God's Favorite Ones

My father, who died in the late summer of 1998, was named Edward.  He was named after his father.  One of eight children, my dad grew up on a farm just south of Holland in place called Graaschap, MI. My dad never graduated from High School.  Ninth grade was the extent of his formal education.  For most of his adult life, he worked long hours at a factory called Buss Machine Works, located on west Eighth Street near Kollen Park.  The building might still be there, though probably condo-ized by now.  The company was bought out by Ex-cell-o Micromatic and moved to a new facility on highway M40 south of Holland.

My dad worked at the same job for nearly 35 years.  He built wood planers.  Big planers.  48”-wide planers, the kind used for planing down the thickness of a sheet of plywood.   Needless to say, my dad wore a suit only on Sundays. When he came home at the end of the day, his clothes were dirty and grimy.  His fingernails were forever chipped; his hands always rough.

For the longest time, when I was growing up, I secretly wished that my dad did other work, cleaner work, work more widely recognized and admired.   I remember wishing he were a businessman in the community, or a banker at First National, something white collar, like the jobs the dad’s of my friends worked at, with an office to go to rather than a factory that smelled too much of grease and oil and steel.  

Part of my father’s job during my junior high years, was to travel occasionally on service calls.  The wood planers built by Ex-Cello-o would need repair and necessary maintenance.  Lumber companies and furniture manufacturers were typical customers.  There was a period of time when my dad did considerable travel, often in western Michigan to places like Muskegon, Grand Rapids, and Jackson. and sometimes beyond.  I learned later, that companies near and far would call the plant and ask specifically for my dad.  They didn’t want John Doe, they weren’t interested in Joe Blow, they wanted Ed Plasman to come out and service their machines, machines worth more than the house you live in.

One summer, my dad asked me if I’d like to accompany him on a service call.  He had to drive out to Maryland, not far from Baltimore.  I packed my suitcase and we were off.  It was our great adventure. The name of the company escapes me.  I don’t recall what kind of manufacturing it did.  I don’t even remember the sites of the city as we drove into downtown Baltimore.  Those are not the images that stuck with me.  What I’ll never forget, however, is the greeting my father received from the owner of the company and the relief so evident on the worried face of the plant manager now that my dad was there.  You’d have thought he was George Washington being welcomed by his troops. 

There was good reason to be excited about my dad’s arrival.  Production had slowed down at that plant.  A portion of the business had come to a near halt, all because they didn’t want just anybody sharpening the complex assortment of steel blades on the planer, they didn’t want just anybody replacing the ball bearings in the gears of their valuable machine, they wanted this Graaschaap-born, 9^th-grade-educated Hollander to do it because they knew it would be done right and it would be done well.  They wanted my dad, and when they got him they rolled out the red carpet and applauded his arrival much like what happens when the President enters the House of Representives to give a State of the Union address.  I should also add that they set us in a really nice Holiday Inn with a heated pool.  And we ate well.

I share that memory with you, because for me it was an epiphany experience.  To see someone in a totally new light.  To see someone as others saw him. He was one of God’s favorites.

I suspect all of you could tell similar stories, stories of parents or grandparents, family members, neighbors, friends, people you know, people you’ve heard of or read about on whom God’s spirit seems to descend. And whether or not the voice is heard by others or only by you, heard with your ear or with your heart, you sense unmistakably heaven saying, “You are my child, my one and only, my son, my daughter, and I’m really pleased with you.” 

This is the day on the church calendar when the story of Jesus’ baptism is read and acknowledged.  Granted it is not the kind of event in the life of Christ that launches a holiday.  There are no Hallmark cards that commemorate it.  Store merchants pretty much ignore it.  Macys and Kohls are not offering 50% off “Baptism of Jesus” sales. Maybe they should, after all, the birth of Jesus is recorded in only two of the gospels while the baptism of Jesus is found in all four.   

Thirty years after his birth, Jesus left the house of his parents in Nazareth of Galilee and walked south and east until he came to the Jordan River.  There, as Matthew records earlier in the third chapter, his cousin John was busy dunking and dousing and immersing anybody who wanted to get clean.  People of all walks of life were coming up to John saying, “I need to change.  I don’t want to continue down the road I’ve been traveling.  I don’t like the way my life has turned out.  I’ve messed up bad.  I’ve blown it big time.  I’ve caused others so much pain.  I’ve failed in so many ways.  I’ve tried it all and nothing seems to work. No one is able to help me.” All of them wanting their lives to be different, better, more holy, more whole, more godly.

Like all the rest arriving on the banks of the Jordan, Jesus takes his place in the baptism  line, waiting for and wanting the same cleansing waters.  Jesus there too?  Along with all the rest standing in line?  Really?  Even John had to scratch his head over that one.  “Wait a minute,” John hesitates, “You want me to baptize you.  The way I see it, you should baptize me.”  John had his theology right.  If the one standing before him is the sinless one of God, then why in the world was Jesus seeking a baptism of repentance.  John knows that Jesus had nothing to confess, no sins of which to be forgiven, no wrongs to be made right.  Yet here he is? That makes as much sense as Warren Buffet enrolling in finance class at Davenport.  Jesus didn’t need to, and yet he wants to.

Which is the first hint of what his ministry and mission was to be about. Jesus inaugurates his public ministry not with a press conference outlining his goals and objectives for the next three years; not by passing out a brochure listing his qualifications for the job. He begins his work by publicly standing with and identifying with all humanity, with the flesh and blood of people’s lives. He allies himself and aligns himself with the faults and failures, pains and problems, with all the hopes and hurts that any and all persons have ever known and felt.  By wading into the waters of baptism Jesus stands beside us and among us and with us all the way, from the first day to our last.

And opening of the sky, and the descending dove, and the presence of the spirit, and the voice that speaks are all literary ways of saying, “Heaven approves, this is the way it shall be.”

In this single act, even before his public ministry commences, Jesus begins to redefine holiness and what it means to be holy. Up to this point, in the religion tradition, holiness meant separateness. You can read it for yourself in the Old Testament books of Deuteronomy and Leviticus.  One remained holy by keeping a distance, by keeping separation from all that which was not holy.   And that long list included gentiles, to start with.  Anyone who was a non-Jew.  Foreigners. Illegal immigrants.  People with certain physical and emotional disabilities were considered unfit to worship with the community.  Lepers were consideedr unclean and warehoused beyond the city limits. 

It was a full time job determining who was in and who was out, who was holy and who was not. If Jesus cared at all about those old, tired definitions he didn’t show it the day he stood in line to get baptized.  Because when he went under it was as good as saying, “I’m with all your folks, in good times and in bad.  I’m with you, when no one else seems on your side, I’m with you.  That which separates has far less power than that which unites.  I’m with you.”

Whenever a community of faith has the word “Christ” in its title, as in East Congregational United Church of Christ, then we too are called to live in the manner of Jesus and to heed the words of the prophet who foresaw his coming and said, in righteousness “he will bring justice to the nations,” in gentleness “he will not break a bruised reed,” in kindness “he will not put out a flickering wick,” in healing “he opens blind eyes and sets the oppressed of mind, body or spirit free.” 

May we this week continue his noble work. Blessing on you, God’s Favorite Ones.