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.”

Text: Luke 3:21-22

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.”

Sermon

One of the most profound and unexpected religious experiences of prayer I have ever had was at a Mo Ranch retreat for clergy. We were instructed to go off by ourselves and meditate on Luke 3:22.

In doing so, we were asked to think of the act of praying not so much as saying things to God but as listening for God to speak.

Listen to this story. After Jesus is baptized, the text reports he is praying, and as he is praying the voice from heaven says: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

What if each morning for the next week, you listened to this text as the most important speech about your life: “You are my beloved; with you I am well pleased”?

Would you be a different person if you heard permanently and deeply the truest thing about you, the most defining assessment of you was God promising: “You are my beloved; with you I am well pleased”?

I know that might run counter to all the messages you receive from others, and even to the judgments you have drawn about yourself. But what if “You are my beloved; with you I am well pleased” came to be the judgment upon your life you heard more than any other?

As Luke is interpreting the story of Jesus for his readers, he uses the only Bible he has, Old Testament verses about Israel being God’s beloved and the King being God’s servant (Psalm 2:7 and Isaiah 42:1). He fills these Jewish images with Christian theology: the belief that the birth, life, teachings, baptism, death of Jesus -- all disclose the strange nature of God choosing in Jesus to save humanity from our own inhumanity, to liberate us.

In this Luke 3 story it is the baptism of Jesus that glistens with God’s unexpected act on our behalf. Jesus’ baptism is not a private action for his benefit. He joins in a distinctly public religious ceremony where all kinds of people with all kinds of motives are seeking to experience God.

Don’t you wonder what Jesus was praying about? There’s no hint in the text.

But I would bet everything that it had something to do with what he would teach his followers, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” and Jesus knowing this prayer would involve him being an instrument of heaven’s will.

One thing is clear in the story of Jesus’ baptism. It is clear by the way Luke provides some context in the dark words about Herod and John the Baptizer in verses preceding today’s text. The affirmation in today’s text is that God was pleased with Jesus does not in any way exempt Jesus from the way of suffering and death. Heaven’s blessing of life doesn’t eliminate heartbreak or pain.

Again, it is worth remembering in the New Year and as long as I am at your helm that the legitimate experience of God is minimum protection but maximum support.

The Christian understanding of being “chosen,” of being called “beloved,” does not bring with it any escape clause when it comes to suffering or being treated unfairly.

The implication of our Lord’s baptism is that it might well actually involve a chosen suffering, an action of self-denial, the taking up of a cross.
John locked up in prison as part of the context of Jesus’ baptism and the hearing of the heavenly blessing hints that God’s love faces severe resistance in an inhumane world. Nevertheless, God’s pleasure in God’s Christ will not be withstood in the end.

Darkness cannot overcome the light. There is always more mercy in God than sin in the world.

The most powerful truth about my life and about your life that I want to hold tightly in this New Year is what our baptism proclaims. Because Jesus was baptized into our humanity, we are baptized into his family. The truest truth is not that I fail, that I fall, that I sin, that I don’t measure up -- all that is true and very clear to me every moment of my life. Yet no matter how true that is, there is even a more profound truth: You and I are beloved of God.

Go off by yourself today or this week and practice saying this text to yourself:
“You are my beloved; with you I am well pleased.” I wonder what you will see and hear.

I wonder how all the others in your life will experience you if you experience yourself as beloved of God. If you come to hear and believe that your goodness, though sometimes so deeply buried as to be lost or erased, it is still there — having been planted by God and awaiting its release.

The redemption Christ brings is this liberation: “You are my beloved; with you I am well pleased.”