January 13, 2013

Clay Nelson

Baptism of our Lord     Luke 3:15-34

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

I confess I’m having a hangover from last Sunday. This week the focus is on Jesus’ baptism, but I’m not quite ready to let go of the nature of epiphanies. As I suggested last week most epiphanies are subtle and if we do notice them we are tempted to ignore them because they can rock our world altering our view of reality. If we take the opportunity to be aware of them we risk having to change and move into an unknown future.

Working from home this week I’ve had more time than usual for task avoidance by spending time on Facebook. It paid off when I saw a posting by one of you in the congregation. It made my case that epiphanies surround us on a daily basis. Too bad we are too busy to notice.

A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that 1,100 people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.

Three minutes went by, and a middle-aged man noticed there was musician playing. He slowed his pace, and stopped for a few seconds, and then hurried up to meet his schedule.

A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till without stopping, and continued to walk.

A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work.

The one who paid the most attention was a 3-year old boy. His mother tugged him along, but the kid kept stopping to look at the violinist. Finally, the mother pushed hard, and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on.

In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money, but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the most talented musicians in the world. [I don’t know if he is related to our organist, Michael Bell, but their love of Bach seems to be in their DNA.] He had just played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, on a violin worth $3.5 million dollars.

Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100.

This is a real story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste, and priorities of people.

The outlines were: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour: Do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?

One of the possible conclusions from this experience could be: If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever written, how many other things are we missing?”

This Sunday we have a different kind of Epiphany, one that seems hard to have been ignored with the heavens opening, a dove descending, and a divine voice speaking when Jesus is baptised by John. Who noticed?

While this is one occasion in Jesus’ ministry that all four Gospels have recorded, they all differ. While I don’t challenge the historicity of Jesus’ baptism by John, I do pause to ponder what exactly might have happened on that day. What was his motive to begin his ministry in this way? What did he experience? What did others witness? And most importantly, why does it matter to us today?

In today’s version Luke suggests that John did not know he was baptising the Messiah until after a dramatic heavenly epiphany that all would have witnessed. In Mark’s earliest version of the event only Jesus experienced the epiphany. In Matthew, it is the same except John tries to dissuade him from being baptised. In John’s Gospel, John the Baptist doesn’t recognise his cousin Jesus and only John saw the Spirit descending like a dove and heard the divine voice say to him, “He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptises with the Holy Spirit.”

So either it was an epiphany for Jesus, for John the Baptist or the people being baptised on that day. My hunch or, perhaps bias, is that it was solely an epiphany for Jesus. He had an experience at the Jordan that changed the direction of his life or at least affirmed his intuitive sense of what his calling was. It was clearly a key moment and why Mark, the earliest of the Evangelists begins his Gospel with it. The description we are given of it is poetic and that is probably the only language that can come close to describing Jesus’ experience that he may have later shared with his disciples.

Since we don’t know anything about what brought him to his cousin to be baptised we venture into the world of conjecture. Perhaps he shared John’s zeal to rid the country of the Romans and their Jewish henchmen like Herod. Did he want to be part of a planned rebellion? Did John’s beheading later dampen his enthusiasm, causing him to rethink his mission? Or was it something else entirely? Did he feel a need to repent? That would certainly challenge the view of Christians after his death that he was without sin. If he thought he was without sin, why did he do a baptism of repentance? I have trouble concluding that someone who is fully human thinks they are without a need for repentance. At the very least we sometimes need to repent our resistance to moving forward into a new reality. Could that have been his struggle? Certainly the road upon which he felt called to embark on was full of risk. I can identify with any ambivalence he might have felt. Perhaps being knee deep in the Jordan helped him get passed that resistance. Perhaps it was a moment where he stopped long enough to listen to a maestro playing heavenly music, moving him forward.

I suppose there is another possibility as well. I’ve been to where John supposedly baptised Jesus in the Jordan. In fact I have baptised people there. It is not in a suburb of Nazareth. Jesus had to move out of his comfort zone to go there. Perhaps his epiphany was the fruit of being willing to move beyond what was safe and familiar.

I maintain contact with Glynn’s predecessor as vicar on Facebook. This week Ian Lawton shared this story, which could have been about Jesus.

A town was completely enclosed behind high walls. For generations all the people stayed within the walls, comfortable with the only world they knew. Occasionally some brave adventurer would climb over the wall, never to be seen again. Inside the walls, people wondered if their friends never came back because it was SO good outside of the walls or if it was dangerous and they met with some awful tragedy. The risk was too great for most to take. Eventually the curiosity of a group of people in the town got the better of them. They decided to discover firsthand what life was like beyond the walls. They tied a rope around a volunteer, who climbed over the wall. After he had time to look around, they hauled him back. They were bursting with questions as they gathered around him, and everyone spoke at once. But the man said nothing. All he could do was smile from ear to ear.

Ian goes on to suggest, “There are no words to describe the moments of life that go beyond [our] current experience. Sometimes [we] just have to pause at the limits of [our] understanding and enjoy the mystery. All [we] can do is grin from ear to ear with the joy of new possibilities. [We] can’t fully explain it. If someone hasn’t had the experience, they won’t understand it in words. If they have had the experience, they won’t need explanation. They will see it on [our] face, the look of recognition. Getting stuck on the explanation is a little like being at the peak of a roller coaster and pausing the scene to analyze it, and describe it and before [we] know it the ride is over. Its far better to simply enjoy the feeling of exhilaration.”

That’s the way I like to think about what Jesus’ baptism meant to him. He stopped to listen to the music and jumped the wall. Are we prepared to do likewise? If so, prepare to grin ear to ear.