At the River

Matthew 3:13-17

Imagine for a moment that you are at the river.

You’ve come, like most of the folks before and around you, because you want something. Maybe something you can’t quite describe; something you can’t get for yourself.

You want…renewal. You need relief or release from the anxieties and guilts and doubts, great or small, that shadow your life. You want to lay some burdens down.

Or maybe you want the flip side of that – you’ve come looking for transformation, for a change for the better, for a stronger, deeper, truer connection to God.

I suspect that what drew most of the people to John at the Jordan that day was not unlike what draws you or me to make New Year’s resolutions, adopt a “dry January”, start a new meal plan, household budget, exercise plan or new work habits, now or at other times of the year.

Many of us are very familiar with that desire for a fresh start, an opportunity to become better than we are now. Many of us also know that desire for a stronger, better, deeper, truer relationship with God – though we often don’t know what resolutions to adopt to get there on our own.

We, too, might have turned to John for help.

Might have come for John’s baptism to wash away the burdens of regret, guilt, anxiety, shame that make it hard to trust ourselves to God. Come looking for transformation: for baptism in the river that represents God bringing us into the promised land; where we’re freed from all the bonds and burdens that limit us, free to fully entrust our selves, and our future, and all those we love to God.

[That’s the vision of heaven we just sang about, by the way – on the bank of the river that “runs by the throne of God”. That call to come to theriver is a call to live in the promised land; free of our burdens and joyfully close with God.]

And into this longing, on the banks of the Jordan long ago, walks Jesus of Nazareth.

He might have come with friends or even followers who’d known him in Galilee. But in my imagination, he simply slips in with the crowd; joins those lined up for, or clustered around John, awaiting baptism; just stands quietly among us.

Until John recognizes him and clearly, passionately, refuses to baptize him.

And Jesus insists.

There’s a faint sense that this is an argument, an interaction anyway, that takes some time. John insisting every way he can think of that he can’t possibly baptize Jesus. He needs Jesus to baptize him. (John has this longing, too, it seems.)

In my imagination, he’s standing right at the edge of the river, not quite pushing Jesus back, but you can tell his body wants to.  Everyone’s attention is riveted on them for this moment.

And Jesus just keeps saying yes. Yes, you can baptize me. Yes, you will.

Yes. Yes.

“Let it be, now,” we hear him say. “It’s right for us to do this, to fulfill all righteousness.”

Nobody’s really sure what he means by this, but finally that’s enough for John. He takes Jesus down into the river, immerses him, and brings him up.

And you and I and everyone around us have the sense of the sky ripped open, of heaven come suddenly and powerfully close to earth, and hear in our ears and hearts: “This is my Son, Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

We came looking for renewal,

for relief and release and the shedding of burdens,

for hope and growth and coming closer to God.

And we witnessed – we felt – God appear. Felt heaven come right to earth for a moment.

There, on the bank of the river of the promised land, God comes closer – very close – to us.

“Righteousness” – the quality of walking, living, closely with God – happens to us, not because of what we do, or what we repent of, but because God chooses.

Because Jesus insists.

It has been bugging me for days that I can’t really figure out what’s meant when Jesus says “it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.”

I can understand (and analyze, and theologize about) each word, but I still don’t really understand what he’s talking about, why it answers John’s objections.

It irritates Matthew even more, I think. It’s vividly clear to scholars that Matthew agrees with John – Jesus shouldn’t be getting baptized by him. There is no earthly reason why the Son of God, entirely without sin, should be baptized in a ritual that is about repentance and confession of sin, the baptism John has been offering to prepare people for the coming of Jesus.

I don’t get it, and I suspect that Matthew can’t really explain it to himself, either. I suspect that’s why I can’t understand – and many scholars struggle to explain – this statement that it’s “to fulfill all righteousness.”

But I can’t deny that righteousness happens, there and then.

Righteousness is, in gospel language, simply the qualities that make us close to God, that make us a little like God. Righteousness is the qualities that make our life like heaven: free of the burdens of sin or shame or guilt or anxiety, small and great, that make it hard to trust our whole selves to God.

And right there, on the Jordan river, as Jesus comes up from the water, God is unmistakably, vividly, audibly close to us. We hear heaven come right into earth, hear the revelation that here is God’s Son.  That, essentially, here is God, the manifested love of God, wet and just like us, and that God is delighted by it all.

Righteousness just happens to us, on the bank of that river.

Maybe that’s what Jesus meant. Maybe that’s what convinced John.

Maybe that wasn’t what he meant at all.

But still, righteousness happens to us.

The heaven we long for comes to meet us on the bank of the river. God’s closeness erupts into us; God appears among us, much like us, making us a little more like God.

That’s what happens when you and I are baptized, too.

Maybe we come to the font the way John’s people came to the Jordan – sometimes with a clear need to repent, turn from evil, be forgiven. Often with a vaguer but true longing for some release from our burdens, for renewal, for hope and transformation. Very often looking for a closer relationship with God.

Many of us were brought to the water before we felt those longings for ourselves, because of what someone who loved you longed for for you.

And there at the water, in the midst of our longing, “righteousness” happens to us, not because of what we do, or what we repent of, but because God chooses.

Today we renew that longing, we remember that gift. We read this story and promise to keep coming back to the river, to continue seeking renewal, seeking to live close to God. We promise to continue seeking heaven in earth, in our lives, and we sprinkle drops of river around us because the longing to be close to God, to be righteous, doesn’t stop with our first trip to the water. It grows.

So we come back to the river, in story and in ritual, bringing our longing to be relieved of burdens, our longing for hope and transformation, for our more whole, more hopeful, more holy selves.
And again, and again, righteousness happens. Jesus shows up. Heaven comes close. God’s love is proclaimed and God’s delight made known.

Nightmares and Dreams

Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23

I wonder, sometimes, whether Joseph experienced his night-time visitations as glorious dreams of salvation, or as disturbing nightmares.

An angelic visitation is pretty terrifying to start with, according to all the witness of scripture. Add to that the news that the king is specifically looking for your kid, to murder him.... If Joseph didn’t wake up gasping, in a cold sweat, I don’t know why.

Because it’s not just the news that the child is in danger, but that he’s got to leave everything behind: home, job, his network of family and friends, language, familiarity – and flee to a country that hasn’t always been the best place for his people.

Egypt was a place of refuge for long ago ancestors, for another Joseph who had dreams, but that refuge turned into a place of oppression, danger, murder, slavery, and prejudice. Egypt is the place that God had to free Israel from, that Moses had to lead the people away from.
And now God wants this child who is supposed to save Israel to go to Egypt?

Matthew is evoking all of this on purpose in Joseph’s story, because Matthew wants us to see Jesus as a new Moses – a leader who saves his people, who has a uniquely close relationship to God, who can interpret God’s will and give God’s law, speak God’s word with authority.

Which is an inspiring promise of relief and renewal when you’re reading the story. A story that promises Jesus will be a good leader, someone to solve the problems we all face, is hopeful and joyful when someone else is telling it.

But it’s a lot harder to live an inspirational story than to hear one.

It’s undoubtedly terrifying to live it, and still Joseph does precisely what God commands: gets up, takes the child and his mother, goes to Egypt and stays. And then he has another dream, another unnerving encounter with a messenger of God in his sleep. He receives the news that the threat to the child’s life is over, and another set of “get up, take, and go” instructions – which again Joseph follows precisely.

But he can’t go home again. There’s news on the way, and another dream: It’s still dangerous in Bethlehem. Joseph has to find another home for his family. Has to take them to the half-foreign Galilee, to the useless little town of Nazareth, entirely the wrong place for a Messiah or Savior to grow up. Where they’ll start over; outside the security of family and the familiar, building from scratch.

No, I don’t think Joseph enjoyed his dreams, his divine visitations.

But he responded to them with his whole life.

And both Matthew and the folks who choose our Sunday scripture readings want us to notice Joseph’s responsiveness. You and I are supposed to notice and appreciate how Joseph’s full and prompt obedience to the word of God not only saves his own family, but makes God’s plan for salvation work.

We’re supposed to notice and appreciate that God works through the dreams of a Joseph, and calls salvation out of Egypt all over again. To appreciate that Jesus, like Moses, escapes certain death as an infant to become a leader and savior.

And that’s another nightmare right there.

Hiding in the background of this story of salvation and obedience is a deep, bitter tragedy. We don’t hear it read this morning, but this whole story of Joseph saving Jesus by his obedience to dreams is wrapped around and rooted in the massacre of infants.

Jesus escapes Herod’s order to kill the children of Bethlehem just like Moses escapes Pharaoh’s order to kill all the boy children of Israel.

Both great leaders are survivors almost before they are even people, and their survival is the sign that they are the leading edge of deliverance for all God’s people. Both Jesus and Moses are protected for God’s work in a painful tension between rescue and tragedy, hope and grief, good news and bad.

I struggle with this story all the time. It’s so bitterly unfair. God sends a dream to save Jesus, but all the other children of Bethlehem are murdered.

I feel an echo of survivor’s guilt, knowing that the person I need most in this story survives, but other children are unjustly murdered. I grieve for the tragedy of Bethlehem, and I want God to save them all. 
I don’t want my good news – the inspiration and hope of a miraculous escape, of divine intervention, and the echoes of a previous deliverance that promise new salvation here and now – I don’t want that good news mixed with bad news, with unjust and pointless tragedy.

But it is.

It always is.

There is not a single time in human history without unjust and pointless tragedy. Some people die of treatable illness while others are saved. There are Pharaohs and Herods ordering slaughters small and large in every single generation. Infants and toddlers, innocent and fragile, are shot by accident or on purpose in wars and homes and schools. There are families displaced by violence across the world and a few miles from us. There are parents in every age who weep unconsolably as their children are torn from them by governments or individuals, by accident and disaster, or by malice and cruelty.

But there is also no time in human history when God is not working for redemption, renewal, hope and healing.

Divine good news, salvation, hope, and freedom always comes mixed in with elements of tragedy, grief, and pain. In all God’s history with us, all God’s long work of salvation, faith and redemption and healing come always amid a world that is violent, bleeding, and broken. Because God is always working even when all around us says that God is absent, or has failed.

Which is why the story we read and tell today matters.

We tell the story of Joseph’s disturbing dreams, of the child Jesus’s narrow escape, the family’s awkward move to Nazareth for God’s purposes of salvation, and the tragedy of Bethlehem’s children because this is precisely the context in which God comes to our lives. 

Like the story we tell at the center of our Christian faith, the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection, today’s story of salvation isn’t meant to teach us to ignore pain or evil, or to keep us from grieving our tragedies. It’s not meant to make us forget our pain, or to swaddle us in untouched, satisfied contentment.

If we look for God only where the world has already been made perfect – only in stable, successful, challenge-free families, only in perfectly safe neighborhoods, only in complete and easy healing, only in unmixed, easy love - we will never meet God, because none of that safe perfection actually exists.

In the midst of all the tragedy, fear, and failure that saturate our daily news, it can be a relief, in a way, to know that we will always meet God in the imperfect, the terrifying, the tragic. With so much tragedy, fear, and failure to go around, it’s essential to know that this is the exactly context in which God works.

It doesn’t make the tragedy less sad or scary; it’s meant only to help us expect and see and respond to the call of God in the difficult and scary places of our lives.

The stories of God’s salvation almost have to be messy, have to acknowledge the tension of good news with grief and pain, so that you and I recognize our own world, our own story, in God’s story.

And when we do, God calls us to respond like Joseph, to obey our own dreams of salvation. To commit ourselves to following God’s call as closely as we can; to act in hope, confidence, and faith even when we have every reason to fear.

In the ongoing violence, tragedy, and loss that seem like evidence of God’s failure, God still acts. God messes with our dreams, calls us to take risks, invites us to see salvation happening anyway, and to respond, to get up from our own risky dreams, take God’s unexpected gifts in hand, and venture into the unknown, where God is already, always, crafting salvation.