Even questions like infant baptism, like the two infant baptisms we got to witness last week, create difficult questions. Aren’t we taught that baptism is a symbolic washing away of our sin? We want to know that those who are baptized have accepted Jesus as their Savior and Lord. How does a baby do that? So we ask the parents that question--the responsibility for personal faith is laid on their shoulders. We want to know that the parents will bring up the infant in a Christian home, so their children can get to know Christ, and make their own affirmation of belief.
We also wonder how an infant, just a few weeks old, could have sins that it needs washed away. Unless pooping, crying, and eating are sins, what have they done?
This gets even more unsettling in terms of Jesus’ baptism. Aren’t we taught that Jesus was tempted like we all are, BUT WITHOUT SIN? So why was he baptized? Did he have sin before his baptism, but not after? We know virtually nothing of his growing up years. Just what was Jesus doing as a teenager, eh? If Jesus was fully human, as we believe he was, it makes you wonder about those teenage years, doesn’t it? I mean, you all know what you were like as a teenager, and the stuff you pulled when you were that age. So, what about Jesus?
But, we also believe Jesus was the Son of God, fully divine. How could God-in-the-flesh-Jesus have sin that would need to be symbolically washed away by baptism? Or, did Jesus become the Son of God after his baptism? Kind of like his baptism was an adoption process, and God was taking him on as his Son from that time on, but not before.
See, these are the kind of questions that book writing theologians love to get a hold of and run with. You never end up knowing any more than when you started reading the first page. So, being amongst those who has had a theological education, and wrestled with these earth-shattering issues, I finally asked myself another theological question: Who cares? I mean, it’s not that I don’t like theological questions. It’s just that, to a lot of questions like these, there is no good answer, and the Bible doesn’t help us out much, to tell you the truth. So, when I asked myself the “who cares?” question, a lot of the weight fell of my shoulders to try and solve the riddle, and I could get on with the more important tasks of being a pastor.
The point of the story is that Jesus was baptized. Why? We don’t know. Jesus didn’t even tell John what was going on. Only that they had to “put all things right.” And even though it doesn’t say so, John probably just shrugged his shoulders and did what Jesus said he should do.
There are more important questions that do intrigue me from this baptism story, though. For example, What was the tone of the Voice from heaven that said, “This is my Son, chosen and marked by my love, delight of my life”? We aren’t even told whose voice it is, but we all know don’t we? It had to be God’s.
And here’s an even more important question: What was the expression on God’s face when God made that statement? That’s something I’d like to know. These are the kinds of questions I sit and wonder about, so that kind of lets you know how my mind works. The only problem is, no one else seems to be worried about these kinds of questions and no publisher has wanted to review a book that deals with what God’s face may or may not look like at any given moment.
Aren’t we always warned not to make God out to be too human-like? We’re told that God is not some grandfatherly character, with a long white beard, sitting on a throne, floating on a cloud. God is a Spirit, the gospel of John reminds us, who flows like the wind, invisible, yet making a presence mysteriously known.
But here God says he’s got a Son, whom God loves dearly, and who is the “delight” of God’s life. So I just got to thinking, when God said that, what God’s Voice sounded like; and what the expression on God’s face was. And I wonder what Jesus did to evoke such a voice and such a look. You know, I hope, some day, God will look at me with that same expression, and speak in the same tone.
I think we have this idea, that if God does indeed have a face, we assume God only has two looks. One is anger. Even in its mild form, it is a look of disappointment. We may know that look all too well.
That’s what we think the face of God is most like. Angry. Red. Shouting. At least, as I said, if not angry, constantly disappointed. If you’ve done any reading in the prophets, or the first five books of the Bible, doesn’t it seem like God is always angry or disappointed?
If God has any other expression, don’t we imagine it as a kind of somber, serious, stoic kind of look. It’s not a look of anger or pleasure; it just is. So, when I get you thinking about what God must look like when God is smiling, when God is delighted, maybe you’re having a hard time catching a vision of what that might look like.
But imagine it as best you can. C.S. Lewis was the writer who really got me thinking about this. In one of his books he wrote the following:
To please God, to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness, to be loved by God--not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work, or a father in a son--(that love and delight) bestows on us a glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. (The Weight of Glory, pg. 13)
Imagine making God happy. Imagine making God smile--even laugh. My favorite picture of Jesus is the one Adam put on our bulletin cover--the image of Jesus laughing out loud. But how could we do that? How could we make God smile or laugh? How did Jesus do it?
When Jesus and John the baptizer were discussing who was going to baptize who, Jesus finally wins out when he makes the statement: “For now this is how it should be, because we must do all that God wants us to do.” That last phrase is so important. It says so much. It says we will receive the look from God’s delighted face when we live within the will and intentions of God, by living within the God-rhythms of life, by humbly accepting the wisdom that God’s way, and what God wants for our lives is the best way. “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” is what we pray each worship service.
Jesus moves from his baptism right to his temptation in the wilderness. He goes right from God’s love and delight to God’s apparent absence. He goes from feeling the Spirit coming upon him like a dove, to feeling the devil come upon him with a vengeance. Jesus must face the worst temptations that can be thrown at a person What’s going to help him resist?
Dr. Thomas Chalmers, one of Scotland’s greatest preachers of many years ago, was riding one day behind the driver of a pony cart. All of a sudden, the driver drew his whip and gave the pony a sharp flick. When Dr. Chalmers protested, the driver said, “Do you see that patch of weeds off the side of the road? This pony has a way of shying at it, and they’ll make him sick unto death if he eats them. So whenever we approach it, I always give him a touch of the whip to let him have something else to think about.” Dr. Chalmers used that experience in one of his sermons, when he pointed out that God always gives us something better, higher, loftier to think about when the lower things of life would distract us and tempt us.
I would guess, and of course I can’t be sure at this point, that the look of God’s pleasure and love served the same purpose for Jesus. Once Jesus was out in the wilderness being tempted by the devil, Jesus would only have to remember that amazing and powerful look of delight on God’s face, and it would keep Jesus’ mind focused on what God wanted him to do.
Let’s think of this in terms of our own relationship with our children. All parents who take their role as parent seriously and joyfully, want to give their children the best foundation of faith and morality. At some point, then, the parent must give children enough freedom to put into practice what they have been taught; to really make their parental guidance a part of their own lives.
When the parents see how their children, in their freedom, choose the wisdom of what the parents have taught, is there not a great smile that forms on our faces? And is not that smile attached with heavy chords to our hearts? Don’t we want to boom out to the world, “This is my son/daughter, marked by my love, delight of my life!”?
When our children face their various temptations through out life, and they get through them because of their faith and morality, aren’t we proud of them? When we see the character they have developed, don’t we smile? Is there any amount of money that can buy such a feeling, or any reward in life greater than that sense of being totally delighted by their choices of faithfulness? I think not.
This is what is going on in our relationship with God. We are children of God, taught at the knees of Jesus Christ, guided by the loving direction of the Holy Spirit. We are freed by God to choose God’s way or not. To accept God’s plan and do what God wants, or not. We are freed by God to live in a world that makes us come face-to-face with amazing temptations and difficult choices.
Will we live, as we have been shown by God in Christ, listening to the voice of God’s indwelling Spirit? Will we make God smile--even laugh at times? Will we face life in such a way that would make God just slap one of the angels on the back and boom, “Look at that Brooke Erickson; I am so pleased with that gal, I could just dance and laugh out loud!”
There must be no greater feeling for God than to look with a well-pleased smile on we, God’s children. And there must be no greater feeling than to be the recipient of that look from God that says, “You are the delight of my life!”
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