Baptism of Our Lord

Baptism of Our Lord Do We “Delight” God? 1/6 & 1/9

My father tells the story of a family in a church he served long ago. They were a simple people, down to earth, working the land for a living. I don’t recall the names of either the father or the mother, but I will long recall the names of their two boys. It seems that the father and mother had decided they would name their children whatever the father said upon first seeing the child. Admittedly, a rather risky proposition! This particular couple became the parents of two boys. The first son they named “Welcome,” indicating the father must have initially said something like “What a welcome sight!” or “Welcome to the world!” The second child they named “Delight,” indicating the father somehow spoke this word upon first seeing his second child. Perhaps the father even repeated the words spoken of God’s servant and recorded in Isaiah 42:1: “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen in whom I delight.” The family’s last name was Stewart, thus the boys were Welcome and Delight Stewart.

The word “delight”, according to Webster, means “to have or take great satisfaction or pleasure.” This describes God’s emotion toward His servant described in our Isaiah reading. This same “great satisfaction or pleasure” describes the heart of God upon the baptism of His Son, Jesus, reading in Matthew 3:17: “And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” God takes “great satisfaction or pleasure” when an individual is baptized, then and today!

God, as revealed in Scripture, is a God of emotions. God gets angry, as demonstrated in the total annihilation of the morally corrupt cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and the global destruction rendered by the Great Flood. We read of God’s tenderness, whether in kneeling in the dust in order to blow into a human-shaped clay figure the very breath of life…or as in Isaiah v. 6: “I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness, I have taken you by the hand and kept you.” God experiences joy, indicated by the unrestrained divine voice from heaven shouting to all the world at Jesus’ Baptism, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” God is loving, shown by the emotions conveyed in John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.” God is emotional. We, the pinnacle of His creative power, cause our Father God deep distress and deep delight.

As our heavenly Father, God has expectations of us, expectations for us…just as we, admittedly, have expectations of God. It is true that, sometimes, our greatest sadness and disappointment---emotions, they are---are the result of God not meeting our expectations, not fulfilling our most prayer-full petitions, not doing and being what we thought we could expect. So, too, we must in like manner “grieve” the Father’s heart when we “all fall short of the glory of God”; when we, as confessed earlier this morning, fail to love God with our whole heart; when we sin against God in thought, word, and deed, by what we do and fail to do; when we fail to love one another as ourselves. Parents, grandparents, teachers, coaches, and mentors all know the experience of disappointment when those we love make poor decisions and go in destructive directions. We know how to disappoint God, but what might actually “delight” God?

Returning to our Brief Order for Confession and Forgiveness, we say: “Forgive us, renew us, and lead us, so that we may delight in your will and walk in your ways, to the glory of your holy name.” When we “delight” in the will of God and “walk” in God’s ways, God is delighted. As Pastor Rick Warren has reminded countless people in his book The Purpose Driven Life, God does have a purpose…a will…a reason for our lives. We are not here by chance or happen-stance. We are created to live in this time and in this place for a purpose, to walk in the ways of God, according to His will, and to God’s good pleasure! This prophecy in Isaiah, written some 7 centuries before the birth of Christ, is believed by many to be fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Not wishing to argue otherwise, I do suggest that we consider what we read in our Isaiah text as describing what God expects not only of Jesus, but from all His children…i.e. you and me!

In a single word, God expects no less than “justice” among His people. This “justice” is so much more than mere judicial fairness or “getting our own way.” “Justice” is an ordering of life saturated and guided, day to day, with compassion. The reach of this teaching, the scope of this justice is universal, and the work of the servant---and servant Church---is not finished, reading Isaiah 42:4, “until he has established justice in the earth.”

Reading the prophet Isaiah against the background of the evening news…Iraq, Afghanistan, the Sudan, and terrorist strikes in most every part of the world…I tremble. The devastating effects of the earthquake and subsequent wall of water in southern Asia, though equally horrific, result from a natural disaster…not the result of what one person or people does to another. The immense grief caused by this Tsunami serves as an opportunity of what people can actually do to help other people, whereas the immense grief caused by our own injustice is an example of what people can do to hurt other people. Unlike all natural disasters, these situations issue forth from the dementia of the human heart and soul! Widespread and deep-rooted injustice is one of the greatest blights of a fallen world, and so “justice” appears first on the agenda of God’s chosen servant.

Isaiah’s prophecy tells us much about “how” God’s servants are to work, live, and give. Bruised reeds and dimly burning wicks are compelling images, for they are wounded and vulnerable and can be finished off by accident or by mere carelessness. The servant Church, though, demonstrates a carefulness, a gentleness, and perhaps even a deliberate attentiveness to the weak of the world. In this “discarding society,” where the standard operating procedure is the survival of the fittest, the servant Church is challenged by God’s call to guarantee the survival of the frailest! When this is the faithful response of the Church, to the generous grace of God, we “delight in His will and walk in His ways” and God Himself is delighted! Amen

Addendum

The purpose of the Church, the called, baptized, confessing, proclaiming “body of Christ,” is to serve as a witness to God’s heart and to demonstrate through word and deed that which is “pleasing” in God’s sight. Sharing the writing of Robert Webber in his book Journey to Jesus, the work of the church is: -1- to embody in this community (the Church) what a redeemed people can look like (Acts 2:42-47), -2- witness to the world that the powers of evil have been defeated (Eph. 3:10), -3- call the world to live under the reign of Jesus Christ who is Lord of creation (Gal 1: 15-2:10), -4- go and tell the world the good news (Acts 1:8), -5- call the world to repent, be baptized, and receive the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38), -6- invite all to live in the fellowship of God’s community, the Church (Eph. 2: 19-22), and -7- to model living exemplary lives (2 Pt. 3:14). When this is our faithful response to the generous grace of God, we “delight in His will” and God Himself is delighted! Amen.

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