josephholubsermons


 

Janaury 10, 2010 - The Baptism of Jesus
Isaiah 43:1-3a
Luke 3:21

Definable Center

"I have called you by name and you are mine."    Isaiah 43:1b

I got a call from a funeral director to do a graveside service.  The deceased was a man found in his home by a meals-on-wheels delivery person.  The man died alone.  He had prepaid his funeral and made all the appropriate arrangements.  I was told the man had a daughter, but her where-a-bouts was unknown.  There was a simple announcement posted in  the newspaper with his name and the time, date and location of the graveside service. 

It was a gray, damp, cold, late November, northern Illinois afternoon.  I rode with the funeral director to the cemetery.  I wondered if anyone would come.  No one did, except those of us required to be there:  funeral director, two assistants, and two cemetery workers.  We carried the casket to the grave.  With the cold and damp chilling bone and soul, I shivered through the short ritual. I read a scripture, prayed a prayer, spoke a few words including the committal.  It was over. We left. That’s all there was: no family; no friends; no personal words; no tears; no recognition of the difference this human life might have made.  No evidence that anyone grieved his loss.  He died alone!

I rode back to the funeral home with the director to get my car, but my mind was still on the man over whose casket I had just prayed.  For reasons unknown to me, I felt compelled to drive back to the cemetery.  When I arrived the only evidence left was a slight mound of dirt and some faint tracks where the machine’s wheels had passed.  I stood at the graveside in a stupor, strangely distressed that someone could die so alone, so isolated, so without compassion and feeling. I wondered about him; what kind of man he might have been; wondered if he had loved and been loved.  What happened to his wife and where was his daughter?  Why had no one come? Why so little information?   That was twenty-nine years ago.  

As I stood there in a cold wind on that gray and damp afternoon, a profound sense of loneliness came over me, so intense it frightened me!  I felt like I was on the verge of a panic attack.  “What are these intense feelings,” I asked myself?   Was I somehow feeling the despair that perhaps this man had known and left behind?   Was I absorbing his feelings in some mystical way?  I do not know. It was almost surreal that's what I do know.  Searching for solace, some words of scripture surfaced in my consciousness.  Jesus’ words, “Do not be afraid. Not one sparrow falls to the ground separate from God.” (Matthew 10:31)  And also these words of Isaiah, “When you pass through the waters… and rivers… and fire they shall not overwhelm or consume you... I have called you by name and you are mine.”  At that moment, the Divine Presence seemed so far away and so absent.  Even so, I clung to those words, for not to would have meant surrender to despair.

*****************************

Maya Lin, designer of the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial Wall was asked why her monument has so gripped the hearts of the American people. "It's the names," she said. "The names are the memorial.”  People will fall to their knees and weep in front of a name on the wall, or place flowers beneath the name, or reach out and touch the name. It is a way we have found to say simply and profoundly, "We remember!  We know your names!  You are not forgotten!"

"I have called you by name, and you are mine."  To be known by name is like a doorway into being known.  Knowing one's name doesn't mean you really know the other, but it is a doorway; the first step we take into knowing the uniqueness of another.  One of the things I disdain is when I forget someone's name - it makes me nuts!   When I forget, I really feel like I have let the person down and not recognized an essential entry point of their humanity; that which makes them unique.  It’s like forgetting where the front door is.  Conversely, I dislike it when someone comes up to me, especially someone I have not seen in a long while (years perhaps), and they put me on the spot saying, "Remember me?"   If I don’t remember or struggle for the name, to cover my tracks for a few moments I may say something like,  "Is this a test?"  But my point still applies that we long to be known, and we express it in many ways. 

There is perhaps no more crucial time to be known than when we are broken, defeated, grieving, troubled, lonely, confused, under great duress, sick, etc.  That's exactly the historical context of these words from Isaiah. Isaiah is writing these reassuring words to a troubled and shattered people living in forced-exile in Babylon. They are strangers in a foreign land, and they feel forgotten and forsaken, alone and disconnected from that which gave them identity. 

The prophet Isaiah, giving voice to the Divine, speaks to his people words of deep affection and love, "I have called you by name and you are mine."   These were assuring words to a despairing people.  Notice there is no promise of a trouble -free life of comfort and ease, but there is the promise that they were not forgotten or rendered anonymous by the Divine Presence.  Regardless of place or circumstance, Isaiah was declaring they were in-God – never separate from God – never outside of God, but known in-God. "I have called you by name and you are mine."   

*********************************

Arlen was a strapping, handsome active out-doors-man and civil engineer who had traveled the world. He died in his late 50's. I became close to him and his wife the last months of his life. Those last months and weeks his body was ravaged and depleted. He was nearly blind and his mind profoundly affected near the end.  Everything good and wonderful that Arlen was his disease slowly degenerated away.

Every time I visited him he would request that I would read one particular passage!  So that became our practice. When I visited, before I left, I would read the passage - this very passage from Isaiah, especially this part: When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire... the flame shall not consume you.  I have called you by name and you are mine.”  

Arlen requested that I read those words every time because he felt the disease overwhelming him, victimizing him, defining him.  He wanted me to read those words, even if he was delirious, because he said that was who he really was: named and known by the Divine Presence that surrounded him and was the "ground of his being."   Arlen trusted that nothing could ever change that Good News. He trusted there was no power or force strong enough to redefine him as orphaned and forgotten by the Divine.  "I have called you by name and you are mine."  I read those words at his last breath.

Sometimes it's not merely a matter of feeling forgotten by others or not being known, but sometimes it’s a matter of not really knowing ourselves, being alienated from self, especially when we feel the pressure to be different people in different situations. 

Who are you?  How would you answer that?  Do circumstances and situations define you?  Or, do you have a definable center you bring to every situation?   Think of all the different faces you wear and roles you fulfill in any given day or week: parent, friend, spouse, boss, employee, teacher, student, neighbor, coach, player, provider, consumer, person at leisure, at work, at play, in conflict, competitor; volunteer, service club member, church member and many more.  In all of those many roles and circumstances do you have a definable center that anchors you?  In that sense, do you know you own name  - who you are?

Jesus came to John to be baptized, and in the experience of his baptism Luke tells us that Jesus heard a voice that declared, "You are my son, the Beloved."   Luke (and Mark) present this as if only Jesus heard the voice, Luke's way of saying it was an internal experience to Jesus.  In my mind, it was that "voice" and that knowledge and that conviction that he had been named by God that sustained Jesus and carried him through every circumstance. It was his definable center, and it empowered him to not be grotesquely misshaped by the forces that pressed in upon him, but rather to be beautifully fashioned by the energy of God's love expanding from the inside of his being outward regardless of what was happening to him from the outside.  That definable center empowered Jesus to embody the kingdom of God and the love of God in the face of a legion of relentless dehumanizing influences.

A BAPTISMAL FONT occupies a definable center place in our worship area.  It is a symbolic expression of our definable center.  It is the place all our longing to be known leads us and takes us. It is the definable center of love growing within us; a love that that can withstand all the influences pressing in upon us that would reduce us, dehumanize us and victimize us?

At this stage of my life baptism means just that. BY GRACE I am named and known by the Divine Presence that surrounds me and is the "ground of my being."  "I have called you by name and you are mine."  That is my definable center - a center I share with Jesus.  And like my friend Arlen requested that I read the passage every time I came, it's a center that can be returned to, renewed and reaffirmed every day.

It's a definable center that by its very nature, as seen in the life of Jesus, is full of energy, and it desires to grow outwardly and come to expression in my life in all circumstances whether it is looking you and the eye and shaking your hand; or holding your hand listening to your heart-ache, or clapping my hands celebrating your life, or using my hands and heart to welcome a stranger or to serve others in this community and in the world. 

Baptism means, sharing with Jesus and he with us,  his definable center - and allowing it to so fill us that we together, might come to resemble him more and more as his body in the world.