Do you remember that iconic Jaws poster? Or maybe the beach towel, book cover, lunch box, toy game, or assorted t-shirts and clothing? That was when movie merchandising really became a thing. I remember being really young and begging to see that movie. Everyone else was seeing it. There are limits and things that we just have to learn for ourselves. My parents didn’t think it was a good idea, but they took me because I drove them crazy. I learned a huge lesson. My parents knew my limits better than I did. Terrifying back in 1975, and Spielberg really pushed the sense of foreboding and then Robert Shaw and his USS Indianapolis speech with the dolls eyes and I just knew it was going to bust through the wall of the boat. Saturday Night Live really got it right with their silly skit where the shark kept showing up in ridiculous places. They did well because that is the way that I felt as a kid. All water reminded me of that movie and the thing lurking right beneath the surface that was silent and unseen until, well at least until your untimely and grizzly end. I got older and the movie stopped bothering me but, I will have to say that I’ve watched several documentaries about the making of the movie and that the failure of the mechanical shark and Spielberg’s subsequent strategy for dealing with created the trepidation and it is what put the movie in the annals of movie making history. That unseen, the foreboding and 2 notes. Back in the 70’s, I remember seeing a picture of a man standing in a set of shark jaws in the Guiness book of World Records. It showed how big a prehistoric megalodon mouth would be. The megalodons were over 60 feet long and thank goodness, they went extinct 3.5 million years ago….But…enter Hollywood in 2018. Guess what! A movie called “The Meg”. It wasn’t Jaws, but it too pointed downward. This movie pointed far more down into the abyss than Jaws which featured the shores of New England. In “The Meg ” as it turns out, in the deepest part of the ocean, the sea floor is not the floor, it just looks like it. It’s a muddy barrier and below it, more ocean and prehistoric creatures and guess what their accident lets out. I wonder what those of Jesus’ time and those that came before would have thought of these two films and really a host of other ocean/water horror movies. There’s the next excellent Journey for Bill and Ted. I really think the response would be very “See, I told you so! There ya go! Mess around in the seas and that’s what happens. Under the water was chaos. It’s where the bad stuff dwelled. In the Old Testament, people viewed life and their existence in three layers. Up which was heaven or the heavens, here on dry land and down into the seas. The seas were where there was chaos, and that level was not thought of favorably. Actually it was an area of evil. That was also the area of the Gentiles, or the others, the outsiders and here Jesus is hanging out with the people that know more than anyone about pulling stuff out of the deep. The fishermen. People that knew about letting down their nets into the chaos into the outside and it pulling onto the boat. The creation story begins with the formless and void, the wild and the waste that is the primeval waters of the deep. That chaos that lay beneath the darkness… wow, beneath the darkness, that’s some sinister stuff and negative connotations getting laid on. Then there is a lot of destruction and turmoil when the waters make other appearances. Remember the flood story? The waters burst forth and cover the earth. Civilization is wiped out. Or at the crossing of the Red Sea? The waters collapse and destroy the Egyptian army, or the many mentions in the psalms with negative connotations, and the raging waters of the sea that are terrifying even to those fishermen until Jesus calms the waters. All this negativity, fear and association with chaos and evil with water and suddenly we don’t find Jesus commanding or walking across it but going down to it and being plunged beneath it. Debie Thomas writes, “According to Christian historian John Dominic Crossan, Jesus’s baptism story was an “acute embarrassment” for the early Church, too, but for reasons very different from our modern ones. What scandalized the Gospel writers was not the miraculous, but the ordinary. Doves and voices? All well and good — but the Messiah placing himself under the tutelage of a rabble-rouser like John? God’s incarnate Son receiving a baptism of repentance? Perfect, untouchable Jesus? What was he doing in that murky water, aligning himself with the great unwashed? And why did God the Father choose that sordid moment to part the clouds and call his Son beloved?” End quote. Beneath the waters. I’ve taken part in more than one discussion, debate or argument, whatever you want to call it concerning all the questions that surround why Jesus chooses to be baptized. I’ve spent time researching and reading. I’ve wondered, pondered and fretted, but this week, as I approached this topic once again, I saw the briefest snippet, a little quote that didn’t just give me sermon fodder or discussion topic. It brought me hope. It affected my life. It brought light. Those chaotic waters aren’t just a metaphor are they? I thought about my life. I thought about the lives of people I have known through life. Think about your life. Have you very felt like those two ominous notes were a sound track in your life or seen it in the lives of someone you care about? That thing below the darkness seeking to pull you under and consume and destroy? That monster and all of its friends, fear, death, illness, loneliness, hunger, addiction, anger, poverty, rejection, depression, anxiety? I’ve swam in those waters. And I read the quote. Andre Rabe writes, “This chaotic element, described as a “formless void,” can be seen in a positive light as the raw potential from which God’s creative activity produces beauty and new life, as opposed to a violent crisis leading to more violence.” It sounds a little academic at first, but let’s think about it. First of all, I had never heard of or thought of the “void” in a positive light, it was the unknown and potential danger. When we confront the chaos of life we often react and fight fire with fire and enter that toilet bowl, downward spiral of fear, turmoil and violence. We make mistakes or don’t react up to our expectations and we feel unworthy or hopeless and the notes of the void seemingly echo around us Give up, give up…giveupgiveupgiveupgiveupgiveup. No! Andre Rabe struck a chord with me, and not the John Williams Jaws one. I realized that this chaos was the beginning. In the beginning, in that formlessness lies infinite potential. Think formless void, then think of God’s interaction and creativity, Think the cosmos, galaxies, stars, black holes, rocks, trees, dung beetles, amoebas, brains, the Saturn 5 rocket, people of varying colors and culture, computers, gluons, muons atoms, molecules, classical music, daffodils, dubstep music, light, that thing that hangs in the back of your throat, lantern fish, the smell of fresh baked bread, the smell of rotten eggs, megalodons, pterodactyls, love, pond scum tears, the ability to dump chili into a bag of Fritos, the Everglades and the ability to restart a heart to name a few. Infinite possibility. It’s the season of Epiphany, the season of light, and according to physicists and quantum mechanics, light is all about infinite possibilities. Jesus came to bring light into the world. If you go back to Genesis that chaos was what God used to form everything. Plunged beneath the waters of baptism and you emerge a new creation and that void, that darkness is not the end. We make mistakes, we suffer the worst this world has to offer, but we are reminded that on this day, Jesus did not choose to walk on the water, but down into the void and darkness, the pain and uncertainty, with us and just like us. His life path led through joy and friendship but also through betrayal, loss, heartache, suffering and death. God with us, pointing out to us our infinite potential, urging us to walk with others and reflect that light into their darkness. The word says, “From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we no longer know him in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; look, new things have come into being! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself,not counting their mistakes and wrongdoing against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. The void is not the end. There is always hope there because God sees raw potential there despite our worst. The first thing God said was “Let there be Light!” and God meant it for the cosmos and for you and for me. Amen
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