When the Promise Comes Close: On Earth as It is in Heaven

Bath-time in the Melton home is a beautiful and sometimes also harrowing hour of the day. A veritable roulette wheel of parenting possibilities bending  both time and space, as in, it lasts just a few minutes and an eternity, all at once. The stakes are unspeakably high, regularly marked by life-altering questions, like, “Will this rubber ducky be enough to distract the young child screaming for the other parent?” And, will said rubber ducky, moments later, be voraciously claimed as “no, my ducky,” by rival sibling in the wings? (Spoiler: obviously.) Yet to be addressed are important considerations of correct water temperature and adequate water depth. All before the moment within the moment on which everything depends: the shampooing and washing of the hair. 

Sorry, I need a minute.

The washing of the hair. Forbid it, Lord, that even a single drop of water desecrate the landscape of those precious eyes. A dozen years ago or so, to avoid this great calamity, I came up with an original rhyming formula that 100% of the time works 40% of the time. A little sing-song call and response to diffuse the moment toward the good. “Look to the sky!” I’d say, and child in the water would (ideally) sing back, “Eyes stay dry!”

Let’s try it. Look to the sky, eyes stay dry.

A promise and prescription for peace in the midst of volatility. Not to be overly self-congratulatory, but in addition to being highly catchy and hygienically instructive, it’s also biblical. Consider psalm 121. I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where is my help to come? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. Reminder that what is good for the eyes in the bathtub is sometimes equally edifying for those who wait on the Lord.

Look to the sky, eyes stay dry is an apt starting place for considering the scriptures that meet us on this first Sunday of Lent. Look to the sky! There, you’ll see the rainbow in the clouds. The first promise of God to his people. As in, in the whole Bible. This is the first promise of God to his people. A covenant. In it, God breaks God’s tools of retribution and revenge. The bow and arrow are retired. Turned into lawn ornaments. Exchanged for a decision toward peace and forgiveness. The rashness of wrath replaced with the decision to only ever be the God who belongs to God’s people. And the sign of the promise is there, shimmering, shining, in the sky. 

Ever after, looking up to the heavens has been a good and faithful thing for Christians to do. Led by St. Paul, who writes, “with my eyes fixed on the goal I push on to secure the prize of God's heavenward call in Christ Jesus.” When things are difficult in this life, following Paul, we can seek to rise above it. Find assurance in the promise that waits for us out there. Up there. In the heavens. Look to the sky. Eyes stay dry. The beginning of a trust in God.

But then something unexpected happens. And the unexpected thing changes everything. In the gospel today, the heavens that hold the promise of God up there, out there, kept in safekeeping for a far off “someday,” well, they tear open. And the promise falls from the sky. The promise doesn’t break. But the promise comes close; the promise of God comes down from the sky. 

And what you and I are meant to see is that, even though the rainbow and the baptism are two different occasions, it’s the same sky, and it’s the same promise the one sky holds. So when the heavens tear open on this man in the water, that first promise of God pours out on the earth. Shows up in him. And since he’s our brother, bone of our bone, the Spirit is now on us, too. In an instant, eternal life enters this life. The far off comes close. It’s the beginning of the prayer Jesus later gives his friends when they pray, on earth as it is in heaven. The high up and heavenly promise of God has been poured on the earth, not just as God’s restraint from violence, but as God’s presence as our peace. And the Spirit sends Jesus, with this blessing - who IS this blessing - out into the desert.

That last part had to be a mistake right? GPS broke or something. The blessing of heaven comes down and he takes it to the desert? I’m sure he meant to find St. James. Ended up in Oklahoma. Just kidding. But when the heavens tear open and the promise falls into the river, it’s like the waters of Jesus’ baptism bubble up into something new - a spring of living water to reach out and cover, even to heal, every last parched and aching place on this earth.

Church, do you see what is happening? Jesus is changing the lines of hope. It’s not good enough anymore to only “look to the sky,” but now also, to borrow words from the prayer book, we ask God to “open our eyes to behold your gracious hand in all your works, that rejoicing in your whole creation, we may learn to serve you with gladness.”

My friends. This is a significant development. Back when hope was only in the heavens, people would seek to put themselves in position to score a golden ticket through good behavior, maybe. Last train to Harps and Clouds. Only the best of the best need apply. Or maybe the far off promise of God could be a carrot on the end of a really long stick for those unable to change the circumstances of their oppression. Hope for something more, but don’t dare hope for too much here. But now with heaven in pieces and the Son of God out in dry places, those ways of thinking no longer fit. The Spirit has come to the desert! To the entire creation. And all through the scriptures, the desert is full of what you’d expect: struggle, broken things, people who are certain they are lost, forgotten, or don’t count. The Son of God, God’s own Spirit, comes to these. 

One of the most touching desert stories in the scriptures is the story of Hagar, the Egyptian slave, left for dead in the desert with her son, exiled by Abraham, the father of faith. A heartbreaking reminder that the healing of God doesn’t always come only to or through the faithful but sometimes it comes to those harmed or left behind by the faithful. In the desert, Hagar is hiding from her child so she won’t have to watch him die. And she sobs. And suddenly the voice that thunders over the waters today speaks to her. And his word is new life in the desert for herself and her child. After that experience, Hagar gives God a new name, my favorite name for God that you’ll find in the scriptures: El Roi. It means the God who sees me. 

What wondrous love is this? How is it that things which had grown old are being made new? Things that had been cast down are being lifted up? How is it that hope is not only up there in the sky but balm on the earth, poured out to heal the darkest desert, such that the psalmist can sing, “I am sure I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Yes, I shall see the goodness of our God, hold firm, trust in the Lord”?

Oh church, do you see what God is doing? You and I in the wilderness of this Lent may have at first thought that this was about our getting it together, cleaning up, looking sharp, extracting ourselves from the mess. But it turns out this Lent is about us getting clean but God getting dirty. And inviting us to come and see, in ourselves and in the world around us, on the faces of those we are likely to see without seeing, the least, the last, and the earth, that all of it, all of us, are the landscape of God’s redeeming.

As the late Episcopal priest Robert Farrar Capon puts it, “The new heavens and the new earth are not replacements for the old ones; they are transfigurations of them. The redeemed order is not the created order forsaken; it is the created order - all of it - raised and glorified.”

This Lent, don’t be afraid of the desert. Don’t hide the hardest parts of yourself and your life. Neither turn your eyes from those you encounter in the deserts of the world around you. God’s promise is for there, too. God’s promise is at work there, too. But listen to your Savior as he calls you with your heart and life to live the prayer - as he calls us with our hearts and lives to become this prayer: on earth as it is in heaven. 

Amen.