Click here to watch the sermon.
Matthew 3:13-17
Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
Considering that this story comes up every year in the lectionary, I still have an awful lot of questions about it. This year the questions that wouldn’t leave me come from verses 16 and 17. “When Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” The heavens were opened TO HIM and HE SAW the Spirit descending. That implies that he was the only one who saw it. John the Baptist didn’t see it and the crowd didn’t see it. HE SAW it. And what does that mean about the voice? Did only he hear it? Matthew’s Gospel doesn’t make this clear. Neither does Mark’s Gospel. Luke’s Gospel never says specifically that Jesus saw it; it just says it happened, so we don’t know who saw it.
In John’s Gospel the narrator doesn’t tell the story of Jesus’ baptism, but John the Baptist tells the people, “I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him.” But Matthew and Mark leave us wondering: who saw the spirit and who heard the voice? And if the crowd wasn’t the audience, who was?
Years ago, when I worked for a small niche publishing company, I used to speak at Christian writers’ conferences. At one conference, attendees could submit short pieces of their writing for the editors speaking at the conference to critique. (The writers also hoped the editors would buy their work, but a critique was a good start.) So the day I arrived I was given a stack of writing to review, and then I would meet face-to-face with the writers to give them my feedback. I was all of 25 years old, but armed with my B.A. in English and Business, and my vast two years of experience, I was ready to critique poetry, gift books, & children’s activity book ideas. I was nervous, but as I began to read the submissions I was relieved and pleased. There were some good ideas, and some mediocre writing that I knew how to help the writer improve. And then I read a poem called Metaphor of a Chipmunk. It was bad. I mean really really bad. The rhythms were off; the rhyme was forced; and the concept was—well, memorable. Thirty years later I can still remember in detail the story of how the author had left a watering can outside, and a chipmunk had crawled in and died. It was described as “a wretched, swollen sight.” And then it got worse. “Twas Jesus then, that I saw slain— for his sin? No it was I.”
The poem was comparing the death of a chipmunk to the death of Jesus because both were apparently this woman’s fault. Her sin had caused both deaths. If this had come to my office, I would have sent back our form rejection letter, but I would be meeting the author face to face, and what in the world was I going to tell her? The writing was horrible and the theology worse, but I was there as an editor, not a pastor or theologian. I made a few notes of specific things I could address, but I still didn’t know what I was going to say. The writer showed up at the appointed time, and she was a sweet older lady, and so earnest and trying so hard to use the gifts God had given her. She really was hoping my company would buy the rights to her poem. When I told her it wasn’t something we could use, she said, “But God GAVE me this poem! It just flowed out of me, and I know it came from God! Surely I’m supposed to share it!” And suddenly I knew how to answer her. “So this poem was a gift from God?” “Yes!” she exclaimed, clearly glad I understood at last. “And did it help you?” I asked. “Was it meaningful to you?” She confirmed that it was. “Then this poem has already done its job. It was God’s gift—to you! Nobody else ever has to hear it, for the poem to be meaningful. God loves you enough to give you a gift, just for you.” When she walked away, she was smiling.
I will admit that I have joked about this poem and this moment over the years. I have shared the story with other editors, who said, “Oh, good answer! I’ve got to remember that one!” But I will let you in on the secret I don’t share when I tell this story for laughs: I actually meant it. I believe it was true. The poem was just for her. And that was enough.
So back to Jesus. No, he was not an earnest old lady who had written a bad poem and needed to believe God loved her. He was an earnest man who was heading into the wilderness and needed to know God loved him. You see, this is where we get hung up on the whole question of Jesus’ nature. Christian tradition tells us that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine. While some of our scripture supports this, not all of it does. There are so many questions left unanswered, and here we are so soon after Christmas, when even our carols talk about the incarnation as God come to earth in human flesh. Charles Wesley’s Hark the Herald Angels Sing declares: “Veiled in flesh the Godhead see, hail the incarnate deity.”
Some, like Charles Wesley obviously, believe that baby Jesus was God in the flesh that Jesus was uniquely God, and different from us both in nature and degree. Other trained theologians and standard in-the-pews theologians believe that Christ became divine only after his death and resurrection. Still other Christians believe that Jesus was the Messiah but not Divine. If we do believe that Jesus was human and divine, we struggle when those two natures collide and, to our way of thinking, one must win.
I mention all this because this scripture is difficult to interpret without also considering the nature of Jesus. If Jesus was fully divine, how much did he know? Was he omniscient? If he knew fully who he was, then he didn’t need to see the heavens open, didn’t need the dove to alight on him, didn’t need to hear God’s proclamation of acceptance. If Jesus was fully divine, he didn’t need these things—the crowd did. The audience needed the divine proclamation.
But that’s not what Matthew’s Gospel says. Remember: the heavens were opened TO HIM and HE SAW the Spirit descending. So I can only assume that, according to Matthew and Mark, Jesus was the intended audience. Jesus was the one who needed to see and hear that God chose him. Some scholars say a better translation than “with whom I am well pleased” is “whom I have chosen.” “This is my beloved Son whom I have chosen.” The message was just for him. And it was enough.
I’m really glad that Jesus needed to hear this message. It reminds me that I’m not alone in needing to hear it. It tells me that if even Jesus needed to be reminded, it’s okay that I need it, too.
But here’s the problem. I don’t get it—at least not very often. I don’t get skies that open and a voice that calls from the heavens. My skies stay stubbornly shut and too often the voices I hear are not proclaiming God’s favor. I don’t think I’m alone in this. If y’all are just more spiritual than I am, feel free to tell me on the way out. But as another writer put it, “I don’t know many 21st century Christians who bask in signs and wonders, who complain that God talks too much, or butts into their lives too often. But I know plenty of believers who experience God as hidden or silent. These are faithful people who long for epiphany—not just for a season, but for lifetimes.
So I stand at the edges of this week’s Gospel reading and find myself afraid to leap. How shall I bridge the gap between an ancient Voice and a modern silence? Heaven opened. A dove descended. God spoke. Really? I want to believe this. I do. But to accept the supernatural in Scripture is to plunge into a sea of hard questions. If God spoke audibly in the past, why doesn’t [God] do so now? If [God] does, why haven’t I heard [God]? Is God angry at me? Has God retreated? Changed? Left? Or are the ancient stories of Epiphany figurative? Was the dove, in fact, just a dove, and the voice from heaven no more than a nicely timed windstorm? When we speak of epiphanies, are we really just trucking in metaphor? Perhaps God should be in scare quotes. I had a ‘spiritual experience.’ I felt ‘God.’ God ‘spoke’ to me. Isn’t it embarrassing nowadays to believe in miracles”[1]
Or is the question in how we interpret the everyday? I remember the day of Ed Saxby’s memorial service. We had gone out to dinner afterwards, and we were sitting in a dining room with lots of windows. It was raining and dreary and seemed to match my mood. And suddenly the sun was shining and then there it was—the rainbow. I stepped out of the restaurant to take a picture and sent it to Jill: Ed send us a rainbow! Evidently I was one of many people who sent Jill rainbow pictures that day. Was it really Ed? Was it a miracle? Was it God reminding us all that the sun would shine again? Or was it sunlight and atmospheric conditions? Was it coincidence or God? My answer is yes. And why does it matter? I’d rather see miracles where there are none than see nothing but the mundane where there are miracles . . . especially when they come with messages I need to hear.
I said earlier that too often the sky stays shut and the voices I hear are not divine affirmation. I’m guessing it’s the same for you, especially with those voices. The negative voices we hear come from outside us and inside us. Too many of us hear negative things directed toward us all the time, or maybe we still hear the echoes of playground taunts or critical parents. Maybe those voices are what cause us to repeat them to ourselves. Although some of us refuse to admit our faults, I’m guessing many of us spend way too much time naming them. We can be way harder on ourselves than we would be on anyone else. For example, I used to give myself a score for every sermon. Jackie would tell me it was a good sermon and I’d say, “It was a 6.5.” “Oh come on, that was an 8,” she’d assure me. “Delivery was an 8. Substance was a 5. It was a 6.5.” I don’t know when I stopped doing this— maybe when I finally accepted that God wasn’t keeping score. And God doesn’t keep score on you, either. We need some new voices. Or more specifically, we need one new voice. We need to listen to the one voice that calls from heaven saying: This is my child, my beloved, my chosen one. It’s a message for an audience of one. It’s a message we all need to hear. So today I want to start working on changing those voices in your head.
Repeat after me.
I am God’s child
deserving of love and respect
and I’ve been chosen by God
to change the world.
[1] https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/785-thin-place-deep-water