How many of you have heard the name “Mister Rogers”?
Now, how many of you are aware that Fred Rogers was an ordained Presbyterian minister?
It is true. Fred Rogers graduated from Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in 1963 and was ordained in the Presbyterian Church. Rogers was a person defined by his Christian faith, and the message that he taught every day on his beloved children’s show was shaped by that same faith.
Rogers said over and over again: “You’ve made this day a special day by just your being you. There is no person in the whole world like you, and I like you just the way you are.”
“I think everybody longs to be loved, and longs to know that he or she is lovable,” he said in the 2003 documentary, America’s Favorite Neighbor.
Rogers said in a 2001 commencement address at Middlebury College: “When we look for what’s best in the person we happen to be with at the moment, we’re doing what God does; so in appreciating our neighbor, we’re participating in something truly sacred.”[1]
Where did Fred Rogers get this stuff? I think he got it from Jesus Christ. And we see where Jesus got it from in our passage for today from Luke 3:15-22. Listen for God’s word to you…
15 As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah,[a] 16 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[b] the Holy Spirit and fire. 17 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.”
18 So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people. 19 But Herod the ruler,[c] who had been rebuked by him because of Herodias, his brother’s wife, and because of all the evil things that Herod had done, 20 added to them all by shutting up John in prison.
21 Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, 22 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;[d] with you I am well pleased.”[e]
You Are the Beloved
Today, I want to focus with you on the last two verses that we just read, all about Jesus’ baptism. I love what Henri Nouwen says about this…
When Jesus was baptized in the Jordan, he heard a voice from heaven saying, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3: 17). These words revealed the true identity of Jesus as the beloved. Jesus truly heard that voice, and all of his thoughts, words, and actions came forth from his deep knowledge that he was infinitely loved by God. Jesus lived his life from that inner place of love. Although human rejections, jealousies, resentments, and hatred did hurt him deeply, he remained anchored in the love of the Father. At the end of his life, he said to his disciples, “Listen: the time will come— indeed has come already— when you are going to be scattered, each going his own way and leaving me alone. And yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me” (John 16: 32).
I know now that the words spoken to Jesus when he was baptized are words spoken also to me and to all who are brothers and sisters of Jesus. My tendencies toward self-rejection and self-deprecation make it hard to hear these words truly and let them descend into the center of my heart. But once I have received these words fully, I am set free from my compulsion to prove myself to the world and can live in it without belonging to it. Once I have accepted the truth that I am God’s beloved child, unconditionally loved, I can be sent into the world to speak and to act as Jesus did.[2]
Personally, as my struggle reveals, I don’t often “feel” like a beloved child of God. But I know that that is my most primal identity and I know that I must choose it above and beyond my hesitations.
Strong emotions, self-rejection, and even self-hatred justifiably toss you about, but you are free to respond as you will. You are not what others, or even you, think about yourself. You are not what you do. You are not what you have. You are a full member of the human family, having been known before you were conceived and molded in your mother’s womb. In times when you feel bad about yourself, try to choose to remain true to the truth of who you really are. Look in the mirror each day and claim your true identity. Act ahead of your feelings and trust that one day your feelings will match your convictions. Choose now and continue to choose this incredible truth. As a spiritual practice claim and reclaim your primal identity as beloved daughter or son of a personal Creator.[3]
How so?
Now, you may hear all of that from Henri Nouwen and it may sound like spiritual gobbledygook to you. And you may rightfully ask: How so? How do we appropriate this text to ourselves? How is it that we can see ourselves in the story of Jesus’ baptism?
My answer is: We can if we are “in Christ”.
That phrase, “in Christ”, appears some 98 times in the New Testament.
Ephesians and Romans are the “in Christ” letters where this phrase appears 16 times in each, more than in any other books of the New Testament.
I had an interesting thing happen a number of weeks ago. Kaleb and Ashley Willis are a young couple that have been attending our church for a couple of years now. Quite a while ago I asked Kaleb, “So when are you two getting married?” He gave me a sheepish look as if to say, “I’m not ready for you to ask me that question yet.” So, I stopped talking. Always a wise thing to do.
Then, sometime later, Kaleb and Ashley told me that they were in fact getting married. And they invited Becky and me to the wedding. As the wedding date neared, Kaleb asked me if I would offer a reading at their wedding and I said, “I would be honored to do that.” Then I said, “I would be happy to choose a reading.” And he said, “No, we have something picked out that we would like you to read.” And I said, “What is it?” And he said, “The prayer of Paul in Ephesians 3:14-21.” And I said, “Well, that’s interesting because those are my life verses.” And Kaleb asked, “What’s a life verse?” And I said, “Well, a life verse is a piece of Scripture that a person finds very meaningful and which they sort of choose, or the verses choose them, as a sort of touchstone for their life.” At any rate, Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 3:14-21 has served as the guiding Scripture of my life for a long time. Here is what Paul prays there for the Ephesians…
14 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father,[g] 15 from whom every family[h]in heaven and on earth takes its name. 16 I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, 17 and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. 18 I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
20 Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
If you pray those words for yourself or for someone else, what more do you need to pray after that? These words, to my way of thinking, say it all. If we are in Christ, then we are swimming, as it were, in a love that is beyond breadth, length, height, depth; in fact, it is a love beyond our knowledge. We cannot measure God’s love. We can only bask in it. And if we are in Christ, then we are rooted in the soil of God’s marvelous love, as the Living Bible translation of these verses put it.
Calling God “Abba”
Now, if we are in Christ, then that fact defines our relationship with God in a wholly new way.
Is it not beautiful how we have all three persons of the Trinity active in the story we have read today?
We have Jesus, the Son, being baptized.
We have the Holy Spirit descending on Jesus at his baptism in bodily form as a dove.
And we have the voice from heaven, the voice of the Father saying: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
We have already seen in Luke how Jesus, even at the young age of 12, called God his Father. I mentioned two weeks ago that Jesus was unique among his people in referring to God this way. But Jesus went even further. He called God, “Abba”, which is an Aramaic word meaning “Daddy”.
Mark 14:36 records Jesus as praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, “Abba, Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet, not what I want, but what you want.”
Now here’s the thing…
Paul makes it clear that if we are “in Christ” then with Jesus we can call God our “Abba”.
Paul says in Romans 8:15, “For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’”
And in Galatians 4:6 Paul says, “And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’”
So, if we are in Christ, we can have an intimate relationship with God as our heavenly Father, our Abba.
Baptism & Prayer
How does all of this happen?
It happens through baptism and prayer and faith.
In Romans 6:3 Paul says, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?”
Baptism is part of how we get connected to Jesus Christ, how we get into him.
But prayer is a big part of it too.
In his Gospel, John says, “But to all who received him [that is those who received Jesus], who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.”(John 1:12)
When Jesus walked this earth, people could receive him physically. So how do we receive Jesus today? One way we can do that is through prayer.
Prayer was key to Jesus receiving this revelation of God’s love at his own baptism. Luke specifically mentions that Jesus was praying as he was baptized.
So, prayer and baptism are both important for us as well.
And along with prayer and baptism we need faith.
The Bible uses the phrase “believe in” 75 times. 68 of those occurrences are in the New Testament. 34 of the New Testament uses are in the Gospel of John. Sometimes when the Bible talks about “believing in” something or someone it uses the little Greek preposition “εv” which means “in”. Other times, such as in John 1:12, the Bible uses the Greek preposition “εἰς” which means “into”. John 1:12 says, “But to all who received him, (to those who Πιστεύουσιν εἰς) to those who believed into his name, he gave the right to become children of God.”
We are called to believe “into” Jesus’ name. We are called to believe “into” Jesus, to put our life in his hands. When we believe into Jesus, and when we receive him into our hearts and lives, then we are “in Christ” … and everything changes from that moment on.
I love what C. S. Lewis says about this…
There are three things that spread the Christ life to us: baptism, belief, and that mysterious action which different Christians call by different names—Holy Communion, the Mass, the Lord’s Supper…
And let me make it quite clear that when Christians say the Christ-life is in them, they do not mean simply something mental or moral. When they speak of being ‘in Christ’ or of Christ being ‘in them,’ this is not simply a way of saying that they are thinking about Christ or copying Him. They mean that Christ is actually operating through them; that the whole mass of Christians are the physical organism through which Christ acts—that we are His fingers and muscles, the cells of His body. And perhaps that explains one or two things. It explains why this new life is spread not only by purely mental acts like belief, but by bodily acts like baptism and Holy Communion. It is not merely the spreading of an idea; it is more like evolution—a biological or superbiological fact. There is no good trying to be more spiritual than God. God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature. That is why He uses material things like bread and wine to put the new life into us. We may think this rather crude and unspiritual. God does not: He invented eating. He likes matter. He invented it.[4]
So that is how we get the Christ life into us, and how we get into Christ. But the one thing I want you to remember, even if you forget everything else, is that if you are in Christ, then you are the beloved! You are loved by God beyond what you could ever hope for or imagine. And his love for you will never change.
I love the way Dr. William P. Wilson, describes his first experience of the love of God in Christ in his book, The Grace to Grow. He said he felt like he was dipped in a bucket of love.
What a great place to be!
Let’s pray…
[1]David Finch, Elk Grove, California, preachingtoday.com; source: Tyler Huckabee, The Washington Post (1-30-18)
[2]Nouwen, Henri J.M. (2017-10-31). You Are the Beloved (Kindle Locations 111-114). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
[3]Ibid. (Kindle Location 141).
[4]C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, New York: Macmillan, 1984, pp. 62, 64-65.
Comments