Remembering whose we are

Sojourners Magazine, Jan/Feb 2002 by Verhulst, Kari Jo

The journey from Epiphany to Lent brings us from the brightness of our dawning to the bleakness of our sinfulness. From God manifest as Lord of all to Godly power expressed in emptying itself of power. A baby-weak, unarmed, and wise, in the words of 16th-century poet Robert Southwell-- overturns a world.

These weeks we join generations of followers who wondered, perplexed as we, at ineffable light coming into sharpest focus on a cross. What a strange faith we profess.

Our life as children of the covenant is spent trying to make sense of this Jesus we claim to love, and of the God whose love claims us. This isn't mere headwork-it's what we do, how we love, the quality of our trust. In so doing we stand in a long line of faithful people who believe that death has lost its dominion here and now, all evidence to the contrary.

This mystery is ever new. No matter how many times we sit through the stories-the Magi, Jesus' baptism and that voice from heaven, his Transfiguration and testing--old meanings are recovered and new ones generated.

The Bible speaks with many voices, diverse in style and theology. Try as we might to squeeze out a definitive Jesus or claim that our reading, however learned, is exhaustive, we will fail, and mercifully so. Matthew, John, Micah, and 2 Peter give us different takes on the same story of God's covenant faithfulness, each reflecting a particular refraction of the light that shines in our darkness.

JANUARY 6

A Birth Announcement

Isaiah 60:1-6, Psalm 72:1-7,10-14; Ephesians 3:1-12; Matthew 2:1-12 Set aside, if you can, some of that

Midrash we call Christmas and step into Matthew's world. Forget the manger, the Magnificat, shepherds, and an overstuffed inn-they belong to Luke. Try to get "We Three Kings" and your neighbor's illuminated front yard out of your head. Keep going back, past the medieval saints calendar telling how the Magi died as martyrs for the gospel. Beyond their names and faces, fixed in the seventh century.

You should be surrounded by a plurality of traditions, crammed together in a mish-mash of relocated people from across the empire. You and your fellow Jews have tested the limits of the tolerance Rome prides itself on, but your alternative take on reality doesn't leave room for even token assent to other gods. Now your temple has been destroyed and you're living in exile, but you're used to this-your God has never taken apostasy sitting down.

Remember the long conversations you grew up around, working out the details and significance of Moses' birth? Perhaps you imagined, as firstcentury Jewish historian Josephus did, that Egyptian persecution of the Hebrews resulted from a prediction of a marvelous child. Or that God announced Moses' birth to his father in a dream, telling him that his son "shall deliver the Hebrew race from their bondage in Egypt" (Antiquities).

Come back home now, and see Isaiah's estranged children returning home-sons from far off, daughters on their nurses' hips (Isaiah 60:4) The promise then-the promise now-is that Yahweh will come through on Yahweh's singular claim to authority. Birth announcements written in the stars don't bode well for competing empires, no matter how cozily we reside within.

JANUARY 13

Becoming the Covenant

Isaiah 42:1-9; Psalm 29; Acts 10:34-43; Matthew 3:13-17

Once again, pay attention to where we are. Details that might seem insignificant to us were loaded with meaning for Matthew's audience.

The Jordan river, the site of Jesus' baptism (Matthew 3:13-17), is the same place where Elijah ascended in a fiery horse-drawn chariot, at which point his spirit fell in double portion on Elisha, his successor (2 Kings 1:11). Elijah's assumption was taken as a sign that he would some day return as the inaugurating moment of the Day of the Lord, prophesied in Malachi 4:5.

John the Baptist, in his "clothing of camel's hair with a leather belt around his waist," looks exactly like Elijah in 2 Kings 1:8 ("a hairy man, with a leather belt around his waist"). And where there is an Elijah, there's a twice-as-powerful Elisha. All of which lends support to the text's portrayal of Jesus' baptism as much more than a ritual cleansing. Coming up from the water, he receives his portion of God's Spirit, punctuated by a voice from heaven that identifies him as the "Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased" (Matthew 3:17).

Acts recalls this moment differently. While Peter is still coming down from his visions of impure foods dancing in his head, the Spirit tells him to get ready for three visitors (remember Abraham and the three strangers in Genesis 15?). According to Peter's catechism-like summary of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection, John the Baptist only announces the baptism-- it is God who does the anointing (Acts 10:37).

In baptism, Christians become one with Jesus in his life, death, and resurrection. We get written into the text, becoming the covenant Isaiah writes of, "given...to the people, a light to the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness" (Isaiah 42:6-7).