Baptism by Fire

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January 7, 2007

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button below.

The Trilogy

1. Baptism by Fire – The Baptism of Jesus as seen by John the Baptist “Talking Head on a Platter”

2. The River Jordan – Israel’s Mighty Mississipp

3. Jesus – The Great Escape

PRAYER

Mystery of many names and mystery beyond all naming, this morning we want to investigate the difference between what is proclaimed and the proclaimer.

In ancient Greece when a messenger arrived with bad news it was not an uncommon practice to kill the messenger. There was a disconnect between the news being delivered and the one delivering the news. Television news has this same disconnect in which they think that having attractive and likeable newscasters makes it easier to hear that this culture along with nature, itself, is red in both tooth and claw.

The good news – the Gospel – that was brought before the world in the person of Jesus of Nazareth – whether he was historical or not – makes no difference – the good news that the character Jesus brought to the world has been filtered through culture after culture until it resembles the child’s game of whispering one thing at the beginning of a circle and something quite unlike what was originally said is spoken at the end of the circle.

Even knowing this does not keep intelligent people from dismissing a message that may be vital for today’s world simply because the version of the message that they heard offended them in some way or other. Couples run up against this same problem when after 20-30 years of marriage. They have a hard time recognizing the individual that they are married to as being anything like the person they fell in love with. That’s why wedding vows are rightfully sometimes revisited, and recommitments are made in the light of changing times.

The study of religion is comparable in that to understand what was originally said, thought and communicated, it becomes necessary to reinvent a new way to look at old messages.

Mark Twain once said that one should not mess up a good story by sticking to the facts. This is often heard as an excuse for lying, but narrative truths can be reclothed and reinvented so that new audiences can see the values symbolized by those narrative truths.

A perfect example is the Star Wars Trilogy, which is really nothing more than a remake of the old western in which a son returns home to find that someone has slaughtered his entire family. The rest of the story plays out in a revenge motif in which the son hunts down those responsible, and familial justice is played out in a microcosm of what indeed may be a worldwide motif.

There are those who think prayers are times of requesting, pleading or begging a deity or other object of worship for something we do not have. There is no such misunderstanding in this prayer. This prayer is not to something, but from somewhere.

We pray from a source that is within each of us, we pray to connect ourselves to this source, to renew contact with that which is noble, holy and true within our lives, and this morning, we pray that those assembled here will listen to old truths poured into new wine skins and that the new wine skins will not be the object of the lesson, but rather that the old truths will be successfully imbibed and slake our thirst for meaning.

From that still small voice that speaks in the night when sleep is just the other side of a breath, from that place within us that knows that we arrived with everything we need and looking someplace else might be interesting, but also might just put off the inevitable.

Inevitably, we are born alone and we die alone, and whatever peace we come to in this life, is born with us, and will die with us. It might seem like a burden, but it is in fact a great shout of liberation, which lifts the burdens of proof from our backs and helps us see that what we seek is as close as our next heartbeat.

We pray this in the name of everything that is holy and that is, precisely, everything.

Amen.

SERMON: Baptism by Fire

The Baptism of Jesus as seen by John the Baptist

They say confession is good for the soul – if you believe in a soul. I used to wear camel’s hair and eat wild locusts and honey. No, that’s not my confession. That’s my attire during this period in my life to which I am about to confess. When your head ends up on a platter and you’re not a pig, you’ve done something that probably warranted the loss of your head.

I spoke truth to power. Big mistake. Power will put your head in a place where it can’t speak any more.

I made enemies in high places. Herod’s steward, Kooza, the man who ran Herod’s house was married to, Joanna, one of my disciples. Well, she would have been one of my disciples if that upstart Jesus hadn’t come along. He got the leavings from my table.

We were sitting around one day, eating locusts and wild honey, if you haven’t tried them don’t laugh. You’d be surprised what people will eat, when it’s the only thing you put in front of them. Anyway, the supply was nearly endless so what did I care if Joanna and the others were stuffing themselves on bugs and sweet nectar.

We were down by the Jordan River washing our hands and wiping our mouths, honey’s sticky, you know, when Joanna tells me in Herod’s palace there’s dancing girls, and parties, wild nights of drinking and merry making. “Merry making” – that’s a euphemism for adultery. Okay, when it’s between consenting adults what do I care? Well, I do care. They should repeat. I was preaching a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s not like you can come get baptized and be forgiven your sins, that’s not what I was up to. The idea was you changed your ways, you turned your life around, you straightened up and flew right, and then you came down to the Jordan for cleansing.

And what’s all this stuff about me quoting the prophet Isaiah? “A voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight paths for him. Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill made low. The crooked roads shall become straight, and the rough ways smooth. And all mankind will see God’s salvation.” I never said that.

Hey, I’m running around in a camel hair suit, with a belt made of an animal skin, eating bugs and stealing honey from the bees, and I’m supposedly quoting Second Isaiah? I don’t think so! Now that “brood of vipers part,” – that’s me! “Who warned you of the wrath to come!?” God, I loved it when the crowd was in the palm of my hand. They were there with me, hanging on every word. So what was I to tell them? How much I wished I had a wife? How much I hated living outside all the time? This prophet thing, it ain’t what it’s cracked up to be. Okay, so in the next generation and beyond you get some press, but what about now, here and now?

So I told them repent, stop living in denial, be present in the moment, pull back from cruelty, stop wanting so much, be simpler, more open to what surrounds them. After they repent and are baptized, after it’s all said and done what do they come to hear – but the latest outrage. And me, I got my ear in the house of Herod.

So – I told the people what their ruler was doing in his spare time, how his stepdaughter was dancing in scarves for his horny friends. The kingdom was being run by the whims of a voluptuous 14 year old. Besides, the man had put the Roman eagle over the entrance to the temple of the one and only God, he whose name we do not speak. When Moses asked God what his name was, God answered, “I am.” He answered in the present tense. That’s a clue, ya’ll! It’s the place where the one lives whose name we do not say, but whom Moses called “I am.”

It’s in the Gospel according to Matthew, whoever he was, in this fictitious work I am purported to have declared in hearing distance of my disciples that, “I baptize with water for repentance, But after me will come one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” I never said anything like that.

Hey, just because I dress in rags and eat weird stuff doesn’t mean I don’t have a sense of empowerment. It took me lots of trips into the Jordan, and you know, sometimes it’s cold outside, but when someone wants to be baptized and that’s the way you get disciples, it’s not exactly like I can tell them to come back in the spring.

Ask yourself this question, “Why would a man gather disciples about himself only to scatter them to the winds?” Or better, ?Why would John the Baptist, a man of renowned reputation and weirdness, give it all up to a man from Galilee?”

You think Galilee is cool, cause that’s where Jesus came from, but back in my day and time, to say you were from Galilee was about the same as admitting you’d just fallen off the turnip truck. If there had been a place of learning in Galilee it would have been called Texas A&M.

If Jesus came to me to be baptized, who is the teacher, and who is the student? If Jesus allowed me to baptize him for the remission of sins, what were Jesus’ sins? And, if he was who they say he was, you know, the only begotten Son of God, why wasn’t he baptizing me ?! I’m glad you asked me that. I baptized him because I saw in him a chance to escape my fate.

I knew Herod had sent spies to the baptisms. One of the spies must have seen Joanna there, and known her to be the wife of Kooza, Herod’s steward. I was a marked man. Each day I went down to the Jordan with new dread in my heart. They knew where to find me, that’s for sure. I put my strength in thinking about Jacob getting ready to cross the Jordan. Jacob sending his wives and children over first, and him being the last to cross, and the angel who wrestled with him there. Mentally, I wrestled with Herod’s men every day.

I would need to be as strong as Jacob and fight. Perhaps my disciples would rise up and save me, or perhaps they would do as Jesus’ disciples eventually did – run like hell!

I thought he might be the Messiah, but when he showed up at the Jordan – to be baptized for Christ’s sake! Hey, Christ wasn’t his last name. Christos is the Greek word that means anointed one, and in Hebrew it’s Masiah. He was Jesus of Nazareth. If he was the anointed one who was it that anointed him? Me!

And here he was entering the water, wading into the Jordan, with his arms open to embrace me and that disconcerting smile on his face.

If ways are going to be made straight, if valleys are going to be filled in and if mountains are to be leveled, it isn’t going to be because of this virgin’s bastard child.

That’s when it hit me. Herod’s men were there. And here was Jesus, the idiot carpenter, the upstart with those eyes, and that charisma.

If John the Baptist was going to survive, then this carpenter’s son was going to have to be scapegoated. He’d be the patsy. I could pin it all on him. Announce in front of Herod’s men, right in front of everybody – I could explain it away to my disciples later – hell, I was turning purple and wrinkled, I’d been in the Jordan dipping repenters all day long. All I had to do was blame it on him.

There was a new prophet in town, someone you could really hate, a gullible youth, full of self-hatred from being raised a bastard, ready to take on the world that had condemned him, starving for attention, any attention. Head on a platter, head on a pike, crucifixion, whatever – he’d want the notoriety, the infamy, the – shame. Now, here is a second Isaiah that I can deal with. “He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces – he was despised, and we esteemed him not?” (Isaiah 53:2b – 3 NIV). Okay, so I know a little scripture – big deal!

I was doing him a favor, really, they would see – he was now the ring leader, the culprit, they’d take him away and he’d have his public suffering and be justified at last.

But the Romans were smarter than I gave them credit. They saw me baptizing him . I should have insisted He baptize me. It happened so fast. I did, however, have the presence of mind to say, “Look the lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! This is the one I meant when I said, “A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.?”

I gave those Romans too much credit. I should have stopped at the lamb of God bit, but “a man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me?!” What was I thinking!”

Who did I think those Romans were – Greeks!” Besides the wind was blowing and the water was rushing – they probably didn’t even hear me.

So I testified after we got out of the water. Yeah, I lied, I said I saw a spirit descend from heaven as a dove and land on Jesus. Then I compounded the lie, I said God told me the one upon whom you see the spirit land and remain – that one will baptize with the Holy Spirit, that one will baptize with fire!

Herod’s men heard me. They heard me. And so did my disciples. They heard me, too. They started asking me who Jesus was, and I sent them to him, so they could see for themselves what a loser he was, but they didn’t return, and he gathered others.

This Galilean, he really took off. There were reports of miracles, feeding thousands in the fields, healing lepers, restoring sight, hearing – hell; I was small potatoes by then.

But Joanna kept me informed and in a last ditch effort to win back the crowds I lead with the most salacious story in town. “If it bleeds it leads!” Herod was sleeping with his brother’s wife, it was her daughter that he paraded before his horny friends, and I told everyone “It is not lawful for Herod to have his brother’s wife, to sleep with her!”

I probably would have gotten away with only a flogging, but the dancing nymphet, the voluptuous daughter of Philip – Philip’s own daughter listened to her insulted mother and when she refused to dance in scarves for Herod’s friends, he promised her the moon, but the only moon she wanted was my head on a platter.

The baptism of Jesus was a joke, a shame, a shifting of the blame, but he took it as an affirmation of his own daydreams. Outdone by a would-be Messiah and a dancing nymphet. The old fear death, but what they should fear is youth.

So – that’s my confession. By an act of deceit I catapulted a sleazy Galilean into the catbird seat. There’s a lesson here, oh yeah. Always tell the truth. As my mother, Elizabeth, used to say, the truth’s easy to remember – it actually happened.

The moral to the story – If you’re going to stick your neck out, be sure of two things; one, that you’re risking it all for something noble, true and holy and two; you’re willing to have it cut off!

Conclusion: So – now you know, what I tried to tell Herod’s executioner before my swift and untimely death. Jesus – the Nazarene – he wasn’t the leader, I was! But nobody listened. Nobody understood. The erroneously thought that, that band of rebels that grew around him were his disciples, that they were going to carry on his work, that they actually might be a threat to the religion of Moses, or even the Roman Empire, itself.

So – he ended up like me. We were cousins, you know. Yeah. His mother, Mary, and my mother, Elizabeth, they were blood related. There’s a wives’ tale that when Mary was pregnant with Jesus she came to visit my mother, who was pregnant with me, they say I leapt for joy inside my mother’s womb when my mother heard Mary’s voice!

So – they crucified him – the Romans. And the band of idiots that had attached themselves to him like barnacles, they ran away like the cowards they were. And feeling shamed by the whole incident they gathered together once again. Why? To honor the man that he was, the man whose heart was wide open to the world, the man who could heal your day with just one empathetic look, the man who stood for the best in Judaism – love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind and with all your strength, and your neighbor as yourself. The man who taught that living fully was living as if this moment were your last, because – it is!

They built up a religion around him. They tore him from his Judaic roots “monotheism – and they made him a god! And all he ever wanted was for those around him to see that separating God from the world was the same as idol making. The God whose name we do not say, but whom Moses called, “I am,” that God can only be encountered in the whirlwind of the moment – part and parcel of everything that is happening – immediately hidden, yet immediately recognizable.

A man who loved this life, this world – he came into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through his example of love. They took this worldly man and placed him at the right hand of the God whose name we do not say. They made him the Messiah, the anointed one, but with a twist.

The world has used his name to commit atrocities, to plunder native populations and torture them into Christian submission, to finance lies that keep power and money concentrated in a church called by his name, but not representing any of his initial intentions.

There is a sense in which the scourge that goes under the name Christianity symbolized everything that the man Jesus stood up against. When countries go to war both praying in his name for victory what could the Jesus of love and peace do but painfully shake his head in recognition of the fact that what he came to teach has been perverted beyond recognition.

And even today in some places of worship his name cannot be said without a feeling of repulsion sweeping through the hearts of those who remained convinced that they know who he is, was, always will be.

But I am here today to tell you that if that’s the way you feel, you’ve missed the point. Remember, please remember, I lied. No dove descended. No voice of God spoke.

He was my cousin, a lovely man who made you proud to be one of his kind, a living, breathing, ben adem, a living, breathing son of the earth.

It’s all my fault, and my only wish this morning is that you could erase what you have done to him in the past 2000 years – stop the crucifixion it has lasted far too long and see him sitting next to you, smiling that smile of his, turning his head slightly as you speak, and if that were possible, then you would know in your heart of hearts that there is something inside you that resonates with something inside him, that something is why they followed him, why they fell at his feet, and unfortunately, why they could not abide his presence.

The journey between who they might have been – the person they saw him being – and who they were, that journey was simply too great. It was easier to kill him, raise him from the dead, and put him someplace out of reach, out of touch.

They would relegate him to the Holy of Holies, thinking that hiding him in God they could forget that look, that feeling of kinship that was kindled as they looked into his eyes. But who can forget when someone reaches inside you and plucks the chords of your true being?