“Do not fear,” so says our reading from Isaiah.
(Click here to listen to the sermon)
The book of Isaiah as we have it can be divided into three parts. The first part deals with the Babylonian exile. Our reading from today comes from the middle section, a collection of materials around the themes of hope, divine comfort, and an end to the exile. The period of punishment is over, and God will redeem Israel.
The God who created them, the God who calls them by name, makes a promise to bring them home. It is a forward-looking and hopeful message emphasizing God’s actions, and affirming God’s nearness and compassion.
The book of Isaiah is part of the biblical prophetic tradition focused not just on the historical prophet, but also on how the living tradition remained applicable across generations. So if you find yourself in the wilderness of our modern world, it might be helpful to look to Isaiah. “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.”
The message isn’t that there won’t be floods and fire. The text doesn’t pretend that things were perfect, or even easy as God’s people left Babylon and returned to Jerusalem. There would be trials because the world then, like the world now, was imperfect. The comfort of Isaiah is that the people weren’t reliant on a distant god, but on one who has called them by name, suggesting a deeply personal relationship, a god who is going to seek you out wherever you are and bring you home. “Because,” the scripture says “you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you.”
Listen again to God’s message from God’s prophet: “You are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you.”
It is not surprising that this passage from Isaiah is connected to the story of Jesus’ baptism in our lectionary cycle. Isaiah was speaking to an expectant nation, full of hope and fear as they came home from the wilderness. In our Gospel reading John is speaking to an expectant crowd, full of questions. They want to know if John is the messiah because he looks the way they might expect a messiah to look, at least one of the ways a messiah might look. Most of us are familiar with the idea that people expected an earthly king, but as the crowd gathered around John shows us, they were just as likely to expect and accept an ascetic prophet preaching ritual cleansing and rigid rules of behavior.
If the part of the Gospel reading today about winnowing forks and unquenchable fire sounds extra familiar, that’s because we just heard those exact verses a month ago at Advent 3. The Gospel reading for that day overlaps our reading for today. In Advent, the reading began with John calling the crowd a brood of vipers and then giving them a list of things they should do: give your extra coat to the poor, don’t take more than you need, etc. They’re all very good rules, but that’s all they are: rules. Do this. Don’t do that. It ends with the verses about the winnowing fork and the unquenchable fire. It’s an appropriate reading for Advent, when we’re all supposed to be winnowing our hearts for the coming of Jesus.
Here we are on the other side of Christmas and our reading is telling the other side of the story, starting with the winnowing fork and the unquenchable fire. As Father Michael reminded us in Advent, the prophecy isn’t saying that some people are wheat to be gathered up and others are chaff to be burned, but that we’re all a mix of the two. John is passing out rules and prophecies so that people can get themselves ready for what’s coming. But The Holy Spirit descends on Jesus not as unquenchable fire, but in bodily form like a dove and tells him “You are my son, my beloved. With you I am well pleased.”
Keep in mind that at this point in Jesus’ story he hadn’t done anything. The healing of the sick, the feeding of the poor, resisting temptation in the wilderness, even the minor miracle of turning water into wine hadn’t happened yet. We know that when Jesus was twelve he asked some good questions at the temple. Luke’s gospel tells us that Jesus was about thirty when his ministry started, so it’s eighteen years later that he comes down the river to get baptized and pray. Maybe in those eighteen years he was studying so that he would have snappy comebacks when he was questioned by the authorities, or maybe he was just working in Joseph’s carpentry shop trying to ignore what he surely knew was his calling and his fate. But whatever he was doing, on the day of this Gospel reading he decided it was time. God does not ask what took so long, God does not respond with a list of cities that Jesus should visit or a list of rules he should follow. This was not a time for reproach or instruction. In that moment it was enough that Jesus was named and claimed “ You are my son, my beloved. With you I am well pleased.”
Not so different from Isaiah’s words, spoken not to a messiah but to God’s own ordinary people: “You are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you.” They were precious and beloved not because they performed miracles or because they followed all of the rules all of the time, but simply because they were God’s people and God loves God’s people.
I confess that I struggled writing this sermon. Sermons need Good News and a call to action. I struggled not because it was hard to find the good news in today’s readings. The good news is clearly present in all of the readings. God is present with us as we walk through the wilderness. God will call us out of exile and back into community. God sends God’s beloved son to provide comfort and to empower us. I didn’t struggle with the call to action either, but I’ll talk about that later. I struggled with this sermon because the Good News of the scripture seemed too simple. I don’t have a new twist to put on these readings. I don’t have a new perspective to share. Despite two study bibles and ten different modern commentaries there wasn’t one line in any of them that made me say “That’s it! That’s the hook!”
The message for today is simple. We have heard it countless times, but we can never hear it too much.
God loves God’s people when they’re scattered in the wilderness and when they’re neck deep in dirty river water. God loves God’s people when they’re ready to head out into the world to do the work they’ve been given to do, and God loves God’s people when they’re worn out and ready to come home. The people of Isaiah’s time didn’t have to earn love and belonging, and neither do we. It is a gift freely given. It is that simple. We are precious and beloved. Our neighbors are precious and beloved. You, child of God, you are precious and beloved. Imagine if we lived in a world full of people who really believed that we are all precious and beloved children of God.
Take a moment, and think of someone you love dearly. Holding them in your heart say, “You are a precious and beloved child of God.”
Now think of someone who challenges you. Hold that person in your heart and say “You are a precious and beloved child of God.”
Finally, say it to yourself. “I am a precious and beloved child of God.”
I invite you to write it down somewhere and stick it on your bathroom mirror or by your computer monitor so that you are reminded of it regularly, because the only challenging part, the call to action, of this simple, revolutionary message is going out into the world and acting like we really believe it.
As Prepared for Delivery
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