Jesus and the cycle of grace

First Sunday after Epiphany● Baptism of Jesus● January 7, 2024

Readings: Genesis 1:1-5 (NRSV) & Mark 1:4-12 (The Inclusive Bible)

Rev. Jeff Wells © 2024

You can view the full worship video recording at:

https://youtu.be/fr_hW7r_OPk?feature=shared

Today, we begin a new worship series, which we are calling, “Again and Again: The Cycle of Grace.” And we focus this Sunday on Jesus and the Cycle of Grace. Every year, on the first or second Sunday in January, we remember the baptism of Jesus and we are doing that today. Some people think of Jesus’ baptism as the beginning of his ministry or maybe of God’s public recognition of Jesus’ call to ministry. Or, in spite of what Christians often say about God being with us or God being born at Christmas, it’s also possible to think that his baptism was the true moment when God became incarnate in Jesus. So, this seems like a good day to consider how God’s grace actually showed up in the life of Jesus and, by extension, shows up in ours. 

Notice that the passage from Mark says that Jesus saw the Spirit descending on him and Jesus heard a voice from the heavens declare, “You are my Beloved, my Own.” The scripture implies that nobody else saw or heard these things. This experience was for Jesus alone. Of course, we have to wonder, then, how the story got passed down to the author of Mark. Did Jesus tell somebody about it? We can’t be sure. But what we can say for sure is the grace of God was with Jesus in that moment. The Spirit that descended on Jesus in such a powerful way was the same Spirit or “wind of God” that swept over the face of the waters when the Earth was being formed. It is the same Spirit or “breath of God” that infuses our own lives and the whole of the universe. What a beautiful metaphor for God’s omnipresent grace!

That moment of baptism in the grace-infused waters of the Jordan was a particularly important moment for Jesus. In this passage, we get just a snapshot of God’s grace working in Jesus’ life – helping him know that he was loved with a love that would never leave him. 

Yet, obviously, God loved Jesus long before he was baptized by John in the Jordan River. God loved Jesus from the moment he emerged from Mary’s womb. God loved and inspired and led Jesus before Jesus did anything. During our First Imaginings planning session for today’s worship, Sarah Capers commented, “As a parent, I can relate to that. When that new baby comes, he is yelling, screaming, and wrinkly, and all you can think is, ‘oh, my beautiful baby!’ You love him so much and he hasn’t done anything – he just IS. This is how God feels about us,” she said. God loves us because we ARE, because God has a relationship with us, not because of what we do or don’t do.

“God’s grace” is an all-embracing term which, I believe, encompasses all of God’s inspiring, inviting, guiding, beckoning, wooing, and offering of possibilities for creative transformation and abundant becoming. God doesn’t intervene in our lives only at particularly important moments or only when we pray or only when we desperately need help. God’s grace is active in us, with us, and for us in every single moment of our lives. And that’s true for every element and creature in the universe. Just as grace operates in our lives, it operated in Jesus’ life, too.

So, let’s consider some examples of how God’s grace was at work in Jesus’ life before and after the moment John lifted him up out of the river. We learn almost nothing about Jesus’ upbringing in the Gospel stories, but we know this child grew up under the constant loving grace of God. Jesus was human. And for all humans, our spirits, our personalities, our passions, our beliefs, our gifts, and our understandings are not formed by God alone. Since God accompanies us and everyone in every moment of becoming, God is surely the biggest influence on us, though that influence often goes unrecognized. However, many other people and experiences shape our growing, learning, and becoming. Jesus had to be nurtured and encouraged into the extraordinary teacher, spiritual leader, compassionate healer, and justice-seeker we know from the New Testament. He was the product of loving relationships with his parents, teachers, mentors, and friends, as well as with God. I have to give props to Mary and Joseph. They must have been extraordinary parents. And perhaps, their parents, too – Jesus’ grandparents were extraordinarily loving, grace-filled, and caring. 

Surely, there must have been other mentors along the way, too. Perhaps there were religious leaders and teachers he studied under in Nazareth or other parts of Galilee. From the passage about Jesus’ baptism in the Gospel of Mark, it seems that John the Baptist knew Jesus well and clearly recognized his giftedness and his intimate connection with God. It is quite possible that Jesus was, for a time, a disciple or student of John’s. And the Gospel of John indicates that Jesus recruited his first disciples from among the followers of John the Baptist.

Right after Jesus was baptized, he went into the wilderness for a significant period of time.  God can’t know the future or determine it, yet it is safe to assume that God recognized the great potential Jesus embodied and that God beckoned Jesus to go off alone to fast and pray and prepare himself for whatever lay ahead. According to Mark’s Gospel, soon after his wilderness experience, Jesus began preaching and gathering a group of disciples.

Like all of us (and all living beings), Jesus was, in large part, a product of his time, his social contexts, his relationships, and of the opportunities and possibilities offered to him by God in each moment.

We know, for example, that at one point, Jesus expressed a discriminatory attitude against non-Jews. In the Gospel of Matthew, we hear that Jesus was traveling near the city of Tyre, when a Syro-Phoenician woman confronted him and begged him to heal her daughter. Jesus told her, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” and “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Not to be put off, she replied, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Then Jesus answered, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” You see, even Jesus needed to be reminded that God’s love and grace are available to all. Surely, God helped Jesus in that moment to keep an open heart and learn an important lesson from this woman from a different culture and religion.

Jesus was obviously gifted, but he became such a powerful expression of God’s love, compassion, and desire for human thriving precisely because God’s grace was at work in him from beginning to end. What helped make Jesus so extraordinary was his openness to God’s grace; his ability to listen, to perceive God’s leading, God’s desire, God’s vision for our world. And he responded courageously and faithfully, even at great risk and ultimately giving his own life. Jesus’ life and teachings continue to inspire us and serve as a conduit for God’s grace in our lives.

From the moment Jesus was born, God was there with and in him, just as God is in every human being and we are in God. We, like Jesus, have the opportunity to open ourselves, to listen and respond to God’s offering of possibilities for goodness, truth, beauty, and love. God continually calls us to grow in trust, courage, and perseverance in our loving, our compassion, our healing, and our justice seeking.

In the cycle of grace, God doesn’t dictate our lives, but God offers us the best options or possibilities for the specific contexts we are in at each moment. We are free, then, to choose whether to accept, in part or in whole, the guidance and wooing God offers. Or, we can reject it for something less helpful, valuable, or loving. So the truth is we co-create our lives in dynamic, creative collaboration with God’s continual outpouring of grace. This grace is grounded in God’s unconditional love for us. 

The metaphor of a cycle of grace fits well here because our lives feel like repeated striving to heal, to overcome our addictions, to learn, grow, become more open, better at loving and caring over the course of our lives. Often, we seem to take two steps forward and one step back. That can feel discouraging – like we are not making enough progress, like we are not where we hoped we would at a given point in our lives. If you view your uneven and non-linear becoming as a series of disappointments or failures, I encourage you, instead,  to see your ongoing efforts at growth as part of this cycle of grace, where the Divine constantly offers us new possibilities and we continually have the opportunity to respond and participate. This holy cycle operates in all aspects of our lives. God’s grace meets us, again and again, in intimate and loving ways.

Just as Jesus was shaped by his time and place, so you and I are shaped and influenced by our environment and our context. Yet, those elements do not, by themselves, determine who we might become. Within certain limits, we are free creatures, deeply affected and influenced by God’s abiding love and grace. God constantly offers us ways to change our stories, to do something new, creative, self-giving, life-giving, and healing. Through all of your ups and downs, your steps forward and your steps back, God loves you no matter what and envelopes you in a never-ending cycle of grace.

Copyright (c) 2024 - Rev. Jeff Wells
All rights reserved.