Opened to Love. . . and Serve
First Congregational Church – Wauwatosa, Wisconsin
1st Sunday after Epiphany/Baptism of the Lord – January 13, 2008
Rev. Steven A. Peay, Ph.D.
[Texts: Acts 10:34-43/Matthew 3:13-17]

“. . .just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice came from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

We’re not quite two weeks into the New Year. How many of you made New Year’s Resolutions? -- How many of you have already broken at least one of them? Every year we take stock of what has happened and look to the possibility of new beginnings and, in all earnest, decide that we’re going to do some things that will help that newness along. It seems that the holidays, with the memories, the family and friends and the reminders of so much good, open us to the potential, the possibilities that life holds for us. So we make resolutions to take advantage of this new openness. Sometimes we succeed and other times not, it’s unfortunate that we can’t see how well, or how poorly we’re going to do, because then we would resolve appropriately.

I was reminded this week of a passage from J.R.R. Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings. In the “Fellowship of the Ring” the elf-queen, Galadriel brings Frodo and Sam to a deep green hollow where she has them look into a basin of clear water sitting “upon a low pedestal carved like a branching tree.” She invites them to look into the water, but warns them that they may see things they don’t want to see, too. Galadriel says, “For it shows things that were, and things that are, and things that yet may be. But which it is that he sees, even the wisest cannot always tell.” Something I read suggested, and I agree, that there is an echo of baptism in this imagery and I think it’s there in our desire to make substantive change each New Year. We look at things that have been, we see the things that are, but it is the things that yet may be that are difficult for us to comprehend. Baptism rests on the action of the past, God’s assurance of love and forgiveness, takes it into the present and points us to the potential for the future. We see what was, what is and the hope of what will be with each child brought to this font. What we see is the opening to love and to serve.

When Jesus is baptized in the Jordan on that long ago day Matthew records what he does is for us – it’s part of that things that have been and are. John protests when Jesus seeks him out. “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” That Jesus persists in his request was interpreted by the early Church as Jesus, again, identifying with us. As God in Christ identifies with humanity in the incarnation, the assuming of our fleshly nature and existence, the identification is extended in the moment of baptism, for in that moment we are baptized, too. One of the great teachers of the early Church, Peter Chrysologus, said that he came out of the water drawing the whole world with him. It’s an image that has given me shivers each time I think of it – and fills me with hope. Our lives are drawn together with God’s life and it is that fact, that what was, which allows us to live in the here and now and look to the future.

Jesus is baptized to open humanity to the relationship God has desired with us from the time we were formed from the dust of the ground and enjoyed sweet communion, oneness with God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. We lost that through our own selfishness, the self-centeredness that made us decide we wanted to make the world as we wanted it and not as the Creator did. God takes flesh in Jesus so that we might have that true relationship restored and in that restoration we are opened to love. What we see in Matthew’s Gospel is that moment of opening when Jesus, who we are reminded, has emptied himself of divinity to take on the fullness of our humanity. I like the way Eugene Peterson renders this passage from Philippians two in his sense translation of the Scripture, The Message, “Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn’t claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death . . .” [Philippians 2] And God does this work, as the reading from Acts reminds us, to bring us to relationship.

I like what storyteller-theologian John Shea says about the baptism of Jesus. He writes: “There has always been a creative tension in the way Christians relate to Jesus Christ. On the one hand, Jesus is the unique Son of God, irreplaceable and beyond imitation. On the other hand, Christians participate in the identity of Jesus Christ, continuing his presence on earth and imitating his way of life. Therefore, Christians are ‘sons and daughters of the Son.’ The descending dove and the speaking sky that combine to communicate love and mission to Jesus are passed along through Jesus to all of his followers. The ultimate communication of the story of Jesus is for his followers to see and hear what he saw and heard as he came up out of the Jordan.” [p. 52]

What Shea is saying is that each one of us is to become opened to see and hear the testimony Jesus heard on that long-ago day: “This is my beloved son….This is my beloved daughter, with whom I am well-pleased.” God said that to each of us long before we were born, long before we were baptized. We have been children of God all along. What our faith does for us – should do for us – is make us realize our identity, make us understand that we are the children of God and as God’s children are to live and to act as such. What Jesus does is to open us to who we already are, he doesn’t supply something that is missing, he restores the awareness of our identity, of our dignity and in that way restores, completes, fulfills us. So I have to open myself to the truth that I was God’s child long before Willard and Doris got together and brought me into the world. I was God’s child before the water was poured on me. But I have to get that, to realize it, to open to it, awaken to it – pick your verb – and in that moment understand that God is equally fond of my sisters and brothers in the human race.

To be opened to love is to become opened to serve. That’s what we also read from the Acts of the Apostles today. What we read together is part of the kerygma, the heralding (a kerux is a herald, someone who runs ahead alerting people to the presence of the King) or basic proclamation of the core Christian faith. What did we read? “That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism John announced: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about him that everyone ho believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”

Now, note how the story is proclaimed. What we see is a series of acts of God: God preaches the good news of peace in Jesus Christ; God anoints Jesus; God is with Jesus in the miracles. And it is God who raises Jesus from the dead. Part of the give-and-take, the creative tension Shea mentioned, is all about who Jesus is. It pretty much occupied Christians for the whole of the fourth century and precipitated the first three, if not all, of the seven truly ecumenical councils. And Christology, who Jesus is, still occupies us. There is a tension about whether Christianity is the faith of Jesus or faith in Jesus. It has also been said that Jesus preached the kingdom, but that the Church preached Jesus.

Now, this will probably not come as a shock to those of you who have come to know me well when I say, I don’t see a material distinction or contradiction here – neither did the early Church, neither did our Puritan-Congregational forbears. When Jesus does what he does he makes the kingdom present. And when the Church proclaims Jesus we’re doing the same thing. I like what the New Testament scholar Reginald Fuller says, “The Church proclaimed Jesus precisely as the act of God, the epiphany of his saving presence. This epiphany is activated at the baptism.” [Preaching the Lectionary: the Word of God for the Church Today, p. 33] Remember that an epiphany is an opening, a revelation, a showing and the point comes home – in Jesus we are opened afresh to who we always have been, who we are and who we are called to be. We are God’s children, God’s beloved.

The dove that descends on Jesus at his baptism can be seen as symbolic of the Holy Spirit, but we can also look to another image – the dove that brings word to Noah that a new world has dawned following the flood. Jesus calls us to a new beginning and when we are opened to love as God’s children we are also opened to serve, as Jesus modeled for us – “he went about doing good.” Our coming to a new awareness of who we are isn’t just something for our little world, we are called to love and to share in a far broader way and what holds true for us holds true for the Church, too.

As a church we are called to BE for each other – to love and to serve as Jesus did. This is at the core of the “priesthood of all believers” we Congregationalists hold dear. Last evening I spoke to an adult faith formation group at Christ King Roman Catholic Church – tonight Sam will and on Wednesday it will be Rob’s turn – and I told them about our Congregational Way. I pointed out that our emphasis on covenant called each of us into ministry and to responsibility for the live of the church. Given some of what I’ve seen and heard of late, there are covenanted members of this church who have forgotten what it means to be a part of a church and we muct, again, rekindle the gift if First Church is to thrive and to grow.

We don’t subscribe to hierarchies in our Congregational tradition. Our understanding of the Catholic, or universal, Church is that it encompasses every believer who ever lived, is living, and will live and that we are united with them. However, that doesn’t mean that the Church Catholic, as both the Cambridge Platform and the Savoy Declaration of Faith refer to them have officers, etc. In our understanding the only true expression of the Church is in the local, gathered, covenant community. Here is the Church complete under the headship of Christ. However, while the Church is complete, for it to truly be itself it must be in fellowship – Henry Martyn Dexter called it “sisterly relationship” – with other Churches. As Christians are not “lone rangers,” neither is a truly Congregational Church. Our being opened to love calls us to be opened to serve and to serve beyond just the narrow confines of our Church or even our immediate community.

We accomplish that fellowship through our membership in various Congregational associations. We reach out through the Wisconsin Congregational Association to the Churches closest to us. Through the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches we are drawn into fellowship with Churches across our nation and in the International Congregational Fellowship we come to share with Churches in every part of the globe. If you ever wonder why I emphasize this fellowship “stuff” so much, it’s because it is only through our exercising of fellowship that we really become and are a Congregational Church.

Sometimes it is important for us to remember that our National Association may have been conceived at the Hotel Fort Shelby in Detroit in 1955, but it was in 1956 that the NA was born in this meeting house, when the articles of association were written and approved here. Many of our members and our ministers gave time, talent and treasure to make our National Association come to life. I am particularly reminded of the Reverend Neil H. Swanson, who left the ministry of this Church to become the first full-time Executive Secretary of the NA. Neil passed away this past week in Minnesota – may his memory be eternal. We have folks serving the NA now, like Harry Holz on the Executive Committee, Sam Schaal as the transition editor of The Congregationalist, and I’ve been known to get involved here and there through teaching and research. There are many opportunities for involvement and I would love to see more of our folks be willing to get involved with the National Association, the Wisconsin Association or the ICF. Being who we are is more than just hanging out on Church Street.

God comes among us to remind us, recall us, restore us to what we’ve always been – God’s children. We are opened to love and in that opening we are also opened to serve. I would challenge each of us to find avenues of service here at First Church, in our communities, in our various Congregational associations. Resolve to do something that makes a difference for others, as well as for us as individuals. Do something that is for keeps. We’ve come out of the waters of baptism. The voice speaks. Are we listening? Do we hear what God is saying to us? “You are my beloved daughter. You are my beloved son. In you I am well-pleased.” Listen. Be opened to love….and serve.