HEAVEN’S SECRET
Luke 3:15-17 21-22
Baptism of Our Lord, Year C
Analysis by Fred Niedner
15As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, 16John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 17His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
21Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, 22and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
From Wikimedia Commons
“He will go the way of the cross. That’s who has joined us all on the threshing floor here in Herod’s world. When the winnowing comes, he won’t escape it either. All of us will face it together, with him. That is heaven’s secret. And ours.”
DIAGNOSIS: Filled with Expectation
Step 1: Initial Diagnosis (External Problem): Make us Great Again . . .
If humankind has a universal, consuming obsession, it’s messiah hunting. Surely someone out there can trounce our enemies, keep those people in their place, and bring back the good old days when donkey fodder was 25 cents a bushel. But how do you recognize a messiah when you see one? It’s not easy, as the Bible’s comical story of the first-ever messiah search demonstrates. Tired, old Samuel, with whom the beleaguered Israelites had grown weary, didn’t know what to look for when God, against God’s own better judgment, told him to go find the messiah-craving people a savior. In the end, Samuel picked out the tallest, handsomest fellow he could find, stalked him for a while, then anointed him and sprang the job on him (1 Samuel 8-9). It didn’t go well, but generation after generation, Israel kept looking. So do we. We’re especially taken with yellers and screamers, orators who toy with our fears and give us a whiff of the smoke rising off newly vanquished rivals, invaders, and resisters. This John fellow out in the wilderness sounds promising. He’s prepared to chop down the forest, set it afire, and send the snakes scurrying. Just do it, John! Light the fire. We’ll follow you anywhere.
Step 2: Advanced Diagnosis (Internal Problem): . . . or Show us Someone Who Can
But John demurs. Not me, he says. I barely qualify as the shoe-shine guy. But I know of one who’s coming. Here’s how you’ll recognize him. He will bring wind and fire and a winnowing fork, all so he can incinerate the chaff, chase off the rats, and save the Good Seed. That would be us, obviously. Despite our good genes and fine records, so many sinners, fools, rascals, and parasites just taking up space crowd us out and take our place. Bring on the Holy Gust, O mighty friend of John! Blow away the chaff from your threshing floor. Light your cleansing fire! We’re ready, even eager, for your day of reckoning. We’ll believe you, John, and trust in your promised messiah, when we see our enemies blown away.
Step 3: Final Diagnosis (Ultimate Problem): Recalculating
Wait! There’s been a mistake. Very quickly, John lands in prison. His rhetoric got him winnowed,
so to speak. He never got out. The “coming one” with his fork, wind, and fire didn’t storm into the compound to free him. Perhaps, like old Samuel, John didn’t have a truly good eye for messiah prospects after all, so eventually he sends his disciples to ask, “Are you the one? Or should we look for another?” That’s our question, too. We’re stuck in a prison much like John’s. In a world God promises to rule through The Anointed One, it’s perfectly obvious that Herod and his ilk run the world through the power of money, guns, and hate. In the shadow of Herod’s grand tower, and with the news blaring 24/7 of Herod’s perpetual winning, we will die in our cells, our ashes scattered to the winds. John was right about one thing. All the world’s a threshing floor, and we get winnowed. Daily. We die, just like our babies, the ones who didn’t escape to Egypt.
PROGNOSIS: Heaven Spills its Secret
Step 4: Initial Prognosis (Ultimate Solution): The Silence is Broken
So what message did the rookie messiah send back to John’s prison cell? “Blind folks see. Deaf people hear. The lame and even the dead are walking about!” Perhaps it didn’t need saying that all this was happening in a world still dominated by Herod and his gang of oligarchs, and even in cells just like John’s. And it had all begun with the breaking of a terrible, crushing silence – the silence of heaven. For as long as humankind can remember, we have cried out to heaven: “Hosanna! Save us, we pray!” And heaven remains silent, leaving us to guess at the meaning of our suffering like self-taught readers of tea leaves. Heaven never tells its secrets. But now, as Jesus is baptized, heaven is “opened,” much as earlier in Luke’s story mute Zechariah’s mouth was opened and out spewed a marvelous song of benediction. When heaven opens, even just a crack, the very Spirit of God descends as flesh and blood, and there comes another benediction: “You (flesh and blood son of Mary) are my Son, my beloved, my great delight.” It’s him! The One! But we won’t know just what kind of messiah he’ll prove until we sojourn with him in the wilderness and its temptations. He chooses not to placate us with plenty, or satisfy our craving for long-life assurance, or let someone from our tribe knock off and succeed Herod. No, he will go the way of the cross. That’s who has joined us all on the threshing floor here in Herod’s world. When the winnowing comes, he won’t escape it either. All of us will face it together, with him. That is heaven’s secret. And ours.
Step 5: Advanced Prognosis (Internal Solution): Trusting the News that Reaches our Cell
And now, trusting that, behold what we witness right here in our own cells and shadowy worlds. Blinded people see. Deaf folks hear songs and the laughter of hope. Broken down and even dead souls walk on the way of daily cross-bearing that stretches toward Jerusalem, and then a few steps further, to the place where the Spirit of God leads the baptized, beloved child of God, there to embody heaven’s great secret, or as we know it, the secret of our own baptism. God – or heaven if you will – joins us, not merely in some spiritual manner, but as flesh and blood of the surprising, true messiah in every place, state, condition, or circumstance that befalls us.
Step 6: Final Prognosis (External Solution): That Dove Never Gives up
Every time we baptize someone and receive them as God’s beloved child, the delight of God’s own soul, heaven opens and its secret spills out upon us. The same Spirit who brooded over the waters of creation makes the dust come alive in flesh and blood and gives us to each other as cell-mates and companions on the way. We are never alone. Nor do we ever leave anyone else alone. Even in moments that could be our last, we use our final breaths for singing, thereby catching up the broken, weary, dulled, and deadened world in song. When folks raised from death sing, heaven’s wondrous secret leaks out everywhere. It can’t be stopped.
