Image: Chinese porcelain, Qing dynasty, early 18th century
January 12, 2025: Baptism of our Lord C
Isaiah 43:1-9; Luke 3:21-22
This verse has a new resonance for me this week: “When you walk through the fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.” Like many of you, I’ve been watching in horror as Los Angeles burns. Fueled by an unusually dry winter coupled with hurricane-force winds, the fires have burned through tens of thousands of acres and buildings, killing who knows how many people and leaving thousands homeless. Some of you who have experienced destruction from a natural disaster may be able to empathize in ways that many of us cannot.
I pray that we may never experience a disaster of such proportion. But disaster has been part of human civilization from the beginning. Crop failure, disease, fire, flood, storm, foreign conquest—these tragedies have been imprinted on the human psyche so deeply, they inform the very narrative of holy scripture.
After all, the fall of Adam and Eve portends all manner of disaster: threats from wildlife, famine, pain and death in childbirth, and yes ladies, patriarchy. By the time Genesis 6 rolls around, the world is submerged by a flood. Abraham and Sarah flee to Egypt during a famine. Jacob and his family do the same. The Israelites are enslaved by their Egyptian hosts. And the military threats are always present. Israel faced destruction at the hands of the Edomites, Midianites, Egyptians, Philistines, Assyrians, Babylonians, and Seleucid Greeks, not to mention themselves, just to name a few.
And disaster lurks in the background of this text from Isaiah. Isaiah 43 was likely written as part of what scholars call “Second Isaiah”. This section, from chapters 40-55, is likely written during the exile in Babylon. Around 586 BC, Jerusalem had been destroyed by the Babylonian armies, including Solomon’s Temple. King Zedekiah, along with many prominent members of Jerusalem’s society, had been deported to Babylon where the Babylonian king could keep a close eye on them. The captives had lost their homes, their livelihoods, their status. Some had probably lost family members in the fighting. Some, by the time of the prophet’s words, may have died. And Jerusalem was little more than a heap of rubble. Psalm 137 echoes this lament clearly: “How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?”
The prophet responds: life has indeed been hard. Israel has suffered. But God is faithful and deeply cares for God’s people. This care of God is not that of an absent, benevolent heavenly grandpa who lives in the sky. Rather, God calls God’s people by name. God assures them that He will guide them through any and every disaster. God calls them precious and honored. God loves them.
Many of the exiles surely were asking how they could be sure. How could they know that God loved them if they were in such a condition in the first place? Couldn’t God have saved them from going into exile? And maybe we might ask something similar whenever we go through our own disasters and tragedies. Couldn’t God have prevented them from happening?
Sometimes our expectations of God get a bit out of whack when we think about what the Christian life ought to be like. We shouldn’t expect God to make our lives trouble-free. This is particularly true when we reap what we sow, but it’s also true when we suffer for no apparent reason at all. Often bad things happen because of our own bad choices, but just as often they happen by no fault of our own. Our fallen world—hostile to God and God’s purposes—is profoundly amoral. Sometimes bad things just happen.
And if the story were to end here, how could there be any hope for anyone? But it doesn’t end here. Through changing events, the exiles saw the power of God at work all around them. Babylon was conquered by Persia, whose king Cyrus permitted the exiles to return home. A new temple was begun. A new Jerusalem was planned.
And for us Christians, we know God is with us despite the chaos of current events. We know God is with us because of Jesus Christ. We commemorate his baptism today, but it was far more than simply going under the waters of the Jordan by John’s hand. It was the radical identification of the Son of God with the humanity he had come to enlighten and redeem. When Jesus is baptized, he is called by God his Father: “This is my Son, the beloved. With you I am well-pleased.” The Spirit descends. Jesus’s identity as Son of God. He is named, called, and sent among us.
And in our baptism, we too are named, called, and sent. When we were baptized, we weren’t promised a trouble-free and easy life. You only need to remember Jesus’s own life to know that isn’t true. When we are baptized, we are called into the Christian life. And the Christian life is the ongoing formation and strengthening of the new creation within us. In baptism, God indeed saves us from eternal death, but in baptism God also gives us a new life. A resilient life. A life that doesn’t fall apart at the first sign of trouble but endures within the community of faith. Every single one of us is named and called by God, to grow into the fullness of Jesus Christ.
Disasters happen. But we are the people of God. We are named. As Jesus says, not a sparrow falls to the ground without God knowing about it. How much more with you and me? And whatever happens, God’s call remains the same: be representatives of God’s shalom. Feed the hungry, care for the sick, visit the prisoner, clothe and shelter those without adequate resources, and comfort the suffering without regard for whether they are deserving or not. When we live as the people God has called us to be, we will see His presence among us in ways we could scarcely imagine. Amen.
© 2025, David M. Fleener. Permission granted to copy and adapt original material herein for non-commercial purposes with appropriate credit given.