Martin was adopted. He had lived a life of foster homes from the time he was born until the time he was ten; his numerous behavioural challenges had resulted, time, and time again, in his being shifted from foster care to group care, to back again. He had seen therapists and counsellors, specialists and doctors, but still, Martin would act out, and his ‘family’ would send him down the road. “If you keep this up,” his social worker warned him one day, “it’ll make it harder to find you a family.”
But Martin knew what the problem was. He was unlovable. He had learned from a young age that as he knew it, love hurt. It was conditional on his being a ‘good boy’ – and everybody has a different idea of what good is – and his doing the chores his foster family wanted him to. To be loved, he had to do good in school, not act up, and be invisible.
Where do you fit in? I read once that the endless pursuit of ‘stuff’ that characterizes our culture has at its root a feeling of displacement, of ‘not belonging’ to any one group. Because we feel we don’t belong to anything, we try to acquire things that will fill the void in our lives. Those things can be expensive toys, relationships, anything that we feel can give us a frame of reference for who we are.
And it applies to our religion, too – it can sometimes be hard to find a frame of reference to give meaning to the word of God. Consider the gospel text for today, the baptism of Jesus. John’s out baptizing in the wilderness, and Jesus is there, too. But there’s a couple of other players in the game. There’s a great voice from heaven, and a Spirit that moves through the air (just note: though we like the notion that the Spirit appears as a dove; the text just says it descends like a dove. That’s a simile – a comparison. The almighty doesn’t likely have feathers.)
Every time, Martin felt a little safe, a little loved, he would do something that would destroy his life again. With one family, just when he was beginning to relax, he noticed the bathroom tap dripping. Wanted to be helpful, he took a wrench from his foster father’s toolbox and tried to fix the sink. One call to the plumber, another to the flood restoration specialist, and yet one more to his social worker, and Martin was done.
Another time, he took the clippers to the cat that was very hairy during a hot summer. After a while, his behaviours came to be related to his own sense of alienation from his own life – when he started feeling safe, he would act out in an effort to keep his family at a distance. It worked with depressing frequency.
In the gospel text today, John assumes about his relationship to Jesus is a power dynamic. John is out baptizing in the wilderness, and Jesus comes to him to be baptized. The first thing John tries to do is stop him. Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Not so fast, Jesus. You know how this works – you have the power. You take over, baptize me, and we’ll get this party started.
And Jesus balks at that. To fulfill all righteousness, he says, he needs to be baptized by John. But what about that? What ‘righteousness’ does Jesus need to fulfill? Only one thing – Jesus will not upset the relationship of John to the Word of God.
The Word of God needs to be proclaimed; it is not about force or power. It remains the master of all; yet it is also the servant of all. It is right that Jesus is baptized by John; that is all that is needed. And Jesus goes down into the water.
The summer after he turned ten, Martin was told that he was being adopted. Ma and Pa Jacobsen had four other children, and of them Martin was the only one adopted. They were ‘weird’ by Martin’s standards – Ma Jacobsen stayed at home all day, while Pa…well, Martin wasn’t certain what Pa did, but he seemed to enjoy his job more than anyone Martin had ever seen.
The three Jacobsen boys all shared a room, while Martin and the Jacobsen’s daughter each had their own room. It was the smallest room that Martin had ever had – not like the family he lived with when he had a gigantic room with his own closet, and TV, and game console. This was more like a closet.
But the Jacobsens did everything as a family. When they watched TV, they did it together. When they played on the Wii, they did it together. They ate meals together, after preparing them together. And it puzzled Martin that this was done with a minimum of fuss. They seemed to genuinely enjoy each other’s company.
As Jesus is baptized, a voice from heaven exclaims “this is my son, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased,” and the Holy Spirit descends upon Jesus. This anointing – the word “Messiah” means ‘anointed one’ – proclaims Jesus’ own unique relationship as a member of the Godhead; the Holy Trinity.
So we don’t get voices from heaven. How do we know how God acts? If God is, as we say in the Nicene Creed, three persons in one being, then how can all three be present at once?
That’s called a mystery of faith. But I can tell you this: this little glimpse into how God is shows us that God is present in relationship, and in community. Hear, O
One night Martin came upstairs to get a drink of water, and partly because he heard voices. He was worried that, like one family had, they would argue and fight until someone left and Martin went back to group care. But Ma and Pa were sitting together on the sofa, a pot of tea between them, just talking. They had a book open on their laps and would read from it, then talk about it.
After a while on his best behaviour, Martin began to act out. But as much as he acted out, Ma and Pa didn’t seem to mind. He took markers from his pencil case and coloured and wrote on the walls of his room. Ma came in to get his laundry while he was lying on his bed one afternoon, and he tensed, certain that he was going to get in trouble.
But Ma just looked, and asked where his markers were. Knowing he was in trouble, Martin gave them to her, never expecting to get them back. But Ma took one out of the case, and corrected his spelling and grammar on the wall. “very colourful,” she said, and left the room.
Another time, Martin sat on the kitchen floor with a screwdriver and made scratches in the old linoleum floor. When Pa came in and caught him at it, he took the screwdriver away and left Martin sitting there as he walked away. He came back with a scraper and gave it to Martin. “Needs replacing anyways,” he said, “just always use the right tool for the right job.”
Sometimes, we like to make distinctions about who is ‘in’, and who is ‘out’ in our churches – usually based on some grand assumptions about behaviours or a loose interpretation of what Scripture actually says. Certainly, the most press that Christianity receives deals more with the fascination about who’s ‘in’ and who’s ‘out’ than anything good that churches actually do.
But nestled right in the middle of the story that we tell so often at Christmas is a neat little look at how God works in the world – and beloved, God doesn’t work the way we want God to
Have you ever wondered where the wise men fit into the Christmas story? Actually, they’re not part of the Christmas story at all – they come along after, perhaps even as late as two years after the birth of Jesus.
The wise men appear in Matthew’s gospel. They’re not Jewish, either; they’re gentiles, probably coming from
One Saturday, after a particularly bad week, Ma and Pa called Martin and the other kids upstairs after supper. Martin had been in trouble at school, and had yelled at the Jacobsen boys when they were playing together and Martin wanted to play a different game. That day, there at the kitchen table and surrounded by paperwork, was Martin’s social worker.
Martin couldn’t speak, but he knew what was about to happen. Wordlessly, he went downstairs and packed a small bag. It had happened before; again, he was leaving. He was too much for this family. It was probably for the best.
But when he came back upstairs and began to gather his coat, Ma stopped him. “Where are you going?” she asked. “I don’t know”, he replied, “but I guess I’m done here.”
The day that the wise men found the child is celebrated as the feast of Epiphany, 12 days after Christmas. If you come from
We don’t often consider that the first people to worship Jesus were the least-likely suspects - Much like we don’t expect to find Jesus being baptized in the wilderness. Yet God still works in these strange and unexpected ways, often when we least expect it, or feel like we deserve it.
I’ve met a lot of people who can tell me that they feel closer to God outside, doing something they love doing. And I’m happy for them, and I agree with them – certainly, I feel closer to God when the world is going my way and I’m enjoying myself.
But there are the times when the world isn’t going my way, and I feel pretty far away from God. Like Martin, I try to push God away, so that God can’t see my failings and frailty.
At times like that, and in places like this, I need to know that despite how I feel about the situation, God is closer to me.
“What do you mean?” Ma asked.
“Well, with the social worker here I know you’re sending me back. I’m sorry I’m not a better kid.”
Pa came and stood beside Ma, and the other four children came and stood around them. Martin noticed that they were all crying, and he began to feel a little panicky, as his heart leapt into his throat and tears began to sting his eyes.
“Martin,” Pa said as he wrapped him in a hug, “we’re not sending you away. Your social worker is here so she can sign your permanent papers. You are our son, a part of our family, and we love you. We want you to be part of our family forever.”
You can find God anywhere, that’s true. But here, in this place, God is present; God in relationship with us. God in community; God with us. The Spirit of God is what has called this community into being; that means that God is here.
And everything changed that night. Martin and the other kids painted his room (though now Martin had to share it with his younger brother), and Martin helped Pa with the new flooring in the kitchen. As he learned what it meant to be loved, Martin settled down, and began to grow. And he knew, he knew that he was part of a forever family.
It’s when you think that you are outcast, outside, down and out that the Spirit of God comes to you, and shares with you one simple vision, your own Epiphany:
You are my beloved. With you, I am pleased. And together, as God’s beloved, find that this, this group of people chosen by God as witnesses of a great redeemer and Savior of all humankind, is our forever family, because we are all children of God. And God’s vision – of a people created, nurtured, bound together by the same relationships that bind God’s own self – becomes our own.
Let the people of God say amen.
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