Peace Lutheran Church

Las Cruces New Mexico

Pastor Steve Loy

The Baptism of our Lord

January 7, 2007

Text:  Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

People were questioning if John might be the Messiah.  In so many ways John the Baptist would have made a better Messiah than Jesus.  Luke tells us that John brought people from Jerusalem out to the wilderness, to the Jordan River demanding that they repent.  He was a fiery preacher calling the crowds a “Brood of vipers.” He proclaimed a baptism of repentance for forgiveness of sins.  And when the crowds asked what should be do?, he answered them.  He said, “If you have two coats, give one away.”  To tax collectors he warned them not to take more than their fair share.  To soldiers he said, “Don’t extort money...”  John had all the qualities of a great Messiah; he was pious, zealous and challenging.  Jesus didn’t make nearly as a good of a Messiah.

Jesus tells stories, makes up parables and teaches crowds of people.  He made a good rabbi, but not much of a Messiah.  He doesn’t have the same fire as John.  He doesn’t call people snakes and demand that they repent.  And when people ask him what to do he doesn’t give them moralisms or specific instructions, he says, “Follow me” or heals them without demanding something first.  He’s not very good at religion.  And, he’s not a very smart politician.  He invites second class people to join his movement and alienates the religious and political leaders.  He breaks the Jewish dietary laws, talks to women and doesn’t keep the Sabbath.  He touches lepers and is critical of pious people.  John was far more religious, far more demanding and Jesus knew it.  He tells the crowds, “…among those born of women no one is greater than John…”  John was a much better candidate for messiahship than Jesus.  In fact, I have to believe that if people around Jerusalem had taken a vote, John would have won. 

That’s what people want out of religion.  A few do’s and don’ts – not that they will follow them, but at least if we know what to do, we can work at it and it gives us something to do, to pretend like we are religious people.  We want something a little bit demanding, as long as it’s not too fanatical.  But in truth, all of that pious behavior isn’t really religion.  I’ll show you what I mean.

Ann Lamott writes about a man named David Roche, the pastor of the Church of 80% Sincerity.  David has a terribly disfigured face.  Born with a tumor on the bottom left of his face, surgeons removed it when he was very young leaving him with no lower lip and terrible plum-colored burns from the radiation treatments.  Now, a part of his ministry is as a motivational speaker.  When Lamott heard him he said,

We with facial deformities are children of the dark.  Our shadow is on the outside.  And we can see in the dark: we can see you, we can see you turn away, but one day we finally understand that you turn away not from our faces, but from your own fears.  From those things inside you that you think mark you as someone unlovable to your family, to others or even to God.

All those years, I kept my bad stories in the dark, but not anymore.  Now I am stepping out into the light.  And this face has turned out to be an elaborately disguised gift from God.

David’s church is not a physical church, there is no building.  His church is made up of people who listen to his stories.  He calls it the church of Eight Percent Sincerity because he thinks that’s about as good as we are going to get.  80% sincerity is about as much as any of us can handle, so is eighty percent compassion and eighty percent celibacy.  The other twenty percent of the time you just get to be yourself.  In the church of 80% Sincerity you don’t have to look good, although you should meditate.  David recommends getting comfortable, breathing deeply and pay attention to your breath.  Then begin using mantras like “Why am I doing this.  This is such a waste of time.  I have more important things to do.”  If you stick with meditation you can graduate to panic meditations and meditations of winning the lottery.

The difference between David and many television preachers and many pastors is exactly the difference between John the Baptist and Jesus.  John the Baptist is a very religious, pious, serious, do all the right things type of man.  Jesus is a fun loving, carefree, buck the system, accept people as they are kind of man.  Pat Robertson makes a better Messiah than David Roche, but David knows a lot more about grace.  In the church of 80% Sincerity everyone has to come to understand unconditional love, but only for about eight seconds.  Instead of beating yourself up because your feelings of unconditional love are always fleeting, you should savor the moments when it appears.

You might say to your beloved, “Honey, I’ve been having these feelings of unconditional love for you for the last eight to ten seconds.”  Or “Darling, I’ll love you till the very end of dinner.”

Lamott writes,

There he is standing in front of the crowd, and everyone can see that just about the worst thing that could happen to you physically has happened to him.  Yet he’s enjoying himself immensely, talking about the ten seconds of grace he felt here, the ten seconds of grace he felt there, how those moments filled him and how he makes them last a little longer.  Everyone gets happy because he’s giving instruction on how this could happen to them, too, this militant self-acceptance.

That’s the ministry of Jesus.  John wants us all to eat locusts and wild honey and dress in camel’s hair.  John beats us down calling us vipers and demanding that we repent.  While Jesus brings good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind and freedom for the oppressed. 

What we most often want out of religion is a list of things to do.  John will give them to you.  We want to know that if we pray more, give more, love more that God will love us in return.  And in John’s religion that seems to work, but not in the religion of Jesus.  In the religion that clings to Jesus we have only to cling to Jesus.  While he may not have been the powerful messianic religious figure that John was, he is a man of consummate grace, who shows us the God of consummate grace.  And that’s difference between John and Jesus.  If we had become followers of John we would have had a religion of strict rules and intense demands.  As disciples of Jesus we have a faith of strict grace and intense forgiveness.  Pious behavior, and believing that our good works have some kind of merit with God only leads us down the wrong path because if we can cozy up to God by being good we don’t need grace. 

Pious behavior isn’t really religion.  Religion comes from the word ligature, to hold together.  Ligaments hold one bone to another.  A guitar string is a ligature that runs from one end to the other.  Religion is that which binds us to God.  As Christians what binds us to God is that we are embraced by Christ.  Where many religions tell us that we have to pray, we have to read scripture, we have to forgive, we have to give money, we have to be a good or moral person or the ultimate – you have to believe a certain way, ours is not that way.  Our religion is shaped not by the demands that others lay out for us, ours is shaped by the nature of God.  That’s where Jesus is so different, he shows us that God is gracious and forgiving, hunting down the lost and forsaken, healing the sick and lonely, embracing people who aren’t terribly religious.  David Roche’s Church of 80% Sincerity gets closer than most religions to the grace of Jesus, but even 80% is too much to demand for a God who gives us 100%.  We rely not on our own efforts, but on Christ who comes to us bringing grace and hope, an unlikely Messiah.  A gift from God.