God Is On The Loose – Luke 3

A text – Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

3:15 As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah,
3:16 John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.
3:17 His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
3:21 Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened,
3:22 and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

A reflection:

This story of the day of Jesus’s baptism, found in both Mark’s and Luke’s gospels, reminds me of my dear friend, the late Dr. Donald Juel, a New Testament scholar. He was teaching a Bible study class to a few older women and one teenage boy, a grandson of one of the women, who was dozing in the back of a warm room. They were talking about this text.

They reached the part where “the heavens were opened.” In the Gospel of Mark, this description of the heavens opening, sort of being ripped open, even, at Jesus’ baptism is the same phrase used during the story of the Crucifixion, when the curtain of the temple, separating the priests from the people, “was ripped open,” Don was telling the ladies.  “Now what do you think might have been happening if the heavens or the curtain was ripped open?” he asked them.

“The people would be free to go into the Holy of Holies,” one of them said.

Don was nodding, when the sleepy teenager in the back hollered out, “No. It means that now God can get out! God is on the loose!”

The heavens are opened at Jesus’ baptism. The Holy Trinity (God the Creator, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit) are alive and present among humans! Whatever might have kept humans separate from God has been ripped open. God is not off of earth and way far away from our daily life, and instead God enters our world and is right here with us.

If that teenage boy in the back of the Bible study was right, at Jesus’ death, when the temple curtain was ripped in two, God is no longer kept in a tiny room in the church or temple, and instead is on the loose among the believers and the unbelievers in the real world.

God cannot be boxed up. And at least twice in the scriptures, God has visibly broken something to show God’s deep desire to come close to human beings. What does that mean in our daily lives? What might it mean?

A prayer:

Gracious God, Thank you for loving us. Help us to realize, over and over again, that you intend to live close to us, and that you want us to be close to you. You are on the loose, no matter what we might think or wish. Keep us knowing that you are next to us all the time.   Amen.