For Sunday, January 8, 2017 – Matthew 3:13-17 – Matthew 3:13-17
Such a simple act marks the moment when heaven and earth are joined as one. Jesus goes to John, his childhood friend, one might presume, the son of Mary’s cousin, and asks him to baptize him. Jesus wants to be not a sightseer on an earthly journey but fully immersed in the ordinary delights and extraordinary pains of the human experience. He desires no special status, only the status of the multitude who, one by one by one, is so very beloved by God.
To stand in line with the poor and ill and ashamed and then to lower himself into the dirty waters, to say with his actions, “I am one of you; you are my people, and I am your brother,” Jesus begins to show us himself and his God. Not a God of war and division, a conquering and spiteful God who demands sacrifice, but a God we can trust—even more surprising, a God who trusts us. Just as Jesus trusts himself into John’s mortal hands, leans back and back and back until he is falling into ever more trust.
Jesus shows us how to join the Commonwealth of Creation, how to unite the portion of heaven and earth that is given to each of us to tend and nurture into fuller life. He comes to John to be baptized not in order to fulfill the religious laws of righteousness but to do what is right. Some of us have trouble discerning the difference between these. Laws can get us to do what is right only by force of the will. The Spirit compels us to do what is right by way of desire and joy.
In the Spirit we hear how tenderly God speaks to each of us: “I want to be one with you. Come to the waters. Fall back into my love. Trust me. When you are at last weak enough, human enough, we will be able to do some new things. Just for the fun of it. We’ll start over. I’ll help you be who you really are. We’ll do it for the sake of others. We’ll do it for love.”
