Isaiah 42:1-9 | Acts 10:34-43 | Matthew 3:13-17
Jeremy Richards
Audio recording: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/01-12-20-what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-christian-jeremy-richards/id1479727299?i=1000462966112
When I decided to go to seminary, I had hardly read any real theology or biblical studies. I didn’t know who the modern day theologians and scholars were. I was told by my religion professors at Concordia that Duke Divinity School was one of the top schools and that I should apply there. In addition to it being a good school, I grew up cheering for Duke basketball, so when I got in, it was a pretty easy choice. But like I said, I didn’t know who any of the professors were. But I quickly learned there was a name that seemingly everyone but me knew about, a name that was synonymous with Duke Divinity School: Stanley Hauerwas.
If I told anyone who knew anything about theology that I was going to Duke, the next thing they’d inevitably say was, “Ah, Stanley Hauerwas.”
Unfortunately, Hauerwas retired the year before Mitch and I arrived at Duke, but he was still professor emeritus, so we would often see him shuffling around the school in a baggy shirt with one too many buttons unbuttoned. To be honest, I still haven’t gotten around to reading much Hauerwas, so I’m no expert on the guy, but I know he has a reputation of telling it like it is, of being fairly blunt, and of swearing a fair amount in the process.
One of the things that sets Hauerwas apart, aside from his theology, is his voice, which is surprisingly kind of high and nasally. A while ago, I mentioned offhandedly something about Hauerwas’ voice, and Brie said she’d never heard it. I looked up a video of Hauerwas on YouTube, simply to show Brie what his voice sounded like, and I the first video I saw and clicked on was titled “Stanley Hauerwas Interview | Are You a Christian?”[1]
It turns out, if you click on an interview with Stanley Hauerwas, or any other good theologian or public thinker, no matter what the reason, you’ll probably hear something worthwhile. I clicked on a Hauerwas video to hear his voice, and what I heard instead was this: first he said, “I’m not at all sure I’m right in identifying myself as Christian…” and I have to admit, I rolled my eyes a bit. Personally, I’m so over people being like, “I don’t call myself a Christian, I call myself a ‘follower of Jesus’” or something like that. I thought, here it comes, another person talking about how they’re above all these other people and can’t be categorized like the rest of us. But then, of course, as is Hauerwas’ tendency, he said the opposite of what I expected. “I’m not at all sure I’m right in Identifying myself as Christian,” Hauerwas said, “because I have such a high regard for what it means to be a Christian.”
What is he talking about? What does it mean to be a Christian? Another way to say this is, what does it mean to be baptized? Because baptism is the rite by which we identify ourselves as Christians. A common way of talking about baptism is to say it’s an outward sign of an inward change, or inward grace, or an inward decision. The point being, we don’t somehow do a work that earns God’s favor through baptism. God has already extended God’s grace to us, and baptism is the rite by which we accept God’s invitation.
In other words, when we look at Jesus’ baptism today, on Baptism of the Lord Sunday, we believe God had already called Jesus God’s beloved, Jesus was already God’s son in whom God was well pleased, but in baptism Jesus accepted that identity. So also for us, has God extended an invitation to become children of God, and in baptism we accept this invitation. We don’t earn it, we just receive it.
Just last week we read from the first chapter of the Gospel of John, “to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God” (v. 12). Baptism is the symbol of our having received Christ.
But there’s another dimension to baptism, as well. In his own baptism, Jesus accepts his identity as the Son of God, and also accepts God’s call on his life, accepts his ministry. He submits – I know we don’t like that word, but that’s what he does, he submits – to the leading of the Holy Spirit, who, in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, then, immediately after his baptism, propels him out into the wilderness to be tempted.
So there is both an acceptance and a commissioning in baptism, a receiving and a giving – we receive God’s grace, which we do nothing to earn, and we give ourselves to be ambassadors of that grace. 2 Corinthians 5 says that we have been reconciled to God (acceptance/receiving) and that we have, in turn, been given Christ’s ministry of reconciliation (commissioning/giving of ourselves). Baptism is an end in the sense that we have found our home in God, and it is a beginning in the sense that it puts our lives in a new trajectory. Finding our home in God, strangely enough, propels us into the wilderness, into the world that we, maybe, had thought we were escaping.
I think a sermon on baptism could focus on either the acceptance or the commissioning, the receiving or the giving (or it could go in any number of other directions). Today I’d like to focus on the commissioning. I would like to explore Stanley Hauerwas’ comment about the high regard for what it means to be a Christian. What does it mean to be baptized?
It’s impossible to answer this question fully in one sermon, or even one lifetime for that matter, but each of our readings this morning answers a piece of this question.
I would first like to look at Isaiah, which has two parts. The first is a description of a character who appears in the book of Isaiah a number of times and has come to be known as “the suffering servant.” Since the early days of the Church, Christians have interpreted these descriptions of the suffering servant as prophecies depicting Christ. The second half is directed toward the people of God. Originally these words were for the people of Israel, but through Jesus we have also become children of God, and as such these words from Isaiah speak to us as well.
And these verses from Isaiah are all about justice. The suffering servant, Christ, will “bring forth justice to the nations,” he will “establish justice in the earth,” Isaiah says. The people of God are called to be a “covenant to the people, a light to the nations, to open the eyes of the blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in the darkness.” This has been the case since God told Abraham that through him God would bless all the nations of the world (Genesis 12:2-3). So, from the beginning, from early on, Israel was called to be a source of justice and liberation not just for themselves, but for the whole world. They were called to be a light to the nations, and not in a strictly spiritual sense, but in tangible ways.
So, to be a Christian is to do the work of justice. It’s to fight against unjust systems, it means to free prisoners – those imprisoned by poverty and debt, those imprisoned by the effects of racism, sexism, and other -isms, those imprisoned by abuse, those imprisoned by mental and physical health issues, those imprisoned by…prisons. The work of Christ is the work of liberation.
But this is a tall order – to establish justice in the earth. How does Grant Park Church do that? How does a small church in Portland, Oregon become a light to nations? How can we free prisoners and open the eyes of the blind? I would like to point you to vv. 2-4: “He will not cry or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street; a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice. He will not grow faint or be crushed until he established justice in the earth and the coastlands wait for his teaching.” The work of Jesus is the work of justice, but it’s work that requires patience and perseverance. It’s rarely flashy. It’s slow and hard.
When we think of working toward justice, we often think of protests and sit-ins and megaphones. And certainly there is a place for that, but often those things only work to bring attention to an issue. The real work takes more time. It takes commitment and determination, even when the passion has become only a “dimly burning wick.”
How do we, Grant Park, establish justice in the earth? We make our space a welcoming, safe place for marginalized people, especially those who are marginalized by other churches – like the LGBTQIA+ community and sex workers. How do we be a light to the nations? We collect toys and coats and gifts for children and families who need them. How do we live as covenant people? We prioritize our children and volunteer to teach them for two weeks at a time because we want them to know of God’s infinite love for them. We want them to know that they also are beloved, and in them God is well-pleased.
I have to admit, last week, when I stood up here in front of all of you, and tensions with Iran were high – as they still are, but not quite as bad – I didn’t know what to say. I felt exhausted and overwhelmed. It’s hard enough to do the work we’re doing already. What are we supposed to do about the threat of international war, or fires in Australia?
It is easy to be tempted to turn inward when we’re overwhelmed by all the injustice out there. But that’s not what it means to be the people of God, to be children of God. We are called to be a light, a blessing, to the world. And that is what we’re doing, and we need to celebrate that. There’re a million other problems in the world, but we can’t address them all. We can only be faithful to what God has called us to here and now, and I think we’re doing that – you’re doing that. Praise God.
So to be Christians, to be baptized, means to do the slow, hard, often unrecognized work of justice and to do it faithfully.
Now I’d like to turn to our passage from Acts. The context to this passage is that Peter has been led by the Holy Spirit to speak to Gentiles, people like most of us who are here today, who, up until this point, Peter and the other disciples had thought were outside the reach of the Gospel unless they adopted the Jewish religion and all its practices. Peter, as a good Jew, isn’t even supposed to go into a Gentiles house, but he finds himself at a Gentile named Cornelius’ house. He’s still a little shell-shocked that he’s there, and he’s not sure what God wants him to do. God’s pushing Peter’s boundaries. He arrives at Cornelius’ house and it’s not just a couple people there. When he gets there he finds that “many had assembled.” Then Cornelius says, “all of us are here in the presence of God to listen to all that the Lord has commanded you to say.”
Peter is in a strange place, with strange people, people he didn’t think wanted anything to do with God, and, to be honest, he didn’t really think God wanted anything to do with these people, and suddenly he’s asked to give an account of his faith. So what does Peter do? Downplay it? Say they probably wouldn’t understand, it’s a Jewish thing? Does he get embarrassed by how unbelievable it sounds to say that God became an ordinary human and then died the death of a criminal but then rose from the dead and now he’s not here anymore because he ascended into heaven but it’s okay because we’ve got the Holy Spirit, who’s also God but in a different way? Nope, Peter doesn’t water it down. He says what he has seen and experienced, and what he believes. He tells the truth and unlike Emily Dickenson, he doesn’t tell it slant. He tells it straight.
And guess what? His words change the lives of his hearers. These Gentiles receive the Holy Spirit and are baptized. They also are beloved children of God! It’s impossible to overstate the implications of this story. It’s the reason you and I are here, worshiping the God of Israel and reading the stories of Scripture. Up until this point, the Gospel was only for Jews, but now it’s for everyone.
So what does it mean to be a Christian? It means we say we’re Christian. It means we actually share our faith with others without being ashamed. In the words of 1 Peter 3, it means we’re always ready to give an explanation for the hope that is in us.
In many places in the United States, this is the easy part. There are plenty of people proudly proclaiming themselves Christians. They’re happy to tell others about how they need Jesus and they’ve got the sinners prayer memorized. They’re more than ready to talk about Jesus, but they have a hard time with the justice part that Isaiah talked about.
I’d guess it’s the opposite for many of us at Grant Park Church, though. We’re a pretty socially active church. We’ll show up for justice, but talking about our faith? Many of us work in places where Christianity isn’t very popular, and hang out with friends who think of Christians as those people with megaphones talking about how God hates various groups of people. We might be tempted to downplay our faith, if we mention it at all.
Sometimes, when I go to the climbing gym during slow times, I take a book with me. Often I take a book of theology I’m reading. I recently realized that I always turn the book face down, so people don’t see the cover page because I don’t want them to think I’m some kind of Christian fanatic. Sometimes I hesitate to tell people I’m a pastor until they get to know me because I’m afraid, again, that they’ll think I’m some kind of bigot. That’s not okay!
As baptized Christians, we’re called to proudly claim our identity in Christ. We’re called to tell people about Jesus, not because we want to force our views on them, but because we really believe this is good news. We really believe that God has called all people Beloved, and has invited them into God’s family. There’s “a great assembly” of people out there, like the people at Cornelius’ house, who want to know that their lives matter, that God loves them, that they aren’t too bad, too broken, too lost, too anything to be called children of God. The world needs the Good News of Jesus, and we can’t afford to be people who hide the light we’ve been given. What do we sing with the kids everyone week? “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.” We have to let our light shine. So, it may sound redundant, but to be a Christian means to unashamedly be a Christian.
Lastly, I’d like to turn to our Gospel reading from Matthew 3, but I don’t want to focus on Jesus. I want to focus on John. John is baptizing, and Jesus comes to him and wants John to baptize him. John understandably responds, “No way! I’m not good enough, I’m not worthy, to baptize you.” But Jesus tells him to do it, because John has a role and a responsibility, and John needs to step into that role and that responsibility.
To be “the hands and feet of Christ,” to take on the responsibility of being a light to the nations, to minister to broken and hurting people, some of whom have seen more trauma than most of us will ever know…of course we feel inadequate. Since day one, I’ve felt inadequate standing up here in front of all of you. What do I have to say to those of you who are twice my age? Or those of you who have experienced more hardship than me, or have more education than me, or have more experience in ministry than me. As John said to Jesus, “You should baptize me,” so I often want to say to you, “You should preach to me! You should minister to me!” And I have said that at times, and you have preached to me and ministered to me. But it’s important that I step into the role God has called me to, even when I feel inadequate.
The same is true of you. Especially when it comes to matters of faith, you might feel like you’re not devout enough or not educated enough. You might feel inadequate. We all do sometimes. But one of the things we stress here at Grant Park is the fact that, in the words of Peter, “God shows no partiality.” The work of Jesus is not reserved for the ordained or the super-holy or the academics. It’s for all of us, equally.
You are worthy of the ministry that God has given you, whatever it is, because God has called you to it, and God has promised to be with you. Like John, you might say, “No, not me!” but Jesus responds, “Yes, you.” Because you are God’s beloved. Because you are a child of God, and in you God is well pleased. Because that’s what it means to be a Christian.
Thanks be to God.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDD8fOpB-tw