“Jesus’ Baptism” Matthew 3: 1-17

 The next few weeks you need to stick with me friends, because there have been songs playing through my head with each new scripture that we encounter in the Gospel of Matthew. This week - Down to the River to Pray by Allison Krause from the soundtrack of the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? “As I went down in the river to pray. Studying about that good ol' way. And who shall wear the starry crown. Good Lord, show me the way.”

This is one of my absolute favorite songs about baptism. First, because it is profound in meaning and beautiful in musicality. But second, because every time I hear it sung, I don’t hear Allison Krause, as talented as she is. I hear a good friend of mine from high school with a powerhouse alto voice who brought an auditorium to an absolute hush singing this song. We were standing on holy ground, brothers and sisters. 

And Jesus was standing on holy ground when he arrived at the River Jordan all of those years ago. But before he even arrived at the bank of the river God had been preparing the way through the ministry of John the Baptist. 

Remember that in chapter 2 of the Gospel of Matthew we found ourself at the palace of King Herod and journey with the magi. Now, we are away from the power and prestige to the desert, a place of identity and longing. Remember, who is Matthew writing for? Folks who know all about their central story found in the book of Exodus. One of going from the place of backbreaking work for the people of power and prestige to journeying to freedom through the desert place. The Israelites know that the desert is a place of both liberation and transformation, friends. 

We are also told that John the Baptist was a prophet, which would conjure up all the scriptural images of prophets of old. While the people may have been waiting for, even longing for, a prophet for their time, the reality is that the prophets of old were not reveered as much as the imagination of time would lead people to believe. Prophets were often thought to be oddities. Their words were ignored if not downright disdained. Yet, they continued to proclaim the word of the Lord. 

So we find John, the prophet, crying out for people to repent, for the Kingdom of heaven has come near. John who has his own oddities about him, one found out in the desert, clothed in camel’s hair and eating locust and honey. John, who is crying out the same message as the prophets that came before him - its time for a change.

Often in our day and time when we say that it is time for a change, we really mean that its  time for a change that is removed from us. It’s other people that need to change. Or we need a change in leadership. But that’s not the change that John is calling for. No, to repent, is to have a change within a person that rocks them to their core. 

Another way to phrase what John is saying here is, people, its time to turn around. To turn around from your selfishness, greed, and pride. It’s time to turn around from whatever sin has taken hold in your heart and is bearing evil fruit. 

The problem is that not everyone was interested in both hearing and responding to that message. But then again, folks weren’t too keen on hearing and responding to a similar message proclaimed by the prophet Elijah, either. 

But John isn’t deterred by the folks who aren’t getting the message, yet. Because he knows his place, he knows his call and its scriptural. He is the one who has come to cry in the wilderness “Prepare the way for the Lord.”

It is so easy to forget that the word and call that John was ushering forth - to repent - friends, it was a word of hope to a world-weary people. John Howard Yoder said this about “repent” - “To repent is not to feel bad, but to think differently”. And its not just about thinking differently but a type of thinking differently that fundamentally changes the heart and all the action that flowed forth. And John is crying “repent” - he is saying that type of change is possible. 

In fact, what the people though looked hopeless and impossible, suddenly was possible. Because of the Messiah. 

But the religious leaders, who gathered to get intel on what John was doing and saying, showed up, John saw right into the muddiness of their hearts. Now, what we miss on this side of history is that the Pharisees and the Sadducees, they were not one in the same. In fact, that didn’t even really like one another. Think of any opinion, preference, or theological point - and you would find them on opposite sides. Yet, they came together on the banks of the Jordan to stare at John, not because they wanted to repent and be transformed, but because his oddness worried them. Because here is John saying that all of their power and prestige - well it wasn’t going to buffer or protect them from what was to come. 

Have you been there, church? Have you been so caught up in the judgment by the side of the road or the river that you miss out on what God is doing? Add that to the list of things we need to repent from - the judgment that starts manifesting itself in us as kiddos who love to tattle on other kids as an act of judgment and follows us the whole way into adulthood. 

Enter Jesus. Jesus who didn’t need to come to the water to repent or be transformed, but who came to the water to show us the way. Formally proclaiming that he is the King of transformation of heart and life, as he repents God to humanity and humanity to God.

Jesus shows up at the River Jordan and said that there is a different way. Not the way of what the world presents, but the way of the Kingdom of God. If only you are willing to enter into the waters of life. 

I told you what my favorite song about baptism is, but I didn’t tell you that I have a list of ones I don’t care for. Because they don’t explain it well. Or make it out like its our own power that leads to transformation. Ones that miss the holiness of what Jesus is truly showing us the way to. 

Because at the waters of baptism we are offered a new life, that is not our own, but Christ in us. And that change that comes? Friends, its freedom. This week we are starting a new Monday evening study called Younique, which is about who we are and what our call is in Christ. The first time I worked through this curriculum with colleagues, I was struck by the following statement, “Freedom is not the ability to do anything you want to do. Freedom is the capability to become who God dreamed you to be.” And I’ve got to tell you, there are a lot of well meaning Christians who miss the point of that freedom. They know that at the water of baptism they are forgiven, but they fail to realize that they are invited to a whole new way of living in the freedom of Christ. 

I’ve shared with some of you that while I was in college I was able to travel for one of my classes to the Holy Land. While there, the professor leading us, offered to baptize folks in the River Jordan, if they felt so led. Only he was an awesome United Methodist pastor and knew that I was Methodist as well. So when I was toying with the idea of being rebaptized, he instead invited me to come to the river, touch it, and remember the freedom that came in the baptismal vow. Freedom that didn’t come through performing the sacrament again, but by remembering what it means to be set freed, indeed, in Christ. 

Today we, too, are going to have the opportunity to come and remember. Not to remember that act of baptism, but to remember and reclaim the power of the freedom that comes to us in Christ. Friends, will you come, down to the waters to pray. Amen. 

“Genealogy of Jesus” Matthew 1:1-17

 I was recently talking to a fellow pastor about and somehow the conversation turned to the topic “things you don’t know about me.” Right away, I knew what my answer would be. I grew up in a family that had something historical about every single vacation that we went on. Friends, we went to the beach and had to visit a museum. And yet, as frustrating as that was as a child, I am so glad that happened now that I look back. It taught me to appreciate history.

Even ancient history like what we find in today’s scripture lesson. Hands up, how many of you when you get to the genealogy section of scripture skip right past it? Let’s be honest - a lot of us have done so over the years because its a list of names that hard to pronounce. 

Yet, here on the cusp of a new year, we are looking back to the very beginning of the Gospel of Matthew - which starts by tracing back Jesus’s genealogy, his lineage, so that we know, know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is the Messiah.

For the next several months we are going to be journeying together through the Gospel of Matthew. Each of the Gospels tells the story of Jesus in a slightly different way. You may notice that there are some things written in one Gospel that don’t show up in another. That’s because the writers are trying to communicate the Good News of Jesus Christ to specific audiences at the time. 

Matthew is writing to Jewish people in order to show them that Jesus is the promised Savior. So he traces lines back to the writings they know - what we call the Old Testament, what they simply refer to as the Hebrew Scriptures. He wants to make known that Jesus is the son of God and the fulfillment of the scriptures. 

To that end, Matthew starts off the Gospel bearing his name by tracing Jesus’s genealogy back - way back. Back 42 generations. All in order to establish for the audience to which he is writing Jesus’s identity as the Messiah who has been promised and announced. The fulfillment of all hope. 

In recent years there has been a resurgence of tracing back our own roots and history through genealogy. There are places where you can trace your ancestors. Other businesses allow you to find distant relatives. But perhaps what has been most meaningful to me has been the process of mapping my genealogy. 

Now often when we hear the words mapping our genealogy the first image that comes to mind is of a large family tree. Maybe the type that some of you may have or even ones that were written in the family Bible. But that’s not quite the type of mapping that I’m talking about. Instead I’m talking about a family genogram. 

A few years ago, I took a course where the genogram was described this way - family tress show who is related to who, but a genogram shows how we are connected to one another. Another way to say this is that genograms don’t just show names and relationships, but family’s joys, sorrows, and brokenness. 

Because Matthew is writing to a Jewish audience who knows the stories of at least some of the names that he is bringing up, he is presenting more a genogram - showing all of the connections and family stories without ever having to say them outloud.

Think about it - Jesus is yes, the son of Abraham and David, but what does that mean? Well who was Abraham - the patriarch of promise. The one who God did an amazingly unexpected thing with - went from being childless in his old age to being promised that he would be the father of more people than could be counted amongst the stars or the sand on the seashore. Abraham is also the father of the covenant that God made with his people to be their God. Now here is Jesus, showing up in an unexpected way to be the fulfillment of God’s promise - coming in the flesh to be the Savior of the world. 

And David - David was a man after God’s own heart. He was the one chosen to be the King of Israel and was promised that a descendent from his throne will reign forever. By this point in time, that isn’t true in an earthly sense, but God is still keeping his promise by sending Jesus, the Messiah, to come from his throne. 

But that doesn’t mean that everyone in Jesus’s lineage was perfect. In fact, there are some really odd people within it who are full of contradictions. Jacob - a trickster who is also the father of the tribes of Israel. Judah - the namesake of the southern part of Israel that was the place of great kings and where the Messiah was said to come from. Also the brother who decided to sell Jospeh into slavery. 

Judah who also lied to his daughter-in-law, putting off his obligation to provide another son for her to marry after two of them died. So that daughter-in-law, one of the women oddly mentioned in Jesus’s lineage in a time when that didn’t happen, took matters into her own hands and positioned herself in a way to be mistaken by Judah as a temple prostitute - and ended up being the father of his own grandchildren. 

A few generations down the line, we find another woman - Ruth, a foreigner who chose to return with her mother-in-law, Namoi to a land unknown to her, out of a sense of fierce loyalty and protection. While in that land, she gleaned at the fields of a man named Boaz, who took a risk in marrying her, thus grafting her into this lineage as well. 

Two generations later we find Jesse, who yes, was the father of King David, but also the one who thought every other son was the one who God would choose to be the future king of Israel except for David.

And then near the end we find another oddity - the presence of Joseph. Joesph, who was not Jesus’s biological father, but reminds us of the people who are in our lives who take us in, in so many ways, and make us part of their family as well.

Friends, we are standing on the cusp of a new year. And I wish I could tell you that this year would be smooth sailing for you and your family - but the truth is that life is messy. We only need to look at some of the stories in Jesus’s family tree in order to realize that. But when I also look at this genealogy I notice a few things that I invite you to carry into the year 2023.

First, God is faithful to his promises. Yes, God may keep those promises in surprising ways, but God is truth worthy. Are we going to lean into that sense of trust this year and what do we need to maybe pick up or put down in our lives in order to do so?

Two, we are humans. I know this may seem like a pretty obvious point - but we are humans and so are the folks who composed Jesus’s family tree. God uses humans - even in all of our frailty to be part of the story of God, which is beyond our wildest imaginations. Sometimes we get to catch glimpses of what God is doing on this side of eternity - sometimes we aren’t quite sure. But God is using you as his instrument in a way to make known his glory.

Third, our family extends beyond the people who gave us brith and compose our family tree. It includes our spiritual family as well, who play an important role in our lives and in the lives of this community.

Friends, I invite you to sit with this scripture in prayer this week and allow it to become more than a long list of names. May it seep into your spirit and speak to you about your family - spiritual and biological. May it lead you to a bigger vision of what God may be inviting you to this year. And may it, above all, open up your heart and spirit to the surprises of our Lord. Amen.