You Are Mine

7th January, 2010 - Posted by nwilsonadmin - No Comments

YOU ARE MINE

Sermon for January 10, 2010

The Baptism of Jesus

Rev. Nancy Wilson

Readings:

Isaiah 43: 1-7

Psalm 29

Acts 8: 14-17

Luke 3: 15 -17, 21-22

In Baptism, we claim and are claimed. “You are mine,” God says to us, and we answer, “I am yours! You are mine!” And, as a community, we belong to God and each other, all at the same time. . .

The eighth chapter of Acts is a jewel:  filled with sorcerers and eunuchs, and great stories of the early church that are not hard to “queer.” In the lectionary passage from Acts, the apostles hear about a group in Samaria that have somehow or another accepted “the word of God,” but have not had the special, energizing, enveloping power of the Holy Spirit breathed upon them. Perhaps they are a remnant from Jesus’ visit with the woman at the well and her community, we will never know.  But the apostles are sent to them, and lay hands on them, and “zap!” the heavens open, and they are fully empowered followers of Jesus.

I felt like I was one of those Samaritan Christians. I had been so attracted all my life to Jesus, and to something more, that my “frozen chosen,” suburban Protestant church could not ignite. Coming out as a lesbian, finding MCC the same month I started seminary, I felt the hands of the apostles on me, as my life was ignited by the Holy Spirit, in October of 1972. The radically inclusive message of MCC, the “DNA of Love,” so captured my heart, my soul, my spiritual imagination, that I risked it all to follow Jesus in the context of queer MCC. . .

You are mine. God’s amazing synchronicity and quirky humor were all mixed up in those early days of MCC and a first wave of gay liberation. I see that same power at work every day, today.

I often feel that what we call “Second Isaiah” was written just for us too.

I can’t tell you how many times I have preached on Isaiah 43, which tells of a God, who “created and formed us. . .”  What good news it is to embrace that we are, indeed, “fearfully and wonderfully made,” and that who we are, including our physicality, our humanity, our sexuality, our spirituality, is part of the amazing work of the Designer of the Universe.

Isaiah boldly proclaims God’s message to us, “Fear not for I have redeemed you: I have called (summoned) you by name, you are mine.”

I know that God called me, and that God is still calling MCC, and people into the life and ministry of MCC. I see it every week in my home church, newcomers, people who fall in love with God in a new way because of the authentic community they find.

Fear is the demon that has stalked our communities for centuries, and still stalks us today. How many young people, kids in their teens, even younger, are scared to death because they are coming to know they are queer? Or that their best friend is queer? How many people in the world live in places like Uganda, where the forces of right wing fundamentalism in the US are teamed up with money and politics and are scapegoating lgbt people, their families and friends?

Isaiah 43 tells fear to take a hike, pulls its icy cold fingers off God’s people, saying, “I am here! I am with you! There is nothing you cannot face with my Presence, support, love and resources!”

Over and over in Isaiah 43, God’s passionate love for God’s people is poured out, verse after verse. If you ever doubt it, read all of Isaiah 43: “Do not be afraid (again!), for I am with you; I will bring your children from the east and gather you from the west!”

Today, we need to lean into, and believe that promise. God is gathering our people, and our children, our next generations.

God needs people of faith, who will push through the fear to change lives, to change the world.  God made us for God’s glory, for God’s own purposes, we are here by design! This is good news! Today, the number of people and communities who need the fear-disrupting, liberating message of God’s unconditional love, of Jesus’ grace and power to redeem, are so much greater than who we presently are.

Our next decade has to focus on capacity-building – How do replicate the best of who we are so we can “tear down walls and build up hope?” How do we not hoard our message, keeping small and manageable?

Jesus, at his baptism, humbled himself, and came forward, like everyone else, to receive the Holy Spirit, to be fired up with the gospel. In that moment, he heard the same voice Isaiah had heard, hundreds of years before: “You are mine, my Child, whom I love; with you I am well pleased!”

Jesus is baptized into ministry, into his amazing and at times, terrifying vocation of healing, rebuking and challenging religious hypocrites, and offering good news to the poor. He lived “as one who was glad to die  . . .with eternity in view.” May we be baptized, again, and again, into that life, into that kind of commitment.

And, may we face this new decade convinced that we are God’s beloved, friends of God, followers of Jesus into a perilous time, a time that needs us, even more than in 1968, or 1972, or even 2009.

Blessings. Amen.