The words from heaven, which greeted Jesus as he came up from the river Jordan after his baptism, identify him as my Son, the Beloved, but they echo the prophecy from Isaiah, which was read as our first lesson, linking Jesus with the servant in whom my soul delights. At his baptism, Jesus is confirmed in his identity, just as you and I are confirmed in our identity when we are baptised. Moreover, he is assured of his Father’s love, just as you and I are assured at our baptism of the love of God, which already surrounds and upholds us, as well as the love of our family and our community. What is not said is important too. We know what lies ahead for Jesus, we know the enormity of the mission which has been entrusted to him by his Father, and how much hangs upon it, but the focus here is not on any particular task or commission. At its heart, baptism is not about our response, but rather about the love which reaches out to us as we are, that love which is the free and unconditional gift of God. There is no better start in life than to be called by name, and to know that we are loved.
Love does not command. Love trusts us to find our own response. In all three synoptic gospels, Jesus withdraws into the wilderness for forty days immediately after his baptism. The gospels focus on the temptations which he faced, but he must have spent much time wrestling with what his revealed identity meant. In both Matthew and Mark, when he emerges from the wilderness, he simply embarks on his mission, moving through the villages of Galilee, teaching and healing. It is the gospel writer (Matt 12.18-21), rather than Jesus himself, who makes the connection with Isaiah’s prophecy about the servant of God. It is only in Luke’s gospel that he returns to the synagogue in Nazareth to identify himself specifically with the one who will bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind (Luke 4.18-19). Even here he is not under any external constraint – it is his own choice of text that reveals that he has come to see such a role as the natural expression of the person he is – The Son, the Beloved, who is also the servant in whom the Lord delights. .
Originally these texts concerning the servant of God were understood as referring not to an individual but to the whole people of Israel, whose destiny it was to bring both justice and mercy to the whole of God’s world; and that remains the Jewish interpretation to this day. The Christian Church sees them as being supremely fulfilled by Jesus himself, but there is a very real sense in which we, as the body of Christ, have inherited the collective mission which these verses confer on God’s faithful people. I want us to look again at this morning’s first reading in the light of that understanding, and particularly at verses 6 and 7:
I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness,
I have taken you by the hand and kept you,
I have given you as a covenant to the people,
a light to the nations, to open the eyes that are blind,
to bring the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness.
In brief … I have called you … I have kept you … I have given you.
First then, each one of us is called to work out what it means to be a child of God, and so to fulfil so far as in us lies, and with God’s help, the destiny which is ours. Even if that destiny will grow out of a relationship of loving obedience, which makes us want to respond to the love which we have ourselves received by trying to please God who first loved us, following such a path is undeniably a challenge for us, as it was for Jesus. But you will have noticed that the reference to our being called, in verse 6, continues with the assurance: ‘I have taken you by the hand, and kept you.’
Whether we think in terms of our individual calling, or our calling as a community, a church, a people, it is not in the nature of our God to call us and then leave us to struggle with our destiny alone and unaided. Faithfulness to his chosen people, despite their waywardness, and through all the vicissitudes of their history, is perhaps the leading characteristic of the God revealed in the Old Testament. We see evidence of the same unwavering care in the way Jesus looks after his motley band of disciples. ‘While I was with them’ he prays, as he commends them to his Father’s care on the night before his arrest, ‘I protected them in your name … and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost …’ (John 17.12). If we insist on being exceptionally stubborn and wilful, we can perhaps wrench ourselves away from him, as Judas did, but we are his children, ‘I have taken you by the hand and kept you’. His hand is never withdrawn from ours, even if there may be times of deep distress when we may feel abandoned – as Jesus himself felt abandoned on the cross of Calvary – and even then, in the darkness, I believe he lends us the strength to be stubborn in our faith, drawing us through into a new and deeper understanding of his love and care for us, as we come to his table week by week, and feed on Him in our hearts by faith with thanksgiving. ‘I have taken you by the hand and kept you’.
If the first part of the promise is a challenge, and the second part a source of comfort and strength, the third part is surely the most wonderful. He has called us by name, and we have responded; he has taken us by the hand and kept us; and now he gives us as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations. The Hebrew is said to be obscure at this point, so we should not construe the meaning too narrowly, but the general drift is clear enough. Giving is the most natural and joyful expression of our love for one another, as we remind ourselves with our Christmas giving, but our giving moves into another dimension when it is we ourselves that are given, whether it be to one another in love, or as our text says, when we are given as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations. Can the church of Christ really be a light to the nations? Can this church be a sign of God’s covenant, so that others will see in us the light which will draw them to Christ, the world’s true light? The light is not our own – it is given to us – but it is our responsibility to let the light shine to the glory of God.
At the start of another New Year, as the baptism of Christ reminds us of our own baptism and calling, let us reflect humbly and prayerfully on what it means to be God’s beloved children. We have been called, we have been taken by the hand, and now we have been given as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations. Thanks be to God, who is himself our one true light.