After church last Sunday, we had a time of fellowship and theological discussion among the active leaders of our church, the elders and deacons. For the last twenty minutes of our time together, we all completed a faith inventory, which means we filled out a worksheet with the answers to these statements: “My first recollection of being in church is...The closest I have ever felt to God in my life was...The time I have felt the greatest doubt or distance from God was...Just before I die I want to be able to say...”
Now these questions would have been challenging enough to answer silently on paper in a room full of people, but after we had all filled out the inventory, I asked the newly-elected elders and deacons, those who will be ordained and installed after today’s sermon, to stand up in front of their peers and read their answers out loud.
This exercise was incredibly moving for all of us there, and what has really stuck with me was how the elders- and deacons-elect finished the statement, “The time I have felt the greatest doubt or distance from God was...” What struck me about these answers is that they weren’t surprising or unexpected. They were a reflection of what it is to be human, to know loss and loneliness and sorrow. Here are some of the answers: The time I felt the greatest doubt or distance from God was when I was in college...when I was in Vietnam...when I lived far from home...when my grandpa died...when my young neighbor was killed by a drunk driver...when my sister died in her thirties...when one of my students committed suicide.
In Isaiah chapter 42, the chapter that immediately precedes our reading today, Isaiah speaks of a time when the Israelites experienced tremendous doubt and distance from God. At this point, the Israelites had been exiled from their homeland for nearly sixty years, an exile they interpreted as a punishment for their failure to stay faithful to God. In chapter 42, the prophet clearly lays out the acts of unfaithfulness: the people had sinned by disobeying God’s law. And so, in the words of the prophet, “God poured upon Israel the heat of his anger and the fury of war.” (42:25a)
Which brings us to chapter 43, a chapter which opens with a new word from God about Israel’s future. And that future begins with two words: “But now...”
“But now...” These two little words indicate that something big has changed. And that something is not the Israelites. In spite of their time in exile, the equivalent to a very long “time out” in the uncooperative chair, the Israelites still had not learned their lesson; even in exile, they have failed to be completely faithful to God.
So it’s not the Israelites who have changed. What’s different now is that God has chosen to focus on God’s love rather than God’s righteous anger.
“Do not fear,” God says to the people. “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.”
Regardless of the ways they have turned away from God, regardless of the doubts that have run through their minds when they couldn’t sleep at night, regardless of how distant they may have felt from God while they have tried to make a life for themselves as strangers in a strange land, these are still God’s people. “I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.” With these words, God, who created the world and all people in it, claims Israel as God’s chosen people, and declares that these people are infinitely valuable to God, more valuable than all other nations or peoples on earth.
Like the Israelites, Jesus experienced a “but now...” moment in his life. It is a moment we heard about today in Luke’s story of Jesus’ baptism. Luke doesn’t actually describe the baptism itself. He simply writes, “Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized...” Luke makes it sound as if Jesus simply went out in the the wilderness where John was baptizing, got in line with all the other people who were looking for a new beginning, and was dunked under the water like everybody else, in spite of the fact the he was the only one there who had no sin which needed to be forgiven.
As Luke tells it, it’s what happened after Jesus got dunked that was really spectacular: “the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “you are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
In this moment, Jesus receives God’s name for him—Son, Beloved—and God’s public claim on his life. Baptism is a “but now” moment in Jesus’ life; it marks the beginning of his ministry, it is a line that divides what came before from what comes after.
This line didn’t simply divide two times of Jesus’ life; it is also a “But now” moment for all of God’s people who weren’t Israelites. Now I would hope that you are feeling a little uncomfortable about what I said before, that in today’s passage in Isaiah God plays favorites. In that passage God makes it clear that of all the people God created, the Israelites are God’s favorite. In fact, in this passage, God even promises to give up Egypt, Ethiopia, and Seba in exchange for the Israelites. “I give people in return for you, nations in exchange for your life,” God says. All other people would be given up so the Israelites could return home to God’s loving embrace. And that should make all of us non-Israelites a little uncomfortable.
It should make us uncomfortable, if it weren’t for baptism, first the baptism of Jesus, God’s beloved Son, and then our own baptism. Especially in Luke, when Jesus simply gets in line with all the other people and is baptized as if he is a sinner like the rest of them, Jesus’ baptism is a “but now” moment, not just for him, but for all humanity. In that moment God declares that no longer is God’s claim limited to the people of Israel, but it has now been extended to all people, everywhere, every man, woman, and child who is precious in God’s sight...precious enough that God would give, not other people or nations in exchange for them, but God’s own beloved Son.
What does that “but now” moment really mean for us? Well, we find out back in Isaiah 43. These seven verses we heard today are a Hebrew construction in which the middle verse is the most important, in the same way that what really defines a sandwich is what’s between the bread. In the middle verse, verse 4, God declares to the exiled, hopeless Israelites, “you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you.”
The word precious is something we often use casually. “What a precious baby,” we say; or “those earrings are just precious!” We mean the baby is cute or the earrings are beautiful. But the word precious is a serious word; it means valuable, expensive. In the Old Testament, the Hebrew word for precious is most often used in matters of life and death; when someone’s life is declared “precious” it means their life will be spared when it could have been ended.
The movie “Precious” is about a young woman who is called Precious even though she has been tragically overlooked and undervalued for her whole life. At sixteen, she has a four year-old child with Down Syndrome, whose father is also Precious’ father, a man who has sexually abused Precious since she was a child. She is still in junior high school, she can’t read, and when her school principal discovers she has become pregnant again (and again by her father) she is kicked out of school. Precious lives with her mother, who treats her like a slave, regularly abusing her. The degree of tragedy in Precious’ life would almost be too much to bear except that the movie tells the story of her “but now” moment, the moment when she meets people--a teacher in an alternative school and a social worker--who show Precious that in spite of the horrid circumstances of her life she is valuable, she is loved, she is in fact worthy of the name Precious.
Hear again the words God speaks to Israel in the moment of their deepest despair :
“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;I have called you by name, you are mine.When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,and the flame shall not consume you.”
These words are not just for the Israelites. These words are for us too. They are the words of our baptism, that “but now” moment when water symbolizes the death of our former lives, in which other people determine our worth, and the birth of a new life in which the most important thing is that we belong to God and God loves us. In baptism, God declares that there are no longer any favorite children, but that God names each of us Precious.
As the deacons- and elders-elect so eloquently shared last Sunday, being precious in God’s sight does not mean we will not know tragedy or sorrow in our lives. It does not mean we will not have moments--sometimes very long moments--when our faith is defined by doubt and distance from God. It didn’t mean this for God’s first chosen people and it doesn’t mean this for us. Being named Precious by God means God is with us in all things, through the roughest waters and the hottest fires, declaring “but now” in the face of our despair. It means that we are so valuable that God would exchange his own precious Son to show us the depth of God’s love for us and to extend God’s particular love for Israel to all the world.
In those moments of doubt and distance from God may you hear God whisper “but now.” May you hear God say to you: “you are precious in my sight and honored and I love you.” Amen.
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