1 Corinthians 8:1-13

Now concerning food sacrificed to idols: we know that “all of us possess knowledge.” Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. Anyone who claims to know something does not yet have the necessary knowledge, but anyone who loves God is known by him.

Hence, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that “no idol in the world really exists” and that “there is no God but one.” Indeed, even though there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as in fact there are many gods and many lords— yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.

It is not everyone, however, who has this knowledge. Since some have become so accustomed to idols until now, they still think of the food they eat as food offered to an idol, and their conscience, being weak, is defiled. “Food will not bring us close to God.” We are no worse off if we do not eat and no better off if we do. But take care that this liberty of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. For if others see you, who possess knowledge, eating in the temple of an idol, might they not, since their conscience is weak, be encouraged to the point of eating food sacrificed to idols? So by your knowledge the weak brother or sister for whom Christ died is destroyed. But when you thus sin against brothers and sisters and wound their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food is a cause of their falling, I will never again eat meat, so that I may not cause one of them to fall.

Sermon Text

            What is the price of living in community with each other? That is the question that we all have to ask as human beings. Society is built on the idea that living together costs something. I live with a family, and I am required to give some things up for their good. I live in a city, so I have to contribute to the city’s wellbeing one way or another. I pay taxes, I serve the community, I do what I can to make the world a better place. There are many reasons for this, but one of the simplest, one that is shared by all people who live as part of a society, is the fact we have concluded it is better to live with some restrictions on freedom for the good of our collective wellbeing.

            The debate comes down to whether or not we should give away this or that and to what degree we owe aspects of our life to those around us. Liberty and duty are always held in balance with one another. The classic example in our country comes down to the right to Free Speech afforded us by the First Amendment held in tension with the ability for our speech to cause harm. You can yell fire as much as you want, but if you do so in a public place where it can cause harm, your right to do so ends as far as the law is concerned. The liberty of speech ends when it becomes a detriment to the collective good of people.

It shouldn’t surprise us that our own faith also runs into this familiar tug and pull between responsibility and freedom. We are freed through our faith in Christ from Sin, as Gentiles we are exempt from ritual and purity laws, and as Methodist we believe we can grow to be truly free of any intentional wrongdoing. Such a large breadth of freedom means that we can reasonably find our life free of a lot of the burdens we might otherwise place upon it. As Christ said, in taking on the heavy responsibility of the Christian life, we are taking on a “yoke [that is] easy and a burden [that is] light.”

Our scripture shows the way that this debate of liberty and responsibility manifests in a fledgling Christian community. The issue at hand is that among the early Christians there were many disagreements about how much of the old life they lived had to be done away with when they found faith in Christ. When you live in a world where your entire community worships a variety of Gods, and does so in a way that every part of your life is injected with religious significance, it can be hard to figure out where faith ends and secular activity begins.

Imagine, if you will, that you work in a shop. The shop has a statue of a God in its doorway, some patron that oversees your craft. Are you still allowed to work there? Does your working there somehow suggest that you are a worshipper of that God? These are important questions for the early gentile converts to Christianity. How should they interact with local holidays? With government? With anything, when most every action has something to do with the Gods you no longer claim to worship.

The particular issue here is addressing “meat offered to idols.” This food was the choice cuts of meat left over after the bones, skin, and fat of an animal had been burnt as a sacrifice to a deity. The remaining meat was expected to be eaten and apparently could be sold in the marketplace under certain conditions. It was good meat, it was meat that the wealthy in a community could afford, but it was also dubious meat. If the meat had already been offered to a God, what did it mean if I took a bit of it? What does it say about me, about my faith?

Some people focus in on the economic aspect of this question, making it a statement about how Paul does not want people flaunting wealth at community meals. I do not buy that interpretation, at least not as the primary issue at hand. I think this is a question of people’s personal perspectives on faith, and the need for us to live among the diversity of those ideas.

I am a person who does not regard much in life as sacrosanct. I do not think that there is any innate power in certain ways of ritual. There is symbolic importance and intentionality in the ways we act out our faith, but they do not change the outcomes. I believe in the power of taking time to celebrate Holy Communion, in lifting paten and chalice, and in using the words of institution. Yet, it is through our faith and God’s grace that Communion becomes the body and blood of Christ, not the specific way we do the ritual. Praying at the altar does not make the prayer more efficacious, but it is a powerful demonstration of our reliance on God. This church is a building set aside for worship, but no room of this building is more sacred than any room anywhere else – except in the significance that we bestow upon it through practicing our faith within it.

Other people do believe there is importance to having very precise ways of practicing ritual. Beyond utility, some argue that there is no validity in a thing unless it is done a certain way. That is a difficult conversation to have in the Church without some inherent conflict emerging. If someone tries to tell me that the baptism of my eventual children is not legitimate because they were baptized as infants and not adults, I will have words for them. In the same way, I take issue with people who try to dismiss any aspect of a person’s faith – as long as the person in question has come to their conclusion honestly, and not through deception of self or by others. I think sometimes we have to stand up to people who bully others on these matters.

Beyond those matters, however, there are questions about if certain things should be done. That is the kind of question that causes more potential problems in a church than anything. If you’ll remember our question series, people asked me several different questions about what a Christian could or could not do. Can they get a fortune told? Can they use tarot? What is the ethics behind X or Y or Z?

There are Biblical clues to those answers, but also enough breadth of interpretations to provide for multiple Christian perspectives. As someone who is not very superstitious, I would argue the only thing a Christian loses in getting their fortune told is the money they wasted on the adventure. Dependency on fortune telling and horoscopes can be a problem, maybe, but there is no magic in cards or the stars or any such thing to be a threat to people of faith. Something that other Christians would disagree with.

More mundanely, people disagree on simpler matters of Christian life. Can Christians use vulgarity? Can Christians drink alcohol? Can Christians smoke? All of these have answers that can be derived from the Bible about limitations and reasons why maybe you should not, but outright bans on any of them are harder to draft. Except, some people are convicted that they absolutely must not do any number of them. The conviction that those people feel, makes it so that they must not be compelled to act on them, even if another Christian may think they have the right to.

If I am comfortable drinking a beer, and another Christian is not, scripture says I am not to pressure them into drinking beer. More than that, it says I should not drink in front of someone who chooses not to, because they may be compelled to break their own conviction by my actions. The act of drinking, something that is morally neutral in moderation, becomes sinful if it is done against our conscience. The moral weight of an action is changed by whether or not we believe the thing we are doing has a weigh to it.

Paul does not agree with those who refuse to eat meat offered to idols, he thinks it is a superstitious leftover of their old beliefs. Yet, he tells the people who have been buying the meat to stop eating it in front of their fellow Christians. Why? Because if someone was swayed to act against their convictions, it would be a sin, even if the act itself is otherwise morally neutral. It is a confusing little paradigm that Paul is establishing, but it established two things the Church must be willing to do.

Firstly, we cannot let ourselves become anti-nomian simply because we believe Christ has set us free from Sin. As Paul says in Romans, Jesus’s forgiveness of sins is not a blank check to rank up further debt with. Instead, we are called to grow in our faith so that even some of those neutral ideas we have – if they are harmful to even one person – must be done away with. Sometimes we must give up our liberty, our freedom from compulsion, to help the faith and livelihood of others.

On the other side of things, those of us with particular hang ups about certain things: Teetotalers, altar theologians, Satanic Panic practitioners, all must be willing to loosen the reigns a little. Those who feared eating food offered to idols were legitimate in their convictions, but they were also not using them as leverage to gain power. Often times, we are not good about this in the modern Church. Our opposition to various things becomes a tool, and rather than seeking a way forward that benefits all people, we let the most restrictive readings of our ethics guide our lives. That is also a grave injustice.

So I ask us all to take into our hands the rope being pulled between liberty and responsibility, hold it in tight tension. Let it move as the Spirit calls us, and not as is convenient. Relent to your siblings in the faith, give up what you would like most, and let what is best for all win out in our practice of our faith. – Amen.

Jonah 3:1-5, 10

The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, “Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.” So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days’ walk across. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk. And he cried out, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth…

… When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them, and he did not do it.

Sermon Text

Jonah is a prophet I used to feel like I could relate to. He is reluctant to follow God’s call and his entire adventure, briefly explored across only a few chapters of scripture, is about the consequences of his choice to run. By the end of the story, he has given into God, goes where he was asked to, and as our story tells us, saves the people of Nineveh through his preaching. It is a story that someone like me, someone who ran from ministry as long as I could, can relate to. However, the reasoning between my reluctance to go into ministry and Jonah’s were very different.

When I first thought I might be interested in going into ministry, I was on fire. I was willing to talk to anyone about my faith, I was willing to make brave declarations of what God was doing in the world, and the potential of what I could become was overwhelming. Like many people new to their faith, however, the intensity of that burning passion was too much, and it quickly flickered out. It became clear that I did not have the knowledge, the skills, and especially the tact, to be a minister and that early floundering pushed me into a place where I believed that the feeling I had been called was a mistake. I developed, and immediately gave into, a major case of imposter syndrome… The result was a major setback in my pursuit of my call.

This is a different kind of issue than what Jonah faces. Jonah, as a prophet, was already living into the life that God had given him. While many of us fail to pursue our call because of our perceived failings or lack of experience, Jonah refused to listen to God for another reason. The word of the Lord came to Jonah, and he knew that he could do all that was asked of him. His refusal to follow through was motivated, not by a feeling he could not do God’s work but by a refusal to do it. Jonah knew who God was and did not want to see God do what God wanted to. Jonah knew that God was good, and Jonah knew deep in his heart that he was not.

Jonah did not flee from God’s call out of fear or out of inadequacy, but out of pride and bigotry. When God said that there was enough compassion for a city like Nineveh, Jonah refused to accept that. Nineveh was one of the capitals of the Assyrian empire. Within a few generations of Jonah’s visit to the city, Assyria would form a new empire which would sweep across the Levant. Israel would be destroyed by the armies of Nineveh and Assur, and Judah would become a vassal of the same. Few nations had more of an impact on the history of God’s people than Assyria.

God knew this was in the future and still offered a chance for the people of Nineveh to be spared. In the divine mystery of mercy, even people who would cause harm to God’s people were worth preserving. Maybe the future where Israel fell to Assyria was not written in stone, the people of Israel and Assyria both had time to change. God, throughout the Hebrew Bible, despite being written off by modern readers as “wrathful,” is always extending mercy beyond the people of Israel, to people who have committed legitimate crimes of imperial might, and who would be easy to write off without a second thought.

There are legitimately harmful people in this world, legitimately evil people as well. Though the latter are rare, the existence of genuinely hurtful and genuinely reprehensible people cannot be denied. We are a culture that thrives off of stories of villains, and the surge in popularity of True Crime over the past few decades only serves to prove that something in us craves identifying monsters. I think something about obvious evil comforts us, it reminds us of the relative goodness of the people we know. It also allows us to focus our broad feelings of distrust into focus, a single person can take the load of all our anxieties and angers. Sometimes it is not just one person though – sometimes entire people groups can be scapegoats for our anger. What kind of people? That depends on the circumstance.

Following the 9/11 attacks, our nation found a major source of people to offload our anxieties upon. For most of my childhood, anyone who even looked middle eastern was treated with suspicion. People advocated for bombings of entire countries, to let the leveling of cities go uncommented upon – there was a war on after all. Whatever legitimate military engagements did occur, a national bloodlust was created – one that sought to destroy the “enemies,” of our nation. There have been shifts in this mindset over the past few decades, but to this day Muslims, Sikhs, and anyone who looks like they might have ancestry East of the Mediterranean still face discrimination. Gaza continues to burn, and people continue to excuse the deaths of innocents as a necessary causality.

In other eras, other peoples suffered. In the early days of the United States, Native Americans were maligned for the threat they posed to our Manifest Destiny. Chinese Immigrants were seen as an existential threat during the 1800s, followed by Germans during the World Wars, as well as countless Japanese-Americans forced into camps during WWII. Focal points of hate, sometimes foreign and sometimes domestic, give us someone we can blame for the troubles of this world. We rejoice in the pain of others, as long as their pain can give us an out for our general anxieties.

It does not have to be a nation either. The person you get frustrated with for seeming to fulfill what you hate about the world is also a focus of your general problems onto one person. The person you see paying with food stamps for a cart full of groceries you don’t approve of. The person with “too many,” kids trailing behind them. The person twitching in the parking lot. When we look at someone with contempt, write them off as too far gone, turn them over to suffer because we think they’ve earned it… When we do that, we have done an abominable thing. God is willing to embrace the entire world, why are we unwilling to do the same?

The sin of Jonah, that had him thrown into the sea and eaten by a whale, was that he had no regard for life. When he finally relented to God, when he went through the city of Nineveh and wound his way through the streets – he did so under duress. He refused to believe that the people he hated so much could ever do something his God would approve of. He sat up on a hill outside the city and waited to see the city burn under God’s wrath. Days passed by… And the city still stood.

Jonah realized that he was wrong, that God loved even the people he hated. These foreigners, these pagans, they were people God was willing to preserve – despite their sins. The genuine wrongdoings of the people may have been egregious, but clearly they were not so far gone that there was no hope. One of the problems of dehumanizing people is that we erase any real characteristics from them. They are cartoonishly evil or else so idealized as to be impossible. Human beings are human beings, there are no borders or genetics behind it, no separation of class or circumstance. All people are beloved of God, and all are capable of finding their place in God’s kingdom.

At the close of Jonah, silence is held for us to make our own conclusions about who we support – God or Jonah.[1] Jonah complains that Nineveh lived and that God dared to kill a plant that gave him shade. God complains that Jonah would have compassion for a plant that sheltered him, but not for the people and animals of Nineveh. Were some evil? Oh yes. Were some innocent? They must have been. Were some middle of the road? Absolutely. Yet, Jonah was willing to see them all burn – so long as his hatred was satisfied by God’s approval of his bigotry. We, God’s people, today must make the same choice. Do we believe that God is still extending forgiveness, freely offering it to all people? Or do we think it is only for us, here, and people like us? Grace extends beyond this door, into every aspect of our life. Let grace reign. – amen.

[1] Tzvi Abusch. “Jonah and God: Plants, Beasts, and Humans in the Book ofJonah” in Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 13 (2013) 146-152

1 Samuel 3:1-20

Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord under Eli. The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread.

At that time Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his room; the lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was. Then the Lord called, “Samuel! Samuel!” and he said, “Here I am!” and ran to Eli and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” But he said, “I did not call; lie down again.” So he went and lay down. The Lord called again, “Samuel!” Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” But he said, “I did not call, my son; lie down again.” Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him. The Lord called Samuel again, a third time. And he got up and went to Eli and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” Then Eli perceived that the Lord was calling the boy. Therefore Eli said to Samuel, “Go, lie down, and if he calls you, you shall say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’ ” So Samuel went and lay down in his place.

Now the Lord came and stood there, calling as before, “Samuel! Samuel!” And Samuel said, “Speak, for your servant is listening.” Then the Lord said to Samuel, “See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make both ears of anyone who hears of it tingle. On that day I will fulfill against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house, from beginning to end.

For I have told him that I am about to punish his house forever for the iniquity that he knew, because his sons were blaspheming God, and he did not restrain them. Therefore I swear to the house of Eli that the iniquity of Eli’s house shall not be expiated by sacrifice or offering forever.”

Samuel lay there until morning; then he opened the doors of the house of the Lord. Samuel was afraid to tell the vision to Eli. But Eli called Samuel and said, “Samuel, my son.” He said, “Here I am.” Eli said, “What was it that he told you? Do not hide it from me. May God do so to you and more also, if you hide anything from me of all that he told you.” So Samuel told him everything and hid nothing from him. Then he said, “It is the Lord; let him do what seems good to him.”

As Samuel grew up, the Lord was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground. And all Israel from Dan to Beer-sheba knew that Samuel was a trustworthy prophet of the Lord.

Sermon Text

There is something to be said for expertise. If I have someone coming to work on the pipes in my house, I want a certified plumber. The doctor I see, I hope, knows what they are talking about. When someone claims to be an expert, I want them to really be an expert. The problem, of course, is that we live in a world where pretenders to authority are common and it can be difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff of so called professionals.

I’ve talked before about how there is a tendency in the Church to spice up some of the more mundane aspects of faith with things that sound good but are ultimately based on nothing at all. During Christmas I still saw people claiming that there were special shepherds who wrapped the sacrificial lambs in strips of cloth and placed them in mangers to keep them safe – a myth that has been debunked for ages. I’ve been to funerals where fake little vignettes are presented as true stories the minster was present to witness. Books, movies, videos, and more are often put forward by supposed experts proving this or that aspect of faith, and often with the goal of making the person giving the message seem so much smarter and holier than the people hearing it.

Claiming to have something special, something unique that sets you apart is an easy way  to abuse people in the Church. We are people who have a legitimate claim to something unique – there is nothing like the Gospel and nothing like the Spirit. The problem is, if we believe that the Gospel and the Spirit are truly open for anyone to receive, than anyone can be an authority on matters of faith. If they earnestly pursue wisdom and knowledge, they can find it. That democratization of access is at the core of God’s revelation and it is a major threat to those who wish to establish themselves against and above other people.

Within the Church, I legitimately believe that the system of the United Methodist Church and its siblings is the best at addressing issues of hierarchy. We profess that all people – from a new member to a Bishop – are equally valid and equally called by God. The difference only comes in what we are called to do. Some are called to full-time ministry – Deacons and Elders that serve in Churches and ministries – and so pursue training to be the best they can at that. Some people are called to leadership on committees of the Church, the conference, or community. Still others, their call is to lead through work in the secular world, and to support the Church in participation, funding, and other non-leadership contributions. If a call is authentic, it is valid, there is no right answer to what is or isn’t a call otherwise.

The reason that I think it is important to emphasize the ubiquity of call to make it clear that there are no “right types,” of people that have a place in any aspect of the Church. God has called all sorts to be within the Church, and that means that all sorts will find their way into different roles. The only requirement that we have is that, once we know what are call is, that we strive to do it as best we can. I knew I had a call to ministry when I was in High School, but it took me almost ten years of personal and professional growth to be worthy or ready to live into that call. A call is not an automatic license to step into the roll we are called to.

Our scripture reflects this in more ways than the obvious, and very literal call of Samuel into ministry. In the opening of the passage, we are told that “The word of the Lord was rare in those days,” a reflection of the leadership of the time. Eli, the head priest and keeper of the Ark of the Covenant, had turned many of the duties of the sanctuary over to his two sons. This was necessary, he had grown old and when you get older other people take on different parts of what you once did. However, the brothers – despite a legitimate claim to the priesthood – had taken their call as an excuse to do what they wanted rather than to serve others.

They were lecherous, they were thieves, they committed every crime they could through their position as priests. They seem to have changed worship patterns in the tabernacle to make it easier for them to take what they wanted from those who came to the tent. They were so bad that the line of priests that tended to the work of God was completely wiped out, and in their place the role of itinerant prophet took precedence. Eventually the priesthood would return and for a time would be better suited to serve its role. The pattern of prophets correcting priests followed by priests correcting prophets would flow throughout the history of God’s people, even until today.

The future of the Church is not focused on clergy, but on the work of all God’s people. While I believe there will always be a role for people like me to help guide the work of the Church. what with my book-learning and specific expertise, the center of a Church should never be upon those in the pulpits. Cults of personality grow around ministers when they are the focus and that will kill a congregation given enough time. The heart and soul of a congregation has to be the people, or else it is nothing. We are in another season where priests must give way to prophets, and the people must be given the tools they need to do God’s work in this world.

I consider it my job as a minister to equip people to live their fullest life in Christ. This means getting people resources, training, and supplies necessary for that work. I encourage you all to seriously look into your heart and see what God may be calling you to take part in. Look deep within yourself, listen to the voice of God calling out for you to take action, and trust that your Church and your pastor will help you get what you need to live out that call. It may take time, it may take a lot of work, but the only person who can deny you your call is you. If it is a true call, if you are given the opportunity to discern it and to thrive within it, you will find your way to it. Listen for God’s call, and follow it wherever it leads you. – Amen.

Mark 1:4-11

… John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And the whole Judean region and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him and were baptized by him in the River Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the strap of his sandals. I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove upon him. And a voice came from the heavens, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

Sermon Text

            Jesus began his ministry, not with a triumphal entry into the city, but by humbly submitting to be baptized. He came to John, he asked to be washed in the dirty water of the Jordan, and he – as the Gospel continues – was immediately chased into the Wilderness to face temptation. The start of Jesus’s ministry was a lot like his birth, easy to miss if you were not already looking for it. We are blessed, as inheritors of our faith, to know that this moment is of great significance, something that only Jesus and John knew about in the moment that the Heavens opened and Water and the Spirit poured down upon Jesus.

            Baptism is something we have talked about recently. We looked at how John the Baptist’s ministry was focused upon God’s grace being opened for all people to receive a new start. Today, we are not gathering to focus on the ritual of Baptism, but on the recipient of Baptism in our story. Jesus Christ, our savior, received the waters of Baptism and modeled our own reception of the Spirit’s grace through the sacrament. In this way, Jesus’s baptism greatly resembled our own. The difference comes in that heavenly voice calling out, “You are my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” Today we are going to try to understand each of those terms and understand why we begin our year, and why Jesus begins his ministry, with these words resting upon him.

            Words have weight, even if sometimes we treat them carelessly. I do not think “proper” English is some vaulted virtue we all must aspire to, nor that dictionary definitions are the end all and be all of language, but it does matter what we choose to call other things and ourselves. If we speak well of things, they will often flourish, if we speak poorly toward them, we find them suffering. Likewise, if our language is vague, the stuff which we are referring to may seem like some other thing entirely.

            One of the first major conversations most serious relationships will have between its members, is what each person in the relationship means by certain things. For example, if someone tells me that they are “Fine,” I assume something is deeply wrong and they are either deathly ill or on the verge of a meltdown. To me, the word “fine,” carries a connotation of veiled negativity. Grace now knows, four years into our marriage, that if she says she is “Fine,” I will be trying for the rest of the day to fix a problem that may or may not exist. For my own part, my choice of words have made it so I will often confuse people as to whether I am complimenting or insulting them. Words, thrown about without thought, are a dangerous thing.

            God does not carelessly use words, thankfully, and so each of those applied to Jesus at his baptism matter a great deal. We should begin with the first, “You are my Son…” For Jesus to be God’s son does not mean that Jesus is God’s biological child in the way that I am my father’s son. God the Father and God the Son are both the same being – God – in two persons, a concept we can wrestle with when we get to Trinity Sunday later this year. This means that Jesus is not just God Jr. but is entirely God, albeit only a single person of God’s larger self. So why does God use the term “Son,” anyway? Just to make ministers have to tangle their words on a Sunday morning?

            The Sonhood of Jesus is many things – a statement of his willingness to follow the Father while on Earth and a general way of describing his relationship within the Trinity to the Spirit and the Father – but it is primarily a statement of Kingship. For someone to be the Son of God is for them to be a Davidic King. In Psalm 2, God speaks to the King and says, “You are my Son, today I have begotten you.” This is not meant to make the King into a demi-God or to elevate them beyond mere human status, but to say that God cares for the King, and the King for God. Jesus, in being called the Son of God, is being established as the King, not just of Judea, but of all the world. Up to this point, only a few Magicians from a far off country and a mad tyrant ever gave Jesus this title – but now it is confirmed from Heaven.

            The second title, Beloved, reflects two realities. The first is that Jesus is loved by God, obviously, but it also connects to Jesus’s sacrificial nature. The word for “Beloved,” is “Αγαπητος,” (Agapetos,) and it means exactly what you would expect “One who is loved.” However, Biblically, this interaction calls to mind another Heavenly voice, one that Abraham had received long ago. When Abraham was called to offer up Isaac on the mountain, the Greek version of the story shows God calling out, “Take your Son, the Beloved, the one you love…” language so similar to the naming we see of Jesus here. Jesus, like Isaac is someone who, from obedience and from a greater love than self, is offered up. Unlike Isaac, however, Jesus is the one offering himself, freely, no one makes that decision for himself.

            Finally, God describes Jesus as a recipient of his approval. The Father is “Well pleased,” with the Son, approving of him in the plain sense, but perhaps we see something more in here. God the Father is happy with God the Son. There is a pleasure shared simply from being in proximity with one another, something that only comes from the kind of intimacy that comes with knowledge of one another. The final declaration, that God is pleased by Jesus, is a summary of what has been stated previously. God, who has placed Christ in rulership over all Creation, loves Jesus, and because of that love and through that love, enjoys being a part of Jesus’s life.

            The Son, The Beloved, The One who Pleases God. Three titles given to Jesus all in a few lines of scripture, but each worthy of their due consideration one after the other. The Baptism of Jesus in one way establishes all the ways that Jesus is like us, but there are three specific things that sets Jesus apart from us in the same moment. Christ alone carries each of these titles to their ideal, but perhaps there is not so great a separation between what God says here of Jesus and what Jesus allows us to become in ourselves…

            We are not Kings, nor should we aspire to rule. I exclude myself and all Christians from aspiring toward this aspect of God’s declaration toward Jesus. However, we believe that those who have faith in God become adopted into God’s family. We become siblings of Christ, and in so doing, we know the love and care that God shows to those God calls family. We are able to enjoy a relationship with one another, with Christ, with God the Father, because in Baptism we declare a faith that makes us all one family.

            This family relationship makes obvious the love that God showed for us in the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Christ – indeed in all the work of God in all ages. God loves all people, with a passionate love that overcomes all obstacles. We are Beloved by God, and as the Beloved of God we, like Jesus, enjoy God’s good pleasure. This love is expressed long before we embrace our faith, before our baptism, but it is confirmed in both through the transformation that only grace can bring about. The Incarnation, Baptism, the Eucharist, and so many more statements of love are carried out by God’s continual work in this world.

            We as people of faith are called to embrace all that is revealed to us through participation in God’s economy of grace. We grow as beloved members of a divine family, we know what it is to feel God’s goodness well-up inside. We too are called to live sacrificially in every way we can. Though we are not the uniquely existing Son of God, brought into the world to redeem it through our unique existence, we are still called to be a part of its redemption. Christ, in being Baptized, gave an example for how we ought to live. What a blessings that the word of God can convey so much in just three little phrases. As we start our year, let us remember Christ’s baptism and our own, and live fully into all that we are called to take part in through it. – Amen.