When God Became Human, He Didn’t Find Things to be Beneath His Dignity to Do.

The Rev. Brad Sullivan

Lord of the Streets, Houston

January 12, 2025

1 Epiphany, C

Isaiah 43:1-7

Psalm 29

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

Today, after the service, I have to leave to get to another church where I’ll be talking with them about Lord of the Streets, recruiting volunteers, and continuing to grow our connections with our supporting congregations. So, unfortunately, I won’t be here for breakfast, which I love, not just the food, but being with everybody. Usually, after breakfast, I join with our parishioners to help clean up, put tables and chairs away.

One morning about a year ago, I was cleaning up after breakfast with several parishioners, and someone else said, “You shouldn’t be doing this. You’ve got more important things to do.” I said, “Not really, cause for one, I like getting to be with our parishioners doing this work, and two, if I’m too good for cleaning tables and sweeping floors, then I’m not good enough to be preaching and serving at the altar.”

I bring that up because I think it has something to do with why Jesus got baptized. In seminary, this was a popular question.  Why did Jesus get baptized? He was without sin, right, so he had no need for baptism. We’re told in Matthew’s version that Jesus chose to be baptized to “fulfill all righteousness.” So then, of course, there were debates about what exactly that means. Jesus was already righteous. He was God. Nothing he did separated him from God, and he needed no reconciliation to be reunited with God. He was righteous. He had no need for forgiveness of sin. You could say he was too good for baptism, and you’d be right.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Baptism-of-Christ.jpg

So, what righteousness was Jesus fulfilling? Perhaps the righteousness of being human. The righteousness Jesus fulfilled was the righteousness of joining with humanity in every way. Jesus got baptized because we get baptized. While he was too good to need baptism, he wasn’t too good to be baptized. Jesus didn’t “regard equality with God as something to be exploited.” (Philippians 2:6) Baptism marks our repentance and our desire to be washed clean of everything that separates us from God and one another. Baptism is a physical and spiritual way that we choose to accept and live into our unity with God through Jesus.

We are baptized to embody our unity with God and the love, forgiveness, and grace God has for us, so when God became human, rather than claim to be above all of that, God joined with humanity even in humanity’s ways of joining with God. Even if he didn’t need baptism, Jesus wasn’t too good to be baptized. He wasn’t above that.

Perhaps, as followers of Jesus, there is a lesson there for us. When God became human, he didn’t find things to be beneath his dignity to do. Rather, God joined with us in all of our lives. Perhaps then, nothing is beneath any of our dignity to do as well.

Even forgiving others, which is part of what baptism is all about, the forgiveness of the harm we do. For us to forgive, we have to swallow our pride, to set aside the fact that forgiveness may not be deserved, and then choose to forgive anyway. That’s what God does, forgiving us, not necessarily because we deserve it, but because we need it. We need healing, and forgiveness brings healing, both for the one being forgiven and for the one doing the forgiving.

If God can forgive us and even be baptized with a baptism for forgiveness of sins, then, as hard as it may be, forgiving others is certainly not beneath our dignity. If being God didn’t put Jesus above forgiving others, then being human certainly doesn’t put any of us above forgiving others.

Now, in Luke’s version of Jesus’ baptism which we heard today, John talked about Jesus gathering the wheat of humanity into his granary and burning the chaff of humanity with unquenchable fire. That’s God’s job to do, not ours, and it is a job that we don’t fully understand. How exactly does God’s judgement work? Who or what is the chaff? Who or what is the wheat? We’ve got lots of answers, but if we’re being honest, we don’t fully know or understand. That’s because it’s God’s job to do, not ours.

What we do know is, God is unmistakably for us, and so we are meant to be for one another as well. When we judge one another, and we do judge one another, our judgments should be meant for healing, for reconciliation, for helping one another in this life. We can judge our behaviors as harmful or helpful, as loving or hateful.

Our judgments are not meant for determining who is the wheat and who is the chaff to be burned with unquenchable fire. When we make those determinations, we’re making ourselves equal with God, and not even God made himself equal to God when God became human.

So, when we judge, for example, we can judge that violence and settling our conflicts with our fists and weapons is harmful and terrible for us. Last week at breakfast a man felt disrespected when another asked him to quiet down during the prayer. Feeling disrespected, he became angry and attacked the other man, physically, rather than just taking a breath or using his words. That unquestionably the wrong thing to do. His violence at feeling disrespected didn’t help him. It just hurt everyone, and he had to leave over it.

At the same time, that man may have been doing the best he could do at that point. He seems to have been under far too much stress to condemn him simply as bad. He’d obviously been hurt in his life and dealing with so much that when he felt disrespected, he couldn’t do much of anything other than attack. He still had to go, but that doesn’t mean we condemn him. Hopefully he can come back.

Now, some might say that man is like the chaff which will be burned with unquenchable fire. Maybe, but again, if we make that determination, we make ourselves equal with God. Perhaps, instead of the man being the chaff to be burned, the brokenness and hurt within the man is the chaff to be burned with unquenchable fire, and the healed, beloved, forgiven man is the wheat that will be gathered into God’s granary.

We don’t know, but that certainly seems possible, considering how even God chose to be baptized for forgiveness of sins, not because he needed the baptism, but because we do, and God didn’t find joining with us in our baptism to be beneath him. Rather, God chose to be with us and for us, showing us that we can be with and for one another as well. Even if being for one another means we walk into water that is dirty as sin, we can be for one another, knowing Jesus is there with us to gather us together with God.

Do not be afraid, for the Word has become flesh...

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Lord of the Streets, Houston
December 29, 2024
1 Christmas, C
Isaiah 61:10-62:3
Psalm 147
John 1:1-18 

“[Mary] gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.” “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth.”

When Jesus was born, the Word of God became human. The Word of God which spoke creation into existence became human. The word of God which gave the law of Israel became human. The Word of God which spoke through the prophets became human, and most importantly of all, the Word of God which is God became human.

When God became human, an angel of the Lord went to nearby shepherds and told them, “Do not be afraid, for see, I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.”

That little baby, wrapped in bands of cloth, surrounded by family and no small amount of animals was God born among us as the human child, Jesus. The good news of great joy is that God became human and was born among us, as one of us, uniting all that we are in perfect union with God.

That’s good news of great joy, and yet we so often hear it told as remarkably bad news, don’t we. “If you don’t believe in Jesus, God’s gonna get you,” right? We do talk a lot about God’s judgement of the wicked, the unjust, and those who gain wealth by oppressing others. Thank God, God has judgement on such people.

Here’s the good news: even that judgement and that wickedness has been united to God in Jesus. That’s the whole point of the incarnation, of the Word of God becoming human; everything about us has been united to God. Nothing can separate us from God and God’s love. Amidst all the storms and crud of life all around us, we are perfectly united to God: in our faith, in our fears, in our kindness and in our sins. We are forever one with God through that baby wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.

Now, I said earlier that Jesus, in the manger, was surrounded family as well as all the animals. I don’t just mean Mary and Joseph. As much as I love our manger scenes with more cows and sheep than people, as in a barn set away from the house, that was almost certainly not the case. The room where they were was attached to and part of the house where animals could be kept. They were probably at the home of a family member. So, Jesus was surrounded by Mary, Joseph, and other family members celebrating the birth of Mary’s firstborn son, and they were surrounded by animals.

Thinking of this manger scene of family and animals, I was reminded of Noah’s ark. The Manger, the birth of Jesus, was like a little ark, a little sanctuary amidst the flood of all the crazy that was going on around them. Rome was oppressing the Jewish people, there were fanatical religious leaders calling for armed rebellion, tax collectors and soldiers were extorting money from people, and as it turned out, the king of Israel was a crazy enough dude that he thought murdering babies was a good idea.

So yeah, life was like a terrible flood of crazy all around and in the midst of that flood, you had this ark, this manger in which God was born among us surrounded by loved ones and animals, a safe place from the storm, and a new beginning.

On that night, in that manger ark, our new life of perfect union with God began, and with that new life, God began once again God’s life of love among us. Remember that revolution of repentance I talked about last Sunday, Mary, singing her song of praise to God and of revolution on the earth? Remember, I said that God’s revolution for us is meant to change the crazy of the status quo not by violent revolution, but by the non-violent revolution of repentance? The next step is the non-violent revolution of love.

The Word of God became human because our union with God is what gives us the strength to love in the face of all of the crazy going on around us.

The strength to love in the face of oppression, the strength to love in the face of assault, the strength to love even in the face of murder and rape. That is the revolution of love that God gave us on that night when Jesus was born. We saw Jesus live out that revolution of love all the way through his death and into life everlasting beyond death.

We still see Jesus’ revolution of love being lived out among us in our world today. I think of the time after South African after apartheid. There was terrible violence and oppression during apartheid, and there was violence done in ending apartheid. Faced with this boiling rage among the people of South Africa, Nelson Mandella set up the Peace and Reconciliation Commission, and he asked Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu to lead the commission.

The commission offered amnesty for people involved in apartheid and in the violence done against apartheid. The commission sought truth from those who had harmed so many through their oppression and violence, and victims got to hear from those who had harmed them. The victims got to know that the perpetrators understood what they had done and see the humanity of their victims.

The work done through the Peace and Reconciliation Commission wasn’t perfect, and not everyone agreed with the work, but the work overall brought peace and reconciliation to a nation on the verge of collapse through conflict. Jesus’ revolution of love paved the way for the people of South Africa to move beyond the hurts of the past and find some peace amidst the hurt and hatred, amidst storms of the crazy of life.

Archbishop Tutu wrote:

To forgive is…a process that does not exclude hatred and anger. These emotions are all part of being human. You should never hate yourself for hating others who do terrible things: the depth of your love is shown by the extent of your anger.

However, when I talk of forgiveness I mean the belief that you can come out the other side a better person. A better person than the one being consumed by anger and hatred. Remaining in that state locks you in a state of victimhood, making you almost dependent on the perpetrator.

If you can find it in yourself to forgive, then you are no longer chained to the perpetrator.

Freedom and salvation. Freedom from sin, including freedom from the sins of others. That is the salvation of Jesus and Jesus’ revolution of love. Gathering with Mary and Joseph, with family, and with animals around the manger and the babe wrapped in bands of cloth, we can rest in that ark of freedom and salvation amidst the storms of life around us. The Word of God has become human, uniting us perfectly with God. All of our faith, all of our fears, all of our kindness, and all of our sins have been united to God. So, “Do not be afraid, for we have been brought good news of great joy for all the people: to us is born…in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord,” for the Word has become flesh and dwells among us.

Trust: Judgement and Mercy Given Out of Love

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Lord of the Streets
November 26, 2023
Proper 29 (Christ the King), Year A
Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24
Psalm 95:1-7a
Matthew 25:31-46

Trust: Judgement and Mercy Given Out of Love

When my kids were too young to talk very much or reason much at all, I would give them medicine when they were sick. They might ask what it was for, I’d tell them it was to help them feel better from their cold. They’d basically say, “Ok, Daddy,” and they’d drink whatever medicine it was. It occurs to me, that’s a good amount of trust. They didn’t know what it was; they didn’t know what it did. I said it was to help them out, and so they took it. They trusted their dad.

They’re older now, and they can definitely talk and reason things out. For the most part, I can explain why advice I may give is a pretty darn good thing to follow, and they can understand why they would, or in some cases, wouldn’t follow that advice. Even now, however, there are still sometimes when they wonder why, and the answer is, “I really can’t explain it all. You kinda just gotta trust me.”

We can look at the Gospel in a similar way. Sometimes we really understand the ways of God and what Jesus is teaching us. Other times, we don’t really understand it all, and we kinda just gotta trust God. Today’s passage on the judgement of the nations is one of those passages where, rather than figure it all out, we kinda just gotta trust God. Here’s why.

In the story Jesus tells, at the end of time, all of the people of the earth will be gathered before God, and Jesus will separate them out into sheep and goats. The goats will be sent to eternal fire. The sheep will be welcomed into God’s kingdom. The determining factor in these two outcomes is how we treat one another here on earth. This is pretty clear throughout scripture, that God judges us based on how we treat one another. As we heard God say in our Ezekiel reading,

I myself will judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep. Because you pushed with flank and shoulder, and butted at all the weak animals with your horns until you scattered them far and wide, I will save my flock, and they shall no longer be ravaged; and I will judge between sheep and sheep.

So, from these passages, we can see several important truths:

We are all, at some point, going to die. The world will, one day, end. How we live our lives is vitally important. We are all immeasurably loved by God. We are all loved by others. How we treat one another matters greatly in this life, and how we treat one another determines how we will be judged by God.

Are we harming one another? Are we caring for one another? Do we push with flank and shoulder and assert our will over others? If so, God has promised judgement upon us. Do we care about people other than ourselves? Do we help one another out when we’re in need? If not, God has promised judgement upon us. If we’re going to take our faith seriously, then we need to take seriously God’s judgement for how we treat one another. After all, God takes it seriously, seriously enough to endure the hardships we place on one another.

“Am I a God near by, says the Lord, and not a God far off? Who can hide in secret places so that I cannot see them? says the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth? says the Lord.” (Jeremiah 23:23-24) Jesus is the one sitting on the judgement seat, separating us into sheep and goats, and Jesus is also present in our lives, receiving the blessings we give one another and receiving the hurt and harm we give one another. So, how we treat one another matters greatly.

At the same time, God became human and died on a cross for our sins, giving us grace and forgiveness for all of the ways we harm one another.

Those seem kind of in conflict, don’t they? God gives us grace and forgiveness for all of the ways we harm one another, and how we treat one another determines how we will be judged by God.

We could try to put a bow around this conflict, explain the seeming contradictions away to make it all work out very nicely. Many churches and preachers have done this over the centuries. We’ve got all kinds of ways of fixing or relieving the tension between God’s judgement of us based on our actions and God’s forgiveness and grace. The problem is that when we explain this in ways that remove the tension, we tend not to take the whole story seriously.

We end up talking about grace only. Because you believe in Jesus, you have grace, and any terrible things you’ve done to others are forgiven. That’s not the story Jesus told in our gospel today.

So, then others end up talking about judgement only, constantly threatening people with fire and torment to get them to believe in Jesus or change something about their lives. That’s what I call grace for us and judgement for others. You’re going to be judged because you live life in a particular way (usually because of one or two particular things that I find icky). That places us in God’s judgement seat.

In a way, so does the grace only side. You don’t have to worry about judgement because you believe in Jesus. That judgement isn’t ours to give. That judgement seat isn’t ours to occupy.

Grace for all. Judgement for all. Grace for believers, judgement for everyone else. All of these are nice and tidy with bows around them. None of these take Jesus’ gospel seriously.

If we take Jesus’ gospel seriously, then we realize that all of the ways we try to get God’s judgement and grace to fit together nicely is ultimately a selfish endeavor. God’s desire is not just that we selfishly try to avoid punishment by treating each other just well enough to make the cut, caring about others only out of self-preservation.

No, God’s desire is that we actually learn to love one another. How we treat one another matters, and what did Jesus tell his disciples? What was his last commandment to them. “Love one another.” Love cares about the other person. Love does not place me in God’s judgement seat saying, “You aren’t treating others well so I’m going to treat you badly.” Love does not impose my will over others, forcing them to do what I want, good or bad. Love actually cares about the other.

Love takes God’s judgement seriously by believing in the absolute belovedness of every human being. Love also takes God’s grace and forgiveness seriously because of how often we can’t or don’t know how to love others well.

Love doesn’t need a bow around God’s grace and judgement because love trusts.

Look at Jesus’ judgement. It is judgement made out of love, love which sorrows at the ways we harm one another. God’s love can’t abide the ways we hate one another. Gods’ love can’t abide the ways we tear each other down, cause each other’s pain, ignore each other’s pain. Love desires that we love one another. Love says how we treat one another matters. I can trust that.

Look at Jesus’ mercy and grace. It is mercy and grace given out of love, love which knows how hard it is to live our lives. God’s love is not just on a judgement seat far off, but with and within each one of us. God’s love understands how we hurt one another out of our own hurt and fear. God’s love has compassion and mercy on us because God sees that we are hurt and broken. I can trust that.

I can’t explain exactly how God’s judgement fits with God’s grace and forgiveness. Whenever I do, I end up with a selfish, fearful, judgy mess. This is one of those times where I can’t really explain it all. I just gotta trust.