Based on Isaiah 42:1-9, Acts 10:34-43, Matthew 3:13-17
What’s the very first thing that you do when you meet someone new or encounter someone you’ve met but haven’t seen in a while? If you’re like me, you say hello and then introduce yourself by telling that person your name. Names are important because they tell something about us. Some names are filled with family history – a running lineage that connects present with past. Some names confer specific powers, personality traits or social context that are important to understand. Choosing a name for someone is often a big deal, and parents often struggle to fit just the right name to a newborn.
Our names are unique to us, and we learn to respond when we are called by them. In days gone by, people being baptized into the Christian faith would choose a distinct name to be used in the faith community. This process was known as a “christening” and in the early Church was associated with baptism. Later, the christening and baptism were separated, and this caused some confusion – and still does today. In an effort to bring clarity, The United Methodist Church has eliminated the christening service and rolled everything into the Sacrament of Baptism, one of our two Sacraments. In the Sacrament of Baptism, we are publicly named before we receive the water – and thus our given name becomes blessed along with the rest of us. Once baptized, we become part of the universal family that is the Body of Christ, and yet we remain unique, specially gifted, chosen, named and called.
Being named, claimed and called by God is what our scripture readings are about today. Peter is in the house of the Roman Centurion, Cornelius. He has been called to go there by God so that God can bring Cornelius and his whole household into the Body of Christ. Peter, who has been staunchly opposed to Paul’s broadening out of the Jesus movement to Gentiles, has had an epiphany about the inclusivity of God. God has shown him that nothing and no one is beyond God’s reach, and that all who revere God and are baptized as Jesus commanded are children of God.
The readings from Isaiah and Matthew are linked. The prophet speaks the words of God about a righteous person who serves the LORD. This servant is chosen by God and delights God with how they act in the world on God’s behalf. This chosen servant will bring justice to the nations and will not falter or be discouraged until that task is accomplished. When Jesus is baptized by his cousin John in the Jordan River, the Spirit of God alights on him and he hears a voice that echoes the promise of Isaiah, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased”. Jesus is named and called by God to fulfill the scriptural promise of the Messiah.
Baptism is a special act of consecration in the Church of Jesus Christ. Spiritual writer Kathleen Norris unpacks baptism, how we are empowered and called through it, and the importance of how Jesus’ baptism connects Jewish history to ours. She writes, “…I suspect that to many Christians baptism seems a curious and antiquated custom. People want their children baptized but can’t say much about why they want it, and what the rite is meant to signify. Many adults who attend church faithfully nevertheless would be hard-pressed to say what their baptism means to them. It might help to remember that in the early church the baptism of Jesus was a much more important feast than Christmas…there are important reasons why Jesus’ baptism was observed as one of three feasts of light, which include Epiphany, marking the wise men’s recognition of the true nature of the Christ child, and the wedding feast at Cana, at which Jesus performed his first miracle. These are feasts of light because they illuminate God’s nature. They are three occasions on which God chose to reveal an aspect of God made flesh,...And they indicate that the incarnation is not only about Jesus but about us: these three feasts demonstrate to Christians not only what God is like but also who God wishes us to be.
Baptism, then, is about celebrating the incomparable gift we receive as creatures beloved of God. But baptism is also about more fully engaging the responsibility that this identity entails. The baptism of Jesus initiated his public ministry, which led him to the cross. For individual Christians, baptism is our call to the community of the church, which often provides us with crosses of our own to bear. Yet it is together, as church, that we are meant to witness to peace in a cruel and violent world and bring a message of hope in the face of despair. Whatever the worldly powers may be - Roman rulers or contemporary dictators, corrupt lobbyists, arms traders and war profiteers - Christians are called to witness to another, greater power. Our baptisms mark us for this purpose…
Baptism is a blessing…It is a sacrament…Baptism’s import is so much larger than Christians generally acknowledge when they say, ‘I was baptized a Catholic,’ or an Episcopalian, or a Methodist. A Christian is baptized into the Christian faith, and not a particular denomination. Baptism is that big. Today’s readings in Isaiah and Acts offer us a glimpse of something bigger still: a God who is not limited by our understanding of baptism and what it signifies - a God who created humanity in the divine image and whose love for us is so great that it embraces all people, no exceptions. This God is beyond our understanding and our comfort zones.
[One comfort zone that is confronted is our reading from the Gospel according to Matthew] which encompasses in just a few verses, Jesus’ reenactment of the whole history of Israel. It is at the Jordan that Moses interprets the Torah, that Israel enters a land of freedom, …and that Elisha receives (a double dose of) Elijah’s spirit. When Jesus approaches John on the banks of the Jordan River all of this collective memory is put into play…The occasion of his baptism is so momentous that we are jolted all the way back to the first chapter of Genesis, as the separation the waters of earth and sky that God established at creation is refigured. God breaks through in order to speak directly to human beings…The baptism of Jesus is the event that allows the story to go forward into the community of those who follow him and become his disciples, those who will be known as Christians….”
You who have been baptized in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are named and called to be Christians, followers of the Christ. For the sake of God’s plan for us, it is essential that we lay claim to our God-given identity as Christians so that we can use our God-given power to help God heal our world. This is the significance of being named and called Christians – this is our one and only task. How will you respond when God calls your name? Speak Lord, for your servants are listening…amen!