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Affirmed by Love
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10 January 2010 As I was driving the other day, a story on NPR caught my attention. It was about perception and the human ability to focus on a particular task so intensively that other activities not relevant to the task aren’t just ignored–they aren’t even perceived. The fancy term for this is ‘inattentional blindness,’ and it’s been the subject a host of studies over the past several years. In one study, viewers are asked to monitor three basketball players in white T-shirts and count the number of times they pass the ball during a video clip. Thirty-four seconds into this experiment, a person wearing a gorilla suit strolls onto the center of the court, turns and faces the audience and does a little jig–or pounds his chest–depends on the setup. The gorilla then slowly walks off the court. The remarkable fact is that about half of the viewers do not notice the gorilla....and are stunned when they see the video replay of the incident. Even then, there are those who refuse to believe the video.[1] Our reading this morning may feel like an example of inattentional blindness of the biblical kind...if you’ll pardon the mixing of metaphors. We’re so prepared to hear about Jesus’ baptism that we almost fail to hear the story of John the baptizer as Luke presents it. Luke begins with a year: in our calendar, the year 29 of the Common Era...or as Luke has it, the fifteenth year of the Emperor Tiberius, the second Emperor of Rome. The local ruler is Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great. To those of Luke’s time, it would have sounded something like this: In 1963, in the third year of the presidency of John F. Kennedy, when J. Millard Tawes was governor of Maryland, the word of God came to Martin Luther King, Jr. In other words, Luke isn’t saying, “Once upon a time...”. Luke is telling us that God is active in real time, in real places, with real and specific people. So during the reigns of Tiberius and Antipas, the word of God comes to John, son of Zechariah. And like every prophet before him, John just can’t keep God’s word to himself. He is compelled to preach a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, and his preaching is so powerful that he draws crowds throughout the Jordan region. You didn’t miss the gorilla here–there’s nothing about locusts and camel hair and wild honey. Not in Luke. But you may have missed what Luke does give us. Luke gives us teachings–teachings that sound so familiar we think they come from Jesus: share your coats and your food with those who have none. If you collect taxes, don’t take more than you are authorized to take; if you’re a soldier, don’t extort money, to be satisfied with your wages, refrain from false accusations. Outside of this sanctuary, if we just randomly asked, “Quick, tell me who said that,” I’ll bet at least some of you normally would say: Jesus. Because every Sunday school kid knows that if you get asked a question in church, the answer is ‘Jesus.’ But Luke is telling us about John. John isn’t doing one-on-one pastoral counseling; he is speaking to crowds of people. John is getting people to think more concretely, more urgently, about God, about the way God wants us to live, about the kind of world God is wanting us to partner in creating. The message is coming through: God’s Realm is a present and future reality that has a direct relationship between interpersonal behavior and community health–and we are part of that reality. The people are filled with expectation, with palpable hope. And not just the people who go to synagogue every sabbath. Even the soldiers and the tax collectors come.[2] The vision is being re-formed. Maybe after all these years of promises made and ignored, maybe now redemption will come, because clearly, John is preaching the word of God. But Rome has no constitutional provision for free speech. It isn’t long before John ticks off Herod, and wham! John is in prison. No more baptizing, no more preaching to the crowds. Then Luke tells us that Jesus makes his appearance and he is baptized as part of the crowds receiving baptism. Then he prays. I don’t know if it’s like receiving communion and then praying after you return to your seat, but that’s how I imagine it...personal space within community. Because there’s no way this is a private experience for Jesus. Intensely personal, intensely spiritual, yes. But private, apart from others? Not a chance. Luke’s whole framing is community. What better place to hear the words of relationship and care: you are my son. My beloved. Baptized into a vocation, a calling of treating others as family; baptized into community. I know that growing up in the Roberts household meant that there were certain expectations, certain behaviors that were required–in the house and wherever we went. These expectations often were enforced with comments like, “I’m not talking about how the Dissmores or the Neils behave. I’m talking about how you behave.” Will Campbell, storyteller, writer, Baptist preacher, civil rights activist, tells of being a chaplain at the University of Mississippi in the middle 50's at a very tense time. “I wasn’t any kind of a dangerous radical, but it didn’t take much to make you a radical. Some boys came in there, Delta boys, rabid segregationists. They said, ‘We know how you feel about this. But you’re a minister; you’re supposed to feel that way.’ And then they went on to give this great white, racist lie. ‘But were not ordained, so we....’ I said, ‘Well, have you been baptized?’ ‘Well, yeah, we’re church members, you know.’[3] Sometimes we think of baptism like a driver’s license, like a rite of passage that is part of the backdrop of life as we know it. But a driver’s license is serious: it comes with certain expectations and required behaviors. Luke tells us that baptism is even more serious–it has life-shaping consequences. Baptism enfolds us into the beloved community–and calls us to serve. Personally being enfolded into the beloved community is only the first step. The gorilla on the basketball court is the other part of the story: baptism commissions us–each of us into the priesthood of all believers, where we are called to serve. *** [1] As found online at http://host.uniroma3.it/progetti/kant/field/hurleysymp_noe.html and Aquatic Safety Research Group: A Matter of Perception http://www.aquaticsafetygroup.com/perceptions.html on 9 January 2010. |