First Sunday After Epiphany

Matthew 3.13-17

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Matthew 3.13-17

First Sunday after Epiphany

Sunday, January 13, 2008

Shelton, WA

Surprised By the Kingdom

Did you hear the words? Did you hear them? The voice; it is crying out in the wilderness—do you hear it? Are you listening? Can you hear what it is saying? “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

Sparks fly. A small flicker of a flame ignitesin thehearts of the people. Imaginations stir, embers glow, a small fire starts to burn. The kingdom of heaven… here… now… How can it be? What does it mean?

John stands at the banks of the Jordan—that oh so important river in Israel’s history—he stand there calling the people to repent. “Turn from your sin; turn from your old way of life, and be baptized into a new way,into a kingdom way.”

Echoes of the exodus resonate somewhere deep within those words. And the people come. They come by the droves. They swarm to the Jordan. They are ready for a new exodus—a new beginning… a new age… a new kingdom. They are ready for the Messiah… they long for the kingdom of heaven to come… they yearn for change.

Sparks fly. The fire spreads. Can you hear it? Can you feel it? It’s building. The blaze is growing. “You brood of vipers!” Words of judgment flare up. “The axe is already at the root, ready to cut down and throw into furnace every fruitless tree.” Words of fire and wrath sear in John’s mouth. Not what the people expected. Not what the religious right expected. The people liked it. The religious right... not so much. But the fire has spread. It’s too late to put it out now. It’s building, the crescendo’s coming, the final act, the final movement, is about to be played out.

John,though, he knew his place in all of this. He knew his part. John baptized with water. Soon the Messiah would come. He will baptize with fire. His judgment will be swift and sure and final. He will bring justice—God’s justice—and the guilty… well… the guilty… they will be toast; they will burn with unquenchable fire.

The people cheered. The people rejoiced. This was good news! This is what they had been waiting for. This is what they had been longing for… hoping for. It’s here at last—freedom, glorious freedom. Oh, the final, climatic movement is near. Can you feel it: the excitement, the anticipation? It’s ready to explode.

John stood there on the banks of the Jordan. Fire and water his message; judgment and justice his theme; the kingdom of heaven and God’s Messiah his bold and confident proclamation. John stood there on the banks of the Jordan River—a herald, a forerunner—announcing the main event, the grand finale. It’s almost here. Get ready, it’s coming! Even now it’s on the way. Can’t you feel it?

What a surprise it must have been for John when Jesus showed up. Not what he expected. Not exactly who he expected. What a shock it must have been when Jesus made his way down into the Jordan to be baptized. Johnwas stunned. No, no, no; this isn’t how it’s supposed to be! Don’t you remember: fire and judgment, wrath and justice? That’s how it’s supposed to be. Not this. Not baptism. Not for Jesus. Not for the Messiah. John even tries to talk him out of it. “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?”

Jesus shows up in the middle of this apocalyptic frenzy… this crazed eschatological expectancy... and he turns it all upside-down. He wades out into the water. You can almost hear the fire being doused. You can almost hear the embers steaming; you can almost hear the final hiss as that last flame isdrenchedand the fire dies. The voice crying out in the wilderness has become little more than a whisper.

Sometimes God does that to us, doesn’t he? Sometimes we’re so surprised by Jesus—by what he does—that it seems like the fire is doused, the enthusiasm is washed away, and the anticipation floats on down stream… forgotten. We’re expecting this, and Jesus come with a whole lot of that… and we struggle to recognize it.

That’s the way it was for John. “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?”

Jesus’ answer to John was simply, straightforward, and to the point. “Let it be so for now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Oh, and by the way, just in case you didn’t realize it, these are the very first words Jesus speaks in Matthew’s gospel.

Now, I find that incredibly interesting. The very first words of Jesus are not the words of some great theological discourse, or some eschatological pronouncement, or a proclamation of judgment and justice. They are words of subjection and submission and obedience. And they set the tone for the entire gospel—for the entire ministry of Jesus. “Let it be so for now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.”

Fulfill all righteousness: Those words are about one thing—making God’s will happen. The righteousness Jesus comes to fulfill is the justice of seeing God’s purpose for this world realized. And ultimately that means that everythingcorrupted and perverted by sin and the fall is going to be made right. It means that God’s kingdom will come; it meansthat God’s will—God’s good intention for creation—will be done on earth just as it is in heaven. It means that what God planned and purposed forthis world will finally and fully be realized.

You see, I think that’s one of the most surprising things about Jesus. He came into the world to redeem the world—the whole world. It’s about more than just individual salvation. Oh, certainly Jesus came to “save his people from their sins.” But the way he does that is by bringing the kingdom of heaven to earth.

To understand this better, we need to understand how the Hebrew mind worked. We Westerners, influenced by Greek philosophy and post-enlightenment reasoning as we are, look at the world far differently than the first century Jew did. (And don’t worry; I’m not going to bore you with a long history of ancient cosmology or religious development.)

The Jews had a much more holistic view of creation. While we tend to want to emphasis the separateness of things, the differences, the otherness, the ancient Hebrew mind looked more at the connectedness, the sameness, the way things intersected and were interconnected.

Take for instance the idea of heaven. The tendency in western thought is to make heaven some place out there (or, maybe, up there). We think very spatially. Heaven is a place far away, outside of creation, completely separate from creation. Every once and a while God does interact with this world; but it’s always in the sense of a hand reaching into a fish tank to rearrange things or something. Certainly, Jesus changes some of the dynamics in of all that, but still we’ve essentially held on to this view.

The Hebrew understanding is a bit different. In the Hebrew mind, heaven was indeed separate and other. But there was also a sense in which it was here and present. Perhaps the best way to think about it is to think in terms of another dimension surrounding this one. Right now there is a veil separating the two.

There are places and events that God has ordained where that veil is especially thin, where we catch a glimpse of heaven, where God does indeed shine through. In our Wesleyan tradition we call these ordnances“means of grace”—communion is one of those means of grace. For the Jew it was primarily the temple. Here, heaven and earth were nearly one. The veil was so thin you could almost look right through.

Anyway, the point in all this is to say that, in creation, God intended that heaven and earth would be in sync with each other. That’s the whole image of God walking in the cool of the evening with Adam and Eve in the Garden. Sin and the fall messed that up. It put things out of sync. The harmony was disrupted. Somehow God had to put things back together. It’s what we pray for when we pray “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

In our text this morning, Matthew said that when Jesus came up out of the water, “the heavens were opened.” Think of this event through the mind of the Jew in Jesus’ day. What we have happening here is a small teardeveloping in the veil. Maybe just a temporary tear, but a tear none the less. And through that small tear the Spirit of God moves into this world. Matthew tells us that the Spirit was in the form of a dove.

The dove has many images in Hebrew thought. It was a dove in Genesis 8 that signaled to Noah that the waters had subsided, that it was safe to leave the ark. The image of the dove, in this sense, evokes images of God’s deliverance andnew covenant.

At other times in the OT the dove symbolizes Israel and her mission to the world. And certainly Matthew is making this connection as well. Matthew is showing us that Jesus is the one who willultimately fulfill Israel mission. In Jesus the true purpose forIsrael will finally andfully be realized.

But perhaps the strongest image is the image of Genesis 1 where God’s Spirit rested over the waters at creation. By Jesus’ day that Spirit was thought of as a dove—a dove hovering over the waters. Matthew is drawing on that image to show us that the new creation has begun—that indeed, the kingdom of heaven has come near.

This is confirmed by the voice from heaven saying, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” Most commentators agree that behind these words are the words of Psalm 2 and Isaiah 42. Psalm 2 was a coronation Psalm. Verse seven has God saying, “You are my son; today I have begotten you.” Verse 8 goes on to say, “Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession.”

Isaiah 42 is one of the “Servant Songs.” Verse one says, “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.”

Matthew pulls these two passages together, along with the image of God’s Spirit bringing a new creation, in a way that identifies Jesus as the one through whom God’s kingdom has entered this world. But it’s not a kingdom like any other kingdom on this earth. It is a kingdom of meekness and humility, one of justice and mercy; it is a kingdom of service and obedience, one of righteousness and God’s peace. That’s what makes it so surprising. That’s what makes it so unique. And that’s also why it’s so easy to miss.

Almighty God and Father; You spoke in creation and all things were made. You spoke at the baptism of our Lord Jesus and through him you are now making all things new. Lord, we pray that heaven does indeed come to earth, that your kingdom does indeed make its way into this world, that your will is accomplished on earth just as it is in heaven. And, Father, we ask that if it pleases you, may our lives be points where that veil between heaven and earth is thin enough for others to see into your kingdom. And we ask this in the name of Jesus, who is king and servant, and the only one who is mighty enough to save. Amen.

John GrantPage 111/29/2018