Pastor Christa von Zychlin

Our Savior’s Ev. Lutheran Church

Hartland, WI  53029

Jan. 11, 2004

First Sunday after Epiphany C

Luke 3: 21-22

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Named & Claimed

Water pours over Jesus.  He is baptized.  He prays.  And the heavens open and the Holy Spirit comes down, with a gentle weight, like a dove, and a voice speaks from heaven:

“You are my Son, the Beloved

With you I am well pleased.”

As you know there are 4 gospels in the Bible:

Only 2 of them , Matthew & Luke mention Jesus birth.

Those two also mention that Jesus was born of a virgin, Mary.  That’s important.

Only one of those two, Luke, mentions the shepherds, the hotel that was full, the manger.

Only Matthew mentions the wise men and the gifts.

Important stuff, all of that to be sure, but two whole gospels, Mark & John were written without any of that stuff included.  Nothing about the actual physical birth of Jesus.

One of the things that all 4 gospels do include, because you cannot have a gospel without it,  is what we are celebrating today:  the baptism of Jesus. 

In Matthew

 the voice says, “This is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased”… as if the crowds surrounding Jesus needed reassuring about who Jesus is…

 But in the Gospel of Luke, which is our focus Gospel for most of the Year 2004,

The voice from heaven talks straight to Jesus:

“YOU are my beloved son, with you I am well pleased.”

 I never hear this passage without remembering the busy  January when our youngest child, Eric, was four years old,

 The first couple of weeks of January are always nuts in a pastor’s household.  Without sounding too sorry for ourselves I have to tell you that every year it’s a heckofa schedule to come back to, after Christmas, what with church executive committee, budget preparations, and all the stuff that got piled up before  Christmas where we say, “Oh, we’ll take a look at that AFTER Christmas”

 Well I’ll never forget the year our 4 year old had chosen this particular first week in January, while Wayne & I were juggling schedules like mad, to be desperately afraid of being left alone.  No, he wasn’t going to watch a nice video downstairs while I wrote some rather overdue letters and Christmas thank you notes… “I don’t want to be left alone, Mommy, I want you with me”

No, he wasn’t going to look at his new computer story book while Daddy looked over the Christian Service and Mission outreach reports… “I want you to stay with me, Daddy, and look at the book with me.”

No, he wasn’t going to even go to the bathroom alone, for crying out loud.

“I don’t want to go in there by myself.”

 So, being the good Christian mother that I try to be, I sat down and talked to him about being a child of God. “Eric, God is always with you”  I said.  He’s the one who created you, and loves you very much.

 “Well, how do you know that, who told you?”

 “Well,”

The Bible tells us that… (then I got a sudden inspiration of the Holy Spirit and I said, ) “ AND the Pastor who baptized you… the pastor who baptized you said, ‘Eric Zebedee, you are the child of God’  Did you know that you are a child of God?  That’s why He wants to take care of you & be with you, because you’renot just our son, you’re also  God’s son, Eric”.

 ….

 And do you know what my son, this child of two pastors, this missionary kid, this kid with 15 Bibles in his home, picture Bibles, story bibles, King James & New Revised Standard & Good News Bibles, Bible videos of Moses, Daniel, the Christmas story and the parables of Jesus, do you know what this child said to me when I told him that he was a son of God?

 “I AM?” He said  and a big smile came across is face.  As if he’d never heard it before.  I am??

 And do you know what he told his Daddy, the pastor some hours later when his Daddy came home with a big pile of minutes & reports & mission goals that he was busily sorting through, even while he was walking in the door, Eric said, “Daddy, did you know that I was God’s son?”

 Like he’d never heard it before.

 Today we celebrate the baptism of Jesus, and the most amazing thing to me is that in the Gospel of Luke it’s almost as if… as if Jesus, this ever so human man Jesus, needed to hear that voice to remind him of his name and his claim  “You are my beloved son!”  And if Jesus himself, growing up in a loving Godly home needed that reminder, that voice and the sign & weight of the dove… than how much more do we, people of this godless age, need reminders, voices and signs of our rightful place as sons and daughters of the Most High.

 So, at this, the beginning of a new year, when some of us are still in a resolution making mode.

I urge you to claim the name which has been given to you as a son or daughter of the most high…

And I can think of 3 specific was for you to do so:

 1) Bible go home today and underline Isaiah 43:1-7 in your Bibles.  For some of you this may be a radical new thing if you haven’t already done so before, to take the scriptures home with you every week and lay claim to them personally with your own Bible.

2) Join the small group Old Testament challenge coming up.  It’s only for 9 weeks.  We’ll be looking at the exact same words that Jesus looked at & studied and knew by heart from the Old Testament,

It may surprise you, but you will hear the words spoken in the Old Testament which tell you that you are God’s beloved child… And if you are confident that you have already heard these words spoken to you, than for heaven’s sake, join such a group anyway so that you can say it to others who haven’t heard it yet and there are so many who haven’t even among us: You are God’s beloved child.

 3) claim your name as a son or daughter of God by resolving that when you go through a difficult time this year, you will claim from this church and your fellow sons & daughters of God, the time and the words and the prayers that you need.

 Some people have trouble with the fact that this church is growing,  that there are new people. That you don’t know,  that it’s beginning to get too easy to get lost in the crowd.    This is why we need people who will say, with all the insistence of a 4 year old:  “but I don’t want to be alone… I want someone to come with me.”

 This is why it’s so important for you to be persistent in letting each other know, (not the whole church but a small group within this church) when you are hospitalized, for example, or when there’s a difficult decision you need to  make, or when your mom or dad is in the hospital  or when you have a fear that is overshadowing you.

So that a pastor or a parish nurse, or better yet, I say better yet because we are to be priests for one another,,, that a fellow small group member can come speak the words that each of us needs to hear:  “You are a child of God, created for a purpose, and loved by God.”

 I’ll never forget when I was in the hospital with my first child in Ohio.  I had had a traumatic delivery but a healthy baby

And visitors upon visitors came to see us… I was the first pastor ever in the whole synod conference to give birth…

And our parishioners came

And our family came

And our pastor colleagues came… everybody jolly and smiling

 For the 5 days of my recovery there was a steady stream

Of genuine good wishes and love

 But there was still a terrible, unexplainable fear in my heart

From the trauma of the birth, maybe

And even more, the trauma of new motherhood

 And then a guy that we all made fun of, to tell you the truth,

A Pentecostal lay preacher in Shelby Ohio, with a thin yellow face & brown polyester stretch pants… his name was Joe

 This man came and aside, “Sister, I’d like to pray with you.”  And then he put his hand on my new born baby’s head

And he claimed me and this new born child, me as a daughter and him as a son,  of God.

 And it was exactly what I need to hear.

Exactly what I needed to know.

 Well, in today’s Gospel story from Luke, Jesus, the Son of Man… gets to hear exactly what he needs to hear, he is named and claimed as the son of God, with whom God is pleased.

 And then

The Holy Spirit,

With the gentle weight of a dove

Enflames Jesus

 And sends him on for everything that God has planned for him to do,

For us & our salvation.

 So too may the Holy Spirit enflame us this year,

As individuals, as Our Savior’s Lutheran Church, and as a whole generation of believers

So we can do

What needs to be done

To claim the name which inflames our lives

And changes the world for the healing of nations, to the Glory of  God. Our Father.   AMEN.

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