Exodus 14:10-15; Matthew 3:13-17
One of great things
about the autumn season is the opportunity to enjoy all the colors while
hiking. Who here likes or used to like
to do this?
There are some essentials that need to be taken with you
on any hike. Water bottles. Healthy snacks. Bug spray and sunscreen. And if your hike is not a fairly short,
simple stroll in a well-marked county park, but a more dense and remote place,
you’ll need some sort of trustworthy navigation guide. Especially if it’s the kind of hike fit for
Lord of the Rings, a location that would cause Samwise Gamgee to say, “It’s a
dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if
you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”
If you are fortunate
enough not to be magnetically propelled by a precious, evil ring, then you need
something else to guide you. In real
life hiking, a compass has been a long-time trusted tool for providing direction. It orients you to True North, which is very
necessary if you have any hope of following a map correctly.
A compass is helpful to think about metaphorically too. We all know life is a journey with peaks and
valleys. There are times that feel like
a terribly hard and long trek, when it can be hard to breathe on the ascent to
what we most hope for. There are also
times when we joyfully follow beautiful paths leading us to inspiration and
incredible experiences of love. Do we
all have a common True North in the midst of all this? And if so, what kind of “compass” orients us
all to it?
It’s an internal
compass. The importance of
understanding and using this is something well documented in the field of business
leadership development. For example, listen
to the first thing American businessman and Harvard University professor Bill
George asks in his 2009 bestselling book – “What is your True North? Do you know
what your life and leadership are all about, and when you are being true to
yourself?”
His question is about having a truly authentic internal
compass to guide you successfully through life … an internal compass that
represents you as a human being at your deepest level, that is a fixed point in
a spinning world.[i]
Discovering the power of
an internal compass isn’t just a practice to help businesses. It’s an even more appropriate and helpful
one for churches. So much so that I recently
discovered there is a non-denominational congregation in Long Island named
“True North Community Church.” And they
define their true north clearly through their vision statement which says,
“Honor God. Love Others. Serve
All.”
As Presbyterians, we place
a historic emphasize on being a priesthood of all believers. In this sense, each and every one of us is a
church leader. We all have the
responsibility of helping demonstrate God’s radically welcoming, sin-forgiving,
world-changing love in Jesus Christ. This love alone is our True North. Faith is the internal compass that
constantly directs us on this sacred journey.
Rising from deep within our hearts and minds by God’s grace, faith
orients us to our True North so we can follow the map that is the Bible both
personally and as a church family.
What a great joy it is that we all read our internal compasses correctly
and now find ourselves gathered here this morning!
Easter, of course, is
the ultimate confirmation that the Way of Christ is our True North. But holy confirmation was also demonstrated
at the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry.
This is what we hear about in today’s Gospel lesson …
It’s about the
day when Jesus the carpenter joined up with John the locust and honey eating
prophet who was preaching the need for all people to receive a baptism of
repentance. He was doing so to prepare
people’s hearts to receive the soon to arrive Messiah, whom he knew to be Jesus
of Nazareth. But John was understandably
confused about why Jesus wanted to receive a baptism to prepare for his own
arrival! Especially since it was commonly
understood that the purpose of baptism was to symbolically be cleansed of sin
and thus be put right with God. John
wondered why in the world the Son of God needed to do this.
Jesus told him it was
for fulfill righteousness. This sounds
like a nice orthodox answer, but practically speaking what had this to do with
Jesus’ ministry and why should this matter to us?
As a colleague of mine
has pointed out, Matthew’s purpose in telling us about this baptism wasn’t simply
to present it as “a mechanism for forgiveness,” but rather as a sacramental event
that announced “God’s favor and Jesus’ identity.” It’s important for us to understand this,
that “Baptism, for Jesus, was less about forgiveness than it was about
commissioning, the inauguration of his mission and ministry and assurance of
God’s presence.”[ii] This is why Matthew reports that when John
baptized Jesus, there was a great revelation about his being God’s Son, with whom
God was well pleased.
These empowering words to Jesus are also empowering
words to we who call him Lord. When we
newly baptize a child of God and when we recall the holy power and promises of
our own baptism, we are beautifully reminded that all of us are God’s beloved
children.
We are reminded that God intends to work out good and
holy purposes through us.
We are reminded that God delivers us from all oppressive
worldly powers that pursue us and try to put us in a sinful place.
Even if we
bitterly complain about what we are going through, baptism reminds of Moses
telling the Israelites not to be afraid, to stand firm, to keep their eyes open
for God’s saving grace, to trust that God is fighting for them, and to keep
moving forward.
And to do this together as a faith community.
Going faithfully forward for them, as it was for Jesus,
and as it also is for us, means going through the waters as an expression of faith,
of our Spirit spinning internal compass.
Baptism orients us to our True North every day of our lives, a powerful
truth we really do need to help one another remember.
The colleague I mentioned a few minutes ago, Rev. David
Lose, has a suggestion for how we can do this during worship. He suggests we share the following words of
affirmation together. I invite you to turn
to your neighbor and repeat them aloud when I pause for you to do so –
“You are God’s child, deserving of love and respect, and
God will use you to change the world.”
How did you feel offering
that refreshing baptismal affirmation? Let’s
build on this.
Now I invite you to say it aloud to yourself – “I am
God’s child, deserving of love and respect, and God will use me to change the
world.”
Feel refreshed?
Reoriented to your only True North?
Redirected for the days ahead?
I pray so!
And all God’s people say, “Amen.”
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