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August 17, 2010 | Editor’s note: Faith & Leadership offers sermons that shed light on issues of Christian leadership. This sermon was preached June 13, 2010, at the Service of Commissioning and Ordination for the UMC’s Holston Annual Conference.

Luke 3:21-23; 4:1-13

Bishop Swanson has given me a generous gift by inviting me to share in this service. It was precisely 50 years ago, Annual Conference in 1960, that I was appointed at the naive age of 19 as the student pastor of Watauga Methodist Church in the Johnson City District. Forty-five years ago, I graduated from seminary, was received as a clergy member of Holston Conference, ordained an elder by Bishop H. Ellis Finger, and appointed to Elizabeth Chapel. So sharing in this service has particular poignancy and meaning for me. It has been and continues to be an exciting journey with unexpected victories and haunting failures.

But such is the reality of Christian ministry. Being claimed and called by God is both fulfilling and dangerous. It includes mountain peaks of joy and valleys of disappointment, profound experiences of divine presence and prolonged dark nights of the soul, times of great adventure and confidence and periods of bewilderment and uncertainty. Just ask Abraham and Sarah, Moses and Miriam, David and Deborah, Mary and Joseph, Martin Luther King and Mother Teresa. Living one’s baptismal identity and sharing in God’s mission is fraught with treacherous temptations and profound triumphs. Ask Jesus!

In chapters 3 and 4, Luke describes Jesus’ transition from the private life as a carpenter to a public ministry as an itinerant preacher, teacher, prophet and healer. The drama of his public commissioning is in three acts -- baptism, temptation and hometown sermon at Nazareth. In these three scenes are exposed the ambiguities and assurances, the temptations and triumphs of those claimed and called by God. Here is revealed in dramatic images the source and shape of Christian ministry. Let us move into these stories as we examine and affirm God’s claim and call on these persons who are to be commissioned and ordained, and as we all continue to be claimed and called by God.

It all begins with baptism

Luke begins Jesus’ public ministry with his baptism (Luke 3:21-22). John the Baptist is announcing to the crowds that the time of God’s kingdom is dawning in their midst. One who is the very presence of God’s new world is coming! As preparation for his coming, John invites the people to enter the waters of the Jordan, that crossover river between bondage and wilderness wanderings and God’s promised land. Joining the crowd entering those cleansing waters of freedom and promise was Jesus. Luke makes no fuss about his distinction from the crowds; he simply says, “When all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying,” as he came up from the water, “the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’” [NRSV]

The first act in Jesus’ transition into public ministry is baptism, in which his identity as God’s beloved Son and God’s faithful servant was clearly affirmed. Luke knew that the divine message at Jesus’ baptism combined the words from the coronation Psalm 2:7, “You are my son; today I have begotten you,” and the image of God’s servant in Isaiah 42:1, “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights.”

Baptism is the outward and visible sign of God’s action in claiming us as beloved sons and daughters, those who bear the divine image and are incorporated into Christ’s body, his death and resurrection, and called to share in God’s mission of the redemption of the whole creation. Baptism defines who we are, who our family is and what our ministry entails. This identity is accompanied and affirmed by the Holy Spirit, which persistently woos us, guides us and reminds us that we have been claimed as beloved children of God, redeemed in Jesus Christ, and called to participate in God’s present and coming reign in Jesus Christ.

Our primary calling, then, is to accept and live our baptismal identity! That is a ministry we share as laity and clergy. Ordination does not supersede baptism. Rather, it derives from baptism. And the bedrock calling of the ordained and commissioned is to support the baptized in living their identity in the world. There is no higher calling than our baptismal calling. Baptism has to do with our being as beloved daughters and sons of God: it is who we are.

The glorious, triumphant news is that it is all a gift. We cannot earn our worth and relationship as God’s son or daughter any more than we earned our right to be born. Baptism is God’s affirmation, “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine” (Isaiah 43:1). Therefore, our worth lies in the One to whom we belong, and nothing can take that from us, not even death itself! And the glorious good news is that it is all a gift. We call it grace. Our basic identity and worth are not the triumph of our efforts. They are the free gift of God. In the words of the Epistle of First John: “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. ... Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is” (3:1-2).