"God's Christmas Club"
Given on Sunday, January 7, 2007 at St. Stephen’s Church, Harrisburg, Illinois; and at St James’ Memorial Church, Marion, Illinois (by Mr. Les Boyer, Licensed Lay Worship Leader)
I had occasion to be in a local bank a couple of months ago, and saw a sign that announced the ending of the “Christmas Club” for 2006….
At first, I couldn’t believe it…in this age of credit cards (how many offers per week do you get?), and of “buy-now-and-worry-later”, it struck me very oddly that a bank would continue to offer a Christmas Club to its customers, so they could open a plan, deposit money into the fund weekly, and then withdraw the entire amount as Christmastime approaches, so as to buy gifts for others.
What a “blast from the past” (as we used to say)…a Christmas Club, alive and well in 2006….
A Christmas Club is an anachronism: a throwback to an age in which very, very few things were purchased on credit (if your family was anything like mine). The old attitude was that sacrifice and saving was necessary in order to have the things that one needed, or, in the case of Christmas Clubs, to buy gifts to give away to others….one reserved money and showed the discipline that was needed to keep up with the regular deposits of money throughout the year.
I suspect that most Christmas Clubs have given way to the power and the appeal of Mastercard and Visa…..we live, after all, in an age of instant gratification, of commercials that bombard us, telling us we have to “have it all, and have it now!”
But our Gospel reading for today, recounting Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist in the River Jordan, strikes me as an installment in “God’s Christmas Club”….God, by sending Jesus Christ to be born of the Virgin Mary, something we have just finished celebrating, has opened His own “Christmas Club”…In Jesus Christ, God invests heavily in this world, creating an account into which He will pour heavenly treasure in Jesus Christ.
Today’s retelling of Jesus’ baptism is another major deposit into this treasury, and we are beneficiaries of God’s graciousness and generosity.
God will continue to make contributions to this deposit of faith in Jesus’ teaching, His passion, death, resurrection and ascension. Slowly, the deposit of faith grows until it reaches maturity in Jesus’ resurrection, and in the giving of the Holy Spirit to the Church at Pentecost.
But we are getting ahead of our story for today, Jesus’ baptism….
As we begin, we should remind ourselves that John’s baptism was a “baptism of repentance” for sin. Luke tells us that the crowds wondered if John might be the “Christ”, God’s anointed one (for that’s what the title “Christ” means). John, in reply, points beyond himself to the “one who is more powerful than I”, who is coming to baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire.
But Luke omits the conversation between John and Jesus (which Matthew records for us – chapter three, verses 13 and 14), as John says to Jesus, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” By this conversation, John acknowledges Jesus’ righteousness. John knew that Jesus had no sin for which to repent in the waters of baptism. John’s realization of Jesus’ sinlessness should deepen our appreciation for the self-sacrifice that Jesus makes.
Then, as Jesus was praying, Luke tells us that the heavens were opened up, and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove, and a voice from heaven was heard, saying, “You are my Son, whom I love, with you I am well pleased.”
In Jesus’ baptism, with the descent of the Holy Spirit upon Him, and the voice of God the Father sounding from heaven, we confirm the full presence of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, fully present at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry.
In essence, to return to our image of the Christmas Club, God has made a major contribution to the gift fund that will one day be ours in Christ….
Jesus’ baptism at the hands of John the Baptist, a baptism of the sinless one, is the free gift of God to us.
Jesus’ birth, by which He entered our humanity fully, began the process, opening the account from which all the benefits of God’s grace will someday flow.
Jesus’ baptism, freely undertaken to set the example for us, mirrors Jesus’ coming death, freely undertaken to set us free from the bondage of sin and death.
Jesus’ resurrection, by which He conquered the powers of evil and death, is the maturation of God’s gift-giving plan.
The coming of the Holy Spirit, given to the Church at Pentecost, is God’s withdrawal of the riches that He has been accumulating in Jesus Christ, given to us as His free gift, to enable us to pass along the riches we have received through Christ.
What implications might Jesus’ baptism have for us?........
As I think about an answer to that question, my mind returns to the image of the Christmas Club, versus the “age of plastic money” in which we live…
God surely has the power to save the world, to conquer sin, and to remove all the powers of evil simply by the speaking of a word…after all, that’s the way the world was created (remember Genesis, chapter one, in which God speaks a word and things come to be), by the simple speaking of a word.
But God chose not to redeem the world in that way….Neither did God, when Jesus was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane, order 12 legions of angels to defend Jesus from those who came to seize him. Surely, God could have done it that way…God, instead, chose to enter human affairs, and to establish a mechanism whereby His divine grace could be poured out, step-by-step, in the life and work of Jesus Christ. Like a Christmas Club, God works patiently, investing more and more of Himself in our world, in order to redeem our world.
In response, we must “take up our cross” to follow Jesus, learning to become more and more like Him as we follow Him into the waters of baptism….Like establishing an account into which God can pour His grace, our own baptism and coming to faith in Jesus Christ takes shape as we receive God’s grace, and by receiving God’s grace, are changed and made into a more worthy receptacle for further grace.
None of this, virtually, happens overnight…None of it can happen with the swiping of a divine credit card.
Instead, the process is slow, methodical, patient. The process guarantees results that cannot be fully appreciated if the process is full of shortcuts and cheap imitations of a deep and personal relationship with God in Christ.
So, as we begin a New Year, and still have our New Year’s resolutions firmly in mind, perhaps it would be good for us to take stock of where we have been in our walk with the Lord….
- We should begin by asking if we have established an account with the Lord…that happens in baptism, and in the establishment of a personal relationship with Christ (after all, God can’t work with us if we haven’t agreed to be the receiver of His grace).
- The next question has to do with our openness to receiving God’s gifts: do we expect them to be a part of our lives, or do we shut ourselves off from the possibility that God can do great things for us and through us?
- Finally, is there any visible proof in our lives that God’s grace has been poured into our hearts?
AMEN.
