Sermon for The Baptism of Jesus (11 January 2009)
Genesis 1.1-5
Psalm 29
Mark 1.4-11
October 1983 found me down in Adelaide, in a state of confusion. I had gone down for some oral exams on the way to qualifying as a psychiatrist. Everyone expected me to sail through them. I flunked. Badly.
The day after my devastating failure, I looked up some old friends in Adelaide. I was talking to them in their living room, when I felt a physical sensation in my head and realised—God was calling me into the ministry. Now, all this is a little dangerous for a psychiatrically-trained person to admit, but it’s what happened. (It wasn’t the first time I’d felt a call to ministry; I’d been wrestling with it on and off for years. But this was a final confirmation.)
Today’s psalm, Psalm 29, reminded me of that time in my life, when God’s voice came to me over the chaos of my feelings:
The voice of the Lord is over the waters;
the God of glory thunders,
the Lord, over mighty waters.
The voice of the Lord is powerful;
the voice of the Lord is full of majesty.
For the people of ancient Israel, the waters were a place of chaos and danger. They wouldn’t venture out onto the sea unless they absolutely had to. Think of the story of Jonah, who went on a sea voyage across the Mediterranean. He must have been absolutely desperate to get away from God.
But fearful as the waters were, the psalm proclaims this: God’s voice is mightier than the waters, greater than the storms. God’s voice thunders. In Adelaide, I found that to be so. I went down heading for a career in psychiatry, and returned with a vocation to ministry.
God was asking me to hear a call. I didn’t hear a literal voice, but God was speaking to me. I heard God’s voice over the waters, over the storms of my life.
God’s voice speaks in today’s Gospel passage. God the Father says to Jesus,
You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.
Perhaps Jesus was feeling some chaos at that time. Who knows? It’s certainly not a sin to be confused and search for the way forward. I like to think that he was wondering what his path was, and he heard the voice of God over the waters.
When God spoke to me above the turmoil I was experiencing, God wasn’t just asking me to do something. He was telling me that I am something. He was telling me that I am his child, a son by adoption. I am beloved of God.
This call into ministry wasn’t really a call to do something, to keep the wheels of the congregation’s machinery going smoothly. It was a call to be someone, to be a child of God called to witness in a particular and public way.
I’d been given that call a long time before then. It came to me on 21 March, 1954—the day I was baptised. I didn’t know it at the time, I was less than eight months old. But God knew; that’s when I became part of the Christian family, and that’s when God’s call came to me.
God’s voice thunders above the waters. Sometimes that voice is also a still, small voice. God’s voice finds an echo inside of us, an echo that says, Here I am, God! You’ve found me. That echo has a name: it’s the Holy Spirit. God’s Spirit within us hears the voice of God, and recognises that it’s God speaking. God’s Spirit within us pleads with our spirit to hear what God is saying, and respond in faith and hope and love.
It interests me that Psalm 29 talks about the voice of God, and not the word of God. I’m interested because when we hear a voice, there are two things: the words spoken; and the breath going out.
Try saying something, anything, without breathing out. I don’t think you can.
When the voice of God thunders, or speaks in a still, small voice, the breath of God comes with the word of God. We get both.
And just to remind you: the word for ‘Spirit’ in the Bible is the same word as ‘breath’. In the Old Testament, ruach means both breath and spirit; in the New Testament, pneuma means both breath and spirit. In today’s readings, the Spirit-Breath of God is active at creation, sweeping over the waters. The Spirit-Breath of God comes upon Jesus at his baptism.
The Spirit of God is the living Breath of God, bringing the living Word of God to us. The Spirit is God’s Breath, bringing us the kiss of life. We need that life! The Spirit-Breath brings us to life, so we can hear the word of God. The voice of God is surely over the waters and storms that threaten to engulf us.
At the beginning of 2009, let’s realise that the world is in the midst of a storm. Barack Obama may be inaugurated as President of the USA in nine days’ time, but he’s not the Messiah. (And his mum would probably tell us he was a naughty boy!) The storm we face is seen in terrorist attacks, in economic gloom, in climate change, in an epidemic of depressive illness. And in emptying churches, at least in the western world.
Can the voice of God thunder over the mighty waters of our day? Can the voice of God sustain us in the struggles of life? Can we hear God say ‘You are my beloved child’ over the turmoil of our times?
A new year brings a new opportunity. We need to listen for the voice of God this year, and allow the Holy Spirit within us to show us how to respond. This is a daily discipline! We need to spend time daily with God, so our spirit can begin to recognise the Holy Spirit saying to us, That’s the voice of God!—Listen!
There’s also an opportunity to listen to God with others coming soon, on 21 February, at a Quiet Day here that we’ve arranged with Patrick Oliver, who is well-known to many of us. Why not take the opportunity? Come on 21 February and listen for the voice of God over the churning waters of our times.
