The voice

Have you ever heard God speak? Have you ever had an experience where you know beyond any shadow of a doubt God has spoken?

For me it is an emphatic knowing that God means business about something. I remember hearing God speak to my objections to answering the call. “What will I do with a degree in communications in the ministry?” I objected. “You will communicate the gospel,” God answered.

Then there was the time when I wanted to do something and God said no. It was clear and unmistakable. God did not want me to make that choice, even though I wanted it badly.

There are times I thought I heard God’s voice when I was fooling myself. We can do that too. I have made many life-altering mistakes and blamed them on God. Mistakes where I have found forgiveness but continue to experience regrettable consequences.

We need to hear from God on occasion. There are times when we are overwhelmed with choices or facing crossroads and we need his direction. There are times when we have responded to what we believed God said and need to hear him affirm. We need to know it.

No one knows for sure how long Jesus struggled with the realization that he was Messiah. He grew up in Nazareth and inherited his dad’s carpenter business. He went to synagogue school and took care of his mother.

We know that as a child, just before his bar mitzvah, Jesus stole away and went to the temple. When his parents found him he was holding his own against accomplished scholars and declared to his frantic mom that he had to be about the Father’s business.

But how much did the human side of Jesus know and when? How long did he struggle? When did he come to the realization that he was the lamb of God, sent from the foundation of the world? Did it come all at once or gradually?

We do know that something possessed him to leave the carpenter shop and walk 70 miles into Judea to seek out his distant cousin, the eccentric prophet named John who was preaching a baptism of repentance. We know that he associated himself with John for a while. Was he seeking affirmation?

John was offering a baptism for repentance. It was signifying life-change and commitment to the coming kingdom. Baptism as practiced by the Jews was an initiation covenant into Judaism: leaving the old, being born anew. John applied it to the kingdom and announced a coming king.

Jesus came for that baptism. He stood in line, walked into the water, and received the sacrament. For him it was a transition away from the carpenter shop into something new. The event itself was uneventful. Water poured over the head as words were said.

But as Jesus came out of the water he saw the heavens part and the Spirit of God, in the form of a dove, come and rest upon him. Then he heard the voice of God. “You are my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”

I’m not sure Jesus knew all he needed to know then. The evangelists say Jesus left from there and went into the wilderness to be tempted. To sort out what he was to do. To deal with all sorts of temptations and objections and finally determine whether to accept the mission for which he was born.

Baptism is for us a sign of following Jesus. It is an initiation into committed, covenantal discipleship. Like Jesus, most of the work comes after baptism. The wilderness, the setting aside, the embracing new. It all comes in a lifetime of being set apart for service to Jesus.

Families bring little ones to include them in their covenantal journey and ask us to help them in that. They bring them again later, when they can respond to the covenant on their own, to reaffirm the promise made for them.

Baptism is not an emotional response but a conscious decision to follow Jesus despite the cost. It is not an experience but an act of commitment. It is the beginning of a life of listening for God’s voice. And God is present every time, saying “You are my beloved child. I am very pleased.”

As we baptize one and reaffirm the baptism of another this morning, I ask you to remember your baptism and be thankful.

Father in heaven, who at the baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan proclaimed him your beloved Son and anointed him with the Holy Spirit: Grant that all who are baptized into his Name may keep the covenant they have made, and boldly confess him as Lord and Savior; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen. (BCP)

Mark 1:4-11 (Baptism B)