January 13, 2008 - Spirit of Gentleness - Frank Alton

Isaiah 42:1-9; Matthew 3:13-17



MP3 File


Last Tuesday evening I officiated at a memorial service for a young man named Frank Nieves who had died on January 1 just up the street from our home from an asthma attack complicated by an addiction to crystal meth. Chichester Chapel, which seats a maximum of about 100 people, was packed with close to 200 people for the service. I had met Frank when I first came to Immanuel 13 years ago through the HOLA program that operated at Immanuel during those years. I had spent some time counseling Frank; because he was open to receive love from just about anywhere it was being offered. Frank was a sweet, loving kid; and he was full of rage. He had been kicked out of his home by his mother because she couldn’t cope with him. He was taken in by his grand mother. I lost touch with Frank for about ten years after that. Then, last year I saw him walking by our house, and discovered that he was living up the street from us.
Ten days ago when I heard that he had died I felt a surprising sadness for someone that had been so marginal to my life. Frank had obviously left his mark on me. But why? As I watched the crowd gather for the service, and listened to the stories shared there, I realized I’d been drawn in by a combination of Frank’s capacity to love and his insatiable need to be loved. That combination led to an ability to create community around him self in ways and in places most of us would never imagine even looking for, much less finding it.

The image of community communicated thru testimony after testimony is what I believe we all long for; at least I do. When Frank arrived at HOLA, he was so full of rage that he would walk off the basketball court with ball in hand and refuse to allow the game to go on until he settled down. Sometimes that took 5 minutes; sometimes it took an hour. But when it passed, he came back as if nothing had happened and said, let’s play ball. His rage led him to continue to behave like that far into his 20s.

Yet the very people who told those stories through tears on Tuesday night spoke of how much they loved Frank, and how much they felt loved by Frank. Big guys who were still dressed like gang bangers were willing to stand up in front of 200 people and say through their tears, “I loved Frank Nieves.” One guy spoke of the period when he and Frank were homeless, and how if either of them came up with $20, it was split right down the middle between them without a thought given to not sharing it. Another spoke of being in jail with Frank, and how they supported each other. I have never had any desire to experience homelessness nor prison; yet I felt envious of the community those guys had in the midst of those circumstances.

As I was preparing this sermon, seeking a fresh word from this familiar story, I tried to get hold of the power of the image of Jesus standing on the banks of the River Jordan waiting his turn to be baptized. The image that came to mind was the community that gathered around Frank Nieves last Tuesday night. When Jesus came to the Jordan to be baptized by John, Matthew alone of all the Evangelists tells us that John tried to prevent him. Jesus responded, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” In which way? What does it mean to fulfill all righteousness? From the context it has to refer to Jesus submitting to John’s baptism, and to standing in solidarity with everyone else who had come to submit to John’s baptism. And who were they? Who else was there? Well, there were prostitutes & the adulterers who were their clients; there were tax collectors & the religious hypocrites who judged them; there were revolutionaries & the conformists who feared them; there were wimps & the bullies who beat them up. In other words, they were all there. I imagine it was a very socially uncomfortable gathering on the banks of the Jordan that day.

I have come to conclude that most of us have been sold a false bill of goods around the meaning of righteousness. We’ve been told that we become righteous by performing certain behaviors, by avoiding other behaviors, & by avoiding & distancing ourselves from people who perform those behaviors in order to assure that we will not be contaminated or tempted by them. That conviction is drummed into us at such an early age that we barely know we believe it.

But if we believe Matthew’s presentation of the story of Jesus’ baptism, we have to conclude almost exactly the opposite: that righteousness has more to do with submitting to each another, and to standing in solidarity with the very ones we have been taught to avoid. By that definition Frank Nieves was righteous – not an adjective I imagine was ever applied to him during his life time. I remember learning as far back as seminary that in Hebrew the word “righteousness” had as much to do with right relationships as with right morality – probably more so. I have felt drawn to that idea for a long time & have preached it frequently. But the image I witnessed on Tuesday night showed me that it is more than an idea. It is one of the core truths of life. That truth sunk into me a little more deeply last Tuesday night. I realized in addition that not only does righteousness enrich individual relationships; it is a key part of both creating and sustaining community. The congregation gathered for Frank’s memorial service was a true, albeit unlikely and uncomfortable, community.

Today we are reaffirming our baptism. In the Reformed understanding, baptism has everything to do with community. Yes, baptism is about entering into the death and resurrection of Jesus. But it is also about being welcomed into the covenant community of God’s faithful people. We have to transform our sanitized view of that community. I talk to many people who don’t want to come to church because they think they are not good enough. I hear from others that people in the church aren’t good enough: “I thought Christians were supposed to be righteous?” So the consequences of our misunderstanding of righteousness are serious both inside and outside the church.

We must begin to change our view of righteousness, and begin to heal the wounds that result from our misunderstanding, so that we can start to experience a more authentic community. But there’s a hitch: authentic community is messier than our sanitized version. And most of us don’t like things messy. It’s also full of surprises, and most of us like a little more control over our surprises. So what will it take for us to move toward authentic community?

I believe Matthew’s story of Jesus’ baptism offers us some clues. “As Jesus came up from the water, the heavens were opened to him & he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove alighting on him. A voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’ Whatever you believe about the Trinity, all three members of it were present at that moment: Jesus, the Spirit of God, & the heavenly parent of Jesus who calls him beloved.

Christians have come to believe that the three persons of the Trinity have existed in community since before time. In the passage from Philippians I preached on to begin the season of dialogue we have called “Open”, Paul recites that Jesus, “though in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, being born in human likeness.”

The voice from heaven affirmed for Jesus that in the midst of his humanness he was still a beloved part of that community. Isn’t that what we all want to hear? That in the midst of expressing the most authentic part of ourselves – no matter how different we may be from some one else; no matter how at odds we might be with someone else’s view of what humanness should look like – at least one person will say, “I see you as you are, and I love the you that I see.” That affirmation is precisely what empowers us to live in community, to stand with others in solidarity, & to offer our lives in service to others. And that is the affirmation that we are invited to hear from and say to each other as a baptized community.

Let’s examine what that looks like in Jesus’ baptism. Both the Spirit of God & the voice of God came to rest on Jesus as he arose from the waters of baptism. The voice of God spoke the words we have just said that every human being longs to hear – words that transform us into people who can and will do almost anything asked by the one whose voice it is: “this is my beloved.”
In the same moment the Spirit of God led him into the wilderness where he could discern & test out what that voice was calling him to do. There in the wilderness Jesus faced all the voices both inside and outside himself that resisted following the call to be his most authentic self. From there he returned to his hometown of Nazareth, where he entered the synagogue & read from the prophet Isaiah. He found in those words the voice that won out in the wilderness: the voice that told him that the Spirit had anointed him to preach good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, & to proclaim that just as the voice of God had spoken favor to him, he was anointed to announce that God’s favor was available to all.

Is that level of graciousness available to us? Could that kind of authenticity, that kind of solidarity, that kind of service, actually come to be practiced here at Immanuel to transform us into the community we long to experience? I believe it could be, but it will require some risk, it will require some letting go of assumptions and stereotypes we may have held our entire lives, and it will take some bucking of systems that keep us from changing.

We took (will take) a little risk today in the way we are reaffirming our baptism. It’s threateningly intimate to touch each other, to look into each other’s eyes, and to speak words that call us to something we don’t find easy: to submit to the waters of baptism with people I may disagree with. Let me put that risk in perspective. I recently read about a Rural Presbyterian Church in northern India. It’s an indigenous church composed of the dalit (untouchable) people who are victims of that vile form of injustice known as the caste system, something most of us have only heard of. Though officially illegal, the caste culture still thrives and crushes the poorest of the people. By Hindu law, children of dalits can only be given a derogatory name at birth (stupid, ugly, dumb). But at the Rural Presbyterian Church when dalits come to faith in Jesus Christ, they have a re-naming ceremony, which utterly re-labels them in light of God’s grace & mercy. They step into a new identity with a new name. This extra-ordinary gift shifts power in every part of life.

To imagine a caste system in far off and exotic India from here in Los Angeles creates a dramatic contrast with our own life. But if we are honest with ourselves, don’t we need that new name just as badly as the dalits? Aren’t we just as disempowered by the pressure we feel to be inauthentic in order to be accepted, rather than risk expressing our true selves that might be misunderstood & rejected? Let us take the risk to be ourselves & stop judging each other from that place of insecurity. Let us remember our baptism and accept the new name that we are given there: beloved child.