2-1-3-The Loving Church

Why did Jesus asked to be baptized?

It was not for repentance for sin because Jesus never sinned.  "To fulfill all righteousness" means to accomplish God's mission.  Jesus saw his baptism as advancing God's work.  Jesus was baptized because: (1) he was confessing sin on behalf of the nation as Nehemiah, Ezra, Moses, and Daniel had done; (2) he was showing support for what John was doing; (3) he was inaugurating his public ministry; (4) he was identifying with the penitent people of God, not with the critical Pharisees who were only watching.  Jesus, the perfect man, didn't need baptism for sin, but he accepted baptism in obedient service to the Father, and God showed his approval.

Put yourself in John's shoes.  Your work is going well, people are taking notice, everything is growing.  But you know that the purpose of your work is to prepare the people for Jesus (John 1:35-37).  Then Jesus arrives, and his coming tests your integrity.  Will you be able to turn your followers over to him?  John passed the test by publicly baptizing Jesus.  Soon he would say, "He must become greater, I must become less" (John 3:30).  Can we, like John, put our egos and profitable work aside in order to point others to Jesus?  Are we willing to lose some of our status so that everyone will benefit?

The doctrine of the Trinity means that God is three persons and yet one in essence.  In this passage, all three persons of the Trinity are present and active.  God the Father speaks.  God the Son is baptized.  God the Holy Spirit descends on Jesus.  God is one, yet in three persons at the same time.  This is one of God's incomprehensible mysteries.

Why did Jesus who was with out sin come to John to be baptized?  What "righteousness" did he fulfill (see Isa 53:12)?

In the context of chapters 3 and 4, what do you think verse 17 meant to Jesus?  How does this set the stage for his ministry to begin?

Read Mark 1:9-11

If John's baptism was for repentance from sin, why was Jesus baptized?  While even the greatest prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekial) had to confess their sinfulness and need for repentance.  Jesus didn't need to admit sin-he was sinless.  Although Jesus didn't need forgiveness, he was baptized for the following reasons: (1) to begin his mission to bring the message of salvation to all people; (2) to show support for John's ministry; (3) to identify with our humanes and sin; (4) to give us an example to follow.  We know that John's baptism was different from Christian baptism in the church because Paul had John's followers baptized again (see Acts 19: 2-5).

Jesus grew up in Nazareth, where he had lived since he was a young boy.  Nazareth was a small town in Galilee located about halfway between the Sea of Galilee and the Mediterranean Sea.  The city was despised and avoided by many Jesus because it had a reputation for independence.  Nazareth was a crossroads for trade routes and had contact with other cultures.

The Spirit descended like a dove on Jesus, and the voice from heaven proclaimed the Father's approval of Jesus as his divine Son.  That Jesus is God's divine Son is the foundation for all we read about Jesus in the Gospels.  Here we see all three members of the Trinity together.

What do you think the dove and voice (vv. 10-11) meant to Jesus as he came out of the water?

Read Luke 3:21-22

Luke emphasizes Jesus human nature.  Jesus was born to humble parents, a birth unannounced except to shepherds and foreigners.  This baptism recorded here was the first public declaration of Jesus ministry.  Instead of going to Jerusalem and identifying with the established religious leaders, Jesus went to a river and identified himself with those who were repenting of sin.  When Jesus, at age 12, visited the temple, he understood his mission (2:49).  Eighteen years later, at his baptism, he began carrying it out.  And as Jesus prayed, God spoke, and confirmed his decision to act God was breaking into human history through Jesus the Christ.

The Holy Spirit's appearance in the form of a dove showed that God's plan for salvation was centered in Jesus.  Jesus was the perfect human who didn't need baptism for repentance, but he was baptized anyway on our behalf.

What means the most to you about your own baptism?

The Loving Church

Jesus is constantly moving toward those from whom others are moving away,  Hardly a promising toward those from whom others are moving away.  Hardly a promising strategy to revolutionize the world!  Love through preaching the rule of God; teaching the disciples and sometimes the multitudes; and healing and casting out demons.  A love so radical that it cut through every legalism of organized religion.  A love so grounded in the unmerited love of God for all people that some choose to crucify him while others chose to commit body and soul to him.  A love so bound to the truth of God's reign that every power and principality would come under its dominion for better or worse-including politicians, economists, military leaders and scientists.  Jesus' messiahship was not disinterested in the great centers of world power.  Quite the contrary.  In his brief time he became the Incarnation of a truth that forever judges all systems of power, a truth calling for human dignity and justice.

Whatever else the church is called to be, nothing is more central than to become a loving community of Jesus Christ.  In this lesson you will focus on love for individuals through the life of the church by using the concept of care as a basic expression of love.  I do this in the hope of clarifying at least one dimension of what it means to love, a much maligned yet indispensable word to the people of God in ministry

Care as the Essence of All Ministries

Caring is the glue of all Christian ministry, whether lay or clerical.  Where there is no caring, there is no Christian presence or action.  We would not be in the We would not be in the community of Christians had we not experienced care from others-a care that has made it possible for us to be caring toward others.  Care is God's gift through Jesus Christ and the whole biblical tradition to be shared, not a virtue to be acquired.  We love and care because we have first been loved and cared about by God through Jesus Christ and because that truth has been passed on to us by human hands and hearts within the Christian community.

1. Christian diaconate-the helping outreach of the Christian community to individuals in distress, such a those suffering from illness, poverty, or personal crisis.  This emphasizes the primary importance of unspectacular and unpretentious Christian concern for the unique individual in his or her unique needs.

2. Christian presence-the erection of Christian signs in the world, such as identification with suffering where other recourses of social change are not possible, as in a suppressive state.  An example would be voluntarily living among the poor and sharing their suffering where no other recourse is available.

3. Christian dialogue-the attempt to engage the world in a conversation with the Christian faith in order to function as a facilitator of communication between parties in complex ethical situations.

The great moments and memories of ministry have to do with caring-caring for others, helping others learn to express caring and being cared about.  Thomas Merton in The Seven Story Mountain as he remembers the people in a small French village during a time of his youth states it this way:

It is a great pleasure for me to remember such good and kind people.... I just remember their kindness and goodness to me, and their peacefulness and their utter simplicity.  They inspired real reverence, and I think, in a way, they were certainly saints.  And they were saints in that most effective and telling way: sanctified by leading ordinary lives in a completely supernatural manner, sanctified by obscurity, by unusual skills, by common tasks, by routine, but skills, tasks, routine which received a supernatural form from grace within, and from the habitual union of their souls with God in deep faith and charity.

Their farm, their family, and their Church were all that occupied these good souls; and their lives were full.

Leaders take note!  Practicing pastors take note!  Most laypersons already know this by experience as well as in an intellectual sense.  The faithful and ongoing caring offered by many laypersons from day to day is frequently an example from which pastors can learn.  Like everything else profound in life, caring has it ups and downs, its times of exhilaration and discouragement.  Care is often hard work, whether for individuals or for institutions.  But loving care is the name of it all.  If that doesn't turn you on, ministry will not touch you deeply.

Looking Inside Caring

On the cover of Milton Mayeroff's book On Caring there is a penetrating insight into the meaning of caring.  "in the sense in which a man can ever be said to be at home in the world, he is at home not through dominating... but through caring and being cared for."  He goes on to describe how life attains a sense of integration through caring, that is, of "being in place" or at home.  Certain studies have shown the grace and power of caring in that retired widows and widowers who have pets to care for are more likely to have better health since there is a relationship that calls for caring attention.

In a short seminary course, "The Practice of Parish Ministry," participants are asked to reflect on a profound or powerful experience of caring and being cared about that they would be willing to share with one another.  As best we are able in our reflection, we are to get in touch with what made this an unusually moving occasion, what we learn about ourselves, and what we learn about the meaning of caring and being cared about.  You should here lift up the recurring insights that have come from sharing, as well as an unforgettable experience of caring in your life.

Again and again participants mention thee undeserved nature of the gift of being cared about.  Often the impact is overpowering and unforgettable.  Sheer gift!  No paternalism.  No strings attached.  Not because we were deserving but because someone else chose to give us the incredible gift of loving care.  In the classroom sharing of these experiences, we often find it difficult to explain in words.  Somehow we are in touch with the power of God's love in Jesus Christ.  When that becomes incarnate in a relational gift, we experience the deepest reality of existence.  Our worth is reconfirmed in spite of all our hang-ups and our strategies to make ourselves acceptable as "somebody."

Another recurring theme in the class's sharing of caring experiences, closely related to the first, is our difficulty in receiving.  We are so programmed by our society into justifying ourselves and protecting ourselves that we can barely stand to receive a gift.  Or is it that a deep sense of unworthiness blocks our capacity to receive?

A third realization from the class on sharing was how much even a little care can mean to people who have run out of people to touch and be touched by.

The most exciting meaning in caring happens when the recipient is thereby moved to care about someone else as a consequence of being cared about.

Caring as an Expression of Love

Jesus is not recorded in the Revised Standard Version of the New Testament as having used the word "care" except in the good Samaritan story.  The most important ingredients of care are reflected in the care provided by the Samaritan and in his request to the innkeeper to do likewise at the Samaritan's expense.  Time.  Risk.  Patience.  Humility.  Courage.  Hope.  The reward for caring is of course the act of caring itself.  There is no guarantee that our care will bring about or in his or her attitude toward us.  Nor is the act of caring dependent, in a Christian sense, on our opinion of the one in need.

Victor Paul Furnish touches on this point and helps us see caring in relation to the New Testament love commanded in these statements:

The love Jesus commanded, be it directed toward the "neighbor" or toward the "enemy," is understood in just one way: as active goodwill toward the other, as my affirmation of him as a person who stands or falls quite apart from what I think of him, as my acknowledgment of our common humanity and our common dependence upon One whose judgment and mercy is over all, and as my commitment to serve him in need.

In Paul... (love) means caring for the other-not because of who he is or where he stands in relation to oneself, but just because he is, and because he is there.  It means identifying with him, with his needs, his hurts, his joys, his hopes, his lostness and loneliness.  It means being willing to risk taking the initiative in reconciliation, and being willing, finally, to give oneself to him in service and support for his humanity.  In Christ one is a recipient of such love and thereby becomes a participant in the new creation.  By love he is freed-to love; for love is the meaning of his obedience and his life.

Henri J. Nouwn underscores a biblical understanding of care: "The gospel is not a palliative to help us escape the pain of life, but the way to transform suffering into the birth pangs of something new... ministry  works through pain, taking care to be with people, to love them, to share their pain."

The sense of lostness in our generation-the boredom, the narcissism, the lack of direction-could be revolutionized through simple acts of caring about others.  We have it on good authority that those who lose their lives in care for others will find themselves anew in a most remarkable way.  Caring can rejuvenate or rekindlee our sense of self and a deeper sense of purpose in life.

The theme song of the people of God in ministry could well be Paul Scherer's memorable insight into Christ-centered love: "Love is a spendthrift, never keeps score, and is always in the red."  Take some time now to meditate on great moments of caring, both giving and receiving in your life.  Christians: People with "big feet" moving toward those in need.  Jesus Christ, friend of sinners, sufferers, and Samaritans.

Homework

1. In what ways do you as a church member give and receive care in your congregation?

2. How does your congregation express care to persons beyond the congregation?  How do you take seriously Jesus Christ, Friend of sinners, sufferers, and Samaritans?

3. What is done in your congregation to strengthen and deepen the ministry of lay pastoral care?

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