Baptism of the Lord Sunday, January 11
Isaiah 42:1-9
A just ruler does not come in a rush
with loud gongs or with clanging cymbals,
and doesn’t come to make people tremble
or place anyone under the thumb to crush.
He will not become fatigued, will not cease
but bring new life as at creation,
the people and earth in new relation,
everything working together for peace.
Here we have this special information
given to us as if we were insiders
even though with God there are no dividers,
everyone open to see his vision.
So, who’s to blame if it’s not enacted?
We, who by the world have become distracted.
———-
Matthew 3:13-17
He comes to us disguised but in plain sight
ready to do the work that God first told
his people to do, commandments to uphold –
to live and walk in God’s glorious light
like a dove descending to earth from heaven,
cleansed and made righteous as all us lowly
look on and wonder how this is holy,
easily missing the obvious lesson
that even John missed at first glance.
Jesus never is what we want to make him,
with our own ideas we surely forsake him
missing the grandeur of his expanse.
In all our knowledge we seem to forget
that coming to earth is a form of ascent.