Matthew 3:13-17
January 13, 2008
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
When we are traveling over the holidays and suddenly get a flat tire, we either call AAA or try to change the flat with the factory provided spare that is lovingly called, “a doughnut” ourselves. We may say, “Let it be so for now” until we get to grandma’s house.
Some of you are aware that Joy and I just came home from spending one week with our three grandchildren in Boston while their parents took a much-needed vacation to Nevis in the West Indies. As our oldest grandchild, Evi would say, “This week Yeh Yeh and Po Po are like our Daddy and Mommy!” It didn’t take very long until we realized that our child-rearing styles were different from our grandkids’ parents! But we know that it’s a privilege to be with our grandkids and for just one week, we needed to go along with what the house rules are. We said, “Let it be so for now.”
Having patience and allowing time to go by can often teach us something about ourselves that we may not know yet.
It’s like raising up children. The more we care about something, the more difficult it is to have patience with it. It doesn’t matter what age they are, we want our children to get it right and we want them to get it right now! We wonder how many degrees will they get it right to hold down just the right job. We wonder what it would take to have them want to live on their own. But the jury is still out on our children. Growing up is a time for mistakes and most of our children will need to make a lot of mistakes in order to become happy successful healthy adults. For the most part, we need not panic but let it be so for now.
There’s a sad story about a farmer who one spring worried that his corn planter had cracked all the seed and ruined the crop. Corn was that farmer’s main crop, and there was neither time nor money to replant. The farmer was under some additional stresses at that time, and his anxiety about the corn planter took him over the edge. He committed suicide. The tragedy of his decision was that two days later his corn crop sprouted. The corn planter had not malfunctioned. Had he held on for two more days he would have seen a reward for his effort, and he could have celebrated all summer long his lush green fields of corn.
Every New Year, we declare new resolutions and in just a few short days, we had not muster enough resolve or patience to stay with them. In some ways, patience may be especially difficult for we who call ourselves Christians. To use the metaphor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., we have been to the mountaintop and we have seen the Promised Land. As Christians, we have seen the baby Jesus while shepherds watched, angels sing, and wise men from the east brought treasures of gold, myrrh, and frankincense.
We have experienced the love of Christ and we want that love to dwell in every nock and cranny of the world. We want our families to be filled with real love, and we want that for other families as well. We want everyone to have enough food. I want our visitor Gregory from Zimbabwe to have legal status so that he can receive the medical care he needs. We want a just society for everyone and peace and cooperation in the world.
We want our church to reach its glory, to be filled to capacity with faith-filled, love-filled people; a super force for good in our city and our world. We want God to lead a Chinese-speaking pastor who would come to FCBC to share in our vision for ministry and to work cooperatively with all the sisters and brothers here. But that is not the way things are. The church in any age has never realized its full potential, nor have any individuals, nor families, nor anything else. We learn to resign to the reality that we should just let things be the way they are for now.
It’s like my golf game. I might take a hundred strokes altogether, ninety-seven of which are mediocre at best, but three might feel and look fantastic, and when I hit one of those shots I think to myself, that is how well I can play golf. Those three shots represent my potential golf game. Theoretically, if I can strike the ball well three times I ought to be able to do it every time. But I never do. I am still waiting for my golf game to reach its potential.
Messiah Coming
For a long time, John the Baptist had been saying that the Messiah was coming soon. In fact, it’s been a long time since a prophet even proclaimed the Word of the Lord in Israel. Since the prophet Ezra, 400 years have gone by that people have sat in darkness before John the Baptist came along.
John said there would be a man who would be so good that he would not even be worthy to carry his sandals. The one who was coming would not baptize with water, but with the Holy Spirit and fire!
One day Jesus came to where John is preaching and perhaps John thought then that the time of complete justice and mercy and peace for the world had finally arrived. But instead of doing what might be world-changing-Messiah-like things, Jesus humbly approaches John and asks to be baptized as John might baptize anyone else. John seems a bit bewildered. “I need to be baptized by you,” John says. But Jesus insists upon his own baptism with the words, “Let it be so for now.”
If John was disappointed with the baptism of Jesus, we might understand. But it’s been two thousand years the Christian church has longed for and prayed for the Realm of God to come to earth as it is in heaven. It’s the 2008th year of the Lord!
Far from heaven on earth it would seem sometimes and in some places to be more like hell than heaven. From Baghdad to Darfur, from Gaza to Pakistan, from New York to all the homicides in San Francisco, there is incessant weeping and gnashing of teeth. We are tired of waiting for our prayers to be answered. We have lost our patience for the sins of the world to be taken away. We want the world to be baptized with the Holy Spirit and fire, now!
We don’t want to wait for peace; we want peace now! We don’t want to wait for good health care for everyone; we want it now! We don’t want to wait for economic justice; we want it now! We don’t want to wait for the end of human trafficking; we want it to end now! We don’t want to wait for the end of social injustice of any kind. We don’t want to wait for the end of human suffering and misery of any kind. We have no more patience. What kind of Christian would want to wait for the end of sin of suffering? Of course, we want all good things now.
What Did Jesus Want
I know what we want but I wondered what Jesus wanted when he approached John at the edge of the Jordan River and asked to be baptized. Unlike any of us, Jesus was perfect, unblemished and without sin. He did not need to be baptized like how we need to be baptized. He had no sins to be washed away. He knew God from the very beginning because he was with God and God was with him. But Jesus nevertheless came to John to be baptized and even when John questioned Jesus’ need to do so, Jesus said, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Jesus appeared to have the virtue of patience that we seem to lack. He was able to wait until the right time according to his Father’s plan.
If we want the horrors of life to end now, how much more so must Jesus have wanted that? And yet somehow he had patience with it. For righteousness to be fulfilled it will eventually come in God’s time so let it be so for now.
Jesus had patience not to force his will upon the world. While love is the highest value of all, there is still the freedom not to love for love to truly exist. Love must be chosen. While we want war and violence to end, there is still the freedom to fight for the end of war to happen. Peace must be chosen. While we want everyone in the world to have faith in God, there is still the freedom to choose not to believe for faith to be truly authentic faith. If hope is proven, it is not hope anymore.
As difficult as it may be, what have we but to try and adopt the wisdom of Jesus. We must have the patience to wait for that day when God will finally have his day! When we get angry, frustrated, and tired of waiting, we may need to say the words as Jesus did, “let it be so for now” because we have the faith that someday all violence and suffering will end.
Like a Dove
After hearing Jesus’ request, John baptized Jesus just like the way he was baptizing the others. But when Jesus came up from the water, the heavens suddenly opened up and Jesus saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him.
We get this very lovely, very pastoral image of blue sky, blue water and a frothy, fluttery Spirit floating down to rest on Jesus’ head, as he rises from the river. It’s our perfect image of a perfect baptism.
But have you ever thought about how a dove flies? It’s basically a pigeon and pigeons swoop, dive and they don’t flutter down lightly. They zoom like a hawk. We can say that Jesus was more like the Spirit’s prey!
Baptism is an act in which the Spirit targets us. We are loved by God though no act of our own. It is God’s nature to love. It is our nature to be sought, over and over again.
After Jesus rises up from the water, he will enter the wilderness where he would face the temptation to believe that he is not a beloved child of God. And as he waited in the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights, he patiently learned that he is indeed the beloved and the Son of God. What was done in the Jordan River for that moment enabled Jesus to fulfill the righteousness that his Father planned for him.
We sure want to see good things happen in the world right now. But ultimately, it is up to God and on his time that we may witness the completion of the Realm of God on earth as it is already in heaven.
As we think about celebrating the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. next week, I am reminded of his 1961 conviction. Dr. King said, “I’m convinced that we shall overcome because the arc of the universe is long but it bends toward justice.” We might want to see justice happen now. We might want to see the realm of God be established for us to see in our lifetimes. But what we do know is that at the end, God reigns. Justice and goodness will prevail.
On Its Way
As difficult as it might seem for us to accept, what we have is to try to adopt the wisdom of Jesus. If Jesus is able to patiently wait for God’s plan to unfold for him and that it was okay to “let it be so for now,” then it should be okay for us too. We know that when we might act too fast and quickly, it can bring about its own violence and suffering. While things seem to be going so slowly, we also know that slow progress is lasting progress. Always God knows why God is waiting.
Jesus did not say let it be so forever. The gospel insists there is a forward moving process in the universe because God is actively involved. We do not always understand the process. We may not always like it, but remembering that all is still unfinished might help us to have confidence and persevere knowing the realm of God is not here yet but on its way.
Let it be so for now.
Let us prayer.
God of the universe and God of San Francisco Chinatown, grant us the wisdom to be patient with you during these days of faithfully waiting and living out our faith in truth and peace. Show us not to sit on our hands but to unfold our hands in service to you. Just as Jesus listened to your words and followed your plans, teach us to do no less but to become sons and daughters of your kingdom. We pray in Christ’s name. Amen.