January 13, 2008
The Rev. James Richardson

Isaiah 42: 1-9
Acts 10:34-43
Matthew 3: 13-17

Shalom, Salaam, Peace.

Welcome back to the desert. Welcome back to the river and to John the Baptist. We are not quite done yet with him yet. As you may recall, he was in prison a couple of Sundays ago, and today we are backing-and-filling the story by returning to the River Jordan and the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptizer.

So in the best biblical tradition of backtracking, I want to mention something that should be obvious but is not always: Jesus was not a Christian. And Jesus was not exactly Jewish, at least not in the modern sense of the word.

The religions we know as Christianity and Judaism were not present in the time of Jesus. Nor, for that matter, was Islam. Until we get that, we won’t understand why Jesus is standing in the river – and, really, we may not grasp the full meaning of Jesus very well, either. To get what this is about, we need to shift our world view to a time long ago, before all of our modern categories of religion.

Jesus was living at a time when Judaism was redefining itself, and there were numerous strands of Judaism coursing through the Middle East. Our Christian religion grew from one of those strands, as did the strands that become modern Judaism. And that is important, because Jesus did not really come to found a new religion but to show people how to deepen their relationship with the Lord their God of their Hebrew ancestors. And Jesus did that at a time of great despair when many people felt totally abandoned by God. And that is perhaps not an unfamiliar feeling in our own time.

Jesus lived in a time of great oppression by the Roman Empire. We tend to think of the Romans as this great civilization bringing to the world art and architecture, high learning and government. But to those living in conquered lands, the Romans were a brutal occupier, keeping their vassals in a perpetual state of fear and poverty. Life was cheap in the time of Jesus. It was a common sight at the gates of Jerusalem to see rows upon rows of Jews hung on crosses – the preferred method of execution by the Romans as a warning. The message of the Romans was about power and might-makes-right.

So when Jesus comes to the River to be baptized, a very different message is about to be proclaimed. Sometimes people ask, why did Jesus need to be baptized? That is the wrong question. Instead we should ask, what does Jesus want us to see and hear when he gets baptized? The answer is in the Jewish prophets.

When people hear about John the Baptist standing in the river drenching people in water, they think of the prophets of old. They think of Ezekiel standing in the river as life begins to grow in the Valley of the Dry Bones. And they think of the prophet Isaiah. In the chapter right before the one we hear this morning, Isaiah proclaims that God will bring life-giving water to “the poor and needy.” That is a very different message than proclaimed by the Roman Empire, or any empire for that matter. Then Isaiah, in this passage we hear today, tells us about the leader who is to come – the One from God who comes as a servant to bring “justice to the nations.”

But this leader is anything but a conquering Cesaer. The values of the world are about to be turned upside down. The messiah who comes, Isaiah says, is a gentle servant. “He will not cry or lift up his voice,” Isaiah says. Quiet, calm, silence will be the way of the servant. “A bruised reed he will not break,” an ancient phrase that is meant to evoke someone with a gentle respect for others. “The coastlands wait for his teachings” – the coastlands are a symbol of those who live on the fringes, those who are outcasts. “I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations,” Isaiah tells us.

This servant comes from the people of Israel, the people of Abraham, but is for all the people of the earth. This servant brings not exclusion but inclusion, not revenge and hate, but true reconciliation and healing. Isaiah is describing in Hebrew what is called shalom, or in Arabic, salaam.

God’s overarching, all-encompassing shalom is encapsulated – and signified – when Jesus steps into the water with John the Baptist. God’s shalom is come alive there in the river in the person of Jesus. And there is something more to this. We stand in the river, too. This act of baptism is another way Jesus enters into life with us, by experiencing the same baptism we experience, being drenched with the same water, and entering into the same community we share – this circle of faith we have come to call “communion.”

Jesus is with us in this circle, even to our death, and then beyond. This is a circle that is infinite in time and space. This circle of faith we share has at its center baptism – and this circle of faith proclaims by its existence that we do not share the values of greed and power and death. Through our baptism, each of us is a member of the entire body of Christ, all over the world, in every place and in every time. All of us are connected through our baptism, with each other and with Jesus at his baptism.

All of us are members of the One Body. It doesn’t matter whether you change locations or even change church brands. The circle is unbroken.

This is not an intellectual thing; it is relational. But there are words that go with baptism – and those words are our baptismal covenant. In a few moments, we will once again renew our baptismal covenant, which I believe is an appropriate way for us to mark this Sunday. They are the words we pledge to live by as we live into the fullness of our baptism by supporting each other. We pledge to pray and share in the breaking of the bread.

We promise to love our neighbors as ourselves and we promise that when we fall into sin – as surely we will – that will return to the Lord, again and again. And we promise to respect the dignity of every human being.

Everything we do that is good in this world flows from the rivers of our baptism. Yet there is a challenge to each of us in this – to widen this baptismal circle, to practice God’s hospitality of shalom by bringing others in. We do not get the comfort of a closed circle. That is why Jesus stands in the water with us, to widen the baptismal circle, one at a time, starting with us.

Our baptism makes us servants of each other, right here, and servants of our community and of all the nations. It is to us to bring light into the world, or as Isaiah declares, “to open the eyes that are blind…

And, by our being here today, together in this place, we can declare with Isaiah: “The former things have come to pass, and new things we now declare.”

Shalom, salaam, peace. Amen.