“Lord, Have Mercy”
“Lord, Have Mercy”
Psalm 29, Acts 8:14-17, Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
Baptism of the Lord Sunday, Year C
January 12, 2025
First Presbyterian Church, Sandpoint, Idaho
Andy Kennaly, Pastor
This morning’s scriptures take us on a journey of kenosis as we move, in terms of theme or dynamic, from high and mighty and potentially detached to low and humble and united. From heavenly beings called to ascribe the Lord glory and strength in Psalm 29, to a dove who brings down the living Presence of the Holy Spirit in Luke, we see thunder and lightning, flames, snapping trees, and shaking wilderness give way to heart-felt perceptions of relational closeness and acceptance as God is well pleased with the Beloved.
Kenosis is a Greek word for emptying, or in terms of following the life Jesus shares, Kenosis involves a path of descent. Kenosis invites holding things loosely, letting go, releasing, and rather than experiencing a diminishment, through this important soul work we enter spaciousness, an opening of the heart, and awareness grows through expansive vision of the miracles of life in the world all around us. Kenosis also depends on trust as one falls into the bottomless abyss of God’s love.
Baptism reflects this. One is surrounded by water, descends into the depths (dying with Christ) with trust one shall be lifted up (rising with Christ) and breathe anew the breath of life. Luke’s Gospel introduces the adult Jesus and his ministry through baptism, which is infused with the Holy Spirit’s presence and the love of God through relationship.
Most of the world seems intent to invest in social structures based on power, greed, and influence. Competition, with winners and losers, is the name of the game in our society, and in a world of accumulation and materialism people become defensive. The more you have, the more you have to defend, which creates dependency on laws to help legislate human behavior, from personal to international levels. Many people look for these externals to help control others and gain a sense of stability. But externals can only go so far and they do not have the power to change the world.
This morning baptismal promises help us discover the more ancient message of the Church that we are centered in the grounding reality of divine love. This love involves inner transformation. From within, rules and regulations are put in their proper places and become results rather than mandates, they are indicators of the internal, not enforcers of the external.
As Kenosis happens, descending into the heart, perspectives clear as love takes hold. Baptismal waters wash away the debris of finite thoughts as we die to ourselves, are freed into multiple perspectives, discover a larger trust, and we find new life, centered in Christ. We become new creations.
I want to share a story. I went to college in northern Wisconsin and quickly gained an appreciation for the awe, power, and wonder of Lake Superior. On Lake Superior a storm from the northeast can bring waves across hundreds of miles of open water and by the time they reach the south shore they can be over ten, even twenty feet tall. They collide with cliffs made of sandstone, so old they don’t even have fossils, and the power of water carves out what’s called ‘sea caves.’ On smoother shores of sand, the waves pile up onto open beaches along Ojibway tribal lands.
In November those beaches are deserted, except for the crazy college students that rush out to meet the storms with kayaks in order to surf those giant waves.
That’s what I did with a couple friends, Carey and Brett, back in the day. We paddled out into the storm as water and wind raged and the lake had heavy surf. With wet suits and layers of wool, life jackets zipped tight, each paddle stroke took us up and over the giant swells on the 6-to-10-foot rollers.
Going into the waves was fun, like a carnival ride at a water park. Our excitement and inexperience brought us out too far given the conditions. When we decided to turn around, when sideways to the waves, I tipped over! I tried to roll the kayak but failed, so I ended up swimming, immersed in this inland sea, holding the bow of my kayak in one hand and my paddle in the other. Right after that, my other friend also tipped, but his boat got caught by the wind and drifted away, so he grabbed the stern of my boat and, together, we started kicking our way toward shore, which was a long way off. Our other friend paddled his boat to chase down the drifting kayak. Thankfully, he was a great paddler and stayed upright in his sea kayak. Eventually we swam to shore, and we’d blown so far off course we had a long walk back as we dragged my boat along the beach.
In the howling rain, switching to snow, the cold gale of November come early from a mighty wind from the northeast. Bobbing out in the middle of it, kicking one’s way to shore as wave after wave simply ignores you like floating debris, one gets a sense of how small we are in the larger picture of the Earth and cosmos and the dynamic forces of nature. Once on shore, we regrouped, learned from our mistakes, and tightened our rotation so we didn’t paddle out as far. Quicker on the turns, we spent the rest of the afternoon making circuits and had a great time surfing some amazing waves in Northern Wisconsin on the Lake the Ojibway call gichi-gami, meaning ‘great sea.’
When we were packed up, we stood outside in the snowy wind and looked out at the breaking surf. We knew we’d cut it close that day. We defeated death once again, and with heightened appreciation, life felt sweeter in its intensity. We were more alive than ever! (https://www.livescience.com/31952-lake-superior.html and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Superior#Name).
Like most adventures, they’re only great if you live to talk about it. Just like the Psalmist, humbled by the LORD. The psalmist talks about visions of God Almighty who chooses to bless the people with peace, a people who know too well life’s precarious nature. Filled with awe and wonder of God with us, we come alongside the Psalmist to proclaim God’s glory, to trust that God’s Spirit still speaks through ongoing and active love, still breathes the world into being, not only in those first moments of creation, but even now, for they are the same moment in God’s eternal presence!
In Luke, “the people were filled with expectation and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah.” This is both an introduction to this scene, but more importantly an existential description. The people are filled. They have expectation. All of them are questioning in their hearts. For one, being filled means you don’t have room for anything else, hardly a stance of humility.
Having expectation reminds us of that saying, “Expectations are just resentments waiting to happen” because much of the time life doesn’t cooperate with our preconceived, egocentric desires, and our expectations can lead to resentments. Keeping in mind the path of decent, however, of the importance of Kenosis in Jesus’ ministry, notice how many times Luke uses the word “all” to describe this scene. “All of them are questioning” and “in their hearts” of all places! No one is settled or at peace in their hearts.
John the Baptizer goes on about the one coming using fire and the Holy Spirit, clearing out undesirables and ushering in a golden era for God’s chosen people. This is exactly what those questioning hearts long to hear, a fulfillment of their expectations as God’s thunder rolls over the waters, as God “gives strength to his people!”
But then comes Jesus, who is baptized like everyone else, and afterwards is praying. Cue the thunder! Bring on the shaking wilderness out there in the Jordan! But wait, all we get is a dove, in bodily form!? I’m sure Americans would have preferred an eagle. A voice comes from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Luke doesn’t mention who hears the voice. Is it John, or Jesus, or both, or all the people? Is it audible, heard with ears, or does this voice that comes from heaven register in some other way, and those with calm, spacious hearts can tune in to hear and pick up on it, while others, full of expectations with hearts that are questioning, just don’t?
This voice joins the Holy Spirit in bodily form like a dove to communicate the unique nature of Jesus as Son of God. His path of Kenosis sets a new template that even the followers of John the Baptizer, the greatest Prophet, didn’t recognize.
John was a Zealot, son of the high priest but he rejected that status and power, and chose instead the fasting and harsh, ascetic practices of the Essene Community which lived in the desert wilderness. He fully expected Jesus to not only observe their strict codes, but to take them to the next level of intensity. For the Holy Spirit, the fire John speaks of, to show up and gently settle in the bodily form of a dove? Later on, John sends messengers to ask Jesus, “Are you really the one, or shall we expect another?”
It’s no wonder they were questioning in their hearts. Here they thought they had done a good job preparing. They thought they were ready because they know the rules, they follow the law, and they do it better than anyone, even better than the corrupt priestly class of Jerusalem’s privileged elites. These Essenes are ready for that threshing floor to get cleared, to burn that chaff, and gather the wheat.
But God shows up and says Jesus is God’s Son, not in the sense of exclusiveness, but to highlight the unique and totally different angle or tack the ministry of God is heading from that point onward. It is not purity, not ascetics, not exclusion, not judgment which defines the unique character of God’s people only by differentiating from others who are looked down upon. Rather, we hear Jesus described as, “the Beloved.” This is less an adjective and more a verb. It is love in action that shapes hearts and seeks justice, and not just for some, but as a condition of existence; justice as a thread woven with love into the very fabric of life for all creatures in bodily form.
This is pleasing to God. Jesus, Christ, the new Adam, a fully human one who lives in relationship, with God and all things, through love; this is God’s pride and joy; this is what God’s voice now says over the baptismal waters of new birth as God delights in love and relationship!
Contemplation is experiential faith. Contemplative prayer, largely silent, is probably one of the most accurate spiritual disciplines to help us open our hearts to stay centered in Christ, to hear God’s Spirit voice whisper to our soul. To enter silence is different than just being introverted. It is more than choosing quiet. It is a form of kenosis, an intentional letting go, a form of dying that helps us practice dying before we die.
Let’s practice dying and rising with Christ through one minute of silence as we invite God’s peace and love to wash over us. Let’s pour some water into the basin and open our hearts to Loving Presence in Christ.
(pour water, remember, you are marked as Christ’s own, forever, silence). May God be glorified, NOW, even as forever. Amen.