Receiving

It is a fortuitous day to be able to reflect on baptism, as we have just had the joyful experience of Isabel’s baptism.  Two millennia separate the baptism of Jesus and the baptism of Isabel and yet the gesture and the meaning are one. In both cases, the person receives the Holy Spirit and is declared to be God’s beloved. As are we all.

Will you pray with me? May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable to you O God, our rock and our redeemer. Amen

We have just come through the giving season; commonly know as the Christmas holidays. Much of our time and energy has been focused on giving: of gifts, donations, benevolences, and the giving of Christ to the human race in the incarnation at Bethlehem. Many of us are a bit tired, since the joy of the holidays is often accompanied by extra demands on our time, and particular challenges, like putting together a bicycle for a child late into the night before Christmas or making a big dinner for the whole clan. And right now, there is also a certain fatigue that sets in, after a high, when the reality of putting away all the Christmas stuff until next year seems to weigh us down. So, we may find ourselves feeling heavy, a bit off—and spent.

Over these weeks, we have given of our goods, we have given of our time, and we have given of ourselves, sometimes beyond reason.  And perhaps that is why our story of Jesus baptism is a good one for us right now, because it is a story not of giving, but of receiving.

In our scripture today, we see a remarkable portrait of Jesus. He is not portrayed as one who is in charge, performing miracles or giving wise teaching in the temple precincts. This story is not one of Jesus  giving the Sermon on the Mount nor giving directions to the disciples. Nor of the Jesus who gives of himself on the cross.

Instead we see a Jesus who receives through John the Baptizer’s ministrations the Baptism of water and the Holy Spirit. This is the story of Jesus who receives the blessing of God from heaven, that he is God’s beloved. This is the Jesus who receives his commission to carry the good news.   And, like all stories of Jesus, that go against our expectations, this story gives us pause.

Receiving is not easy for us. As much as we might want to receive gifts or compliments, praise or good evaluations, love and compassion, when these are actually offered, they may be refused or rebuffed, either subtly or directly.

I saw this in my work as a corporate trainer, when  I taught a course called enhancing personal and professional effectiveness. It covered subjects like goal setting, problem solving and decision making.  The very first lesson was about accepting compliments.  I coached people to accept positive feedback with ease. It was so hard for them!  Folks would turn away physically, not make eye contact, or find a way to deflect a direct compliment. Often they would minimize what had been said. “I was only doing my job.” Or, if the comment was about clothing, it was common to hear this kind of exchange: “You like my new suit? What, this old thing?”  But inside, I bet, was a yearning to be seen and to be held in esteem. A yearning to receive, but also a shyness, a fear, a worry about being seen, and cared for.

Many of us grew up with an ethic of “its better to give than receive”, which, of course, does have its place in a selfish world.  For   as humans, we do have the tendency to pull the blanket to our side of the bed, to grab and grasp and want more than our fair share. So it makes sense that our Christian theology has worked overtime to correct this self centered tendency. And we do need to learn to care for others and to go beyond ourselves.

But this proverb is not always true.  Because of this conditioning, we sometimes find ourselves living in a kind of fear of not doing enough or not giving enough. I think that this tendency is a distortion of the gospel message, because giving must balanced by an ethic of receiving. Receiving is also a spiritual good, a necessary part of the holy life.

When we allow ourselves to receive, we admit our needs, dependency and vulnerability. When we allow ourselves to receive, we are open to life as it is presented to us, rather than trying to control the way life is. We acknowledge that we are not self sufficient, but rely on others to meet at least some our needs. Receiving and being receptive shows us that we cannot do it on our own.  It quells our false pride. And it reminds us that life is about relationships, and not self-mastery.

As young children, we need to earn to do tasks on our own, a necessary developmental stage. Tying shoes, riding a bike, setting the table, are all valid activities that help us as young persons contribute to family life and develop our capacity to become, over time, increasingly independent.    But sometimes, even as we age long beyond childhood, we get stuck in the emotional stage of trying to go it on our own. But in fact, we need to learn how to be inter dependent, and not fly solo out of fear of being needy.  We need to learn how to participate in the give and take of life, flexible to both the inflow and the outflow of energy and love in relationships.

Anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson, puts it this way, in her autobiography
Composing a Life:  “The reality of all life is interdependence. We need to compose our lives in such a way that we both give and receive. Learning to do both with grace, seeing both as parts which have a single pattern rather than antithetical alternatives.”

Of course this applies to so many aspects of life. Receive love to give it away. Connect with God in prayer to be able to be present for others in their needs. And rest enough to be able to work.
At the beginning of the calendar year, like many of you, I find myself setting goals and making resolutions. These often have a whiff of striving and personal change and usually by mid January, I am glad to leave them behind. Is any one else in the situation of having already abandoning New Year’s resolutions ?

But one resolution that I have kept for many years and I renew each year is to prime the pump of creativity and allow myself to experience and receive the creativity of others. I learned this practice from Julia Cameron, the author of The Artist’s Way. Cameron says, among other things, that our creativity, a gift from God, needs to be nurtured in a systematic, but also fun and low-key way. She says that each of us has an inner artist, our creative spirit, who needs feeding and tending. She encourages her readers to take our inner artist on a date each week, to see or hear something beautiful. It needn’t be complicated, or expensive. But attention to the inner life through music, museums, drama, dance, architecture, literature, or simply looking at an art book, window display,  or listening to a CD is important. It is crucial to receive the artistic gifts of others and to appreciate them, because this feeds one’s own artistic spirit in an unconscious manner. This is not selfish. Because in receiving, one is then able to give. And create.  Whenever I find that I am tapped out, it is usually because I have failed to keep this resolution, and then I take myself to the Yale Art gallery and all is well again.  

Receive in order to give.  Coming back to our scripture, we see that Jesus can be for us a model and a teacher.

At his baptism, Jesus was willing to receive the Holy Spirit, and that was the key to his power in ministry. At Christmas we learn that Jesus had a holy birth and was destined to be the savior. But he still needed to be empowered by the Spirit to take on his ministry. If he had not received the Spirit, how could he have gone forward?  Certainly not of his own effort.  Jesus came to tell us of his intimacy with his Abba: his father mother God, so that we could learn of God’s deep love for us. But he can’t know it, preach it or have that closeness from a position of self-sufficiency. To be the Son of God, he had to be in a relationship of child to parent, a relationship of receiving.

This story is poignant and also theologically. We see Jesus’ willingness to humble himself to receive the Spirit, going down into the water, getting drenched.  Just like anyone who plunges into a lake or a pool, feeling the letting go and bodily refreshment that accompanies immersion. Can you picture him toweling off, and feeling that good feeling we all know of being clean, and refreshed?

But it’s not just the water, which is important. There is also a voice, a call from the heaven.  Jesus receives the startling sound, declaring him to be the beloved Son of God. An echo of the voice from Psalm 29, which we spoke together in our call to worship.

In this gospel, we find the first indications of the trinity, father, son, Holy Spirit, which we can restate as creator, Christ, comforter. These three persons happen together, they co create each other.  The creator God names Jesus as beloved through the Holy Spirit’s power.  If any one of these persons of the Trinity is missing, the story doesn’t work, it doesn’t flow. They are all three necessary for the power of the Christ to begin to move in the world.

And, our story has more insight to give us, as we reflect back on the question of giving and receiving.

The voice declares that Christ is beloved. This is where his story joins ours, our difficulty in accepting and receiving. And our healing, which comes when we open ourselves to the power of being a beloved daughter or Son of God.

What we receive from God in our baptism is the love of God, who is glad to call us children of God.  We are all then, as baptized Christians, able to say that we are God’s beloveds, in whom God is well pleased.

In a culture which is all about competition and getting ahead, in a world which places incessant demands on our psyches, to hear these words and to receive them as gift a to each one of us is nothing short of revolutionary.  It can turn our world around. Instead of running after what seems unattainable, or giving until we don’t have anything left, instead we are being told:  receive this good news, that you are loved, and that God is already pleased with you, with us.

And so I invite you to consider that these are words that God speaks to you today: “you are my beloved, in you I am well pleased.” Just as we have said to  Isabel at her baptism today, you are beloved of God.

This year 2013 now beginning, like any new year is filled with promise. The season of giving, which has just ended, has evolved into a new moment in time. Perhaps for you, for me, it is a time to let God give to you, what God eternally desires to give:  love, acceptance and the good news that we are pleasing, well pleasing to God.

Take in these works, offered freely by our God, who wants nothing less than to love us and to receive us as beloved daughters and sons, this day and always. Amen.