Isaiah 43:1-7
But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. 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 you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. I give Egypt as your ransom, Ethiopia and Seba in exchange for you. Because you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you, I give people in return for you, nations in exchange for your life. Do not fear, for I am with you; I will bring your offspring from the east, and from the west I will gather you; I will say to the north, “Give them up,” and to the south, “Do not withhold; bring my sons from far away and my daughters from the end of the earth - everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.”
Psalm 29
Ascribe to the Lord, you gods, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Ascribe to the Lord the glory due God’s name; worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. The voice of the Lord is upon the waters; the God of glory thunders; the Lord is upon the mighty waters. The voice of the Lord is a powerful voice; the voice of the Lord is a voice of splendor. The voice of the Lord breaks the cedar trees; the Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon; the Lord makes Lebanon skip like a calf, and Mount Hermon like a young wild ox. The voice of the Lord bursts forth in lightning flashes. The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness; the Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh. The voice of the Lord makes the oak trees writhe and strips the forests bare. And in the temple of the Lord all are crying, “Glory!” The Lord sits enthrones above the flood; the Lord sits enthroned as king forevermore. O Lord, give strength to your people; give them, O Lord, the blessings of peace.
Acts 8:14-17
Now when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them. The two went down and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit (for as yet the Spirit had not come upon any of them; they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus). Then Peter and John laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.
Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
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There's this word people are using around the internet, a word which is completely made up and yet people can’t decide if it’s overused and whiney or a sign of the broken dreams of a generation. The word is “adulting.” People my age, or a little younger, people just out of college or in graduate school, use this word in sentences like: “Just got my paycheck and it all went to rent and car payments. Adulting is no fun.” Or they’ll say “I have a cold and I miss my roommates and I just don’t want to adult today so if you need me you can find me in my blanket fort with a coloring book.”
So if we’ve decided that the 9-5 desk jobs just aren’t fulfilling, or that we don’t know if we can hack traditional ideas of being responsible adults, or that we’re just having a hard time adjusting to giving up our dreams because the rent is too high, this word is making the rounds, pointing to something we all know: life can be difficult sometimes, and we just don’t always want to face what’s in front of us. But we have to. For so many reasons, we have to face life as it is, not just as we wish it was. Either the bills come, or the diagnosis, or the family responsibilities… where’s that happily ever after the fairy tales promised us? How quickly did the Hallmark Christmas let us down when Jesus grew up almost overnight, from an infant to a twelve year old to this thirty-something Palestinian guy at the side of the river. His story is just a hit-the-ground-running kind of adulting. From the start, he’s special, he’s different, he’s carrying all of our hopes and dreams and expectations… just like any other kid, just like we did for our own parents.
Except, of course, for that one small difference: he’s God with skin on. The one who made the waters and separated them above and below, who drew them up so the dry land would appear, is now submitting to washing in those same waters. He’s being washed by another weirdo prophet who wanders the wilderness yelling about fire and repentance, and he’s nothing like this other guy is saying he’ll be. If John were serious about Jesus being so special, then why is Jesus the one being washed by the dirty man covered in camel hair? If John is not worthy to untie the thong of Jesus’ sandals, what would he think of Jesus later washing his disciples’ feet?
We’d like very much to take God piecemeal, the way God fits best into our plans, the way that gets us off the hook and lets us give up ‘adulting’ for as long as possible, but that’s not the God Luke’s Gospel is introducing us to this morning, and that’s not the God Isaiah the prophet points to today, either. God encompasses it all, the exalted and the lowly, the mighty and the meek, the ragamuffin children and the self-righteous rulers, the unclean who know they’re unclean and the other unclean who think they’re clean. Top to bottom, end to end, when it comes down to it, it’s all wrapped up in the mystery and grace and creativity and love of God.
We’ve got both fire and water in the Gospel today. Fire and water and wind, if you consider the image of a dove flying through the air. These very powerful elements which all work in different ways to change and shape landscapes on a massive scale, and to keep us alive on a smaller scale. They each reflect God in different ways, wild and dangerous, comforting and life-giving. Since this season of Epiphany is all about the revelations of who Jesus is, flesh and blood God on earth, the more metaphors we have to work with, the better. God is big. Even with skin on, God is complicated, at the very least. Because we, too, are physical people, meeting God in the person of Jesus, we can embrace or shove, slap or sleep with this God, remembering not only how close God is to us, but how we are created in the Divine Image. We are complicated, too. Wild and dreaming, joyful and content, angry and sad and wrestling and full of contradiction, we are God’s own, and God delights in us, in our living fully, loving freely, in the simple act of existing we are reflections of the power and the mystery of God. We make sacrifices, we make decisions, we give and we take and we try and we try again, and we are never, in any of that, alone, nor ever truly isolated from the community of God’s beloved. Because even when the waters are rough, God is in them, and even when the fire burns us, it will not consume us, as when the bush was ablaze and God spoke through it to Moses so long ago.
So we can face the reality of whatever the world throws at us, or we can hide in our blanket forts and color until we’ve worked up the energy to go out there and give it another shot. Either way, the world belongs to God, we are God’s own beloved, and God will meet us in the fire and in the water and in the wind, in the comfort and in the change, in the weirdo prophets down by the river and in the kids daring each other to eat bugs down at the schoolyard. Even when being a responsible adult is the last thing we want to do, we can always curl up in the lap of God for the comfort and the strength that we need, children always of the God who will forever be our Father, who will look at us and say with delight, “You look just like me!”*
*see the story of Creation from the "Jesus Storybook Bible" for complete reference
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