All Covered Up With Junk
Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

     Have you ever noticed how weird “time” is in the Bible? Biblical time is sort of like Soap Opera time. In soap operas mothers can carry their baby for 11 or 12 months before delivering.

     You see the new born for a week or two. Then three months later the child is entering school and a year later they’ve grown to become a rebellious teenager. Of course Mom and Dad and all the other characters haven’t aged a bit.

     Sometimes it appears that Biblical time is like that. Two weeks ago we celebrated the birth of our Lord.  Yesterday, January 6^th was the date we recognize as my wife’s birthday (oops, how did that get in there?)

     It is more commonly known as Epiphany -  where the wise men from the east came and knelt and worshipped baby Jesus, the new born King of the Jews.

     Today we look up and according to this morning’s text, Jesus is 30 years old. My, my, time sure flies when you’re having fun. 

     And interestingly, all we really know about Jesus from the time the wise men show up until his baptism as an adult is a trip to Jerusalem he took with his family when he was twelve. We don’t know much, if anything, about his life as a child, his teen years or his young adult life.

     Maybe the most significant thing about his early life is that there really wasn’t anything more significant about it than the fact that it appears that he had a stable family and loving parents who gave him a normal upbringing. They helped him grow in his knowledge and faith.

     And they helped him experience a normal life. His parents helped to prepare him for the life to come. A life, that from this day forward, the day of his baptism, would be everything but normal.

     But then nothing about Jesus was ever really normal. Let’s look at His story. He began life with a checkered past. His birth scandalized the community of Nazareth. He was conceived and born out of wedlock. His mother gave birth to him before she even married the man to whom she was engaged. And this guy wasn’t even his biological father.

     It was a time of shame and anguish for the families. I don’t think it was that hard for this young couple to leave Nazareth and go to Bethlehem. At least there, they could leave some of the stares and whispers behind.

     But it didn’t end there. You see, all the hoopla caused by his birth made the local King mad. And as a result, Jesus and his family had to flee. They became refugees and exiles. They were homeless people. His stepfather may have even held up a sign for passersby to see: “Will work for food.” Okay, maybe not.

     Once they found out it was safe to return, Jesus didn’t grow up in splendor. His stepfather had a good job but he was a blue collar worker.

     Joe worked in one of the trades – he was a carpenter. He worked long hours, but he was his own boss which meant his adopted son couldn’t go to the best schools. The family couldn’t afford it.

     But then that was pretty normal for the times. Only a few of the select and wealthy got to attend the fine schools.

     Despite his beginnings, I imagine that Jesus had a pretty normal upbringing and led a pretty normal life.

     And that’s what makes this day and theevents of this day so important. Jesus came to the Jordan River living a normal life. He heard the call of his cousin, John the Baptist.

And like so many of his neighbors and friends he came to be baptized. He came to physically and symbolically claim a new direction for his life.

     And God, approving of that new direction, voiced His acceptance of Jesus. We read in our text that: “the Holy Spirit descended upon him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven saying, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’”

It was absolutely clear that Jesus was accepted. That Jesus belonged. And that God was well pleased.

     I told you His story. Now let me tell you her story. A number of years ago, Dr. David Kerr, a Methodist minister, told a group of pastors gathered at a conference about one particular Sunday morning having an infant baptism as part of his congregation’s regular morning service.

     That morning he also chose to preach about baptism and how we are accepted by God’s grace and by God’s unconditional love.

     At the close of the message he gave an invitation to those who hadn’t been baptized to come forward. No sooner had the invitation been spoken than a fourteen year old girl who had given birth to a baby boy just a couple of weeks before, jumped up, grabbed her baby, ran forward and said:

     “I want my baby baptized!”

     Dr. Kerr paused in the telling of the story, looked at this group of preachers sitting there and said, “I know some of you shudder that this young woman who brought her child of mistake and out of control hormones forward for baptism that day. But she wanted that child accepted.”

     He told them that he did baptize that baby. You see, that young girl and even her baby were alienated, excluded, cut off. She knew what her mistake was. She had been reminded of it swelling within her for nine long months.

     And when she cried out, “I want my baby baptized!” what she was really saying was:

      “I want my baby accepted! I want my baby included! I want to belong! And I want my baby to belong!”

     And isn’t that what the Church is all about? Isn’t that what Baptism is all about? Isn’t that part of the reason Christ died on the cross, so that we wouldn’t have to be separated from God any longer?

     That young girl, maybe for the first time in her life, really felt the love and acceptance of God both for her and her son.

     That church boldly and lovingly reached out in love. Through a little water and a little faith, that young girl knew without a doubt that she and her son belonged. And I think that we could say that God was well pleased.

     And that’s OUR story. You see Baptism is about belonging: belonging to God; belonging to God through faith in Christ.

      One of the greatest blessings of life is knowing who you are and to whom you belong. Jesus had that blessing of belonging to God confirmed at his baptism. Through baptism, God confers that same blessing upon us. God affirms in us our true identity.

     Through our baptism we acknowledge before God that we are his sons and daughters – that we belong to him. Through our baptism God tells us that we not only belong to God, but that we also belong to the people of God – to God’s family of faith. It affirms that we are not alone.

     While tucking his six-year-old son into bed one night, Dad tapped his son’s chest and asked, “Do you know what you have in there?”

     The boy looked puzzled and responded, “My guts?”

     “No, you have a piece of God,” his father replied.

     After a brief silence the boy responded, “God is in my guts?”

     “No,” said his Dad, “we have a piece of God inside of us; it is God’s gift to each of us.”

     The boy smiled, tapped his Dad’s chest, and asked whether his Dad had a piece of God in his guts. They laughed and together they began to ask the same question about the rest of the family.

     “Does Mommy have a piece of God?”

     “Yes,” they answered, laughing.

     “Does my brother have a piece of God?”

     “Yes.”

     His Dad knew that the boy attended a day care center with a little girl named Mary who was so spoiled she made the people around her miserable. And so he said, “You know, even Mary has a piece of God.”

     The boy looked stunned, and then he said emphatically, “No, not Mary.”

     When his father insisted the boy said, “Dad, I have been with her more than you. Trust me, she doesn’t have a piece of God.”

     Dad told his son that God never missed anyone; everyone has a piece of God inside.

     The boy pondered that for a while, and then said, “Well, her piece must be all covered up with junk!”

     It’s that junk that separates us from God. And it’s that junk that Christ came to remove. It’s why he was baptized. Not because he needed to remove any junk from his life, but so that he could show us, all of us with checkered pasts and junk filled hearts, what is normal. What is expected. And, what the outcome will be.

     You have been created by a loving God. You are a designer original. There are no plain label or generic brands in God’s eyes. Each of you is a unique creation. You have been created in the image of God, therefore, you each have a famous maker label.

     It doesn’t matter if you have a checkered past. It doesn’t matter if you’ve never felt good enough to belong. If you’ve never accepted God’s invitation to the party – don’t despair – it is never too late. God wants you to belong. God invites you to belong. All it takes is a little faith and a little water.

     The truth is most of us here this morning have already been baptized.  We have already been accepted.  We have already been affirmed.  We have already been welcomed into the family of God. 

     The trouble is we’ve forgotten.  We’ve let the junk cover the God inside us.  Friends, God is still in here. He is in “here” in all of us.

     Believe me - God loves you and accepts you regardless of how much junk you’ve tried to cover him with. 

     As we come to the table this morning – we have a chance, in a way, to recover that what has been lost – to embrace God’s love through Jesus Christ.  To begin anew.  To start fresh. 

     It is my prayer that each of us may reignite the flame – the spirit that lives within us.   And that we might embrace the fact that we are loved … sometimes in spite of ourselves, but always loved by God and by his people.  What a great place to be.

     Let us pray…