Baptism of our Lord

Baptism of our Lord
Year A
January 8, 2017

    One of the vows that I have taken both in my vows of ordination and in my vows as a Third Order Franciscan has to do with obedience.  In my vows for ordination, it concerns being obedient to our bishop and his direction… In the Third Order, it is obedience to the Order, which means following my Rule of life; that being that I will pray the Daily Office (among other things), contribute financially to the Order, report to my area Chaplain once a year, study scripture, meet with other Franciscans… you get the idea.  Often when people hear that you have a vow of obedience to take, they tend to look at you like you’re nuts.  Why on earth, would someone do that?  I know when I was in formation for the Third Order, I had a hard time with it too.  Part of it was my background in the military brought some not so pretty reminders of what obedience can look like; and like most folks I saw it as a lack of freedom.

    Certainly, blind obedience is almost never a good idea.  Anytime we are in relationship with others in authority over us, we must be able in most situations to raise questions about what we are being asked to do, and in cases of justice or life or death… we must examine the greater good and whether obedience is really a good thing…

    But religious obedience is not quite like the obedience that one might experience in other kinds of situations; and believe me it took me years to figure this out, and I imagine I am not alone… My favorite Jesuit contemporary writer, James Martin says that a vow of religious obedience is really about being free.  Sounds a bit like an oxymoron, right? How can being told what to do be freedom?

    In religious obedience, it can be about having certain decisions made for us so that we don’t have to spend the time and resources on other things… For Jesuits, being obedient means that they don’t have to make decisions about what sort of work they will do; they are free from making decisions based on money or family; in an odd way, this frees them up to use their mental and spiritual resources on their relationship with God and with those they are in ministry with.  In the Third Order, obedience means that there are some decisions I don’t have to make; so I am free to use that energy for other things.  One of the things that James Martin says is that the vows is the way that he loves God and the way God loves him… there were times that he wasn’t sure why he was sent a particular place, or times when he wasn’t sure he wanted to stay; but because of obedience, he didn’t have to really concern himself with those issues, and his ministry was incredibly fruitful … in my own rule of life, sometimes my prayer life seems dry; the thought of doing the prayers of the church just isn’t what I want to do … yet obedience keeps me faithful to those prayers and when I least expect it, there are good things that can happen as a result of being faithful to the task… Obedience can be freeing because there are decisions that are placed in the hands of elders, or those more experienced that can help those of us who are less experienced get through difficult times, or help us to get to the other side; we get to benefit from other’s experience rather than recreating it; and because a decision is made already, there is nothing to fuss over; we just do what’s in front of us to do…

    Why on earth would Jesus go ahead and allow himself to be baptized by John?  What on earth could Jesus have to repent of? 
    I am certain that there are many discussions of this throughout the centuries… My guess is that first, it  comes down to a case of obedience to the will of God the Father…. “Let it be so for now” Jesus says in answer to John’s question about the baptism.  For Jesus, it seems to be a simple matter of doing what the Father has asked of him… the deeper reason there for me, is that it is one more instance of Jesus going to a place where you and I have gone or will go… one more place where we will never have to be that he hasn’t been… Jesus turns his will and his life toward God the Father… it is a public acknowledgement of his obedience and his identity; there is no question now who Jesus is, and what his path, at least in general terms is… he is obedient to the will of God… and those who witness the baptism know it, and they will tell others… and even in the darkest moments, while Jesus might question what is happening, he continues on the path in front of him, trusting that the Father will guide him through....

    How do we allow our love for God and perhaps even God’s love for us to be defined?  What are the principles that help guide us in how we love God?
Scripture is of course an obvious answer to that… we are given a written witness to God’s actions in human history, and God still speaks to us through the words of scripture…

    You and I are of course, baptized as Jesus was… our baptism helps us to be obedient to God and to the community we are a part of; the sacred vows that we take at our baptisms are vows that help to form us, help us to live into our lives as followers of Jesus… these vows are written in a sense as the combined experience of many so that there are things we don’t have to give much thought to… we live into these vows (albeit somewhat imperfectly) as a way to be obedient disciples.  The vows give us a framework for loving God… and the tough part too, is that whenever we have doubts about what we are supposed to do, or we think we can choose another way, the baptismal covenant helps us to get back on track… it helps guide us… it helps to make difficult decisions for us so that we can give our energy and our resources to the ministry that we have been called to, rather than to the decision itself…

    Today is a baptismal feast, and in place of saying the Nicene creed today, we will once again as is good for us, renew our own baptismal vows.  Every time the church does this, I am reminded that I live into these vows imperfectly at best… but we don’t renew these vows in order to see how bad we are, but rather to remind us of what we are called to;  God is always a God of mercy, drawing us into relationship in the life of the Trinity, and helping to guide us back when we wander off… So today we renew our vows with the joy of knowing that we are obedient in ways that fill us and bring us closer to the God of love.  I wonder if there are parts of the covenant that are harder for us than others?  I wonder if there are ways that we can put aside our own misgivings and just be obedient to the vows we have made?