Rev. Molly F. James, PhD
Grace, Hartford, CT
Baptism of our Lord, January 9, 2022
Psalm 29; Isaiah 43:1-7; Acts 8:14-17; Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
May God’s Word be spoken. May God’s Word be heard, and may that point us to the Living Word who is Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
“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.” These lines from our first reading from Isaiah are heartening and comforting in the midst of all the challenges we are facing - in our own lives, in our community, and in the world. Rising case numbers - practically everyone we know is ill, quarantining because of an exposure or recovering from COVID. There are real worries about whether essential services will continue to be available in the days ahead with so many people out sick. And then there are all the systemic issues that we were already facing as a world before this current surge - climate change, poverty, injustice, systemic racism . . . the list goes on.
I would really like to just stop right there in that passage and hold on to those affirmations. The rivers will not overwhelm us. The flames will not consume us. I need those truths because there are moments, and there are days when it feels overwhelming. How can we possibly deal with one more thing, one more challenge, when we are already exhausted from the last two years?
I was doing okay, until I got to the Gospel. At first I am thinking, Feast Baptism of our Lord, that’s good. Always good to be reminded of our baptism. Always good to be reminded that just like Jesus, we are beloved of God. Goes well with our passage from Isaiah, an affirmation of God’s love and care for us. And then we get this line: “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.” And I want to start arguing with God with the author of Luke, with our Lectionary Committee, with whoever might listen.
Wait a minute! What is this bit about unquenchable fire and judgment in the midst of a happy story about Jesus baptism? Lines about fire and judgment make me nervous. As many of you know, I consider myself a recovering perfectionist. I take my mistakes, my errors, my sins very seriously - a bit too seriously most of the time. I don’t find passages like this helpful because they feed my perfectionist tendencies . . . after reading a passage like this my perfectionist self can say “See! It does matter how you behave! Watch out, you better be the wheat or else!” NOT HELPFUL! I am quite capable of giving myself a good guilt trip without adding on the fear of judgment and fire and punishment.
I have often struggled with the theme of judgment and punishment in our Scriptures. Especially since the passages seem to show up right alongside times of joy and hope. Advent is quite a mix of joyful expectation and stories of judgment. It is tempting to just focus on the comforting parts, like those lines from Isiah, but the questions of judgment and punishment are right there in the Gospel, and I believe in facing my fears, so I can’t just let them slide by.
Shortly after 9/11 I read a book of essays by Eugene Kennedy that helped me think about these passages of judgment differently. As you likely remember there was lots of talk of judgment in the days and weeks following 9/11 - who was to blame? who was now burning in hell for their sins? But Kennedy says that we have got it all wrong if we think that the wheat or the fruitful trees are one set of people and the chaff or the unfruitful trees are another.
Kennedy writes of those who died on 9-11: “Their voices, taken from phone calls and emails and the recollections of friends, blend now into one message, one voice like a canyon echo coming back to us out of the ruins: ‘I love you,’ said in a thousand ways the true harvest of these good people’s lives. The good grain so overflowed that it covered over the patches of human stubble in their lives . . . They defined themselves and what life and faith are all about in the commitment to the relationships in their lives.” When we look at all those people from all sorts of walks of life - a real cross section of humanity - who perished on that day, we should see the good - the overwhelming good in them, for as Kennedy goes on to say, that is what ultimately matters to God. Kennedy writes, “What is good and bad in us grows together. On judgment day, God harvests only what is good in us, for that is what is eternal, and ignores the weeds that belong to time.”
Reading these words lifts a weight from my shoulders. They comfort me because they remind me that God can see the big picture - and God pays much more attention to who we are and how we live a life of love - than to the times we messed up. They also give me a much more hopeful picture of Judgment Day. I have always struggled with the idea that God sends people to hell as a punishment. The image Kennedy offers fits more with the understanding of judgment that I have developed over the years, with thanks to theologians like Julian of Norwich, C.S. Lewis, and Rowan Williams. While there may be a moment of reckoning, a moment of cleansing when we come face to face with God at the end of our lives, we need not fear it. God is not some arbitrary judge. God is the God we know and love. God is loving and merciful - ALWAYS. Hell is not eternal damnation for our sins; hell is a choice we make. God is always reaching out to us, always offering mercy. Always willing to remind us that we are beloved - just as we are. We are beloved because we belong to God. And God has given us free will, so we have the option to accept that mercy or to reject it. If we choose to turn our back on God, then we will know hell, for hell is the only place where God is not.
In the end, there actually is solace and hope for us in all our readings today. We can trust that the fire will not consume us, nor will the river overwhelm us. Rather they will merely take away that which does not serve us. That which does not serve God. That which is not eternal. We can indeed trust in the truths of our faith. The beautiful truth we celebrate this day is that we are beloved of God. God is with us. Always. May moments of struggle or challenge or tragedy never blind us to all the good there is in the world, and in each of us. May we always remember that the good, the light, the beauty will last, for our faith affirms again and again that nothing in this world is stronger than the love of God.
AMEN.
