Baptism of the Lord (Year C) January 12, 2025; Fires, Cedars and Doves, oh my!
The Rev. Alisdair Smith
Today’s texts are filled with raw natural imagery. They invite us, among other things, to remember that even in the midst of existential fears like climate disasters, creation, including humankind is loved. Love is the initiating and continuing force in creation. In contrast, the much-vaunted economy is based on fear and greed. God’s creation is based on Love. Isaiah assures us, the waters shall not overwhelm us, the fires will not consume us, because we are loved.
This loving view is a much bigger vision, a bigger mind (metanoia) than the economy. A quick reminder of the Greek; eco meaning house or home, logos, thinking about, and monos, meaning management, surely we should be thinking about the household before we try to manage it? And what changes in our thinking if we see that what built the house in the first place was Love and that means the house is precious beyond our wildest imaginations.
What might seeing Love as the creative force of the universe change in our relationship with creation as a whole? Perhaps we might find that creation is not a commodity, you and I are not commodities. Mary Oliver’s poem “Of the Empire” highlights the antithesis of Love beautifully:
Of The Empire
We will be known as a culture that feared death
and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity
for the few and cared little for the penury of the
many. We will be known as a culture that taught
and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke
little if at all about the quality of life for
people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All
the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a
commodity. And they will say that this structure
was held together politically, which it was, and
they will say also that our politics was no more
than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of
the heart, and that the heart, in those days,
was small, and hard, and full of meanness.
(© 2008 by Mary Oliver
From her 2008 collection, Red Bird, p. 46
Published by Beacon Press 2008)
Commentary
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Historically we know that this part of Isaiah is written during the Babylonian exile in the 6th century BCE. The poem is speaking to a downtrodden and homesick people, desperate for any hope.
Verses 1 – 2
The hopeful promise here is about the community surviving. The promise is to all of the people, not just one person. Thus we are challenged in our zeitgeist to think not of ourselves as individuals, or as commodities, but us as a community. We will not be overwhelmed, by flood or fire, Yes we are autonomous individuals, and we are social, part of a community. My responsibilities then are longitudinal; who am I in this point of time, and what/how can I do and be, so that our grandchildren’s grandchildren and their communities can thrive?
Verses 3-4
God is apparently giving other peoples as ransom?! We humans, often seek to heal our pain by the infliction of pain on another; the victim seeks another victim to assuage their own discomfort. These verses are an example of why Rene Girard calls the Bible a ‘text in travail.’ https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/epiphany1c/ Such a text pushes towards an ideal, and then pulls back, into a smaller, meaner heart. Imagine the author of this part of Isaiah having this experience of God as Love, and then stopping themselves, “no, they’d never believe this!” And so inserting a dose of a small hearted ‘reality’ into their poem.
How often have you or I had our vision of a better world for all of Creation, trampled upon by doses of ‘reality”; people telling us ‘it’s about the economy’, ‘you have to be ‘real’ about your thinking’, you’re such an idealist, you need to be more pragmatic.’ But in the end, those of us who see the reality of God’s creation as infused with love, everyone God “calls by name” gets that there is always more to human understandings of ‘reality.’ (Block, Brueggemann, McKnight, An Other Kingdom; Departing the Consumer Culture, Wiley & Sons, 2016) There is always more than ‘we can ask or imagine.’ We need not ransom anyone else, ever.
Verses 5 – 7
And God loves us all, God calls us all home, including the people with bigger hearts and the people with smaller, meaner hearts. (And perhaps we’re all a bit of both). Yes, this can be interpreted as God calling the Israelites home from the ends of the earth, And, God calls us all home to Love. From wherever we are on the planet, we shall all come home to Love.
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Check out the Riff on Psalm 29 here; https://www.salalandcedar.com/resources/2024-12-a-riff-on-psalm-29
Womanist scholar, Wilda Gafney writes, “The power of God’s spirit is on full display in Psalm 29; the power of words whispered in a holy wind. ... In the psalm God’s voice is the orchestra of creation: rumbling thunder, crashing waves and the crackle of lightning and fire. The power of that voice can peel the leaves and bark off the trees and shatter them into splinters. And God uses that voice to speak to us of her love.” https://www.wilgafney.com/2018/01/07/conspire-with-the-spirit/
When we stand beside the ocean, on a calm day we can be lulled into a serenity that belies the power in that massive body. The response we might have in the face of the power of a force that can break the cedars of Lebanon (which can grow to 40 m in height and nearly 3 m around at the base), is awe and wonder. This psalm invites us once more to shift our thinking from creation as something to use for our economic benefit, to one of awe and wonder at the creative power of what Dr. Gafney calls a “radical threatening love”. A kind of love that “transforms people, places and even politics.” https://www.wilgafney.com/2012/02/12/a-radical-threatening-love/ There is a raw power, perhaps reminiscent of the awful and wonderful wilderness that can facilitate a deeper encounter with the self, and with the Divine.
This is a Love that transforms the systems dedicated to the success of the few, even the systems that feel impenetrable like capitalism, into loving peace for all of creation.
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This passage points to the unity of and cooperation between the apostles and the dreaded Samaritans. This theme of unity and cooperation reminds us that cooperation is required between all of us to address the environmental crisis. In noting that the Samaritans while baptized, they had not received the Holy Spirit in verse 16, might we see in our own relationships there are people who might intellectually acknowledge that there is a climate crisis, but not yet have their hearts in working towards solution. (Or to go back to Mary Oliver, perhaps their hearts are yet too small and mean?) Verse 15 shows us that the apostles prayed that they might receive the Holy Spirit and then Peter and John lay hands on them at verse 17. Might this point us to engage with even those with whom we might disagree. The universe is built on Love, and our work with each other, must be through Gafney’s radical threatening love (See above on Psalm 29). And know that God loves us all.
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Verses 3:15 ff
“... the people were filled with expectation” (Luke 3:15 NRSV) There is here a sense of something new, some salve to heal the people’s pain. How often do we expect or hope for a hero messiah, one who will fix me and all the world’s problems? In these early chapters in Luke, we discover a different kind of hero. Jesus is less about rescue and more about giving us the Spirit to be stronger, braver, more compassionate and loving for ourselves, each other and the planet.
Michael Trainor’s wonderful book About Earth’s Child; An Ecological Listening to the Gospel of Luke introduces us to an understanding of Jesus as a child of the earth, just like you and I. And this child is filled with God’ rhema which Trainor translates as “God’s word-deed.” These four verses are part of a view of how this earth child and God’s rhema come together. (Trainor p. 96 ff)
Trainor writes of the encounter between John the Baptizer and Jesus the Earth Child and God’s rhema, “[t]he imagery of wilderness and waters evokes the creation story where God’s spirit hovered over the watery wilderness in preparation for God’s creative act.” ((p. 98) Into this primordial element, John’s disciples are invited into an attitude change, a repentance, metanoia (a bigger mind). A metanoia that is communal as it affects all the relationships in the ecosystem. (p.98) Trainor continues, “John summons the ...invitation for a change of attitude to the universe and its people that establishes, heals, or restores relationships.” (p. 99) Everyone is called to conversion, to shalom so that the whole earth will be saved.
And then John announces the coming of one more worthy than he, (Luke 3:17-17) who will bring about eschatological judgement. (p. 101)
Verses 3:16-17
Luke’s John tells us that Jesus will baptize us with fire and his winnowing fork will separate the wheat from the chaff. (Lk 3:16-17) Some in our congregations and beyond, might hear this part of the reading with fear in their hearts and minds. Are we to imagine Jesus like a kind of Dr. Mengele at Auschwitz, pointing at some people and saying, you go the right, and others, you go to the left? Are some of us are wheat, some of us chaff? Is Jesus a kind of Santa, “gonna find out who’s naughty and nice?”
Jesus does not become, as we hear at the end of today’s reading “...My Son, the beloved” because he is sending some of us to heaven and others to hell. Jesus is the Beloved, because he loves.
The word ‘fire’ is used in different ways in the biblical texts. Sure, there is fire associated with the ‘wrath’ of God’, for example in Revelation 19 - 21. And, it is also a clear symbol of the presence of the Holy; the Burning Bush, (Ex 3:2), the appearance on Mt Sinai ((Ex 13:21-22) and the Christian Pentecost (Acts 2:3) to name just three. And consider our own experience; think about the fire we experience in our hearts when we’re in love; the whole world changes, there is light where there was darkness. Think about the power of forgiveness, how it feels to be forgiven. It’s like a fire that burns away anger, burns away fear, burns away pain. That is the unquenchable fire. It is that feeling in your heart and soul when you look at the person you love. It is the feeling in your heart and soul when you look at your child. It is the feeling in your heart and soul when you know that it is important to stand up to an injustice. It is the feeling in your heart and soul when you see the beauty of a rainbow, a mountain, or a flower. It is the feeling in your heart and soul when you make a difference in someone else’s life. This unquenchable fire is the feeling in your heart and soul when you gladden the hearts of those with whom you travel on the way.
We might wonder too, wheat and chaff. The chaff is the covering of the grain’s seed. Imagine a corn cob, the chaff is like the husk on the corn cob. It serves a purpose, it protects the seed, but if the seed is to be used to it’s full potential, the chaff must be removed. Importantly, if you remove the chaff too early, the seed dies, and if the chaff remains too long, the seed dies within it.
The wheat and the chaff are not to be understood as different plants, different ideas, different people. Rather, the chaff is a part of the plant, a part of the idea, part of the individual. If the individual is to be fully present, fully alive, fully human, we need, when we’re ready, to step out from the protection of the chaff that surrounds us. When we are ready we need to be that much more vulnerable, that much more willing to love, that much more open to ourselves and each other. There comes a point when growth is no longer possible within the chaff. There is only growth when we are separated from the chaff that surrounds us. Jesus is not simply calling us to be born again, Jesus is calling all of us to grow up.
Verses 3:21-22
Luke’s Jesus is a child of the earth, confirmed here as a child of the Divine. He is, like other humans, baptized by water. In his baptism, in a moment of prayer, the heavens open and God utters words (rhema). If Creation is an act of and by Love, this rhema is the creative voice, like the voice in Genesis 1, where Creator sees that what is being created is “good”. The earth child Jesus is also ‘good’ in that sense.
Imagine if before you began each day, or each cycle of ministry, mission or work, you felt deep on your soul, you are loved, and God is well pleased with you. What would that feel like for you?
And we cannot help but see that God’s Spirit is in a corporeal, in a non-human form, a dove. Importantly it connects God’s spirit with all of creation, renewing the whole earth eco-system, earth’s total household, humans, non-humans. (Trainor p. 103)
Teaching and Preaching Ideas
Ecology and Economy, Which Comes First?
An ecological view is a much bigger vision, a bigger mind (metanoia) than the economy. A reminder of the Greek; eco meaning house or home, logos, thinking about, and monos, meaning management, surely, we should be thinking about the household before we try to manage it? And what changes in our thinking if we see that what built the house in the first place was Love and that means the house is precious beyond our wildest imaginations. What might Love as the creative force of the universe change in our relationship with creation as a whole? Perhaps we might find there that creation is not a commodity, you and I are not commodities.
The Slow Down Rebellion
There is old wisdom, ‘stop and smell the flowers’ that is the antithesis of our current zeitgeist where we must be fast, we must be efficient, presuming incorrectly that efficiency and effectiveness are synonymous. There was a moment in a church recently where as the choir sang a meditative anthem in an otherwise quiet space, someone’s phone rang. The piece the choir was singing had pauses, and the director simply stopped at a pause, and waited until the ringing stopped. There are more important things than responding to some calls, texts, or messages. It was a simple act of rebellion on the part of the choir. Where else can we slow down to honour the love that fills all of creation?
Radical Threatening Love/Fire Transforms
How might Wilda Gafney’s “radical threatening love” in the commentary on Psalm 29 above be related to the unquenchable fire in the commentary on Luke’s Gospel above? Are both trying to describe a love that transforms the systems dedicated to the success of the few, even the systems that feel impenetrable like capitalism, into loving peace for all of creation. How is this love similar to the point at which the chaff is to be burned away so that the fuller more loving person can emerge?
Is the ‘Real World’ Ransoming Us?
How often have you or I had our vision of a better world for all of Creation, trampled upon by doses of ‘reality”; people telling us ‘it’s about the economy’, ‘you have to be ‘real’ about your thinking’, you’re such an idealist, you need to be more pragmatic.’ In the end those of us who see the reality of God’s creation as infused with love gets that there is always more to human understandings of ‘reality.’ There is always more than ‘we can ask or imagine.’ We need not ransom anyone else, ever.
Sources and Resources
https://girardianlectionary.net
Mary Oliver, Red Bird, Published by Beacon Press 2008
Peter Block, Walter Brueggemann, John McKnight, An Other Kingdom; Departing the Consumer Culture, Wiley & Sons, 2016)
Contributor bios
The Rev. Alisdair Smith is the School Chaplain at the Vancouver School of Theology. He also served as Deacon and Business Chaplain at Vancouver’s Christ Church Cathedral for over 20 years.
Image description
A picture of pilgrims waiting to be baptized or to affirm their baptismal covenant at the River Jordan. © Olivia McIvor 2023