The following has been edited from a brief sermon preached in September and October 2006 at Second Baptist Church in Moscow, Russia, and at Khimki Baptist Church, just outside the city of Moscow. I am grateful to Pastors Gennady and Leonid for their courtesy in inviting me to speak and to the able interpreters who made it possible for the people in the pews to understand.
Since I am teaching a class on baptism at the seminary, perhaps it is fitting that I say something about baptism this morning. The baptism I am talking about is the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist in the Jordan River. In Matthew chapter 3 we read this:
Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, ââ¬ÅI need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?ââ¬Â But Jesus answered him, ââ¬ÅLet it be so for now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.ââ¬Â Then he consented. And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenlly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, ââ¬ÅThis is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.ââ¬Â
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Where Did That Baby Go?
Luke 2:41-52; Colossians 3:12-17
Sermon for Sunday, December 31, 2006, First Baptist Church, Midland, MI by Joseph I. Mortensen
Thereââ¬â¢s hardly a parent alive who hasnââ¬â¢t asked, ââ¬ÅWhere did my cute little baby go?ââ¬Â Especially as that child hits adolescence and begins to assert a little independence. And bewildered, clueless parents long for days now long past.
We, too, may well ask whatever happened to Baby Jesus? The Gospels donââ¬â¢t give us much of a chance to bask in the warm glow of Jesusââ¬â¢ birth and linger over and savor its mystery and magnificence.
In fact, two of our Gospels — Mark and John — havenââ¬â¢t the slightest interest in Jesusââ¬â¢ birth and childhood. They say nothing about his debut at Bethlehem or his growing up years.
Matthew wrote about wise men from the east but seems not to have known of angels and shepherds or innkeeper or manger; in less than a dozen verses he covers the escape to Egypt and the return to Nazareth after King Herodââ¬â¢s death. Matthew then skips ahead 30 years or so to the preaching of John the Baptist and to Jesus going mano a mano with Satan out in the wilderness.
Luke alone favors us with snapshots of Jesusââ¬â¢ early life. The Gospel author either does not know or does not care about a star seen from afar and the men of mystery who followed it and brought gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Nor do Herodââ¬â¢s paranoid brutality and terrorism figure in Lukeââ¬â¢s account. But what Luke does tell us about the infancy and childhood of Jesus is worth our careful attention, as I hope to demonstrate.
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My daughter called the other day to ask if I still want the items listed on my Amazon wish list. I checked, only to discover that I had already bought all four books listed there.
A very generous wife and equally kind children plead that I offer them my Christmas gift wants, something at my age harder and harder to do. I have to look for things to want. I have a lot of stuff I seldom use but sincerely intend to read or play or put to work — soon. New computer? I have two reliable Macs, along with a room full of printers, external drives, wireless gadget, fax, and digital camera dock, all of them tied together by a hopelessly twisted mass of cables. Software? More than one mortal can ever fully explore. Nice watch? I seldom wear one since I retired thirteen and a half years ago. Gadgets? I have plenty. Tools? Well provisioned — if only I knew where they all are. Books? My shelves runneth over. 1955 Ford Thunderbird? Or 2007 Mazda Miata convertible? Or a reasonably-priced, hassle-free, comfortable trip by air? (I haven’t completely stopped dreaming.) In truth the time is at hand to unquire things, not to acquire more.
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A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.– Aristotle
The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful. — Edward Gibbon, The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chapter 2 (paraphrasing Seneca the Younger)
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Suzdal, a small town (13,000 people) about 200 kilometers east of Moscow, has existed for at least a thousand years. Erstwhile residents include Ivan the Terrible, banished wives and children of Tsars and other rulers inconvenienced by the presence of lawfully-wedded spouses and their offspring, political and religious dissidents from both Imperial and Communist eras, and German prisoners from World War II (“The Great Patriotic War” for Russians and “World War eye-eye” for Lawrence Welk). Suzdal provided one of hundreds of Gulags run by the Soviets, a location Ivan Denisovitch might have preferred to the one he endured.
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Today in the class I’ve been teaching on the Theology of Baptism at Moscow Theological Seminary we went over a quiz I gave at the end of last week. I had looked over the students’ efforts beforehand. I saw that all but three or four students (out of 21) had answered a group of three true-false statements incorrectly.
In the lively discussion which ensued it finally dawned on me that the problem stemmed from me and from the problem of translating my intention into understandable Russian. The students, for the most part, knew the correct answer but were confused by the way the question was put in Russian (double negatives and all that). I’m not quite the horrible teacher I thought, based on this quiz.
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Smoking has become less and less socially acceptable in the U.S. Fewer and fewer public places allow it. Many restaurants are now completely non-smoking. Those who persist in the habit are increasingly made to feel like pariahs, forced into special smoking areas, usually outside and out of sight.
Russians, on the contrary, pay no attention to tobacco’s health risks. If there is culture shock on coming to Moscow, it presents itself in the pervasive use of nicotine. Not everybody smokes, but it seems like they do. Young and old and everyone in between are all inhaling carbon monoxide and cancer-causing compounds and doing their bit to further degrade air quality in the city.
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The young woman sitting near me on the subway has a pretty face, milk-white skin, reddish hair pulled back neatly. She is well-groomed and her clothing neat. I notice these things because they contrast so with the rest of her.
She appeared a minute ago when she wheeled her way on to the subway car, a great wonder and puzzlement when you know how unfriendly the Moscow transport system is to those with disabilites — everywhere a stairway or an escalator. “Barrier free” does not translate into Russian. How on earth did she manage to get here in a wheelchair? Do kind folks help her maneuver the impossible maze of steps and long, long escalators? How else would she get here?
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Today (Saturday) I have no class to teach. Son-in-law John and I arrange to meet for late breakfast-early lunch. We walk down Tverskaya St. — not a good route if you want to converse — six lanes full of cars racing at top speed (practically speaking Moscow has no speed limits), swerving in and out to achieve advantage, braking with a squeal — to the Starlite Diner. It’s John’s favorite and features American diner-style food.
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Long association with dear friends put me in a great southern city (rhymes with “Mylanta”) last weekend to officiate at the wedding of their daughter. This young woman had long dreamed that, if and when the time came for her to marry, I would be there to preside. The time came. She asked. I gladly obliged.
So off I went, arriving well ahead of time in a part of the city full of huge, gracious, opulent dwellings with shopping opportunities to match. The venue for the wedding, a 4000-member church of the Methodist franchise, which I found after following a less than direct route, is not out of place in its surroundings.
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