Luke 3:21-22 Image from A Sanctified Art
Last week we remember the ritual of Jesus’ dedication at the temple, the story we meditated on last week, where Simeon and Anna praised God for Jesus when he was just eight days old and spoke to everyone about his identity as the Messiah. Between that time and this, there are many unspoken parts of the story of Jesus’ life. We have to jump to Matthew to learn a story of a terrible ruler—Herod—who threatens the community so much that the Holy Family has to escape to Egypt for an unknown number of years. In Luke, we just read about the Holy Family’s yearly trips to the temple in Jerusalem with their community, and how one year when he was 12, Jesus got accidentally left behind and was sharing wisdom with the teachers at the temple. we read only that Jesus grew in wisdom and statue and in favor with God and people. Years go by and we read about a fiery preacher named John who is baptizing everyone but is preaching such a powerful and world-changing message that he has already been thrown in prison by the time Jesus’ baptism is mentioned.
“Now when all the people were baptized and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.’ Jesus was about thirty years old when he began his work.”
On the bulletin you see an image of Jesus’ baptism where he is submerged in the water. The artist describes her process of trying to imagine a different moment than so many others pictured throughout time. We usually see images of Jesus coming up out of the water, into a scene of deep affirmation as Jesus’ steps into his mission. Here, though is another moment. Jesus is underwater. The artist—Lauren Wright Pittman—describes Jesus as “completely suspended, embraced and upheld by the waters of baptism. The water’s surface is choppy. The future is unknown and precarious. The path is a lonely and formidable one, eventually leading to his suffering and death.”
Then she writes, “Despite what is to come, Jesus reaches toward the surface. Two fish are drawn to the light [around his head], foreshadowing his companionship with fishers and his miraculous feeding of the [thousands]. All of creation is leaning into [this] call.”
“This is what trusting your belovedness feels like—muscles and bones relieved of gravity’s burden, serenity, weightlessness, oneness with creation, and the warmth of God’s love permeating every cell of your body and every [part] of your soul.”
All week, I’ve been sharing and hearing stories from people who are moving slowly into 2024. Maybe the Christmas tree has been taken down, maybe not. On our fifty degree Christmas Eve, we were holding our breath, watching and waiting for this weekend—a snowy, deeply cold one that balances out our fragile ecosystem again. Right here at 105 University, we’ve been waiting and watching as the historic building next door, scheduled for demolition, has experienced delays. But this week, our staff and I faced the challenge of the internet being cut on Monday and not restored on Friday. So, all the work we needed to do this week was slower and more creatively accomplished than we expected. So many of us have had to pause, in so many ways—suspended, embraced, upheld—looking at the choppy surface.
This weekend, in so many places throughout Saint Paul, we have the opportunity to honor and remember the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., another young man who traveled a lonely and formidable path, one that eventually led to his suffering and death. Part of my family was present at Luther Seminary on Friday and had the opportunity to hear ________ preach, and he described this weekend as a megaphone for the dreams of MLK… dreams that cannot die if they live on in us. The dreams live on in us as we recognize how they represent our own values, values in which every person is beloved to God. If we believe that every person is beloved to God, we stand with sanitation workers who need access to a bathroom, a place to change their clothes, a living wage. We stand against unjust wars. We stand with those of different religions, different cultures, those who are struggling to be seen as those with human dignity. We hold fast to this dream of God—that everyone is beloved and deserves to be treated that way—even when it seems like an impossible vision.
God—who speaks from the heavens, who appears in the form of a bird, who speaks in the night calling our name—calls us to do the bravest thing we can do. As Rev. Sarah Speed puts it—
Trust your belovedness.
Let it be a protest, an act of resistance, a song of celebration.
Trust your belovedness in a world that is rarely satisfied.
Wear it like a badge of honor.
Speak it as confidently as your last name.
Tattoo it to your heart.
When outside forces chip away at your sense of self,
When like ask you to hand over the keys,
Remember the water. Remember creation.
Remember how it was good, so very good.
Let that truth hum through your veins.
Sing it so loud
That it drowns out the weariness of the world,
For the bravest thing we can ever do
Is trust that we belong here.
In this baptism scene as described by Luke, a detail I appreciate is that Jesus is praying. Maybe you read in our devotional booklet this week the reflection by Rev. Cecelia D. Armstrong. She described how when she was young, her mother woke her up each morning with the song, “Hey, good lookin’ what you got cookin’? How ‘bout cookin’ something up with me?”
She still feels the affirmation of her mother who was interested in her plans each day. Like that, Jesus is praying, connecting with God—and Jesus receives this deep affirmation.
In baptism, we too have this opportunity to remember—we are created in the image of God, we’re invited into the practices of God… and we’re invited to “cook up somethin’” with God as co-creators in a world that longs to rejoice (words and images of Rev. Cecelia D. Armstrong).
When we trust our belovedness, we can live and give fully—we treat ourselves, others and all of creation with tenderness and care. When we trust our belovedness, we have endless reasons to rejoice. [1]
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