Episcopal Church of the Messiah

Worship Service Sermons

January 13, 2008, Epiphany IA

 The Reverend Canon Brad Karelius

Descent of the Dove

As the elegantly dressed man walked the busy city street, soldiers marched by. Women walked past toward the marketplace. His eyes were alert for sudden movements. His lucrative work in support of this occupation army had earned him the hatred of extremists and religious fanatics. He was a marked man.

No, this is not Baghdad in 2008. The year is 30 A.D. Matthew is a tax collector for the occupying Roman Army in Capernaum. He is despised by his fellow Jews for growing rich in this dirty work. He was an outcast in the Jewish community. The synagogue refused entrance to Matthew and his family had disowned him.

But something happened to Matthew. Amazing grace. He met Jesus and repented of his self-serving life. He loathed who he was. He despised himself. But now he could leave that old life behind and live as a new person, a reborn child of God. Matthew became busy introducing his friends, a motley collection of other despised persons, to Jesus.

Our Gospel for 2008 is from Matthew, his memory of the teachings and death and resurrection of Jesus. For Matthew, God became human in Jesus, and therefore we must not despise the humanity in anyone.

Matthew is writing to a Jewish audience. So it is important to him to knit together images of the Old Testament to this New Testament. Jesus becomes the new Moses. The Sermon on the Mount becomes the new Ten Commandments.

Matthew tells us his version of the baptism of Jesus this morning. It is filled with deep symbolism. Jesus comes to the baptismal waters and his consciousness is awakened by the divine source of life. The heavens open, symbolizing the presence of God, and something floats down through the opening: a dove.

In Greek Hellenistic times a lover could his express his feelings to a beloved by giving him or her a dove. To Matthew, the dove symbolizes God’s love and prepares the way for the announcement: "This is my Son, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased."

As Matthew’s Jewish audience hears the telling of this baptismal story, they are remembering the Torah: Jesus coming out of the waters, and the descent of the dove would remind them of Noah and the Flood.

In Noah’s Flood, the dove was the messenger of a new beginning, a renewal of the earth. After the Flood that destroyed a sinful earth, Noah’s ark floated on the water. After 40 days of rain, Noah sends out a dove from the Ark.

The first time, the dove returned.

The second time, the dove came back with an olive branch. There was land somewhere.

The third time, the dove did not come back. It had found a place to rest.

In Matthew’s narrative, the dove is the Holy Spirit and Jesus is the messenger of the new covenant. Through him the world will emerge out of the water of sin, just as he emerged from the waters of Jordan.

Matthew was rescued by Jesus. He never forgot how Jesus could see the child of God in him of all people. For a long time he could not see beyond his own despised self image. His past came back over him as a flood of dark, horrible memories. The more he was with Jesus, the more he could see himself as a beloved child of God.

Matthew learned that awakening in love is an interpersonal chain. The awakened Jesus awakened Matthew and Matthew awakened his outcast friends and they awakened others. Evangelism happens when awakened people awaken others to their child of God identity.

Last Saturday about 25 of us gathered to work on our Parish Strategic Plan. We looked at our mission and vision and goals and tried to come up with two Big Hairy Audacious Goals. BHAGs. This task is unfinished and the vestry will work on the language that best describes these BHAGS. But one of them has a lot of energy, although the words were discomforting to many people at this workshop.

This is unfinished, but I think in light of the life of Matthew and the gospel story about the baptism of Jesus, you can catch the spirit of it. Matthew despised himself and was despised by his community for his life as a tax collector. But Jesus helped him to awaken to his inheritance as a child of God. Matthew’s voice in our gospel readings seeks to awaken in each of us our child of God identity.

But Matthew knew this was no romantic process. For him it was a long haul, involving rigorous self-examination, persistence, and courage. This was not some goal he tried to achieve. But Jesus taught him that he was already a beloved child of God. His work was to awaken to this truth. Jesus awakened in Matthew and in you and me what we already know: we are beloved children of God.

But you and I are more than that. I am the child of Lyle and Linnea. We are bodies with inherited tendencies toward sickness and health (our DNA and family health history) and conditioned personalities built up over experiences. I come from a particular family system and that effects how I have behaved.

So my child of God identity exits within the flux and flow these two poles: who I am in relation to God and who I am as a physical person living life in human community.

For some of us, growing up in nurturing, healthy families, awakening to this child of God identity is not a stretch. For others of us, growing up among scripts of guilt and manipulation, or in environments of abuse or addiction, this identity is hard to embrace. But when I go to an AA meeting, I encounter persons who have risen from the dead, who live every day as Easter Day, because they have captured the gospel Good News of the beloved child of God identity.

As we listen to Matthew’s memory of Jesus, we see how Jesus walks this difficult path in order to help others walk it. Matthew’s gospel is not a collection of theological teachings but the words of a spiritual teacher giving us a liberating way of life.

So in his baptism, Jesus enters the human experience and the work and struggle of awakening.

The dove at baptism comes to each of us in three stages.

First the dove goes out and finds no land and returns to the ark. Our first attempts at understanding and making our own child of God identity are usually unsuccessful and we may quickly go back to old habits of thinking and identity.

Second, the dove returns with an olive branch. As we live the ways of Jesus in a community of faith, we begin to see signs of new possibilities, but we are not quite there yet.

Third, we do not return to the old ways of living and seeing. We have found a new place to stand. God has created firm, dry land out of the chaotic waters of our old life. We have found a place to stand against the destructive sea and darkness. And that place is called the beloved child of God.

Amen.

Sources use:

On Earth As It Is In Heaven, John Shea.

An Overview of the Gospel of Matthew:

www.christianconnect.com/matthew