True Humility
Even in early elementary school, there was one thing that a teacher could say that just ruined my day…and potentially my week, or longer. Whenever a teacher said, “I’m going to divide you into groups…” I could just feel the tension in my body. Group projects – there was little in school that I liked less. There’s a meme that says “Every group project in school you have ever done” and has 4 people labeled: does 99% of the work, has no idea what’s going on the whole time, says he’s going to help but he’s not, and disappears at the very beginning doesn’t show up again till the very end.” Some combination of these 4 seem to show up in every group.
What is incredible about Jesus being baptized is that in his baptism, he humbles himself to join our group. Matthew’s Gospel that we read this morning records that John realizes that Jesus is superior as he approaches the group’s table and says, “You should take over” and Jesus says, “No, bring me into the group as one of you.” These are the first words that Jesus speaks in Matthew’s Gospel, “Let it be so now, for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.”
Dr. Stanley Saunders, a retired NT Professor at Columbia Seminary summarizes the importance of this moment, Jesus’s “baptism confirms Jesus’ submission to the will of God and his identification with God’s mission of peace and reconciliation to the world.” Jesus is not baptized to be cleansed of his sins, but for the sins of the whole group, for all of us, he joins the group. And as he is baptized, the divide between humanity and God opens, God’s Spirit descends to earth, soaring and lighting on Jesus, and God speaks, the voice that brought all creation into being is once again heard, “This is my son, the beloved one. I am delighted with him.”
It is normal water. We went to the Jordan River in 2019; we stood on some steps that had been constructed so you could step down into the river (at a point where it really was not much more than a muddy stream) and not get your shorts wet. We dipped our hands in the water and made the sign of the cross on our foreheads and remembered our own baptisms.
And it is right on Baptism of the Lord Sunday that we remember our own baptisms – not when and where we were baptized, not what we were wearing or how old we were, not who performed the baptism. None of those things matter.
What matters is that we remember that by our baptisms we are part of a group project. God claimed you as God’s own. When I baptize someone, I walk up and down the aisle with them and introduce them as your brother or sister, a new group member in the project that Jesus declared is starting when he said, “Let it be so now, for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.”
When we celebrate Jesus’s baptism, we celebrate his humility to join in the group project of fulfilling all righteousness, we celebrate our identity as family who live together and work together to accomplish God’s will for creation, and we celebrate that by our baptism we are part of the group project too, the reality is that we tend to be the not so good group members from the meme. Remember the 4? The one who does 99% of the work, the one who has no idea what’s going on the whole time, the one who says he’s going to help but he’s not, and the one who disappears at the very beginning doesn’t show up again till the very end.
It’s a meme, and like any metaphor is flawed and can’t be pushed too far, but also helps us reflect honestly about what our baptism means and how it shapes who we are and how we live. Is your membership in the group project of fulfilling all righteousness something that you do in class once a week when you come and sit on a pew, is it something you meet with the group outside of class and work on, do you work on it at home on your own, does what you are learning impact how you interact with other groups, does it effect your other work, is it changing who you are and your relationships with others?
Perhaps it won’t, unless we become more clear on what Jesus meant by “fulfilling all righteousness.” When Jesus humbled himself to be baptized by John, he submitted to God’s will for his life. It’s not that he didn’t wrestle again, we know that even in the Garden as they were coming to arrest him to crucify him, he prayed, “If it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” True humility is submitting to God’s will. And as we submit, we fulfill all righteousness because God’s will is righteous. And as God’s will is done, the divide between heaven and earth subsides, God’s vision for creation is fulfilled. But it can only be accomplished as we do our part of the group project, which requires allowing our baptism to truly humble us, to let it transform our sense of self from identifying as independent, self-made, self-determined people who do what we want to being children of God, disciples (students) of Jesus, servants of God who seek to do God’s will.
I read Dr. Saunders’s commentary on this passage from 2010 and thought, “Wow, that feels prophetic.” Here’s what he said about our identity formation: Twenty-first-century North Americans shape their identities through rituals of consumption, domination, and violence. We are ‘somebody’ when we consume the appropriate material goods, whether cars, clothing, houses, guns, electronics, or food. The goods we purchase tell others who we are, our status, and our allegiances.”
His words reminded me of a conversation with my internship supervisor when I was in seminary. She drove a really old car. It looked terrible, so bad that one of the elders in the church I was serving who worked at a car dealership offered to help her get a new or newer car. Her response? It’s a matter of stewardship. This car has no mechanical problems.
The temptation? Why did he think she would want a nicer car? She was a pastor. It mattered for showing status – the status of a professional in town, the status of a higher economic bracket, to project authority and importance and power.
Saunders claims, “We use the stuff we buy to tell others who we are, our status, and our allegiances.” Our refusal to claim our identity through consumerism is a matter of stewardship. How will we use our resources to do God’s will rather than satisfy our desires? It is so easy to buy…just a few clicks and it is delivered to your door…does it bring you joy? Satisfaction? Does what you have give you a sense of worth? Claiming our identity in baptism and challenging our identity as consumers is about more than how we spend our money – it’s about our relationship with stuff – it’s how we tend our hearts and how we know our worth.
Saunders goes on to say that as 21st Century North Americans, “We use ritualized forms of violence, including war, torture, and executions, in order to project a sense of order, to distinguish friends from enemies, and to ‘preserve our way of life.’ We seek meaning and identity by conforming ourselves to the pictures beamed into our homes on flat-screened altars, These rites and ritual objects shape our daily imagination and practice” (whew!) and then he goes on to ask, “How do Christian rituals [like baptism]…challenge what we learn from and practice in the world?”
As I read these words published in 2010, they echoed in my thoughts this week like a prophetic warning. We see the outcome of identifying as those who dominate through violence in our daily lives. The pictures as Saunders describes them, “beamed into our homes on flat-screened altars” encourage us to divide and argue and refuse to listen. If we are going to accomplish the group project of living in community according to God’s will, we are going to have to pay attention to our own sense of identity and our relationships with one another.
One of the resources I use in premarital counseling is a metaphor developed by the Gottman Institute, who by the way have great marriage and family counseling resources. The describe the four horseman, not of the apocalypse, but of the end of a relationship. Research has shown that when we are in conflict, when we are fighting, if our communication style shifts to these 4 horsemen, our relationship is in trouble. The first is criticism rather than complaint, attacking the other person’s character rather than addressing what they did that you didn’t like. The second horseman that reveals that your relationship is in peril is contempt, treating the other person with disrespect, mocking them, calling them names, assuming moral superiority over them. Contempt in a marital relationship is the greatest single predictor of divorce. In any relationship we hope will continue, it must be eliminated. The third horseman is responding with defensiveness, offering excuses rather than admitting fault and accepting responsibility. Defensiveness is really a way to throw blame back on the other person, and only leads to escalated conflict. The fourth horseman of the end of a relationship is stonewalling, shutting down, refusing to interact.
What do these 4 horseman of relationships have to do with baptism? In our baptism, our primary identity is that we belong to God, and are brothers and sisters in Christ. In our baptism, we have been assigned a group project. Our primary identity is to live in relationship and in true humility, putting God’s will before our own, choosing whom we will serve and how we will live. May we live in such a way that our lives offer glimpses of God’s presence here and now. May we live in such a way that God’s will is accomplished through us.