I. Introduction
Except for the fact that David Prince, the usual occupant of this pulpit, has fallen ill, leaving me as a substitute preacher, I am very happy to stand here today, to preach in a church that Anne Barstow and I have come to love.
They say that sermons are supposed to address themselves to questions. In that case, I may as well start with a big one:
What provides the sense of purpose and direction in your life?
According to a recent poll, 63% of us Americans think that the nation is on the wrong track. Only 22% think we're on the right track. A month earlier, 76% said they are dissatisfied with the way things are going.
To ask about purpose and direction is to inquire about the whole of life —both the personal and the political. We live on both levels, and both need guidance.
Let's start with the personal. I hope you do not feel 76% dissatisfied with the way your life is going. I hope you do not feel that your life is headed off in some direction that you cannot change. But you might.
When I grew up long ago down south, I used to hear a story about a man driving a Model-T Ford. In those days we didn't have any super-highways. In fact, many of our roads were not even paved. Wind and rain could leave them in terrible shape. The story is that the man driving his Model-T Ford came upon a road sign that said, "Choose your rut. You're going to be in it for the next 25 miles."
That's how people feel sometimes about their lives. Choices they made in the past have put them in a rut they can't get out of. Call it addiction, depression, despair, dull routine, force of habit, or whatever —it's the pits. Or maybe I should say, it's the ruts. If that's how it is with you these days, I hope this sermon —and the liturgy of the Renewal of Baptism that is to follow —may offer you a hand to help pull you out of whatever rut you're in.
II. If not a rut then bull-headedness
Sometimes our problem is not being in a rut but having an attitude that looks like the opposite. Instead of feeling caught in a rut, we feel high above it all —so superior that we go around trying to goad everyone into making the same choices that we have made. Determined that we are no kind of victim, and vowing to ourselves never to become one —wanting at all cost to avoid getting lost in the crowd, we become imperious. We become ego-inflated and bull-headed. Our theme is, "Do it my way."
I need to be careful when I speak about this. Ego-inflation is the occupational hazard of preachers. Or is it that preaching is the occupational hazard of ego-inflated people? Either way, we get to stand up here above the listeners —how does it feel down there? — and say what we think. Trying to avoid the rut of dull preaching, we are tempted by the desire to get everyone except ourselves in line.
My wife and our daughter Susannah, who are here this morning, will remember the time when our other daughter, then a small child, announced one evening at supper that for Christmas she was going to give me a church. I was too astonished to say anything, but there must have been some sort of concerned look on my face, because she quickly added, "Oh, Daddy, you won't have any trouble with this church. You just push buttons." Imagine that! A minister's dream! No people problems at all!
I'm suggesting that many of us, preachers included, are between the Scylla of feeling trapped by life and the Charybdis of lording it over others. Some people crash into both of those big rocks. We get caught in our own bull-headedness.
What gives your life purpose and direction?
It's an important question at any time. One should ask it more than once a day. These days it's an urgent political question as well as a personal one. America is in an election year. Choose your leader: we're going to live with the consequences at least four years.
And, as you know only too well, we Americans are also at war. I hope you did not come to church to forget about that. We may not like the war in Iraq. We may not even like the so-called "war on terrorism," as I do not, because I think it's the wrong way to seek security. America's adventure in Iraq has been called an American "war of choice." In other words, a bull-headed war.
The clearest sign of this bull-headedness, its most extreme form, is the use of torture. On Friday about ten of us from this church stood in the driving rain downtown at Foley Square as part of an interfaith Prayer Vigil in opposition to our government's use of torture. We heard a rabbi say, quite truthfully I believe, that torture expresses the will to achieve absolute domination over another human being.
The torturer, the bully on the playground, the tyrant in the household, and the manipulator of others in the workplace, are determined to be in unchallenged control. They injure, sometimes they destroy, what they touch.
III. Jesus' baptism
John the Baptist was amazed when Jesus came to him asking to be baptized. John had been baptizing people right and left. That's how he got the nickname, "the Baptizer." He dunked people in the River Jordan to dramatize his message of repentance. He saw that he was living in a corrupt society — rotten from top to bottom, from the royal family on down. People needed to turn things, and turn themselves, completely around. That's what repentance means. It doesn't mean just being sorry or pleading guilty. It means turning around — turning away from the wrong and heading toward the right thing to do.
So John is out there on the edge of the desert preaching up a storm and baptizing people in the river so they'll rise up, and dry themselves off, and start a new life. And, Oh, My Lord! Here comes Jesus! Here comes this extraordinary man who doesn't have anything to repent of, and he comes right up and looks at you without even blinking and says, "Baptize me, too."
Who, you? No way! You're the clean one. You're from God. I'm not gonna touch you. You dunk me.
Jesus wins that argument, of course. If he didn't, we wouldn't be telling the story now, would we? And all four gospels say that "he", meaning John, gave in and baptized Jesus in the river.
Matthew 3:15 ends with three little words: "Then he consented."
Consented. That's the word most translations use. Another says "allowed" — John allowed Jesus to come and be baptized. (NEB) Others say, "agreed" or "permitted." The King James version, using an old idiom, says that John "suffered" Jesus to be baptized. It means he let it happen.
I went in search of the Greek text to see what its verb was. Not that my Greek is all that good any more, but I went looking anyway. The Greek word in question (aphiémi) has three closely-related meanings:
to send away;
to let go, as in letting someone or something go free;
to let go, as in to give up, to surrender, or let something pass.
Today I'm thinking of Baptism as a letting go. In the Biblical story we're looking at, perhaps it is not only John who gives up and says, "OK." I think it is also Jesus.
When was the last time you had a struggle with yourself about whether to do the right thing? You had your mind set on something even though part of you knew it wasn't the right thing. So your head went back and forth, your will wrestling with itself about what you were going to do. And then, strange to say, you gave up. For some reason, you said to your better self, "I give up. I'll do it your way."
We can call that a moment of baptism. Not baptism by actual water, perhaps, but a giving in to the spirit, or current, of truth that was already flowing within you.
St. Augustine famously said to God: "You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You." Let's paraphrase that: "God, you have made us to follow you, and our hearts are restless until they let go."
It takes courage to let go. Those who are weak of heart cannot do it. They crouch in their rut, or they blare away through their bull-horn.
In order to be baptized, Jesus had to let his own human will come into line with the will of God. The Bible does not assume that this was automatic with Jesus. Right after getting baptized he goes alone into the wilderness and is tempted for 40 days by dreams of power and glory in this world. Later, fearing death on a Roman instrument of torture, he asks to be saved from that, and then prays, "Nevertheless, not my will but thine be done."
We often hear that baptism refers to a cleansing, some kind of purification. Or perhaps we think of it as having to do with making vows, promising to do better, that kind of thing. I have a different thought: For an adult, to be baptized is to let go ...
—Letting go of our own willfulness;
—Surrendering ourselves to God the way a diver surrenders to the water;
—Becoming willing to let ourselves be led by God.
Letting go of fear and hatred, letting go of the desire to be in control, is perhaps the most courageous thing that human beings can do.
Conclusion
People who work in the theater come to know the difference between those performers who can take direction and those who can't. Many big stars cannot do it, but the best actors can. They have learned how to subordinate themselves to their role, and how to submerge the role into the ensemble work of the cast.
As for directors, some of them know how to subordinate themselves to the deep meaning of a play, and some do not. Either they just don't get it, or they are determined to whip the play into their own pre-determined shape. But you can't be a good director, nor a good artist of any kind, unless you let yourself be directed by something higher or deeper than yourself.
In this election year, a good question to ask of candidates is from whom or what they take direction. This is not the same as asking about their religion, and it is certainly not the same as asking their views on family values. It is asking to whom and to what will they turn in a crisis. To whom or to what will they turn when their advisors contradict each other? To whom and to what will they turn when the perks of office are trying to swell their heads? What provides the sense of purpose and direction to their lives?
It is Sunday morning. We are commemorating the Baptism of Jesus. We are invited to commemorate also our own baptisms.
The invitation today is to those who have the courage to let go. And also to those who want the courage to let go. With that invitation, let us gather at the river.