January 10 Epiphany I
There is a difference between the lines at, say, Disneyland and the lines at the Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, Kansas. At Disneyland lines are to be avoided or endured. At Winfield, for some people at least, the lines are the main attraction.
Walnut Valley is an acoustic music festival, and as it grew in popularity during the 1970s so did the lines. In fact, since a lot of people camp on the Cowley County Fairgrounds, a long line began to form a whole week before the actual festival for what came to be called the “Land Rush”, the moment when the gates of the fairgrounds are opened and campers spill in to claim the best sites.
And eventually the line for the Land Rush got to be so long that people started arriving a week before the week before the Walnut Valley Festival to get a number to get in line for the Land Rush.
So the line at Winfield is about two weeks long for some folks. And you think you’re to be pitied for waiting two hours with a couple of crying kids to get into Finding Nemo: Submarine Adventure at Disneyland?
Don’t worry. You’re still to be pitied. Because at Winfield the lines can be the main attraction.
You see, at some point years ago, somebody waiting to get into the Walnut Valley Festival turned off the car and pulled an instrument out of the trunk. Maybe it was a fiddle. Then someone with a guitar a few cars back joined in, and before long there was an upright bass, maybe a mandolin and a banjo. And a decade later some people forgot that they had supposedly come to just listen to somebody famous make music. For these people the headliner events—Doc Watson or John Hartford, even the National Flatpicking Championship—the headliner events celebrated in all the Winfield posters were just excuses to get in line and make music of their own.
At Winfield, the lines can be the main attraction. Because some say that’s where the best music is made.
We usually think of long lines as evidence that we do indeed live in a fallen and imperfect world. And even though it seems like Jesus, as the second person of the Trinity, should have had the power to mysteriously avoid long lines at supermarkets or theme parks or baptisms, he didn’t.
In fact, one oversimplified description of Jesus’ baptism is that Jesus was just getting into line. As if it’s here in line with us that life happens.
What we read today from the Gospel of Luke is a continuation of the scene we read four weeks ago on the third Sunday of Advent. Christmas is such an interruption…
You might remember that crowds of people were coming to John the Baptist to be baptized. The logistics of baptism have always suggested to me that the crowds must have formed something like a line when the actual ritual took place. And it’s hard to imagine Jesus pushing his way to the front. Although it’s possible that some friendly kid might have given him ups.
Regardless, the story seems to be telling us that for all the impressive special effects that attended his baptism—the Spirit descending upon him in bodily form like a dove, the voice coming from heaven, that kind of stuff—in spite of the special effects, Jesus really just got in line. “Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized…” we read. Jesus began his ministry by getting in line.
But the notion of Jesus’ getting into line is about more than the line at the river for baptism. What our lectionary left out of our Gospel reading today was Jesus’ genealogy. The omitted paragraph between the voice from heaven and Jesus heading into the wilderness to be tempted begins like this: “Jesus was about thirty years old when he began his work. He was the son (as was thought) of Joseph son of Heli, son of Matthat, son of Levi…” You get the idea. Come to think of it, reading a genealogy is a lot like standing in line. That’s why people trying to read the Bible through get bogged down in Leviticus.
But the genealogy reminds us that Jesus was getting into another kind of line. Because it continues through the generations until we read, “son of Menna, son of Mattatha, son of Nathan, son of David…” Jesus was in David’s line. And it continues: “…son of Judah, son of Jacob, son of Isaac, son of Abraham…” Jesus was in the line of all of Israel. And the list goes on even further until it gets to “son of Enos, son of Seth, son of Adam, son of God.” Jesus was in the line of the whole human family.
In fact, the genealogy even suggests that it is because Jesus is a son of Adam, that he is a son of God. So Jesus’ baptism didn’t seem to be about getting power from on high so much as it was about stepping into a long line with us. The incarnation is about the time Jesus spent in line.
And maybe you tripped over that little caveat in the genealogy: that Jesus was the son (as was thought) of Joseph. That nod to the virgin birth, to the notion that Jesus didn’t actually have the right father to be in the line of David, might just emphasize that participation is as important as bloodline. It was Jesus’ participation in the family story of Israel that got him adopted into that line. Standing in line isn’t enough.
Let’s play this idea out a little further. What follows Jesus’ baptism and after Luke sketches out his family tree is his temptation in the wilderness. He doesn’t eat for 40 days and gets hungry and weak. And when he is tempted, his responses to the devil don’t seem to require any super human power. He just quotes a little scriptural wisdom: “One does not live by bread alone… Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him… Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”
Jesus seems to become only more human to us after his baptism. In other words he really was spending time in the line of humanity.
Compare this story to one early in the book of Acts, a book also written by the author of Luke. The Acts story is of the day of Pentecost. And on that day the Holy Spirit comes again in a visible and conspicuous way. A violent wind fills the house and this time it’s not a dove, but a tongue of fire that comes to rest on each person.
The people in this story do get some pretty nifty powers: they are able to communicate the good news to people in foreign languages. So it’s an interesting contrast that while Luke describes Jesus’ followers as gaining the power to speak in tongues when the Holy Spirit comes upon them, Jesus gets driven into the desert where he is hungry and tempted and very, very human, given nothing but his own wits to use in his defense against the devil. Luke doesn’t even have the angels come and wait on Jesus in the end as Matthew does.
If the spirit baptism at Pentecost seemed to make people more than human, Jesus’ baptism makes him only more human. Instead of the gift of tongues, Jesus gets hungry and weak, maybe lonely. He gets tempted. He steps into line as a human.
Reading the parallels between Jesus’ baptism and the story of Pentecost seems to emphasize only more that the power of Jesus’ baptism and the power of God that still comes to us through Jesus’ life arise somehow from his stepping fully into line with us in the human family and participating in life on earth with us.
And one simple truth this story might be teaching us is that the life God has for us is not just waiting for us at the end of the line. Life happens right here in line with each other. And just as Jesus was a full participant in life in the long line of humanity, he showed us that there’s music to be made right here in line. In fact he showed us that even God has chosen to get into line with us and join in.
Life on this earth is a long, long wait if we see it as only a line to be endured. But maybe one reason that God stepped into this line in the life of Jesus was to show us how to make a little music with our lives along the way. To show us how to respond even to the hungers and temptations of our lives with courage and grace and hope, because Jesus didn’t get to move to the front of the line. He stood and he stands right here with us.
Even life in the line waiting for the Land Rush at Winfield isn’t free of pain. My friend Brandon says a big bottle of Tylenol is a helpful remedy for the blisters and sore fingertips that accompany night after night of making music. He recommends taping one pill to the end of each finger, and then playing on.
And we might say that the story of Jesus’ baptism and temptation show us that Jesus came to play, not to watch life in the human family line. He showed us that life in the line can be painful and lonely at times, but he showed us that God’s redeeming love is at work all the while, right here among us.
And maybe the first thing he calls us to do is stop living like we’re waiting for the end of the line and start making whatever music we can with the folks in the line around us. Amen.