This sermon was heard at the First Presbyterian Church in Berryville, Arkansas on Sunday January 10, 2010, Baptism of the Lord Sunday, the 1st Sunday in Ordinary Time.
Isaiah 43:1-7
Psalm 29
Acts 8:14-17
Luke 3:15-17, 22-23
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
Swiss Theologian Karl Barth is credited with telling young pastors “to take your Bible and take your newspaper, and read both. But interpret newspapers from your Bible.”[1] I am sure he meant this about the news and editorial pages, but could he have also meant it about the funnies?
I have always found the way the gospel connects to popular culture enlightening. Especially with youth, it is a way of making connections between the Word of God and the world we live in. Last year, I did a Bible Study with Zach using Greg Garrett’s book “Holy Superheroes, Exploring the Sacred in Comics, Graphic Novels, and Film.”[2]
One of the recent trends in comics and graphic novels is to write origination stories, the beginnings of characters. This was done by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale in “Superman For All Seasons” and by Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli, in “Batman, Year One.” The 2002 Tobey Maguire movie “Spiderman,” the 2005 Christian Bale movie “Batman Begins,” and last year’s Hugh Jackman movie “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” takes this trend on its cinematic course. Of course the WB and CW television series “Smallville” takes Superman as a teenager to the small screen.
One of the things these stories do is take a character that we are already familiar with and give us a glimpse into what made them who they are. What of the life of a teenage Clark Kent prepares him to become the Man of Steel? What horror causes Bruce Wayne to dress up like a bat, something he fears, and prowl the streets looking for trouble? What tragedy makes Peter Parker realize that with great power comes great responsibility; pushing him into his Spiderman personae?
In a way, Luke’s gospel gives us a look into the life of the Messiah we know oh so well, Jesus of Nazareth, and presents us with some of the Earthly events that shape him. This gospel gives us the most glorious story of his birth that the church will ever hear. This gospel gives us Jesus as a teenager at the temple in Jerusalem, as if there is any other place to seek him than in his Father’s house. Today, we join him in the water of his baptism.
Let’s return to the beginning of this chapter, the time and place where John begins his Baptismal ministry on the banks of the Jordan. John preaches a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Jesus obviously hears of his cousin, the man raising a ruckus on the riverbank crying out that he baptizes with water; but another will come and baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire.
So Jesus comes to the banks of the Jordan. He comes as one of a crowd.
He comes as one of a crowd. We know the glorious story of Jesus of Nazareth. We know how this story begins, we know of the miracles and the controversies. We know of how the world thinks death defeats him, and we know how death will never hold him. We know of how he will rise to the right hand of God the Father Almighty where he will come to judge the quick and the dead.
But today, he comes as one of the crowd, just a man in the multitude.
If there is anyone in the crowd who knew Jesus of Nazareth, they knew he was the son of Mary. They knew he worked in wood. Maybe someone in the crowd used Jesus to put up drywall, or maybe he built a dining room set for them.[3] He was seemingly just a guy in the crowd, neither more nor less special than anyone else in the mass of humanity.
He was one of us.
Joan Osborne had a hit with Eric Bazilian’s song “One of Us.” She sings, “What if God was one of us/ Just a slob like one of us.” We testify that Jesus is God and Man. We say that he is Emmanuel, God with us. We say that he is fully human and fully divine. We also say that being fully human, he is more human than we can ever hope to be. And this is true, but on this day, Baptism of the Lord Sunday, it is neither Jesus’ divinity nor humanity that is emphasized, it is God’s community.
If John preached a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, then why does Jesus come for this baptism? He certainly doesn’t need to receive the baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. He doesn’t need it at all, so why?
For Presbyterians, we see our baptism not as a soul-saving event. We are neither saved nor condemned through our baptism. If we were, salvation would be something we could accomplish on our own, not something God does. Instead, we consider baptism a welcoming to the community of faith. The baptismal liturgy in “The Book of Common Worship” says:
By water and the Holy Spirit,
we are made members of the church, the body of Christ,
and joined to Christ's ministry of love, peace, and justice.[4]
We don’t celebrate that our baptism saves us; we celebrate that by the water and the Holy Spirit we are made members of the church, joined to Christ, and to his work. The liturgy ends with this prayer of the people:
With joy and thanksgiving
we welcome you into Christ’s church
to share with us in his ministry,
for we are all one in Christ.[5]
Elaine Ramshaw writes, “a rite of passage into a community is a rite of passage for the whole community.”[6] It is not Jesus who needed to be transformed by this baptismal passage. Taking Ramshaw’s cue, I believe that Jesus was baptized because we need to be transformed by this rite of passage. It is by the Baptism of the Lord and followed by every Christian baptism since that we are transformed, in the water and in the Holy Spirit and fire.
Through his baptism, Jesus, even in his deity, identifies with all humanity.
I once read that most superheroes put on a costume to take on the personae of the hero. They put on a disguise before going on crime fighting adventures.
Bruce Wayne puts on the tights and cape that have all of the gadgets he uses as the Batman. It was the same for every incarnation of his sidekick Robin. Even enhanced humans are still humans. Their regular identity is the skin they were born with. Peter Parker has his spidey-sense and can throw a web without a costume, but he puts on the suit to really become Spiderman. Even Wolverine puts on the spandex before the claws come out. But Superman, Superman is different.
Kal-El, the Kryptonian name of the infant adopted by the Kent’s of Smallville, Kansas is not the ordinary superhero. While more like us on his native planet, under the yellow sun of our solar system and in our much lighter gravity, Kal-El becomes strengthened with super-human abilities. In our world, he becomes Superman.
This is who he is, he is Superman. He is a Kryptonian masquerading as a human being, not a human being playing super hero. He is the hero; he is the one who is faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. He is the alien who is able to do more than we could ever hope or imagine.
It was not a coincidence at all that Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the two Jewish men that created Superman, named him Kal-El, the Hebrew phrase meaning “Voice of God.”
As a super hero, Superman is completely different. While nearly every other super hero in comics is a person becoming something more to hide their regular identity; Superman is always a super man and to hide his identity, he becomes less than who he is. In his own way, the geeky Clark Kent is Kal-El’s commentary on what the average human being looks and acts like. This mumbling, milquetoast, klutzy man uses this disguise to blend in with us. He has never been one of us; he only dresses like one of us. Superman will never be anything but a Kryptonian disguised as one of us.
This is where the Son of God is different from the Son of Krypton. Superman hides in a Clark Kent’s business suit. Jesus of Nazareth is not God dressed up in human skin, in a robe and tunic to fool us into thinking he is one of us. No, he is one of us, and as fully human he is more human than we will ever be. And through his baptism, he takes the step to make all baptism a rite of passage for the whole community. In this work, he hears the words of the Father proclaiming, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
Join in the waters of the Baptism of the Lord and let us become a community transformed.
[1] “Where Did Karl Barth Say…?” http://libweb.ptsem.edu/collections/barth/faq/quotes.aspx?menu=296&subText=468, retrieved October 19, 2008.
[2] Garrett, Greg, “Holy Superheroes: Exploring the Sacred in Comics, Graphic Novels, and Film, Revised and Expanded Edition.” Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2008.
[3] The “dining room” quip is inspired from a scene in Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ.”
[4] The Theology and Worship Ministry Unit for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, “The Book of Common Worship.” Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995, page 363.
[5] Ibid, page 372
[6] Ramshaw, Elaine, “How does the church baptize infants and small children?” in Open Questions for Worship Volume 4: What is Changing in Baptismal Practice? Gordon Lathrop, Editor. Minneapolis, Minnesota, Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 1995, page 7.
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