River of No Return

When Jesus also had been baptized and was praying the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended on 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.” (Luke 3.21-22)

Formative Years

Earlier in the week, as we dismantled our sanctuary’s Christmas décor, I joked with our pastor about how suddenly the liturgical calendar lurches ahead. One Sunday it’s Epiphany; a week later, we’re at the Jordan, celebrating the Baptism of the Lord. “We barely get the Baby born and the before you know it, He’s grown and in the water,” I chuckled. “It does come quickly, doesn’t it?” she replied.

Because modern sensibilities put great stock in our formative years, we’re apt to feel cheated by the gospels’ relative silence regarding Jesus’s youth. We want to know more about His upbringing—what His family dynamic was like, what His boyhood friends and neighbors were like, how His human personality took shape. But the gospels don’t exhibit much interest in these details. All told, they give us four brief peeks into His story once the Magi leave. And the timing of these accounts is problematic. In Luke, we observe Jesus’s circumcision and naming eight days after He’s born, followed 32 days later by His presentation in the Temple, in keeping with Jewish custom that the mother—now “purified” and able to be seen in public after 40 days of post-natal seclusion—present herself and her child to the priests. In Matthew, we learn that Joseph and Mary whisk Jesus off to Egypt to escape Herod’s assassination attempt on the Child’s life. We’re told they remain there until the tyrant dies, roughly four years later.

Which is it? Did the Holy Family go underground until the threat passed? Or were they seen by many, basking in the adoration of two esteemed Temple prophets, Simeon and Anna, who proclaim the Infant as the fulfillment of their Messianic hopes? Since we know so little about Jesus’s childhood, we politely overlook these discrepancies and assume “all of the above.” The fourth childhood siting happens in Luke, when the 12-year-old Jesus strays from his parents to discuss theology with Temple leaders. His response to Mary’s scolding—“Did you not know I must be in My Father’s house?”—suggests early awareness of His divinity and mission. That’s all we have to tell us young Jesus knows Who He is. How He reaches this understanding isn’t explained.

The Beginning of Our Story

So we follow Jesus, now 30, to the Jordan with some frustration. Yet, thinking more about the rapid fast-forward to His baptism, it seems less jarring. John the Baptist is the last in a very long line of prophets announcing a Savior, and it’s fitting that his eyes see what his ancestors could only envision. One minute, he’s telling his followers, “One Who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of His sandals.” (Luke 3.16) The next minute, there Jesus is—the Word Made Flesh—standing before him. In this magnificent moment we witness a living example of the believer’s yearning to see Christ fully, as Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 13.12: “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.” The instant Jesus appears and asks John to baptize Him, the very meaning of the Baptist’s life—concealed in a fog of prophetic faith that has sustained Israel for centuries—becomes clear. Surely John’s heart leaps with the same joy that caused him to dance inside his mother’s womb when her cousin, Mary, visited with the Christ Child resting inside her. Surely John whispers to himself, “This is why I’m here. I was born and have lived for this day!”

While differing accounts of Jesus’s birth and youth confound us, clarity surfaces when all four gospels converge on His baptism with nearly identical retellings. The writers uniformly agree that this is the signal moment—the proof-point that erases all doubt about Who Jesus is. It’s the pivotal event that leaves prophetic promises behind to grasp the reality of God’s presence, alive and at work in our world. We know what we’re looking at. But do we really see what’s going on here? Jesus humbles Himself to be baptized by a man who is too low to consider tying His shoes. He leaves the water and prays, immediately communing with His Maker, Who responds in a supernatural fashion confirming that Jesus is God’s Son—“the Beloved”—Whose obedience to God’s will pleases God. And it is in that humble obedience that our lives find their meaning and purpose. It’s here, at the Jordan—the River of No Return—that our faith is transformed from profession to confession. The Good News of the Gospel shifts focus. It’s now about us, the beginning of our story. Questions about Jesus’s formative years fall away, replaced by questions about ourselves. What brings us to this place? What compels us to follow Christ in baptism? What hopes drive us to this definitive act of faith? For even if we were baptized as infants, there comes a time in all of our lives when we confess the truth that flows in Jordan’s water: We belong to God. God loves us without restraint. Our humble obedience pleases God.

Supreme Assurance

If we follow Christ in baptism, it stands to reason we should leave the water with the same confidence in God’s love and acceptance that proclaimed Jesus as God’s Beloved Child. This breathtaking demonstration is given to us, for us, to bring clarity and meaning to our lives. It defines us every bit as much as it defines Jesus and we do ourselves a great disservice by thinking less of ourselves than what God proclaims us to be. In the turbulent three-and-a-half years that followed Christ’s baptism—when He was tempted, tried, and ridiculed to death—no doubt He reached back to this moment and its supreme assurance of God’s pleasure. No doubt the apostles did likewise as they faced unjust persecution and many of them suffered torture and death. And, as we confront the challenges of faithful living, we should do the same.

Whatever shapes us during our youth—good and bad, lovely and ugly—loses its gravity once we grasp the meaning of baptism. Following Christ, we plunge into a River of No Return and rise from its waters irrevocably changed. It matters not how others see us, what they say or think about us. There is no turning back. God claims us as beloved children. We enter the river in humble obedience; we leave it prayerfully, eager to commune with our Maker. We belong to God and God is well pleased. That’s the Good News of the Gospel.

If we follow Christ in baptism, it stands to reason we should leave the water with the same confidence in God’s love and acceptance that proclaimed Jesus as God’s Beloved Child.

Consent

Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” (Luke 1.38)

The longer I sat with Denise Levertov’s poem, “Annunciation”, the more I kept thinking, “It even looks like Advent.” Seen through a bird’s-eye, it reflects all the unruliness of novice experience. It’s ragged and roaming in all the right ways, starting and stopping and backing up on itself, as if repeatedly having another go at trying to figure things out.

The entire poem is worth sitting with. (I’ve attached it at the end of the post.) Yet very early, it levels two sobering blows—one an observation, the other a question.

            But we are told of meek obedience. No one mentions courage.

                                    The engendering Spirit

            did not enter her without consent.

                                                            God waited.

            She was free

            to accept or to refuse, choice

            integral to humanness.

______________

            Aren’t there annunciations

            of one sort or another

            in most lives?

 

We can look at Mary with awe—and her story is unlike any in history. But its uniqueness begins with recognizing the sameness of her experience with our own. God offers all of us opportunities to accomplish great things and play unexpected roles in God’s plan. There are annunciations in our lives—callings that only we can fulfill. They aren’t burdens foisted upon us. They are announcements of what’s possible if we accept God’s calling, believe God’s promises, and consent to God’s will.

While we wait on God, God waits on us.

Post-Script: “Annunciation”

We know the scene: the room, variously furnished,

almost always a lectern, a book; always

the tall lily.

Arrived on solemn grandeur of great wings,

the angelic ambassador, standing or hovering,

whom she acknowledges a guest.

But we are told of meek obedience. No one mentions

courage.

The engendering Spirit

did not enter her without consent.

God waited.

She was free

to accept or to refuse, choice

integral to humanness.

________________________________

Aren’t there annunciations

of one sort or another

in most lives?

Some unwillingly

undertake great destinies,

enact them in sullen pride,

uncomprehending.

More often

those moments

    when roads of light and storm

    open from darkness in a man or woman,

are turned away from

in dread, in a wave of weakness, in despair

and with relief.

Ordinary lives continue.

God does not smite them.

But the gates close, the pathway vanishes.

________________________________

She had been a child who played, ate, slept

like any other child – but unlike others,

wept only for pity, laughed

in joy not triumph.

Compassion and intelligence

fused in her, indivisible.

Called to a destiny more momentous

than any in all of Time,

she did not quail,

      only asked a simple, ‘How can this be?’

and gravely, courteously,

took to heart the angel’s reply,

perceiving instantly

the astounding ministry she was offered:

to bear in her womb

Infinite weight and lightness; to carry

in hidden, finite inwardness

nine months of Eternity; to contain

in slender vase of being,

the sum of power – 

in narrow flesh,

the sum of light.

Then to bring to birth,

push out into air, a Man-child

needing, like any other, milk and love – 

but who was God.

This was the minute no one speaks of,

when she could still refuse.

A breath unbreathed,

    Spirit,

  suspended,

    waiting.

________________________________

She did not cry, “I cannot, I am not worthy,”

nor “I have not the strength.”

She did not submit with gritted teeth,

raging, coerced.

Bravest of all humans,

consent illumined her.

The room filled with its light,

the lily glowed in it,

    and the iridescent wings.

Consent,

    courage unparalleled,

opened her utterly.

Denise Levertove

Walk With Them

Ruth said, “Do not press me to leave you or turn back from following you! Where you go, I will go; Where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.” (Ruth 1.16)

The Compassion Principle

Not long ago I heard an illuminating talk about compassion. The speaker began by breaking down the word’s Latin roots, pointing out that it literally means, “shared suffering.” Then she said the best definition of compassion she’d ever heard came from a Benedictine nun, who told her to be compassionate is to walk beside people in trouble—actively participating in their journey, meeting them where they are, and supporting their efforts to move ahead. Thus, compassion is an intentional work of grace that collapses the distance and differences between those in need and us. It is not sympathy, which attempts to provide solace from a polite remove. Nor is it empathy, which professes to know and understand another’s situation. Compassion surpasses feeling and transpires in the doing. Our sorrow for others means nothing if it stops short of investing our all to alleviate it. Without committing to walk with them in their distress—to make their suffering our own—we’re merely well-wishers, sympathetic viewers from the sidelines.

The more we study God’s Word, the more we mature in our faith, the more convinced we are that compassion is the core Christian value. This belief is inherited from our Jewish forebears, who filled Hebrew scripture with texts extolling compassion as one of God’s defining traits. Numerous times the writers link God’s compassion with divine faithfulness, as we see in Nehemiah 9.17: “You are a forgiving God, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love. Therefore You did not desert them.” Compassion becomes the central theme in Jesus’s message as well, not only in His depiction of God, but also in the expectations He sets for us. Most famously, Jesus marries compassion for others to love for God in the Great Commandment, which we hear in Sunday’s Gospel: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength,” followed by, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Mark 12.30-31) Then, in Galatians 6.2, Paul underscores compassion’s centrality to our faith when he writes, “Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.” Bearing the burdens of others, sharing in their suffering, walking beside them, meeting them in their need—we cannot misconstrue the compassion principle as a call for kindness that keeps its distance. It is the law of Christ that places very specific demands on our attitudes and behaviors toward one another. Compassion, first and foremost, is an act of obedience.

Relentless

There’s a relentless aspect of compassion that we all too often—and easily—overlook. Compassion is an act of faith we carry out by faith, ignoring conventional wisdom, social mores and taboos, and political expediencies that would advise against walking with others. We see the full extent of compassion in God’s unyielding covenant to love and accept us despite our failures and deficits. But we also observe its relentless nature in dozens of biblical characters who are moved to bear the burdens of people around them. None of these examples is more vivid than Ruth’s. Here is a woman dealing with extraordinary loss, whose future is anything but certain, and who stands to lose everything she treasures if she embraces another’s sufferings as her own. Yet that’s precisely what Ruth does. She’s relentless in her compassion for Naomi, the mother of her recently deceased husband, and commits herself—despite her mother-in-law’s protests—to walk with Naomi, to bear her burdens, and to face life’s uncertainties alongside her.

Ruth’s story is familiar to most of us. Yet we risk undervaluing its gravity by underestimating its complexity. Sunday’s Old Testament text (Ruth 1.1-18) introduces her saga with a detailed background that brings Ruth’s dilemma into sharp focus. Ruth and Orpah are two Moabite women who marry the sons of a Jewish couple who relocate to Moab after famine descends on their home in Bethlehem. Despite ethnic, religious, and cultural differences, both marriages prosper. Then the father-in-law dies, as do both sons, leaving three widows with no viable means of support. With no blood relatives to provide for her, Naomi has no choice but to return to her extended family in Bethlehem. Going home is no guarantee she’ll be accepted. Her sons’ marriages to pagan women casts shadows over her and her return no doubt will give rise to resentments about having to care for a woman who’s not contributed to the family coffers for many years. Ruth and Orpah do have a way out, however. They can return to their families and resume the lives they knew before marriage. It won’t be easy. They too will confront prejudices and disdain for marrying outsiders. But they’ll have a safe home and provisions to ensure they won’t starve.

Reluctantly, Orpah assents to Naomi’s wishes. Ruth refuses. It’s inconceivable to her that Naomi should return to Bethlehem alone. So profound is her compassion that she voluntarily severs family, cultural, and religious ties to walk beside Naomi into a strange world, to live among strangers who despise her, to adopt strange customs, to speak a strange language, to worship a strange God. Ruth has absolutely nothing to gain by bearing Naomi’s burdens. That’s why the compassion conveyed in her resolve takes our breath away. “Do not press me to leave you or turn back from following you!” she insists. “Where you go, I will go; Where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die—there I will be buried. May the LORD do thus and so to me, and more as well, if even death parts me from you.” (Ruth 1.16-17) There’s no pause to consider what’s “appropriate” or “feasible.” There’s no lengthy hug, followed by a tender fare-thee-well and reminders to “call if you need anything.” Ruth doesn’t promise, “I’ll be there for you.” Ruth is there and refuses to be anywhere but there. Ruth is relentless.

Admonishments and Promises

Stripped of relentlessness, compassion is reduced to sentiment—an affect that has little effect in a harsh world. As believers who seek to reflect God’s nature in all we do and followers of Christ compelled to honor Christ’s commands, we are wise to take Ruth’s example to heart. And that begins by removing the filter of self from our eyes. Especially for American Christians participating in our national elections, this passage comes at a critical time. We cannot of good conscience enter the voting booth alone. We must take those we walk beside with us—those presently struggling with poverty, hunger, homelessness, violence, broken families, and every other form of social neglect. Beyond what may be best for us, we must consider what’s best for them and, if necessary, place their needs above our wants. We must subvert conventional wisdom, social mores and taboos, and political expediencies—many of them endorsed by religious leaders—to demonstrate true compassion in all of its relentless glory.

In Psalm 112.1-5 we read, “Blessed are those who fear the LORD, who find great delight in God’s commands. Their children will be mighty in the land; the generation of the upright will be blessed. Wealth and riches are in their houses, and their righteousness endures forever. Even in darkness light dawns for the upright, for those who are gracious and compassionate and righteous. Good will come to those who are generous and lend freely, who conduct their affairs with justice.” (NIV) May we listen closely to these admonishments and promises, and like Ruth, trust God above all else in our commitment to walk beside those in need.

Compassion goes beyond promising to be there. It is there and refuses to be anywhere but there, walking beside those in need, bearing their burdens, and sharing in their suffering.