Mt. Olive Lutheran Church
Sermon for 1st Lent
By Rabbi Neil Comess-Daniels -
I've been thinking a good deal about vaccinations lately; I'm sure that most of us have. One thing that sparks these notions within me is the good fortune and the slight bit of survivor's guilt I have about already receiving both of my shots. To a person, when I tell people about this, their first response is "Congratulations!" I accept this graciously from people in my age bracket or serve in healthcare or other front-line work. My immediate reaction to everyone else is, "I hope so for you, too, very soon." To that end, I've recently been made aware of some congregational and union efforts to help those who face many roadblocks to access their vaccinations. As soon as Pastor Schaffer and I have more information, we'll let the community know how we can participate.
How does this apply to this week's text from first Peter? In quite an elegant way, really. In this passage, we read of John the Baptist giving baptism… to Jesus! Have you ever asked yourself why Jesus would need to be baptized? After all, in the Christian faith, He was born without sin! If baptism is to demonstrate a Christian's desire to be free of sin, wouldn't that make the baptism of Jesus unnecessary? Jesus saw things differently. He specifically asks John to baptize him. John received his call to begin recruiting people to purify their ways by preaching a baptism of repentance to forgive sin. To demonstrate the appropriateness of the calling, either John, but more likely Peter quotes the book of Isaiah (40:3-4), A voice rings out: "Clear in the desert a road for the LORD! Level in the wilderness a highway for our God!" As your Rabbi-in-Residence, I must point out that Peter took a bit of license with Isaiah's words written in a different context. When Isaiah spoke of clearing "A road for the LORD!" this is not a reference to Jesus, but, explicitly in the Hebrew, to ADONAI, Y-H-V-H, YaHWeH. Isaiah's promise expressly was about returning to Jewish national sovereignty in Israel's ancient land after foreign alliances went sour and led to the Babylonian conquest. He was not predicting a messiah, an anointed one, other than a militarily powerful, flesh-and-blood king who would secure and maintain Israel's independence.
One can understand how Peter saw Isaiah's exclamation as a premonition of John's mission and connects the two, as did Luke and Mark. John is befuddled when Jesus arrives and asks John to baptize Him. John thinks it should be the other way around! Jesus never really explains why he asks to be baptized which is why many Christian commentators search for an answer. One of the most common explanations is that Jesus wished to be one with the people and demonstrate that via baptism. The other solution is that Jesus Himself knew of his impending death and that before His execution, He needed to absorb all the sins of all those who did and would believe in Him so that He could absolve them through his death. In other words, the reason for Jesus's baptism was the inverse of everyone else's! Jesus was purposely "exposing" Himself to and "contracting" a fatal "disease" to "vaccinate" everyone else against it! Everyone else came to John to begin a purgation and atonement process; Jesus arrived to become porous to others' sins.
Then, of course, He begins his 40 days in the wilderness in which He confronts a series of temptations to give up His commitment. In today's Jewish Testament, these 40 days parallel with the 40 days of Noah's experience during the Deluge along with the other living beings on the ark. To me, the similarity ends at the number of days. A more apt comparison would be the 40 years that the Jewish people spent in the crucible in another wilderness, during which they struggled with their new commitment to a spiritual idea that was innately beyond their ability to comprehend. There were no sacred objects in this new structure, no hearing or seeing of anything specific, but rather a perspective that everything was all part of a Grand Connectedness waiting to be made holy by human interaction with every aspect of Creation. The actions and the social values that would emerge, catalyzed by a set of commandments, tested the people's adherence continuously during their seemingly endless nomadic life in the Sinai wilderness. Their food was only manna, assumed to be a fungus that grew on the morning dew. They reached their destination early in their trek, but when they displayed a lack of faith that they could conquer the land, their entry was denied. Dejected and rejected, they continued their journey, at times approaching the brink of a lack of understanding, often as not, driven by the primary tortures of hunger and thirst.
Such was the laboratory in which embryonic Judaism took shape, as the laboratory of faith that Jesus experienced during his desert sojourn, which you simulate by your actions in this Lenten time. I know that many of you will be giving up many pleasures of your lives that are dear to you because they bring you comfort, contentment and happiness. This is admirable in and of itself. However, as seen through this rabbi's eyes, Lent should not be a practice that is only about human excesses. As it is any spiritual practice, at a time of fasting, purging, or self-sacrifice, it is not about a means to an end but rather about a means to meaning. After 40 years in the Sinai, the Jewish people faced an immediate decision regarding the meaning of their generation-long desert experience. What would it mean now that they were to develop a mostly agrarian life, more contented, perhaps a bit more stable but subject to the seasons' whims? How would they translate the elementary values they learned into lasting social expectations so that honesty and respect would prevail? With Lent, Christians try to approximate, in their own lives, the preparation that Jesus made for His ultimate sacrifice. Your faith does not require you to imitate Jesus to that extent, but it does ask you to come out of this period with a renewed perspective as to not only what you are willing to sacrifice from life, but, more importantly, to what purpose. In other words, what is the meaning you will take away from your experience? What meaning will you give to your experience? If you are to follow the example of the Jewish people's value-purposed journey (which, the way we see it, continues to this day) and the 40-day emotional and spiritual journey of Jesus, it is best not to wait to Lent's end to see what you learned. Be mindful every day, learn and grow. Just as with every annual vaccination, your yearly Lentin injection needs to be renewed, refreshed, and contemporized.
May you emerge from this season with a renewed sense of self-worth, value, and purpose. May you feel all the potential you have in this world. May your faith be strengthened not only in belief but in action. May you be recommitted to building and maintaining a society of justice and peace, in which you are among those who take responsibility for what is wrong in our civilization and do something to fix it. May you always give meaning to the holiness of your body, your blood, and your soul.
Amen
Rabbi Neil Comess-Daniels
Rabbi-in-Residence - Mt. Olive Lutheran Church
Santa Monica, California
Sermon for:
February 21, 2021
