2025-01-23
Brooke Strong
Sermon Text...
“The Way of Love”
Isaiah 43:18-21; Mark 1: 4-11
Rev. Judith Bagley-Bonner 1/19/25
Today we look at the baptism of Jesus. And really, I’d like to use this
opportunity to look again at what theology calls christology. Christology, if you
remember, is the ten dollar word for the nature of Jesus. If you have a high
christology, you tend to think of Jesus more in terms of being divine. If you have a
low christology, you understand him more as a human. Orthodox Christianity
splits the difference, of course, and espouses what it calls one of the mysteries of
the faith, proclaiming Jesus both fully human AND fully divine. What I’d like to assert in this sermon is that no matter what your christology, there is room for you in the United Church of Christ, and that the important thing is not the status of the
historical Jesus’ DNA that really matters, but that we follow his teachings that
love, not power or money or status, but love is the way.
First a little Biblical history. We have, over Christmas, heard all about Jesus’
extraordinary birth from Luke chapter 2, which tells us he was born of a virgin
under a miraculous star with angels heralding his divine birth. Luke, in other
words, had a very high christology. But did you know that the Gospel of Mark,
written first, includes none of that high christology birth information, and skips
right from John the Baptist’s prophecy about Jesus to todays account of his
baptism? Luke added the birth narratives some years later. But in Mark, the
earliest and therefore, to my mind, probably most reliable source, it’s only Jesus’
baptism that initially marks him as special, not any claims to a divine birth.
Furthermore, the birth stories are only in two of the four gospels as opposed to the
baptism which is in all four. And even further furthermore, the genre of literature
in Luke is really poetry, where hyperbole and metaphor would be expected and
were not necessarily even meant to be taken literally. The reason we think Luke and the divine birth narratives are so definitive is that Luke is the only version we usually hear on Christmas Eve, and it’s widespread in the culture in our Christmas carols, pageants, Christmas cards etc. And of course that’s the case, because it
makes the better story. But again, it’s only in two of the four Gospels and maybe
was never meant to be taken literally.
I remember where I was the first time that I doubted the whole thing. I was
probably in junior high or maybe early high school, sitting in the sanctuary of this Church during the Christmas Eve service when it first occurred to me to
wonder about the virgin birth. You see, I was still Catholic, although my step father was a member here, so I kind of grew up in both churches. But as a catholic school child, make no mistake, I had been taught the virgin birth was literal! And it was a terrible, lonely feeling to have all that doubt slam into me and to feel like I was probably the only one who doubted it. I had grown up believing all the Biblical stories to be literal and historical. I wish someone had told me explicitly when I was young that there were other, more symbolic ways to interpret scripture and that unsullied belief in their literal historical happening is not a requirement to count oneself a Christian. I didn’t come to understand this, let alone get a vocabulary for it, until I went to a UCC seminary many years later. And I think this is really too bad, because it has caused so many people, once they come to doubt scripture as literal or historical, to chuck the whole thing! I know adults who feel duped by the church and have come to resent it for espousing “fairy tales” as truth because they could no longer believe it literally.
This is why churches like the UCC are so important. We are here to tell the
world that the choices within Christianity are not a literal belief in the Bible on the
one hand, or a wholesale rejection of the faith on the other. There is an admittedly
smaller crew of folks who have traditionally been called “liberal christians” or now
the term is “progressive Christians” which takes scripture seriously enough NOT to take it literally, but to understand that its sixty-six books were written in a time and place, so that context matters, along with translation and the aforementioned
genres, among other things.
What does all of this have to do with the baptism of Jesus, you may be asking?
Well, I for one, think it is significant that the baptism is, indeed, in all four gospels
and that they mostly agree on how it occurred. That gives it historical credibility
in my book. I also think it is important to look at the context, which was that it
occurred within the Jewish community and so was originally not even called
baptism, but rather a “ritual washing” whose purpose was to make clean. Why
would Jesus be allowing himself to participate in a ritual washing away of sin if he
viewed himself as sinless? Why would he be using himself to model repentance
and symbolic cleansing if he didn’t also need to repent or be cleansed?
You may have discerned by now that I am making quite a case for a low-
christology belief in Jesus. But that’s only partly true. Yes, I question the
historical details of the birth narratives. But the long and short of it is that I
believe, with the orthodox writer CS Lewis, that Jesus represents a new phase in
the evolutionary process. Lewis said, “Perhaps a modern man (sic) can understand
the Christian idea best if he takes it in connection with evolution…What is the next
step, we might ask. When is the thing beyond the human going to appear? Well, if
you care to talk in evolutionary terms, the Christian view is precisely that the next
step has already appeared. And it is not a change from brainy people to brainier,
nor muscled people to something physically stronger. It is a change that goes off in
a totally different direction- a change from being creatures of God to being sons
and daughters of God, and that the first instance appeared in Palestine two
thousand years ago.”
This is who I believe Jesus to be: the firstborn in a new evolution of the spirit,
the soul. A whole new magnificent kind of being. And he had an aliveness so
robust and whole and full of love, that in ways we probably just can’t understand,
being near him often healed people, and not even death could ultimately defeat
him. And yes, I do believe in his resurrection, although I think there are numerous
ways to understand that, as well.
But here’s the thing, ultimately, I don’t think it really matters! It doesn’t matter
to me if you agree with the fourth century creeds which were attempts by historical councils to nail all this stuff down once and for all. It doesn’t matter to me if you believe that Jesus was born of a physical virgin, begotten, not made, one in substance with the Father, etc…or not. And as long as I am espousing what plenty would call heresy today, I might as well tell you that I think those fourth century councils were wrong-headed from the start. All they did was codify a litmus test whereby some were deemed true believers and others, heretics, and I believe they domesticated the potent, counter-cultural faith based on the radical teachings of Jesus into an anemic institution which has been losing potency ever since.
Last Advent, I had occasion to attend a couple of Presbyterian churches in a row. Now don’t get me wrong, Some of my best friends are Presbyterians and the UCC
is theologically compatible with them on most things. But they are still what’s
called a creedal church, and indeed, we were invited to recite the Apostle’s Creed
at each of the three Presbyterian services I consecutively attended. I declined to do so because I quite simply don’t believe much of the Apostle’s Creed, starting with the assertion that God literally is a father. Now I’d be OK with poetry that
included an image of God as father, preferably with other rich, creative images like
God as mother and wind and source, to name a few. But in the creeds, the
language was NOT intended to be symbolic or metaphorical. They were written as
systematic theology statements and when they say I believe in God the Father they mean I believe God is literally a father, period. When they say Jesus was born of a virgin, they mean it in the literal, physical sense, not in a poetic, metaphorical way.
Anyway, I cannot tell you what a joy it was on the third Sunday of Advent, last year, to get back to this UCC church and not have to stand, uncomfortably, while
everybody else read a creed that I suspect a good many in attendance did not really believe anyway. It was a joy to again be at a UCC Church which, from its
inception, has declared itself not creedal, but covenantal. You ask what the
difference is? In creedal churches, the ranks are held together by their common
nuances of beliefs. In covenantal churches, the members commit to walking
together on the journey even in the midst of differing understandings of the faith,
different theologies. In the latter, you commit to being part of a community of
those seeking to follow the teachings of Jesus. In the former, you figuratively sign
onto a statement of faith.
Robin R. Meyers, in his book, Saving God From Religion said this: “Consider
this remarkable fact: In the sermon on the mount there is not a single word about
what to believe, only words about what to do and how to be. By the time the
Nicene Creed is written, only three centuries later, there is not a word about what
to do or how to be, only words about what to believe.” And here’s the thing,
friends, Jesus was all about what to do and how to be, NOT what to believe. HIs
baptism was a modeling of repentance, of turning to a whole new way of life based
not on power or money or empire, but on love. Maybe once we master that: doing
and being in a way that lives out of love in each moment, maybe then we can hair
split about what to believe. Maybe we need to worry less over the words ABOUT
Jesus and focus more on the words OF Jesus.
Brian Maclaren said this and I think it is one of the most powerfully true things
I have ever read or heard: “The purpose of the Christian faith is clear and
simple: It is not an evacuation plan to heaven, but a transformation plan for
earth! A transformation plan built on the strategy of helping people become
loving human beings who build loving societies following the loving example
of Jesus. And after 2000 years, it’s about time for the Christian religion to get
serious about its prime directive.”
That’s what Jesus’ baptism was all about- It was a baptism into that! And in it he modeled the way for us! So go ahead, have a high or a low christology! Believe in the unique divinity of Christ, or believe he was the son of God but so are we all, just maybe to a less realized extent. What matters is how fully we are following him in living our lives out of love, and if we are building societies based on love, which Niebuhr said is just justice working out its problems. Live out of the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount! Work to embody it in everything you say and do both personally and collectively. And if and when we ever master that, then maybe we can split hairs about doctrine, about what to believe.
Sheldon Van Auken said it best in his poem entitled “The Gap” with which I
will close:
Did Jesus live? And did He really say
The burning words that banish mortal fear?
And are they true? Just this is central, here
The Church must stand or fall. It’s Christ we weigh.
All else is off the point: the Flood, the Day
Of Eden, or the Virgin Birth--Have done!
The Question is, did God send us the Son
Incarnate crying Love! Love is the way!
His baptism was a baptism into the way of love. Our baptisms are baptisms
into the way of love. May we live from that prime directive.