I want to start out this morning by talking about the Psalm. We don’t usually get to pay much attention to the psalm, but this one is such an especially good one, that I thought it might be fun to unpack it a bit this morning. And as a fun bonus, it’s printed in your bulletin. So if you are the sort of person who likes to follow along, you’re welcome to do so. I’m just sort of going to stair step right on through it.
“Ascribe to the Lord, O heavenly beings,” it starts. “Ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Ascribe to the Lord the glory of his name; worship the Lord in holy splendor.” Psalm twenty-nine is an enthronement psalm, probably one of the oldest, and its purpose is to demonstrate God as the all-powerful ruler. Three times in those first two verses the psalmist commands the heavenly beings to ascribe, to attribute, to give credit to God for God’s glory and strength, for the glory of God’s name, to worship God as one would a sovereign. “Heavenly beings” literally translates to “sons of gods.” Lower case “g” there, these are not God’s children like we think of Jesus. The psalmist is probably referring to the gods worshipped by other nations; it is a demonstration that all the deities of the other nations are subservient to the One God. This pantheon of other gods concept might sound confusing to our modern ears, so let’s phrase it this way. The dictionary definition of god lower case “g” is “a spirit or being that has great power, strength, knowledge, etc., and that can affect nature and the lives of people.” Lower case g gods then are the things that we give our lives to that do not bring us life. They are the voices that say that ultimately we are in control, that our efforts can ensure our own security. The people of the ancient near east gave them personifications, names and identities. We might think of them more as distractions, but they are the same. Gods of success and wealth, gods of greed and power, gods of addiction, gods of the smartphone, of instant gratification, of you need to do/be/look like/own this in order to have value. Lower case g gods are all the forces in our lives that seek to name us or control us, to call us less than we are, and keep us captive from ourselves. The psalmist commands to all of those gods who think they have power, “ascribe to the Lord, glory and strength.” It is the Lord, not those lower case gods, who has power, who has glory, who has strength, who is to be worshipped. Those lower case gods are put in their place by the power of the Most High God.
The Psalmist goes on: “The voice of the Lord is over the waters; the God of glory thunders, the Lord, over mighty waters.” This phrase “the voice of the Lord” shows up seven times in the psalm. Seven is the number for perfection or completeness in the Hebrew Scriptures; so we see the Lord’s voice, represented by the seven-fold repetition, is all-powerful, perfectly complete in its power. This complete, all-powerful voice is over the waters, waters representing both the Mediterranean Sea, the sea representing chaos, the place of sea monsters and the source of uncontrollable storms. The waters also evoke images of the waters of creation, the cosmic waters from which God’s voice called creation into being. “The God of glory thunders,” thunder would have been the loudest sound the psalmist could have imagined. It is a sound that you feel as much as you hear, that shakes your very bones with its crashing. It is destructive and uncontrollable. It announces lightening, fire that rains down from heaven.
It is not just the sea which is God’s domain, but the wilderness as well. Verses seven and eight, “the voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire. The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness, the Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh.” So powerful is the voice of the Lord that the world itself is shaken. Even the powerful cedars of Lebanon are broken, even the oaks whirl at the sound of God’s voice, and in God’s temple, all who gather to worship God, say “Glory.”
And what do we take from this powerful display of God’s sovereignty? Verses ten and eleven. “The Lord sits enthroned over the flood;” another reference to God’s power over chaos and destruction, “the Lord sits enthroned as king forever. May the Lord give strength to his people! May the Lord bless his people with peace.”
What a great psalm to read on the day the church has set aside to celebrate the baptism of Jesus. A psalm that invites us to marvel in the power of the voice of God to whom all heavenly beings ascribe glory, the voice that both thunders over the waters and brings God’s people peace.
As we transition into the Gospel reading from Luke this morning, I invite you first to remember back a few weeks ago when we heard the story from Luke two about how on the night of Jesus birth, suddenly the sky over the hills around Bethlehem were filled with a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and speaking aloud these words, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors.” Do you hear any similarities between the song of the angels and the song of the psalmist?
Fast-forward thirty years and only a handful of verses from that moment, and you get to where we are today. Jesus, the one at whose birth the angels sang, is standing in line with “all the people” waiting to be baptized. That’s one of the things that’s unique about Luke’s account of the baptism narrative, there’s no real fanfare around it. No conversation between John and Jesus, no special proclamation of the coming of the Lord. John announced Jesus’ arrival, as it was foretold John would at his birth, and then, in the three verses our lectionary left out for some reason, John is removed from the scene, imprisoned by Herod, so there can be no question at the baptism that Jesus is the clear successor to John, the one for whom John was to prepare the way.
So we know Jesus is coming. We know he is more powerful than John, we know he will baptize with water and spirit, we know John is not even worthy to untie the thong of his sandals, but at verse twenty-one, Jesus hasn’t done anything yet. No miracles, no healings, no crowds flocking to hear him teach. There were angels at his birth, a brief appearance in the Temple at age twelve, but other than that, Jesus is just a guy standing beside the Jordan River with all the other people, patiently waiting his turn to be baptized.
But after the baptism. After “all the people were baptized, and when Jesus had also been baptized…the heaven was opened.” The heaven was opened, you can’t miss the radical intrusion here, God is not subtle. The boundary between heaven and earth set in place at creation is bodily ripped in two by the in-breaking of God at Christ’s baptism.
And then, “a voice came from heaven.” A voice from heaven. Remember the power the voice of the Lord carried in the psalm? The voice that soared over the waters and drowns out thunder, who breaks the mightiest cedars and causes the oaks to whirl, that same voice roared out of heaven and said to Jesus, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” The very beginning of Jesus ministry is marked by this declaration that he is Beloved, and that with him God is well pleased. Beloved is a word only used in Luke to describe Jesus. It is spoken here, it will be spoken again at the transfiguration. And to be well pleased is an attribute of God. God is well pleased with Jesus, in the song of the angels in Luke two, peace is for those with whom God is well pleased, and in Jesus’ teachings, he will talk of how it is in God’s good pleasure to give the kingdom. Everything that Jesus does in his ministry, every sermon, every lesson, every healing, every greeting, every meal with a sinner, every relationship restored, his death on the cross and his resurrection from the dead, every single part of it is predicated by this one declaration made at his baptism, that the identity of Jesus is Beloved and the nature of the Father is well pleased.
Dear friends in Christ, THAT is what we celebrate throughout this whole epiphany season, but especially on this Baptism of our Lord Sunday, that it is the nature of the all-powerful, all-glorious voice of the Lord to open up the heaven and proclaim to us “you are my child, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.” Because it is in these waters that we are adopted into God’s family, that we too become children of God. Which means all those little “g” gods we talked about in the beginning of the sermon, those little “g” gods that would seek to define us, to name us, to claim us as their own, those little “g” gods are silenced by the voice that booms over the waters, that shakes the mighty cedars, that proclaims us beloved. And those little “g” gods tremble at the sound of this voice.
Baptism is not a pretty, gentle, church event where we dress in white and sprinkle water on our heads. Baptism is the in-breaking of God in our midst. It is God who risks everything, who shakes the powers of heaven, to appear in bodily form and declare us Beloved. Baptism isn’t something we remember, something we can pull off the shelf and think about with gratitude, and then put back on the shelf and forget about it. Baptism changes us. Not once, but every single day, in powerful and glorious and unexpected ways. The epiphany, the revelation of God we celebrate this season, is the voice of the Lord whose mighty declaration rings so loudly that it drowns out all those lower case “g” gods who would try to name our identity, who would try to call us less than we are, who would try to hold us captive, to say that we cannot, or we are not, the voice of the Lord booms over all of those lower case “g” gods with this one unshakable identifying phrase, “you are my Son, you are my Daughter, the Beloved.” Why? Because it is the nature of the Father to be well pleased. Amen.
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