Don Friesen
A novice cowboy was riding on the open range when, for the first time in his life, he saw buffalo – two of them. He rode up to them, got off his horse, examined the creatures, and said: "You are the ugliest, dirtiest, smelliest animals I have ever seen!" Then he got on his horse and rode away. Whereupon the one buffalo turned to the other and said, "I thought out here we were never to hear a discouraging word."
The "range where the deer and the antelope play" is not the only place we hear discouraging words. Too often we hear them in our own homes. I remember seeing a film (Wild Man Blues, 1998) of Woody Allen's jazz group's tour of Europe. The film closes with Woody sitting around the kitchen table with his elderly parents. Woody, already into his sixties himself, is talking about how well he and his group were received in Europe, but his mother doesn't seem to hear a word he says. "I always wanted you to be a pharmacist," she says overtop of his words, and then something to the effect, "If you had gone into pharmacy, you could have been somebody."
We recently had dinner with a young couple, and the young woman told us that her parents wanted her to be a doctor. She already has three degrees, but her parents are very disappointed in her. Some of us could relate similar stories. Perhaps you recall bringing home a report card and waiting for your parents' approval, like a hearty "Well done, my child!" Some of us, of course, waited for the other shoe to drop, the inevitable "What happened here in mathematics? If you put more effort into it, you could bring that mark up!"
My mother thought that following high school I should hire on with the Macleod's hardware store and work my way up – a little like Stephen Leacock's character in Literary Lapses ("The Life of John Smith"), who hired on with a dry-goods establishment and who over the course of a lifetime worked his way up from the ribbon counter to the collar counter, from the collar counter to the gents' panting counter, and from the gents' panting to the gents' fancy shirting. And then, as he got older, they moved him down again from the gents' fancy shirting to the gents' panting, and so on, until he was back at the ribbon counter. At least, that's what my mother's suggestion sounded like to me, because I had already read Leacock. Now I wish I hadn't! My mother's advice is sounding better all the time.
The Beginning of Jesus' Ministry
The new church year began with the first Sunday of Advent, and our salvation began with the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, and the Epiphany season marks another beginning, the beginning of Jesus' ministry, marked by his baptism. Jesus came to the River Jordan to request baptism at the hands of John the Baptist, and after Jesus and John had negotiated which one of them was humbler than the other, Matthew's version of the story makes it feel like one of those moments of epiphany when the heavenly and the earthly meet.
This week I presided at the grave-side service of a woman who was buried in a cemetery out in the countryside near Carp. It was one of those days this week when the fog was heavy. The cemetery is located in a low-lying area, and the fog-enshrouded location lent to the occasion an ethereal quality that was breath-taking and supernal. I imagine a similar ambience at the River Jordan, for "...when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.'" (Matthew 3:16-17)
There are echoes of ancient Scripture in this utterance, of course, echoes of Psalm 2 (verse 7) and Isaiah 42, both of messianic significance, but the pairing of water and spirit is also reminiscent of creation (Genesis 1:2), which I imagine to be another fog-enshrouded event. In Genesis the Spirit brooded over primeval chaos to bring order and light, and in Matthew God's Spirit is brooding over Jesus, to bring about a whole new creation, if you will.
Then there is the dove, a symbolic figure that appeared soon after creation, when Noah sent it on a mission to ascertain whether the floods of judgement had come to an end. The dove returned to Noah's ark with an olive branch in its beak (Genesis 8:11), and thereafter was a symbol of peace and reconciliation. The descending dove may also represent an anointing, the bestowal of a difficult but God-given and God-blessed task.
Then there is the mysterious Voice-from-heaven speaking. All of this together – the heavens opening, the Spirit descending like a dove, and the Voice speaking from above – is Matthew's vivid way of describing – no, perhaps "hinting at" is a better word – hinting at a reality beyond description! What moves me, however, is not so much the heavens, the dove, the Voice – all of this is common biblical language and imagery – but the message given to Jesus: "This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased." (Matthew 3:17) Other versions translate it this way: "This is My Son, My Beloved, in Whom I delight!" (Amplified Bible) Or: "This is my Son, and I love him. I am very pleased with him." (NIRV)
This is the ultimate affirmation! To know that God loves you and is pleased with you. Jesus must have left his baptism with serenity and strength of purpose, having as he did this stamp of Divine approval. And the approval was not just an inspiring not-yet-out-of-the-gate pep talk; it would recur. We read later in Matthew that the Approving Voice came to him again, during the Transfiguration: "While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased....'" (Matthew 17:5)
Was Anyone Displeased with Jesus?
Those of you who have children all love your children, I'm sure, but there are times when they displease you. A grown man tells of growing up near a small pond. He was strictly forbidden from going anywhere near the pond, but he could not resist the allure of the soft mud that would squish up between his toes when he walked in the pond. One day he too heard a voice from on high, but with quite a different message and uttered in a different tone!
There were certainly times in the history of God's people when God was displeased with them. When King David arranged to have Uriah killed, so that he could have Bathsheba for himself, it displeased God greatly! (2 Samuel 11:27) It wasn't the only time David displeased God. (1 Chronicles 21:7) The Scriptures tell us that God is displeased when we take pleasure in our enemy's misfortune! (Proverbs 24:18) God is displeased when justice is lacking. (Isaiah 59:15) Jonah was quite displeased himself with the way his tour of Nineveh turned out (Jonah 4:1), but then God wasn't all that pleased with Jonah's behaviour. So it's not as if God is always pleased with everything and everyone!
It's possible to displease God, and I was wondering if it would have been possible for Jesus to displease God. I imagine that if Jesus had caved in to one of the temptations he faced in the wilderness, that may have given God a measure of displeasure. It's a hypothetical question, I know, but there were certainly others who were displeased with Jesus. There were many who were displeased when Jesus sat down to dine with a tax collector. (Matthew 9:11) There were some who were displeased when they discovered that Jesus' disciples disregarded the rules of fasting. (9:14) Some were so displeased with Jesus that they suspected he was in league with the devil! (9:34; 12:24) Some were displeased that Jesus' disciples disregarded the Sabbath. (12:2) Some were so displeased with Jesus that they conspired to kill him! (12:14) At one point the chief priests and Pharisees were displeased with Jesus because he had hurt their feelings! (15:12, TEV) And they were so displeased with Jesus that they devised all sorts of tests to trap him (16:1; 19:3; 22:15, 35), and so displeased that they put plans in place to arrest him (21:46), even if that meant acting in collusion with Pilate. (27:1-2) It's a good thing God was pleased with Jesus, because he sure encountered a lot of displeasure from others.
How Can God Possibly Be Pleased with Dust?
The Psalms tell us that as "a father has compassion for his children, so the Lord has compassion for those who fear him. For he knows how we were made; he remembers that we are dust." (Psalm 103:13-14) The Lord may have compassion on us, but how can God be pleased with dust! Most of us are not pleased with dust. To dust is to get rid of it; it's not something we want in our homes, even if we don't get around to dusting very often!
We don't spend a lot of time thinking about our dustiness, our creature-liness, our sinfulness, because we have been told that it's not good for our self-esteem. It's interesting, however, that thoughts of self-esteem don't keep us from noticing the dusty shortcomings of others, even fellow believers.
Roland Rolheiser, a Catholic theologian, has remarked that both conservative and liberal Christians these days hold up a God whose primary facial expression is a frown. The God-of-conservatives looks at the world and sees moral laxity, sexual promiscuity, and liberal attitudes, and He is very displeased! The God-of-liberals looks at the world and sees injustice, political in-correctness, and conservative attitudes, and She is very displeased! Both wear a frown on their face. Both exude an aura of disapproval.
No doubt there is much for God to frown upon, like selfishness, greed, and unfaithfulness, but neither the God-of-conservatives nor the God-of-liberals lines up very well with the God portrayed at Jesus' baptism. The Voice-from-heaven does not say, "You are my beloved conservative; with your old-fashioned ways I am well pleased." The Voice-from-heaven does not say, "You are my beloved liberal; with your quickness to adopt the current moral fashions I am well pleased." No more than the Voice-from-heaven says, "You are my beloved workaholic; with your sixty-hour work-week I am well pleased."
What is interesting about the baptism story is that God smiled His love and blessing upon Jesus even before Jesus had done anything, even before Jesus had any idea of what God had in store for him, even before Jesus had told a single story. Even before Jesus he had healed a single person, or spoken with compassion to a person in need, God said, "This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased." (Matthew 3:16-17)
God was pleased with Jesus, delighted with him! And God expressed His pleasure with almost childlike delight. It reminds me of a grandfather who entered a toy shop just before Christmas, looked around at the various displays, but returned time and again to a counter featuring a train set. Finally he said to the clerk, "I'll take one."
The clerk smiled and said, "Your grandson will love it."
"Then I'll take two," said the man.
Jesus' baptismal experience revealed God's delight in him, but God does not reserve His shower of approval for one child alone; God loves all of His children and finds pleasure and delight in all of us. This is the God of which another New Testament writer said, "How great is the love (God) has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! ... Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him.... For this is the message which you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another...." (1 John 3:1-2, 11)
Pleased Indeed!
Raymond Carver (1938-1988), an American short story writer and poet, died rather early, after a hard life, including alcoholism. Near the end of his life he found love and started to pull things together, but then he was hit with lung cancer. Before he died he wrote in a poem:
("Last Fragment," All of Us: The Collected Poems, 1996)
Thomas Merton first entered a monastery in 1948, and for the first decade or more he devoted himself to leaving the world behind and searching for God's beloved-ness. One day he left the monastery to run some errands in the city, where he experienced an emotional and intellectual epiphany. He was visiting his doctor in Louisville, Kentucky, not far from the monastery, and coming out of the doctor's office Merton found himself on one of Louisville's busiest intersections. In his journal he writes:
"And did you get what
What a gift! We long for that sense of beloved-ness. We long to be valued. In one of the Christmas cards we received this year, a mother conveyed her gratitude for my part in helping to shape a church experience that was positive for her daughter. Like many of us, their family has been a part of various churches, some of them negative experiences. She was very grateful for OMC.
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth."
"In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness ...(to take your place as) a member of the human race…. I have the immense joy of being ...a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. ...if only everybody could realize this! ... There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun." (Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, 1966)
Another moment of God's love and favour descending upon a human being. May that be our experience as a community of faith. May we look at each other with new eyes, knowing that each one of us is beloved of God, and a child of God in whom God is pleased. Pleased indeed! AMEN
Quotations of Scripture are from the New Revised Standard Version, unless otherwise noted.