Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
January 13, 2008

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Do you ever get sick and tired of clichés? I know I sure do. They get trotted out when people don’t have anything original to say. They’re tired. They’re boring. They’re the refuge of the mentally lazy. There’s one that gets used in progressive Christian circles all the time. In seminary I got sick to death of it. It’s the cliché of faith as a journey. Whenever someone’s in a place in their faith life that we don’t particularly approve of we say: Well, faith’s a journey, which can end up just dismissing what may be some serious spiritual issues that we don’t want to or don’t know how to address. If faith is a journey we don’t have to worry about where we are or where anybody else is on that journey because, the implication is, we and they won’t stay there. Clichés can be a real barrier to spiritual discernment and to truly useful pastoral help.

The thing about clichés, however, is that, as annoying as they can be, they got to be clichés because there’s truth in them, sometimes profound truth. This past week, as I studied Matthew’s account of the baptism of Jesus that we just heard, I got to thinking about that cliché that faith is a journey; and something surprising struck me. We don’t normally think of Jesus as having had a faith journey. The Christian tradition has so deified him, and has so ignored his real humanity, that we assume that he sprang fully developed from Mary’s womb with all of the spiritual knowledge and insight that he showed later in his life. He’s God, after all, so surely he didn’t have to go through any development of his spiritual understanding. He had it all right from the beginning, or so we assume. What occurred to me this last week is that Jesus’ relationship to John the Baptist suggests something different. It suggests that Jesus did undertake a spiritual journey, that his understanding did develop over time. And it occurred to me that that is important because it makes Jesus a model for our own spiritual journeys and legitimizes our own struggles with spiritual understanding. Let me explain.

In Matthew’s account of Jesus’ baptism we see the early Christian community struggling with what was for them an uncomfortable fact. Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist. The Son of God had been baptized by a mere mortal, and that undeniable historical fact made no sense to the early Christians. Why would Jesus need to be baptized? And how could a mere human baptize the Son of God? We see the early Christians’ objection to this fact in Matthew’s account. Matthew puts it into the mouth of John when, after Jesus comes to John for baptism, Matthew says: “John would have prevented him, saying ‘I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?’” Matthew 3:14 NRSV And we see that Matthew really has no answer to that objection. The response that he has Jesus make makes no sense. Matthew’s Jesus responds: “‘Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.’” Matthew 3:15 NRSV Say what? I’ve struggled with understanding that response for years, and I’ve finally decided that there is no way to understand it. Matthew had to have Jesus say something, and that was all he could come up with. It isn’t an explanation. It is an expression of Matthew’s puzzlement as to why Jesus should have been baptized by John.

So let’s proceed by trying to answer that question that Matthew couldn’t answer. Why should Jesus be baptized by John? Why would Jesus leave his home in Galilee and walk all the way to the river Jordan in Judea to be baptized by John? The only reason I can think of is that he had heard of John’s message and responded to it in the same way that the others who came to John for baptism had done. He was a man who had a very human reaction to a powerful spiritual message. He heard John’s call and answered it. He heard John’s message, which was: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” Matthew 3:2 It seems to me undeniable that Jesus began his public life as a disciple of John the Baptist. He was baptized by John. Even more than that, Jesus’ first public proclamation was identical to John’s. In Matthew’s Gospel, the baptism story is followed by the story of Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness. Immediately after that story, however, Matthew says: “Now when Jesus heard that John had been arrested he withdrew to Galilee.” That is, he went home. Then Matthew writes: “From that time Jesus began to proclaim, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’” Matthew 4:17 NRSV He proclaimed John’s message; and at first he proclaimed only John’s message.

In other words, Jesus’ journey of faith began at the font. Well, at the river actually; but we use a font as a symbolic river. So we can say he began his journey at the font. He began with a decision to come to the font, was baptized, and from the font went on to develop his faith and his understanding of God. He started with the lesson he had learned from John: Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near. But he didn’t end there. A few verses after he tells us that Jesus’ began to proclaim John’s message, Matthew begins the Sermon on the Mount, that major collection of Jesus’ teachings in which Jesus takes what he had learned from his Jewish tradition, expanded it, deepened it, and amended it into one of the most profound bodies of religious wisdom the world has ever known. Matthew doesn’t give us any more information about the development of Jesus’ spiritual insights. Like the other early Christians, he was probably somewhat uncomfortable with the idea that Jesus actually had a faith journey. So starting with the Sermon on the Mount he gives us Jesus’ teachings more or less without development.

There’s one exception. In the 15th chapter of Matthew there’s a story of a Canaanite woman, that is, a non-Jew, who pleads for Jesus’ help for her daughter, who is possessed by a demon. At first Jesus answers: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, “ that is, only to the Jews. When the woman continued to implore him he said to her: “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” These words strike us as a harsh and even un-Christian response to the woman’s cry for help, and indeed they were. The woman, however, continues to implore him saying “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” At that Jesus relents, or rather, Jesus sees the light. He changes. He changes his mind and his understanding of his entire ministry. He says: “Woman, great is your faith!” And he heals the woman’s daughter. Matthew 15:21-28 NRSV This story is more evidence that Jesus was on a faith journey and that he is the model for our faith journeys as well.

In so much of contemporary Christianity faith is seen as a destination and as some fixed thing that you either have or you don’t. If we read the story of Jesus closely, however, we see that such was not the case even for him. The Gospel writers perhaps wished it weren’t so, and they seem to have tried to conceal the fact. Yet enough of Jesus’ reality comes through to show us that faith was a journey even for him. It’s a journey for us too. As Christians we too begin at the font, or with the decision to come to the font. Yet when we claim our identity as Christians in baptism or, as we will here this morning, in re-affirmation of our baptismal vows, we haven’t reached an end. We have only begun. Faith is indeed a life-long journey. I know that my faith has developed and changed even in the time I’ve been here as your pastor, and it changed a lot more in the years before I came here. I have seen some of you on the journey as well, deepening your insight, deepening your faith, growing in your knowledge of God’s unconditional love. Faith isn’t a thing. It isn’t something at which we arrive once and for all. It is a process. It is a journey.

So let us together embrace the journey. Let us understand that we are all at different places in the journey, and let us respect each other’s right to be in the places that we are. Yet let us also know, for each other and for ourselves, that the place where we are is not the end. It is a way station. It is a place for us to be for now. And let us always remain open to the possibility that we will move from that place to a new place of deeper understanding and deeper faith. We start at the font, and today we return to the font to reaffirm our baptism. We start at the font. So did Jesus. He didn’t end at the font. Neither do we. Amen.