Luke 3:15-22
01/13/2019
When I was 15, I took a trip with a group of high schoolers to a Young Life camp in Colorado called Frontier Ranch. For those who don’t know, Young Life is a Christian organization that seeks to reach out to high school age folks and bring them the gospel in a manner more geared to that age and period of life and when I was in high school I was way into Young Life. The summer of that trip, I had spent a month and a half working on the staff of their camp in the mountains of North Carolina only to spend a couple of weeks traveling to Colorado and back on a chartered bus with 50 other high school age folks from Eastern North Carolina. And the trip to Colorado was amazing—a collection of excursions to a great many tourist destinations in between my home on the east coast and Colorado and experiences as diverse as stopping at amusement parks and whitewater rafting and hiking and looking back I cannot imagine how much that trip costed my parents but at 15, I’m not sure I had the best understanding of the value of a dollar, anyways. Arriving at our final destination, we soon discovered that the front door to our cabin opened up to the face of a large cliff, the kind that you might see on a postcard and each day, simply walking from there to the cafeteria was to be immersed in the sights and sounds of an area of the world that was totally different that anything I had ever experienced in my little hometown. Now, even at 15, my deathly fear of heights was already well-cemented into my psyche. But at the same time, I was staying with a group of primarily older guys, juniors and seniors in high school, and, testosterone being what it is at that age, it seemed that none of them had any sorts of qualms about going fast, or high, or any of the sorts of thrill seeking things that young men in high school do to bear witness to their toughness, manliness, courage, whatever. And not wanting to be completely cursed by the ridiculously late growth spurt that the men in my family seem to hit (I was 5'6" in my sophomore year to 6 foot tall by the end of my senior year) or the bookishly nerdy persona that I had meticulously crafted for myself in high school, I had, over the course of the trip engaged in some of the same banter about supposed conquests of height and/or speed. So it should come as little to no surprise to anyone that when the time came to decide what activities the group was going to do while at the camp, calm nature hike along the shoreline of a babbling brook lost out to rappelling the side of the same 200’ cliff face that greeted us every morning. And, of course, in Frontier Ranch's defense, there was nothing that said anyone had to do any of the activities but like I said, the nature of young men at that age being what it is and coupled with the fact that there were also girls on the trip, there was simply no way I was going to walk around for the whole rest of our time together being the guy who wussed out of doing anything. And so it was with some degree of terror that I joined my comrades in making our way up the steep cliff to what I was becoming increasingly sure was my impending demise. Once there, the folks tasked with supervising the rappelers began to ask for volunteers to go first and while I knew there was no danger that that was going to be me, there was, of course, no shortage in my group of folks that wanted to do this and so I slipped further and further into the background. And, from a relatively safe and secure distance, I watched as folks seemingly effortlessly dropping two hundred feet only hitting the side of the cliff once. And observing my friends and their deep trust of the physics of rope and carabiners, I sat completely perplexed as to how anyone could do this kind of a thing for pleasure or possess the degree if faith that it took to engage in the quick descent down the mountain that each was accomplishing. But as our numbers continued to decreased and my ability to hide became increasingly challenged, I soon found that it was just me and the instructors up top and a group of dudes down at the bottom, watching me and waiting for me to get down there. So it was into this vortex of terror and sweaty palms that I slipped my harness on, tightened it up, clipped into the line and began to walk back down the cliff when the instructor stopped me. "That's not how you do it. If you want to rappel down you have to sit into the harness with your back parallel with the ground below." And a new wave of fright a’washed over me. It was bad enough being hooked into this thing and walking down the side, now they wanted me to sit down in it and trust that I wasn't going to go careening down the 200 foot drop. And in the back of my mind, I recall thinking, "well, if I'm going to die, at least no one will call me a coward." And so I sat. And then I pushed off the side of the cliff the way I'd seen others in the group do it and I dropped like 20 feet. And breathed. And pushed off again and dropped another 20 feet.There is a process that happens in the human mind when it feels on edge for a prolonged amount of time and I mean this without any sort of embellishment of fear or alarm. Hanging by a rope untethered to anything else save a single eyelet drilled into a rock feels completely unnatural and unsettling. And it is in moments like this that the experience within your mind becomes greatly heightened as it tries to grasp for details upon which to reground itself. At that moment, hanging on a rope on the side of a cliff, my brain began to function as something of a camera taking almost microscopic pictures of all the sights and sounds around me. The moss that grew on the rock 18 inches from my face soon burst with life. The granules of sand and dirt that filled in some of the crevices of the side of the crag seemed to be individually numbered. Each leaf, each tree, each hawk, each beam of sunlight, each droplet of sweat, each wisp of wind, each sound of straining rope and tiny rocks hitting the ground below me seemed to be in perfect placement and perfect harmony in a perfect world. And it was God’s world and God dwelt deep within it. Every little detail revealing the greatness of God’s plan for the world and my infinitesimally small part of it. And somewhere in the midst of that holy union between creation and creator, all my fears and anxieties had dissipated and I simply spent a handful of moments being and existing and dwelling in the presence of God. When, as if out of nowhere, my feet came to rest on the terra firma below me I, too, became re-grounded to the earth, and the moment was past. And in the immediacy of the experience, all I could sense was a deep and abiding feeling of gratitude. Gratitude for the ground but also for the cliff and the rope and the harness (especially the harness) and while everything had seemed scary and uncertain and frankly dangerous just a few minutes ago, when I was willing to place my whole trust in the people around me, in the rope and harness, when I was willing to let that trust propel me to sit with my back parallel to the ground what came next was an amazing ride, a challenge that I didn’t think I could do, and a singular moment in time in which on the side of a mountain in Colorado, I sensed the presence of God in a manner that was real and true and in a way that almost 3 decades later I remember with crystal clear clarity. But none of it would have been remotely possible without that single moment of faith.
Truth be told, we know almost nothing about the lifte of Jesus of Nazareth. The Gospel of John suggests that Jesus's ministry lasts for three years and that is usually taken to be the most accurate of the historical timelines. But the other three gospels layout the whole of Jesus's ministry across the expanse of a single year. One year to completely change the course of human history. Having just left the Christmas season, we know of the two birth narratives in Matthew and Luke and there is a single story of Jesus in the Temple teaching the Elders as a child of twelve in the gospel of Luke, but beyond that, he lives almost all of his lifetime in seclusion. There are those intellectuals out there who have tried to fill in the gaps so to speak—from positing a more normalized life lived in Nazareth until his baptism to suggesting that he was some kind of zealot revolutionary seeking to overthrow the Roman Empire by whatever means necessary when he perceives the call of God on his life. And while all these theories are interesting and make for good discussions around academic tables the fact is that we are all grasping at straws, trying to pick up on the very few clues offered in scripture about this child of God and his life prior to the beginning of his ministry of love and grace.
And while trying to create a singular story from the collage of details offered about Jesus's life from the four tellings of it that were put in the Bible, it seems of critical import to all the traditions from which these gospels arose that Jesus's new life, his life as the bearer of God's love and light for the world, began when he came to the Jordan River and requested of his cousin John the same ritual of baptism that John was calling on all the Jews to undertake that they might be made clean once again in the eyes of God. For in each rendering of the story we commence with a great number of Jews were making their way down to the river with Jesus, too. Eventually finding his way there. And, again, because of the way each story stars, we really don’t have any sense as to why he found himself standing before John the Baptizer. Maybe he was just following the crowd. He had heard that his cousin John was doing this thing and he wanted to check it out. Maybe he had been out on a walk one day and heard the commotion that inevitably arises when large numbers of people have congregated in the same area and he wanted to see why they were all together. Maybe, there was a yearning deep within his spirit that propelled him towards that river, towards the people, towards John. A yearning that he could not fully understand. A yearning that had grown with him as he transitioned from a baby, to a boy, to a young man, to now an adult. Whatever it was, we see him coming to the water, to his cousin, to take part in this ritual with all his brothers and sisters. And you get the sense that John sees him working his way through the crowd from some distance because the Baptizer who has spent the last few verses berating the people around him of the coming fire and the threshing room floor and calling them a brood of vipers, almost immediate changes his tune in the presence of Jesus. The one who in the previous verse is availing himself of the high sear of judgment on an entire country and religion, is reduced to declaring that the one that is coming into their midst is so much greater than John that John is unworthy to untie the straps of his sandals. And as Jesus drew closer to the river, perhaps he, too, was awashed in a sea of emotions; excitement, terror, uncertainty, faith. Maybe as he entered the river, his cousin John serving as his guide, maybe he saw that his life was about to be irrevocably changed, that he was at one of those moments in his life, that we all have, one of those moments in which to go one way or the other will forever alter the course of our existence. Maybe he knew like me, dangling high about the earth, that he had to drop down into the water and give over any vestiges of hesitation or doubt over to God, that God might use him for the betterment of creation. Maybe, for that singular moment, all of time and space froze for Jesus. For that solitary instance as the darkness of the water enveloped him, did not time slow down for him so that his brain turn into a miniature camera as he studied and then captured the minute details of each new thing that arose in his perception of the world around him. If he felt the granules of sand and mud rush through his hair, his nose. I wonder if he opened his eyes while he was under the water to see if he could see anything or if he remained wholly in his mind and in the moment. I wonder what it was like when he crested the water having been made clean in the dirty and dank waters of the Jordan River. I wonder if he stayed down there a couple of extra seconds wondering if he was ready for all that, wondering if he could be the ultimate conduit for God's love and light on the world, I wonder if he stayed down there until he could stay no longer, just to linger in those last few moments of normalcy before he gave his life wholly and completely over to God. I wonder if he felt different, if he felt changed, if he felt like the Christ. And when the skies ripped open? What must that have been like for him? To see the holiness of God descending from the clouds like a dove. To hear the words of God, the parent that your mother had always said you had, to hear God say that you are the beloved, that God is well pleased with you. What must that whole experience have been like? I wonder if he was ready to embrace being the savior, the redeemer, the Christ for a world that desperately needed to be saved from itself. I wonder.
Sisters and brothers, I am convinced that from that first age when we become cognizant of our place within the grand scheme of the world to our last breath, that there are those moments that come over and over again in which we are called to place the whole of our trust in God, believing that we are surrounded by love and light. To cast ourselves into the waters of doubt and let those waters clear any stray thoughts, and hesitation from our minds and our souls and allow us to hear, with the clarity of Christ, the Holy One call down to us and proclaim us, "Beloved." But more than that to take that status of beloved, that proclamation of who and whose we are and offer to each person we meet. To allow all people to feel and know that they, too, are the beloved of God, knitted together in their mothers' wombs by the commingling of spirit and flesh, blessed with the opportunity to experience God's good creation and called to pass that along to the next and the next and the next until we all see that we are each only a part of the web of life that covers the whole of the earth, that moves and breathes throughout the universe, that is forever and always bathed in the grace of God. I don't know specifically where each one of you is in your life but I believe with my whole being that God is not yet done with you, that God is still calling, still demanding, still desiring each one of you to be the conduit for God's love and light for the world until we are all awashed. So lean over the edge, drop down in the water, step out an inch, just an inch, and have the faith that God will catch you and love you and change the whole course of human history through you. Glory be to God in the highest and on earth peace amongst all God’s children. Alleluia, amen.
*-The Baptism of Christ (1472), Leonardo da Vinci