What Kind of Love Is This?

John was in the wilderness, far from civilization. Yet, people were coming here because they had a longing….a longing to be cleansed, to be purified. John’s baptism was one of repentance, of turning from a life apart from God’s ways to a life seeking God’s way, of being cleansed and restored.

And one day Jesus joins the crowd. He gets in line to be baptized. He acts no different from the person ahead of him or behind him. Why? Why does Jesus get in line? He is not in need of cleansing. He does not need purification. He has nothing for which to repent. He has not led a life apart from God. But, he comes and he gets in line, and he submits as he is submerged. He submits to God’s purpose in his life. He submits to being like the person in front of him in line and the person behind him in line. The Word made flesh, the one who speaks “Let there be light,” lays back on the arms of his cousin, John, and is baptized.

Barbara Brown Taylor says that baptism is “the celebration of a demotion.” Jesus is the Holy One of God, yet he steps down in baptism to submit to a ritual for the unclean. What kind of love is this?

As he comes out of the water, back into the light, the heavens are torn apart, ripped open. The Greek verb is schizo. Leaving jagged edges, it is as though God could stand the separation no longer. There is a verb in Greek for opening. This is not the heavens opening. This is schizo, the heavens tearing apart. We find the same thing happening to the Temple curtain as Jesus gives a loud cry and breathes his last breath, from top to bottom it is torn in two, schizo. The Temple curtain veiled the Holy of Holies. It kept the unclean from being in the presence of God. And at the moment of Jesus’ last breath, it is ripped in two and there is no division between us and God.

Mark begins and ends his Gospel with God schizoing what separates us from God. An inclusio that bookends the whole story of Jesus’ ministry from the heavens schizoing at his baptism to the Temple curtain schizoing at his last breath, Jesus’ life and ministry is God not standing the separation from us any longer. It had been the prayer of the prophet Isaiah, “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down.”

Now Jesus steps in line to be just like us, divided from God by our sin, seeking purification, and God tears open the heavens and comes down like a dove hovering, the same wind that in the beginning had swept over the face of the waters, descended on Jesus, and a voice from heaven claims him, “You are my Son, beloved, and with you I am well-pleased.”

Baptism is both a symbol and a seal. Symbolically, we mark the one who is baptized as God’s child and Christ’s disciple. The waters of baptism represent purification and cleansing, rebirth and renewal, and dying and rising with Christ. And in baptism, we receive the grace of God and God claims us as God’s own child, beloved and pleasing to God. The one who acts in baptism is God. We receive God’s grace and are claimed as God’s own.

Jan Richardson’s poem, “Beginning with Beloved: A Blessing” captures the power of baptism for us:

Begin here:
Beloved.
Is there any other word
needs saying,
any other blessing
could compare
with this name,
this knowing?
Beloved.
Comes like a mercy
to the ear that has never
heard it.
Comes like a river
to the body that has never
seen such grace.
Beloved.
Comes holy
to the heart
aching to be new.
Comes healing
to the soul
wanting to begin
again.
Beloved.
Keep saying it
and though it may
sound strange at first,
watch how it becomes
part of you,
how it becomes you,
as if you never
could have known yourself
anything else,
as if you could ever
have been other
than this:
Beloved.
–Jan Richardson

God acts in baptism and rends the divisions that separate us from God. What kind of love is this?

Martin Luther, the Catholic priest whose challenge of the practice of indulgences with 95 theses nailed to the church door in Wittenburg began the Protestant Reformation, was plagued by depression all of his life. When conflicts and doubts assailed him, he would say to himself over and over, “I am baptized.” I wonder if he was so bothered by indulgences, the church telling people that to receive forgiveness or for your dead loved one to go to heaven, you owe the church money, because he knew the power of baptism. Jesus commissioned us to baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, because God can’t stand the separation any longer. What kind of love is this?

It is the love that says you are my beloved. Rev. Janet Wolf has been a friend and advocate of the poor and imprisoned for nearly half a century and now serves through her leadership at the Children’s Defense Fund. But, years ago while she was serving as a pastor in Nashville, she met Fayette. The church she was serving is a wildly diverse congregation that includes, as Janet has described it, “…people with power and PhDs and folks who have never gone past the third grade; folks with two houses and folks living on the streets; and, as one person who struggles with mental health declared, ‘those of us who are crazy and those who think they’re not.’”
Fayette found her way to Janet’s church. Fayette lived with mental illness and lupus and without a home. She joined the new member class. The conversation about baptism—“this holy moment when we are named by God’s grace with such power it won’t come undone,” as Janet put it—especially grabbed Fayette’s imagination. Janet tells of how, during the class, Fayette would ask again and again, “And when I’m baptized, I am…?” “The class learned to respond, ‘Beloved, precious child of God, and beautiful to behold.’ ‘Oh, yes!’ she’d say, and then they could go back to their discussion.
The day of Fayette’s baptism came. This is how Janet describes it:
Fayette went under, came up spluttering, and cried, ‘And now I am…?’ And we all sang, ‘Beloved, precious child of God, and beautiful to behold.’ ‘Oh, yes!’ she shouted as she danced all around the fellowship hall.
Two months later, Janet received a phone call.
Fayette had been beaten and raped and was at the county hospital. So she went. I could see her from a distance, pacing back and forth. When I got to the door, I heard, ‘I am beloved….’ She turned, saw me, and said, ‘I am beloved, precious child of God, and….’ Catching sight of herself in the mirror—hair sticking up, blood and tears streaking her face, dress torn, dirty, and rebuttoned askew, she started again, ‘I am beloved, precious child of God, and…’ She looked in the mirror again and declared, ‘…and God is still working on me. If you come back tomorrow, I’ll be so beautiful I’ll take your breath away!’

What kind of love is this? It is the love that celebrates demotion, demotion to be with you. Start here: Beloved. Thanks be to God. Amen.