Loved and Called
January 13, 2008
Sue C. Steiner
Text:
Isaiah 42:1-9
Matthew 3:13-17
How easy it would be if the sky opened FOR US. How easy it would be if God’s Spirit conveyed with a fluttering of wings in audible voice: AYou are my beloved daughter. You are my beloved son. With you I am well pleased.” We long for signs of God=s love and acceptance – or at least I do. We long at the same time to know we are called to something, to know that our lives have meaning and purpose. But for most of us, it doesn’t happen with doves alighting and voices from above. If it did, we=d probably not tell anyone, for fear of being labeled crazy.
Most of us must content ourselves with something much less dramatic, mere intimations of God’s love for us and call to us that are ambiguous and veiled. For most of us, God=s love and God=s call come mediated rather than directly -mediated through music…through events…through books…through lively conversation over a cup of coffee or a glass of wine. In fact, God=s love and God=s call often slip through our pores when we=re hardly paying attention. We absorb them over time rather than in an instant.
And yet, for us as well as for Jesus, baptism is the symbolic event where being loved by God and being called by God come together in a profound way. Each year on this Sunday, the church calendar invites us to consider the baptism of Jesus, and then to live more deeply into both the love and the call embedded in our own baptism. This seems especially appropriate at TUMC today, as you and David Brubacher together prepare for a new season of ministry here.
So, let’s first take a moment to consider Jesus’ baptism. All four Gospels give it a place of prominence. Matthew and Luke preface it with infancy narratives – angel visitations, startling pregnancies, dangerous journeys. John begins with a prose poem about the Word becoming flesh. Mark needs none of this. He gets right down to it, and by verse 9 of chapter 1, the deed is already done. It happens down by the Jordan River, where John the Baptizer is urging people to get ready for God’s reign to break in.
Into this picture – in all four gospels -Jesus appears, presenting himself for baptism. Then come the dove, the voice, and those astonishing words: “This is my Son, the Beloved.” The Gospel writers imply that these are private signs for Jesus himself – not available to onlookers.
A testing of Jesus’ identity and call follow immediately, as the Spirit drives him into wilderness. Is Jesus’ really Beloved of God? Will God take care of him as he lives out his call? Jesus emerges after 40 days, and begins describing a new world so longed for, so vivid, so near, that people find themselves transported there by his very words.
Now of course we often find ourselves transported to new worlds. I’ve been know to be dozing on the couch with background music playing when suddenly I hear 3 bars of music. I wake up. Maybe I even sit bolt upright. For those 3 bars of Mozart lift me right out of my living room.
Suddenly I=m on safari with Robert Redford and Meryl Streep. I=m managing a coffee plantation. I=m shooting lions. I=m lounging over dinner in a gorgeous landscape with monkeys watching the turntable of an old record player out of which come those same 3 bars of Mozart. A whole new world has claimed me – the movie Out of Africa. Those 3 bars of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A take me there.
Now in baptism it=s God=s dream that claims us – and Jesus takes us there. God=s dream evokes a landscape more gorgeous and rugged than the Rift Valley of Kenya or the Isle of Iona on the coast of Scotland. The Gospels call it the kingdom of God.
God=s dream invites us into something more thrilling than shooting lions. It=s called standing back in astonishment when lions lie down with lambs. God=s dream invites us into something more challenging than managing a coffee plantation at a higher altitude than coffee has ever been grown. It=s called fitting our deepest desire to the world=s deepest need. Sometimes at a low ebb in life, sometimes when we=re no longer expecting it, something happens so that we’re actually able to hear: AYou are my son, the beloved. You are my daughter, the beloved. Come, take up your calling once again, in keeping with my dream.” This happens to individuals. It happens to congregations. Often it happens to congregations in an interim period. Whenever it happens, we receive energy to live more fully into the call embedded in our baptism.
Some of you know Chip Bender, who was a summer intern here at TUMC years ago. When Chip and I were pastors together at the Waterloo North congregation, he kept insisting that all of us are gifted for ministry, and that these gifts are somehow released as we live out our baptism. At Chip’s urging, we actually added a line to Waterloo North’s baptismal liturgy. We said to those being baptized: “May God’s Spirit release in you the gifts you have been given to serve in the church and the world.”
When I think of you at TUMC during this interim period – when I think of any church during an interim time – here is my hope and prayer: First, that you may know you are loved of God. And then, that God’s Spirit may release in you the gifts you will need for a new season of ministry.
The gifts released in us are usually not splashy or out of our reach. As one of our songs put it this morning, they are the nets and fishes of our daily labour. The gifts released in us may flow very naturally out of our music-making, our child rearing, our business acumen, or from the healing that emerges from the work of our hands. The gifts released in us may flow very naturally from years of study in this field of knowledge or that, or from an intuitive sense of how humans relate, or from a strongly–held passion for justice. The gifts released in us flow naturally out of who we are. But how these ordinary things get enfolded into God’s dream sometimes takes us by surprise. Sometimes God=s Spirit surprises us with an invitation we finally can=t resist – and I think this has happened for my colleague David Brubacher, likely more than once.
Dave is fortunate to have two different ski
ll sets – carpentry and church ministry. I believe both of these have been part of his calling over the years. Dave and I met in Greek class way back when, and our paths have crossed repeatedly since then. As you may know, after Dave left his position with MCEC a little more than two years ago, he started a carpentry business (while also keeping his hand in several church ministry projects). In his carpentry business, Dave thought it would be fun to break into the high-end market in Niagara on the Lake, and he did.
Yet here he is today, at TUMC, committing himself to be your full-time interim pastor. I believe beyond a doubt that his being here is a call from God for this time. It’s yet another living out of his baptismal vows, yet another releasing of the gifts he has been given to serve in the church and in the world. God’s Spirit surprises us as individuals. God’s Spirit also surprises us as congregations. Sometimes when we least expect it, God’s Spirit comes to us as congregations with an amazing assurance – You are God’s Beloved – and from that assurance flows a renewed call.
I know this place, this community, TUMC, is precious to many of you. Some of you travel quite a distance to connect here. Some of you may be the only people on your block who roust out on Sunday morning to go to church – or at least that’s what some families tell me about themselves in Kitchener-Waterloo.
We sang this morning: “What is this place where we are meeting? only a house, the earth its floor….Yet it becomes a body that lives when we are gathered here, and know our God is near….This is the place where we can receive what we need to increase God’s justice and God’s peace.” In other words, this is a place – this is a community of people – called together by God not only for our own benefit, but also to further God’s dream in our world.
In Isaiah 42, which Anita read earlier, some discouraged Jewish exiles are doubly astonished. They’re astonished when God invites them back into community after a very major disruption. “I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness, I have taken you by the hand and kept you.” I have not abandoned you during a very rough time. The exiles are even more astonished to hear that their community has a purpose beyond themselves: You – the whole people – are my Servant, says the prophet , speaking on behalf of God. You – the whole people – are created to participate in my dream for the world. And now I have given you – collectively – as a light to the nations. I have given you – collectively – to open eyes that are blind. I have given you – collectively – for justicemaking – to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon. I have given you – collectively – for announcing hope. See, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare.
An interim time in the life of a congregation is a time to receive once again God’s love for you as a body. Who knows, maybe you’ll hear it almost audibly, with fluttering wings. Or maybe God’s love will be a mere intimation. However it happens, may you know again that you – TUMC – are a beloved community of God. May you know again that God calls you to life filled with meaning and purpose, where your deep desires intersect with our world’s deep need.. May you glimpse a renewed vision for TUMC to participate in God’s dream here in Toronto in 2008. May your gifts be released towards that vision.
May you honour your past, and look with eager hope towards the new things God has in store for you. Blessings to you as a congregation. Blessings to you, Dave.
Amen.