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January 13, 2008
Matthew 3:1-17The Rev. David A. Davis
“Preventing Grace”
I saw the River Jordan for the first time last year. We were on the bus somewhere up in the region of the Sea of Galilee. I was sitting next to a window and taking in the sites. One of our leaders announced over the intercom that we would be crossing the Jordan River. Sure enough there was a little highway sign there right before the overpass. It said Jordan River both in English and Hebrew. It was an overpass, not a bridge. And there was some water down there, but not much. It certainly wasn’t the Delaware, and it was a lot smaller than the canal. It was more like Harry’s Brook down in our neighborhood that feeds into Lake Carnegie. The folks on the bus who were in conversation, those who were reading or resting with eyes closed; they missed it. By the time we pointed to it out the window, it was gone. I had been told and I had read enough to know that the Jordan River was not like the Allegheny, or the Monongahela, or the Ohio, but my imagination, my biblically formed, historically feeble imagination was still a bit rocked. The Jordan River wasn’t deep and wide; at least at that point.
Several days later, on a Sunday morning, we were scheduled to worship at the Jordan River. We arrived at the tourist spot established to mark the baptism of Jesus. The river was wider. It was clear. You could see fish. It wasn’t deep. It was as wide as home plate to the pitcher’s mound, in Little League. As one could imagine this particular location has been built to provide for tour group after tour group; rest rooms, gift shop, various outdoor chapel like gathering spots along the river; including one amphitheater that is built right up to and then into the water. Stairs and railings that led right to a spot for baptisms. It was a boat launch type of arrangement for people; a cattle shoot kind of thing; like a line from a Disney world attraction leading down to the water.
Our group found a beautiful spot under a few trees and we gathered there on the banks of the Jordan River. It was my turn to lead in worship. All of us were grateful, even relieved to have a bit of space and peace and quiet there by the river. But it wouldn’t last. Soon, another group arrived. A large, not so quiet group. As we moved through our liturgy, they moved around taking in the site, taking pictures, spreading out. As I was beginning to offer a short meditation on Matthew 3 and the baptism of Jesus, that group that was easily five times larger than ours, they began to gather in one of the chapels. And suddenly, there was from that multitude, the loudest, sharpest tenor voice I had ever heard, leading the group in a rousing rendition of “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands” complete with an amplified acoustical guitar. Our congregation of mostly clergy tried really hard to attend to worship, to listen to the preached word, to keep it together, but we really couldn’t. The moment was lost. I’m not sure what I was expecting in my imagination, but I know that wasn’t it. The baptism of Jesus there in the Jordan River has played out in my mind time after time after time, but the setting has never been like that.
“In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, ‘Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’” Matthew explains that the prophet Isaiah was talking about John; the voice crying in the wilderness, prepare the way the Lord, make his paths straight. The Baptist came preaching and he came in a noticeable style; camel’s hair, leather belt; buffet of locusts and wild honey. All kinds of people where going out to seem him; from Jerusalem, from all Judea, from all the region along the Jordan. It must have been quite a crowd. Matthew stops just short of saying “everyone came out to see him. They came from all around (Jerusalem, Judea, Jordan) to hear and to see John. It was a crowd that came, a crowd coming to confess their sins and be baptized in the river Jordan by John.
The Baptist came preaching, and when he saw the Pharisees and Sadducees, he brought the heat. “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance!” You can’t live off Abraham’s coat tails; your grandfather’s religion. Trees that bear no fruit are cut down and tossed into the fire. It doesn’t matter who you are, where you came from. No legacies here, John preached.
“I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” The Baptist came preaching alright. Coming out of the wilderness. An outfit and a diet worthy of the gospel’s mention. Crowds drawn by a fiery preacher and the talk of judgment and the call to repentance. And John delivered. When it came to the message and the look and crowd and the moment. He delivered. Fire and ax and fruit and harvest and wrath. “Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near!”
Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. Jesus came down from Galilee. The crowds had come from Jerusalem, from Judea, from along the Jordan, and now Jesus came from Galilee. Jesus took his place there in the crowd. Among those who found themselves drawn to a message about repentance, among those listening to some hellfire and brimstone, among those who were captivated by the moment. Jesus stands there in the crowd. He stands there with everyone. This was no “Behold the Lamb of God who takest away the sins of the world!” This was just Jesus getting in line, getting in line to be baptized by John.
John would have prevented him. That’s what Matthew tells us. The other gospel writers don’t mention the Baptist’s hesitation. Mark records the baptism rather matter-of-factly without editorial comment. “In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee to be baptized by John in the Jordan.” Luke names the sacramental act almost as an afterthought with no clear mention at that point of John. “Now when all the people were baptized, and Jesus had also been baptized and was praying” John’s gospel tells of the Baptist’s own spiritual experience. “I saw the Spirit descend from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him.” But Matthew informs his reader that John would have prevented Jesus. John tried to stop him, saying “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?”
John the Baptist doesn’t strike me as overly humble or one prone to pious submission. There’s an edge to his preaching, a righteous indignation, a prophetic enthusiasm. Some scholars suggest that at some point, John had a connection to the Qumran community. The Dead Sea Scrolls from Qumran reveal a certain self-certainty and religious arrogance and we’re clean and you’re not kind of attitude. Some of it probably rubbed off on John. There’s not a whole lot of meekness going on in this moment of sacramental proclamation there by the Jordan River. Yes, the Baptist had this sense of divine order: you baptize me, I try to carry your sandals. I baptize with water. You baptize with fire. John had the Spirit-given sense of Jesus as the Messiah here. But when he tried to prevent Jesus from being baptized, it must have been more than humility, more than not me, but you Lord. It had to have been more than “no, no, no, no, yes”. More than, “oh, I just couldn’t!”
John would have prevented him. It must have been more than the act of baptism itself. John would have prevented Jesus from even getting in line. John would have prevented him from joining the crowd. John would have prevented him from taking his place there among “everyone” else. John would have prevented him from ever taking a step into the water. The Messiah shouldn’t wait in line. The One who comes with the Holy Spirit and with fire, he’s not just another face in the crowd. The Lamb of God can’t wade in there with all the riff and the raff. The ritual un-cleanliness of it all, it’s just too much. John would have prevented Jesus from immersing himself there in our humanity, surrounded by our sinfulness. John knew the divine order of it all. He recognized the Messiah there in the crowd and he wanted to stop it!
Most of us, I guess, can never really imagine that first century scene at the Jordan River; Jesus being baptized by John. What the river looked like, how it flowed, how deep, how wide? Our biblically formed, historically feeble imaginations have their limits. But we do know about crowds, and what it feels like when “everyone” gathers. You and I can imagine the sight, the sound, the smell of a crowd, the press of human flesh. We understand that. The river, the water level, the landscape along the banks, it has all changed. But the crowds are the same. Humankind is the same. You and I, we’re still “everyone”, standing waist-deep in a sinfulness that flows from generation to generation. The baptism of Jesus, maybe we can’t picture the setting, but you know the crowd!
John would have prevented him. John would have prevented grace. Preventing grace: refusing to see Jesus among us in the crowd of our humanity. Preventing grace: an inability to see the face of Jesus staring back at you in the eyes of those you love, in the gaze of those you don’t know, in the stare of any who cause you grief. Preventing grace: that tendency to deny the presence of Christ in the more difficult corners of life and of death, to turn away from Christ who is standing with those with whom you most disagree, to ignore Christ as he gets in line behind the many we would just assume ignore.
Can you imagine looking out into the crowd of humankind, looking out at the press of human flesh all around that is your life and mine looking out and seeing Jesus standing there and wading in and kneeling down, with our biblically formed, historically feeble imaginations, looking out into the sea of faces that surround you and seeing Jesus right there looking back at you?
You don’t have to imagine it? Because like John, that’s where we will find him, every time. So it’s time to stop preventing grace.
© 2008, Property of Nassau Presbyterian Church
Contact the church to obtain reprint permission