Originally Preached at Kimberley Shared Ministry. Photo taken at St. Mary's Lake by Andrew Stephens-Rennie.
It all begins in love and to love all will return. But all along life’s journey, we face a thousand deaths every day.
When we meet Jesus and John as part of the crowds, down by the riverside, I bet each of them could tell us about that last part. I bet you that each one could tell us about death
Under the thumb of an autocratic ruler and in the sights of an occupying army, each of the people there that day could say something about death. Farms and fisheries, exhausted. Families, communities, and livelihoods plundered. All to feed the insatiable appetites of emperor and king. Economy decimated. Sons dragged away to serve the occupying forces, or perhaps hiding as bandits in the hills.
Each one could tell you of the horrors, the list of traumas experienced at the hands of the occupying legions. Wave after wave of violent plague as uncountable and destructive as locusts (a snack, we should remember, John the Baptist was rumoured to eat for breakfast). The people were suffering. Of course they were. But that’s not the story being told on state TV. Day after day, Starlink keeps pumping out the message that everything is now, and that everything will always be great.
When we meet Jesus and John as part of the crowd down by the riverside, we know that any of our neighbours could tell us about death. We can see it in their eyes. We can see it in their posture. It shapes their very being.
We can see it and we can recognize it because we have seen and experienced it too: the pain of searing loss that leaves nobody untouched. It’s in this kind of world, in this kind of moment that we meet Jesus and John, in the midst of the crowd, down by the Riverside.
And I don’t want to be a downer on this beautiful morning, in this beautiful building, gathered together with all of you in worship. As we pray together, sing these gorgeous songs of the God we meet in Jesus–in silence and stillness, in healing, liberation, and fierce, uncompromising love.
I don’t want to be a downer on this beautiful morning (although I do count such pessimism as an under-reported spiritual gift) but I also think it’s important to remember what kind of world we meet Jesus in this morning. It’s not an endlessly idyllic English countryside. It’s not eternal first tracks on a bluebird powder day.
We meet Jesus in a world where, alongside those moments of profound joy, we also experience deep pain. This is a world where not everybody has enough. It’s a world where not everybody knows that they are enough. It’s a world where God can sometimes feel distant from us even as we long for deep connection with God and others.
In a world like this, we can seek to numb the pain with nostalgia–it’s a hell of a drug. We can numb the pain longing for the way things used to be (or at least the way we remember them to be, whether that was the way of things or not). I know for myself that wherever I go, I find myself searching for, trying to recreate the kind of community I experienced in a campus ministry in my mid-20s. In that community, and in that time, my faith was transformed and so was I. I long for that moment, for that community, or for some way of recreating that community, twenty years down the road.
And so here, in this church building this morning, some of us find ourselves longing for a past that others of us never experienced. Or perhaps longing for a past that others of us do not long for.
Perhaps these others long for something else. Or perhaps the past that some of us long for is the very past that caused others of us deep pain. What do we do when we realise that our “good old days” were sites of exclusion, of trauma, and pain?
As I’ve been thinking about all of this lately–both about nostalgia in general, and my own in particular, I’ve found myself wondering. What if–specifics aside–maybe, just maybe, we’re all longing for the same thing?
What if, in some small way, each of us is longing for God's beauty and mystery; a liberating word; the gift of connection, a group with purpose and direction; a community of care and compassion. A community where people give and receive love, imperfectly, the best that we can.
What if, in the midst of all that’s going on around us; in the midst of a world that doesn’t always have our back; in the midst of a life that is impossible to do on our own, we are all longing to be seen, known, understood, valued, cared for. Not for some idealized version of ourselves, not for the masks some situations force us to put on, but for who we are deep inside. We're longing to be recognized at a soul level, and to be loved--not in spite of these things, but because we are inherently worthy of love.
Maybe, just maybe, we’re all longing for the same thing, it’s just that each of us has a different picture, a different image, a different moment in time that we use as shorthand for the experience of feeling most alive, most connected, most cared for, most loved. Maybe this is the reason we talk about the 20, 30, 40 person Sunday School. That number stands in as shorthand for times we felt deeply connected. These were times when we felt deeply loved.*
When we meet Jesus this morning, we meet him in the midst of dashed hopes and unrealised expectations. We meet him in the pain and suffering of the world laid bare, nowhere to hide. When we meet Jesus at the Riverside, we are about to be reminded that this is a world where God comes close. A world into which God still speaks. A world that God still loves. This is a world where the old, grounding rituals gain new life as they are reinterpreted and remixed. This is a world where God, through Jesus is making visible God’s dream that all things will be made new.
It all begins in love and to love all will return, but all along life’s journey, we face a thousand deaths every day.
This morning I want to invite you to join me down by the river. To imagine standing there as one of the crowd on its shores. Carrying whatever burdens you find yourself carrying today. Feeling the call, feeling the draw to come forward. Laying your burdens down on the shore. You step into the water–first a toe. How does it feel? A toe, then your feet, then up to your knees. A little unsteady, you look up, eyes connecting with John’s wild reassuring eyes.
You’re here because you know the old way isn’t working. Because the old way has led, is leading towards destruction. And while you’re not sure, you’re hoping against hope that this way–John’s way–of resistance to the occupying forces, the powers of fear, anxiety, and death, might somehow, inexplicably, if you give your whole self to it, lead towards a newfound experience of life.
Imagine John’s strong caring arms around your back, as you lean back, plunging under the surface for what seems like blissful eternity. And then the tug on your back as you rise once again, water rolling off your forehead, your nose, your chin, drinking in the air with a full deep breath, and then another, and then another.
Before you get quite to the shore, another steps forward. Just one person left. You stop to observe the way their eyes lock, how this one steps into John’s arms. You watch John do the same for this one he’s done for you. But this time, as he rises from the water, it’s as if the heavens open, a dove descends, a voice breaks the silence. Looking back to this day, you’re sure there was a voice, but can’t quite decide if the voice was a voice of thunder, or a barely audible whisper. Maybe both.
“You are my son, the beloved; with you I am well pleased”
Your jaw drops. Time stands still. In that moment, heaven and earth seem to meld. In that moment, that voice of love spoken over Jesus speaks also to you.
“You are my child, my beloved. With you I am well pleased.”
What else to say except that this is a holy moment? This is a sign of who Jesus is, and a reminder that we too begin in love, and that this love goes with us to the very end. Jesus’ baptism is more than a sign of solidarity with humanity. Jesus’ baptism is revelation and invitation to remember the one in whom we find our identity.
We find our identity in the beloved. Not in the naysayers. Not in those who would come to steal, and kill, and destroy. Not in the trumped up stories of some ideal future bearing the musk of some non-existent past.
And this baptism, this death to the claims of an anxious and violent world, this rising to life in Christ, this rising to the truth that you are beloved–we are beloved–transforms us. It transforms us and those we meet, because the children of transformation live transformed lives. We bear the marks of transformation. The children of transformation live lives that find (and find, and lose, and find again) their true identity not in nation or institution or corporation, but in the reality that they were begotten of eternal love. In baptism, and every time we renew our baptismal vows, we are reminded that every moment is holy, that every moment is infused with God’s presence, every moment God is speaking, every moment God is inviting, every moment God is reaching out to us with grace and mercy, with possibility, blessing, and love.
My bet is that many of us here were baptized as infants. And that maybe we don’t quite remember what that moment was like. And yet, haven’t many of us had clear, albeit confusing encounters with the Holy? Have you ever had a moment when time stands still? When time and eternity seem to overlap?
So often we have these experiences and then we don’t tell anybody about them, so scared we are of sounding crazy. But let me tell you friends, in this world, with all that’s going on, I’m pretty sure that this is the kind of crazy I want to be. And so I want to tell you this story.
One time in my mid-twenties I found myself walking home from class, anxious and overwhelmed. Or, to be more honest, I was walking home after a pint with classmates, after class. I was walking with one of those classmates, who happened to be someone I’d been in conflict with for several weeks. And, out of nowhere, I can’t even remember what we were talking about, I start sobbing and weeping uncontrollably, feeling so unworthy, so unloveable, so deeply and profoundly turned around and lost. Right there, in the middle of a soccer field in downtown Toronto. As I utterly break down this person, who in that moment, I really didn’t like, didn’t want to be with, stops, reaches over and holds me.
He just holds me. Eternity passes. I cry uncontrollably for what seems like forever. And when the tears break, he wipes the tears away with his sweater. He doesn’t try to fix anything. He holds me. He stays there until I’m ready. Checks that I’ll be okay to make it home alone. My face is raw, my stomach still heaving. I’m not sure what, if anything I mumble, as I walk off into the night, towards my apartment, my bed.
The next morning, when I wake up, even before I open my eyes, I can feel the sun warming my skin, illuminating my room. And in that glow, a tingling in my hands and feet, an overwhelming sense of God’s love coursing through my veins. A feeling I can’t explain. Won’t ever be able to explain. No dove, no voice from heaven, but in that moment, in my body I knew that this message was for me.
To this day, whenever I remember this moment, whenever I feel it in my body, it comes to me as a gift, a signpost, an oft-needed reminder of the breadth and the particularity of God’s love.
And perhaps because of how this all happened, each time I remember this moment, it also serves as a reminder that we need each other more than we need to agree. This isn’t a statement meant to make space for violence or putting up with abuse. Conflict and abuse are not the same. And this was a moment when God worked through this person--even in the midst of our conflict--to reassure me that I was worthy of love.
When we meet Jesus and John on the crowded riverside, it's in the midst of disorientation. It's in the midst of a world seeming so unmanageable, so out of control. Here we are today, the world and the church as we remember them passing away. And yet, God’s love does not pass away.
In baptism, we come to see that it’s the moment of letting go, the moment of dying, the moment of vulnerably opening ourselves to the other, of vulnerably opening ourselves to God, the moment of realizing that we can’d do it all (that God does not ask us to do it all) and let go of some of the pieces, it’s that moment of falling apart in a soccer field in the arms of an enemy, or whatever your Everyday Holy Moment might be…
It’s in moments like these that we are most ready to receive what God has been trying to tell us from the very beginning, the moment Holy Spirit hovers over the waters, when the Holy Dove swoops over the river, and a voice speaks as thunder, as a barely audible whisper:
You are my child, my beloved, in you I am well pleased. Or perhaps, echoing the prophet: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; no other authority has any claim over you anymore. I have called you by name, you are mine.
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Footnotes:
*This is a bit of an aside, but I’m repeatedly fascinated, and currently a bit worried by the way particular leaders tap into our nostalgia for some half-remembered past, feed the frenzy, weaponize our misplaced longings, all too often at the expense of those who have only ever received crumbs from the table, only received love for their ability to perform or conform to the dominant culture's expectations.
