Who We Are and Whose We Are
Luke 3: 21-38
Gettysburg Presbyterian Church
Rev. Daniel T. Hans
September 9, 2007

Does God speak to us in personal and particular ways?  Does God call us into personal and particular service?  Does God lead us by personal and particular guidance?  As Christians, who believe in a personal and involved God, we must say “yes” to such questions. But such queries beg another question: How does God speak and call and lead us?

I

How did Jesus know what God wanted for him when he began his ministry at age 30? Let’s put the start of Jesus’ calling and ministry in perspective.
Before he began his public service he was baptized.  If you were here last Sunday as we began this series in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus being baptized should raise a question for us.  People were baptized with “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sin.”  But doesn’t our faith teach us that Jesus was sinless? Jesus’ baptism can be explained in a word: solidarity.
By baptism he identified with us in our struggle, sin and suffering.

In Jesus we encounter the personal and particular love of God. God is not distant and detached from us; God is present and vulnerable with us.  God so loves the world that He pours his heart, Himself, into it.  What we must be careful not to do is think of Jesus as something other than one of us humans. In this series, I want to bring Jesus down to earth with us where he belongs.
If we so elevate Jesus we remove him from our lives and hopes. God is not removed from us or beyond us in a frustrating manner; God is with us and among us in a helping manner.

At Jesus’ baptism Luke says the Holy Spirit came upon Jesus and a voice from heaven said: “You are my Son, with you I am well pleased.” An early and erroneous belief in the church claimed that Jesus became the Son of God at his baptism.  This mistaken view held that God adopted Jesus at his baptism by placing the Holy Spirit in him.  Thus most Bibles put in a footnote an addition to this verse which is not present in the earliest versions of Luke’s Gospel.  The addition is: “Today I have begotten you; or Today I have brought you into being as my own.” However, in the earlier annunciation to Mary at her conception and in the account of Jesus’ birth announced by an angelic chorus and in the only biblical story of Jesus as a boy saying that the temple was his heavenly Father’s house, Luke understood Jesus’ identity as Son of God to precede his baptism.

In the account of Jesus’ baptism we find immense insight and we find tremendous tension surrounding Jesus’ identity. As one who is fully human he is baptized in solidarity with us fellow humans in our struggles and temptations.  As one who is fully God he is energized by the Holy Spirit and affirmed by the heavenly Father. Jesus as fully human and fully God is no simple claim. That declaration drips with tension and pulses with paradox. How could one who is human overcome all temptation and not sin? How could one who is God be tempted, suffer and be killed? All of this leads us to take a closer look at what it means to be human and what it means to be God.

Perhaps we humans are not prisoners enslaved to sin or victims who have no hope of faithful obedience to God. Perhaps we can do and be better than we give ourselves and give each other credit for doing and being. In Jesus we see fulfilled and completed humanity. In Jesus we see what we can become by God’s grace. Perhaps God is one who is not sitting aloof in heaven removed from human struggle and suffering, but is immersed in our struggle to the point of suffering with us and even dying for us. Perhaps God so loves and identifies with his creation that God is resolved to stand with us in everything. In Jesus we see the vulnerable and intimate God. In Jesus we see “the human face of God” [Bishop Robinson].

II

Had you and I been standing near Jesus at his baptism, would we have seen the Holy Spirit and heard the Father’s voice. No!  Could we have seen and heard both? No! This was a personal and particular experience private to Jesus and arising from his life long journey of wrestling with his purpose and calling, wrestling with who he is.  Most of us can relate to that! Most of us know what it is to wrestle with why we are here and where we are headed and what we are to do with our lives.

The difficulty comes when we try to put into words for the ears and eyes of others that which is going on deep within us. It is hard to put into words deeply spiritual experiences. Words are not adequate but words are all we have to pass on the meaning of those experiences to others.  If it is hard to describe adequately a spiritual experience in words, how much harder is it to describe God who is Spirit in words?  The Christian faith attempts to do just that with its Trinitarian language of Father, Son and Holy Spirit to refer to the purpose and activity of God in this world, language present in our passage.  While words are inadequate to describe the fullness of God, suffice it say that the Holy Spirit means “God in His nearness to us.”
The Spirit is God and God is the Spirit, active and present in our world and in our lives – speaking to us, calling us and leading us in those personal and particular ways that words cannot capture.  Think of your most profound spiritual experience with God.  Can word adequately express the feeling, the memory and the hope of that experience?

One additional comment on Jesus’ baptism and his calling from the heavenly Father point to what Jesus was doing at the time: praying.  Jesus prayed at the beginning of his ministry and continued to do so throughout his ministry up to his death. Jesus sought and discovered, wrestled with and learned of God’s will for his life gradually as he moved forward day-by-day.  Jesus was not on autopilot to know and do God’s will. God’s will was a daily discovery and continual struggle for him just as it is for us.  In this baptized-and-struggling Jesus, we find “the human face of God” who loves all of us and we find the divine challenge set before each of us who loves God.

III

Having been baptized as a sign of identification with the world he came to serve and save, having been energized with the Holy Spirit to empower and direct him in his mission, and having heard confirmation of his calling from his heavenly Father, Jesus began his ministry at about age 30. He didn’t leave home and start work until 30!
I’m glad my daughter who’s a college senior isn’t here to hear that! I think age 22 is a good time to begin a career, one’s work!  Kidding aside, Jesus paid his dues by living in a family for 30 years.  Having lived in a family for 30 years when Jesus taught about love and relationships he wasn’t just quoting authorities; he was speaking from experience.  I suspect Jesus could relate to the saying: Friends are God’s apology for family!

Luke then does something confusing yet fascinating.  Luke gives us Jesus’ genealogy. 25 genealogies are in the Old Testament and only 2 are in the New Testament.  Those two are of Jesus: one at the beginning of Matthew’s Gospel and one at the end of chapter 3 in Luke’s Gospel.  Jesus’ two genealogies are different in placement and content.  The distinction is another reminder that the gospels about Jesus are less historical biographies and more theological interpretations. The meaning and purpose of what happens in the gospels is more important than the details and sequence of what happens.

Luke’s genealogy at this point in his gospel is a reminder to us that Jesus is apart of a tradition, a lineage and a process. God doesn’t work magically and instantaneously; God works humanly and gradually to fulfill his eternal purposes.  Such a statement should give us great hope when we wonder what God is up to in our lives, what God is doing in and through us and why things are not happening for us sooner as we desire.

The genealogy, like the entire Gospel of Luke, is intended to tell us who Jesus is. Luke writes: “He was the son (as was thought) of Joseph.”  The genealogy opens with Jesus’ identity as more than merely the son of Joseph.  The genealogy ends with the verdict “the son of God” through a lineage that reaches back 77 generations (symbolic generations) to the creation story of Adam.  Do we need to view the names in this genealogy literally as actual, historical people?  Yes and no.  Some are and some are not.  Whether the names belong to historical people like Zerubbabel, David and Jacob, or to mythic characters like Noah, Methuselah and Adam, one name belongs to all of them & that is God’s name.  Each person’s story is part of the story of God’s love for his creation.  Each of our own stories is part of God’s story. We are part of a lineage of God’s love for this world.  Our names have a place in God’s story and a place in Jesus’ life.

Luke’s genealogy contains names of people whose actions in the biblical accounts did not always honor God. Nevertheless, their names are included.
This past week in looking back over some news articles from immediately after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, I was reminded that the names surrounding those attacks were a mixture of good and evil. Added to the 19 names of the terrorists who took the lives of the 3000 innocent victims were names of individuals who risked, and in some cases lost, their lives trying to rescue others. Life always has a mixture of good and evil. Nevertheless, God continues to work out a loving and redeeming plan for the whole creation.
That plan reaches back to Adam, the father of humanity, that plan culminates and is fulfilled in Jesus, God’s beloved Son, and that plan continues to reach out to and through each of us.

IV

Let’s return to my opening questions. Does God speak to us in personal and particular ways? Does God call us into personal and particular service? Does God lead us by personal and particular guidance? To ponder such questions, questions with which I suspect Jesus wrestled, consider the Disney Broadway and movie hit, The Lion King.  The story centers on Simba, a lion cub destined to become the king.  Simba is forced to flee his home because his evil uncle Scar convinces him he was responsible for his father’s death.  Simba grows up in a jungle far from his home and forgets that he was originally created to become king.  One day, Simba encounters a baboon named Rafiki who leads him deep into the jungle telling him he knows where Simba’s father is.  Believing his father is dead, Simba is confused and intrigued, so he follows.  The baboon leads him to a pool of water and tells him to look into the pool.  Simba is disappointed when all he sees is his own reflection.   Rafiki tells him, “Wait…Look harder…”  The baboon stirs the water and when the reflection comes back into focus, it is not Simba’s own reflection that he sees but the reflection of his father.  “You see,” says Rafiki, “he lives in you.” The image in the water tells Simba, “You have forgotten me and you have forgotten who you are.”  He reminds his son that he is destined to be so much more than he has become. The encounter transforms Simba and changes the direction and outcome of his life.

Simba discovers who he is by discovering whose he is. The same thing happened to Jesus and it can happen to us. Have we heard God’s voice say to us: “You are my child, my beloved, with you I am well pleased?”

If we have heard it, what are we doing with what we’ve heard? If we haven’t heard it, we need to listen harder. God’s speaking, God’s calling, and God’s leading are all here for us to help us discover who we are by discovering whose we are.

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