Amy Courts
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Beloved: Be Loved, Be Love (Luke 3)1/12/2025
If you’ve heard me say that before, it’s because these words have been the anchor of my life, my personal mission statement, for years now -- ever since October of 2014, in fact, when a dear friend asked me to write a song from one of her poems reflecting on the fragmentation caused by the years of abuse she suffered as a small child. As I wrote, I grieved -- and the song became a conversation between her truth of what is and my hope that her Beloved self would learn to Be Loved. And as almost always happens when I set about writing a song or a sermon, the words that come are as much if not more for my own hearing than anyone else’s. So those words-- Beloved: Be Loved -- became the rooting affirmation of my life. And the invitation to Be Love, which so seamlessly follows, became its guiding aspiration. It was a clarion call I desperately needed. Because despite being named Amy Jo, which means “Beloved, God is Gracious,” I spent my first 33 years believing, as I was taught, that, in the words of Jonathan Edwards, I am “a sinner in the hands of an angry God…[who] holds [me] over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fires; [He] abhors [me]...is dreadfully provoked; [that] his wrath toward [me] burns like fire; he looks upon [me] as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the [flame] ... [and] all that preserves [me] every moment is the mere arbitrary will… [and] unobliged forbearance of an incensed God.” It took more than three decades for me to even begin to understand that no lie could be more heretical, no doctrine more blasphemous of the God we meet across and throughout Scripture, who Is Love, according to 1 John 4, and who affirms Their unconditional and unflappable Love for us at every single turn -- including and especially at the Baptism of Jesus which we revisit today, and in our own baptisms which we remember today. So let us, Beloved, Re-member: Today’s festival and its readings are not about death, but about Water and Breath, the two forces which together create and sustain all life, and apart from which there is none. And I don’t mean that metaphorically, but in a most fundamental and literal sense: The human body is up to 65% water, and water is 88.8% oxygen. Breath is Water, and water is Life: It is 64% of the skin, 73% of the heart and brain, 79% of muscles and kidneys, and about 83% of the lungs. In every real and tangible way, we are breath and water. And! we are more: For, in the waters of the womb, the same Spirit Breath that hovered over the Waters of Creation in Genesis 1, hovers over and around us, as our Creator God -- who is Love -- imagines and weaves us into being, and imbues in us their very own Likeness, the likeness of Love. Belovedness is the seed of our creation within the watery womb, and it is woven into every cell of our being as we are formed. It is unassailable, irrevocable, eternal. It is as essential and inherent to our Being as water and breath are to the body. We are Water, Breath, and Love, or we are nothing at all. If there is nothing else you hear today, let this fundamental truth against which Jonathan Edwards’ diatribe and every one like it crumbles, resound in your body: Hear it loudly and plainly, as if from an opening in the heavens: that you are intrinsically, inviolably, infinitely, and unconditionally Loved by your God who is love and made you of Love. To be born of flesh and water is to Be Loved. Water, Breath, Love. They are the forces of all creation that will collide with such cosmic poetry in and over Jesus, that a new day will dawn when he is baptized. But even before that, in Luke chapter 3, Water is already Birthing, the Spirit is already Breathing, and Love is already Blooming among John’s baptized followers. For them, John’s proclamation of a baptism of repentance and forgiveness has become tangibly Good News. Those who were once so desperate under Roman Occupation that they were striking at each other like a brood of vipers, are being transformed. As they share food and clothing from their excess, reject imperial tactics of extortion and theft, and forgive each other for causing harm, they are becoming a Beloved Community marked not by rugged individualism but by radical care and mutuality. And friends, it has filled them with such hopeful expectation, that even after John tells them he is not the Promised One who will baptize them in Spirit and Fire; even after he is arrested and incarcerated by their oppressor, and they see for themselves the risks inherent to such counter-cultural proclamations. Even after all that, their hope is so palpable that they carry on John’s ministry at the river until all the people are baptized, including and finally Jesus. And it is at his baptism that the Great Reversal his mother Mary sang about in Luke 1 becomes real-real. It is a culture-quaking event that decisively separates What Was from What Will Be, as Right Now is literally broken open by Eternity — And God simply Is: Incarnate Son in prayer; Holy Spirit in physical flight; Eternal Father booming with pride and delight over the One he so dearly loves. I don't really think it’s possible to imagine with any accuracy what that moment must’ve been like for the expectant crowd, who got to watch with their own eyes, the Spirit take on the flesh of a dove, and descend to the newly-baptised Jesus, or feel in their own bodies the vibration of God’s voice proclaiming God’s Delight. What I do know is that his baptism in water and spirit, is where God declares and claims Jesus as the Beloved, and sends Jesus out in the Spirit to Be Love, and the same is true at ours. I know It is the genesis of Jesus’s ministry; and the inauguration of a new era for all creation: One that is rooted in our intrinsic belovedness, our mutual belonging to God and one another, and in the cultivation of wholly new ways of Being Together that ease and improve peoples’ material circumstances. I know the Way of Jesus sustained the disciples through Jesus’s death and resurrection, and propelled them forward to proclaim the Good News and carry on Christ’s ministry of baptism thereafter. That those they baptised were transformed by the proclamation of their belovedness in Christ Jesus. And that across the early chapters of Acts, the Power of Holy Breath and Fire in their communities was consistently enfleshed as new believers pooled their pennies, shared their possessions in common, and met every need through solidarity and mutuality in Lived Oneness. Which is to underscore the uncomfortable, unpopular, but beautiful truth flowing throughout today’s texts -- from John’s followers to Jesus and his disciples to the communities in Acts, that were always growing in number: The revolutionary redistribution of wealth and resources from those with plenty to those in need was The Marker of the Spirit’s movement and power among God’s people. And I dare say it still is today. Wars and fires and storms and politics raging; poverty and homelessness and desperation are rising. And will almost certainly get worse before it gets better. Which means our most important task now and in the time to come, is to re-member our baptismal belovedness in Christ and take seriously our baptismal belonging to each other; so that by the Power of the Spirit and the forces of Creation, we who are Water and Breath may fully become what we already are: A Beloved Community. A living sacrifice. A Holy Sacrament of Love imparting God’s divine, revolutionary, and material grace to everyone around us. This is the Sacred and Eternal truth we proclaim in the sacrament of baptism; It is the unassailable Truth we are remembering and reclaiming today: We are created to be loved and be love. And so beloved, I invite you into a moment of stillness. Open your hands. Maybe close your eyes. Take a deep breath of God’s Spirit into your lungs. And receive these words from Rev. Jess Cook: “At some point in seminary I was introduced to the idea of remembering my baptism every time I interacted with water. This idea has held so strongly through years of practice that it now comes without thought - rain starts falling and every drop on my head, every plink on the gutter reminds me I am loved even when I do not have the capacity to ask for it. Tear ducts become wellsprings within me, sometimes gushing open at the most unexpected moments. “The rain on my back a reminder of the holiness around me, each tear a reminder of the holiness within me, grounding me in who I am and connecting me to everything else. “It rains and I am loved. I cry and I am loved. I wash my hands and I am loved. Hard as I may try sometimes (and I guarantee I have certainly tried hard), I have realized I simply cannot outrun my belovedness. “None of us can." All praise, all praise be to Love. Amen.
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