baptism: beyond guilt and shame

1/11/10 from my sermon on the Baptism of the Lord, from Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

We get a lot of messages about who we are: the grade on the lastest exam, the size of our office or our salary, second string on the sports team, a doctor's diagnosis. Get this message very clearly today, God says, "You are my child, the beloved one, with you I am well pleased." With every breath you take, "you are my child, the beloved one, with you I am well pleased." Even if your mind wanders and you get nothing else out of worship today, "you are my child, the beloved one, with you I am well pleased."

This is the message that Jesus got at his baptism. I think it is intended for us also. You are my child, the beloved one, with you I am well pleased.

I want to slow this scripture passage down. We assume we know what it says, but we sometimes blend the gospel accounts together. Luke tells the story differently. Let's experience afresh.

John the Baptist is doing just what his name implies; he's baptizing. All kinds of folks are coming to him. They are full of expectation, "Are you the ONe?" "No, I am the set-up guy, the one who prepares the way. I baptize with water for repentance. The One will baptize with Holy Spirit and fire for a whole new life."

Jesus is baptized. By whom? We want to say John the Baptist, but in the verses omitted in the reading today, John is placed in prison, so he can't do it. Where is Jesus baptized? In Luke, it is not site specific. Jesus is also the last to be baptized, not the first. In fact, in Greek, his baptism is a dependent clause. It seems in Luke that Jesus is just one of the crowd. And maybe that is the point. He's one of us. In baptism, Jesus joins us in our fraility, in our humanness, in our less than humanness, in our guilt and shame. Jesus is baptized not because he has to but because he wants to. He is baptized into our desire to know what God intends us to be.

Then Jesus is praying. Look in Luke's gospel how many times Jesus is praying. Big hint for us: after our baptism, we are called to pray to seek God's will for us. Then the heavens are opened, and only in Luke does the Spirit come down in bodily form. Luke wants us to know this is not some imagination, but a public event.

Then the voice says, "You are my son, the beloved, with you I am well pleased." When I first read it I thought the whole crowd heard it, like a public address. Then I picked up the commentaries. I wish I hadn't. They seemed to say, that Jesus alone heard the voice. Then I pushed back, "Then how did we come to have this recorded. How did they hear?" I believe Jesus joins us in baptism because he wants us to know this is true for us as well, "you are my child, the beloved one, with you I am well pleased."

This is the message we need to move beyond guilt and shame. I know a lot about guilt and shame....you see because I have been in counseling. I need to offer some definitions at this point. Guilt says, I did bad. Shame says, I am bad. Guilt says, I made a mistake. Shame says, I am a mistake. Guilt is about actions. Shame is about identity.

We get a lot of messages. One of them that I got growing up was that I was never good enough. No matter how hard I worked or how high my grades were, I was never good enough. The problem comes when we start believing that is true about ourselves. It's not just what others say about us; it's what we say about ourselves.

What can cut through that? Only, "you are my child, the beloved one, with you, I am well pleased."

I also know a lot about guilt and shame because I know something about addictive behavior. I think we live i an addictive society. I am not just talking about alcohol and other drugs, but also money, beauty, fame, power. I will illustrate with an example from my teaching human sexuality. ONe exercise I have youth do is take ads from magazine and to cut away the product from the nearly naked person trying to sell. I never even noticed the wristwatch on her body. We worship youth and beauty and success and...

The problem with addictions is that they work...up to a point. You take the alcohol or the money or the fame or food or the whatever and it always delivers an immediate high. You feel better for a little while. The problem is that there is always a corresponding low, and it is lower than you started. So you take more of the drug to get high....but then you dip lower....and so the spiral continues.

What can cut through this? Only "you are my child, the beloved one, with you I am well pleased."

Now I believe in meditation and in medication, in dieting and in exercise and in accountability groups. But I believe in more what God says to us in our baptism, "You are my child, the beloved one, with you I am well pleased." Even when we are fat, when we are fired, when we are a failure, "you are my child, the beloved one, with you I am well pleased."

I am trying to invite this community to discern what is Christ's vision for us. I think we begin in our baptism in remembering who we are as God's beloved children. I think the vision expands for us to share the new with them also about who they are. Alan Graham of Mobile Loaves and Fishes does this so wonderfully well. I have been with him a little bit on the streets. Does he go up to a person on the street and say, "You're drunk...your're homeless?" NO! He says, "Hey brother, how's is going? Do you mind if I sit here?" He calls them family. He asks permission to get close. He says you are a beloved child of God with whom God is well pleased.

Who are you? We know who we are because of what God said at Jesus baptism. We know who we are because of what God said at our baptism. You are my child, the beloved one, with you I am well pleased.