The Baptism of the Lord, rcl yr b, 2022
Isaiah 43:1-7; Psalm 29; Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

the Lord shall give his people the blessing of peace

In the Cathedral of Santo Spirito in Ravenna Italy, there’s a beautifully preserved baptistry, dating from the mid-5th century. In the ceiling there’s a mosaic portraying the scene described in our gospel reading—it’s Jesus standing in the river Jordan being baptized by John, who is standing to Jesus’s left. A dove hovers above Jesus’s head.

But there’s an additional figure—a figure most of us wouldn’t typically imagine there, having grown up in a spiritually dead world largely empty and evacuated of such figures—but in this ancient image, on the shore of the Jordan across from John the Baptist, sits a river god.

And in the Santo Spirito mosaic, he looks pretty chill. I mean, he’s kinda weird looking, if you look closely. He has a reed in his hand, the river flows out of an overturned urn of water, and he has crab legs coming out of his head. But he sits there, this small god, this defeated god, paying close attention to the scene playing out in front of him, of Jesus, baptized in the Jordan by John; of the Holy Spirit descending; and maybe even hearing that voice from heaven, saying to Jesus: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

And as the river god listens in, and watches, so do we to this whole scene; we watch, too, and listen in, too, to the divine drama of the revelation of the Son of God.

We are listening in on another divine discourse in Psalm 29. Except in Psalm 29 we don’t listen in and hear the voice of God speaking to Jesus, with lesser gods listening in as well; in Psalm 29, we listen in as someone chews out the lesser gods. “Ascribe to the Lord, you gods, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name; worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.” Bend the knee, you gods; your time is over, you gods, whether you’d admit it or not.

Anglicans have often pointed to this verse to describe a sort of divine mandate about how we should worship God: “worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.” I’ve certainly appealed to this verse as a way to understand why we would ever concern ourselves with the arts, especially the musical arts, in worship. Because to worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness is a divine mandate.

But again, at least in the Psalm, we aren’t the ones being spoken to here. We are listening in as the gods are getting hauled over the coals. This is probably the Canaanite gods who are belittled here; some rabbis thought though it might be directed at those who would talk back to God, Calvin thought these little gods were “stubborn and stiff-necked giants …who refuse to stand in awe of any power in heaven.” All would agree, though, that these gods—whether they be proud humans, or proud beings of some more supernatural origin, they agree that they are that: unbowed before the Lord of heaven, the one who is to be worshipped before all else and all others, in the beauty of holiness.

And to these gods, the unbent and the stiff-necked, the Lord roars. The Lord roars with a voice that thunders, with a voice that breaks trees, with a voice that splits fire, with a voice that can make a tree writhe. Bend the knee, you small and petty gods. The Lord who made all this, can destroy all this too.

We’d be wise to attend to the Psalm’s ending, though; this is also the Lord who sits over the flood. And we should most certainly remember here that the God who roars at unrepentant proud little gods, is the one who shows mercy, who sends a dove to Noah on the arc, that the God who roars at unrepentant proud little gods is the Lord who promises mercy, ongoing; in fact, “The Lord shall give strength to his people; the Lord shall give his people the blessing of peace.”

Augustine would see this as a nod to the God who does not protect us from the difficulties of life; that God does not promise peace in this world. I can’t imagine any among us who can honestly say that God is protecting us at all from all the squalls and storms of life this moment. Augustine does say, though that God grants peace in himself; after all, isn’t that what Jesus says in the upper room? “My peace I give to you”? “My peace I leave with you”?

I’d say one more than Augustine, though; that the peace of God that is promised is the peace of the whole world, even all that which is threatened in Psalm 29, though this is a peace we would anticipate, rather than know in its fulness.

Though perhaps in that anticipation, we would know some of that peace in our own time. And so I think back to that very chill river god in that Revenna mosaic. And, indeed, a pretty chill voice from God, too, at least compared to the voice of God in Psalm 29. This voice that would roar, thunder, break trees and split fire, a voice that can make a tree writhe—this voice now speaks a word of gentleness, kindness, and even of peace, the peace of the triune God that knows no violence in its difference.

And so maybe that chilled out river god is himself at peace with his place in this universe: that the god of the river rests in the knowledge, that he is a servant of the God in the river. That before this one, every knee shall bow, even the knee of the river itself.

And as we listen in, as does the little river god, along with the whole of the creation too, hearing and resting in the voice of God speaking gently: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” It’s the word of peace that we would hear, baptized as we are into this one, this Lord Jesus Christ, where are differences don’t disappear but where difference rests in peace, the peace of God, the Lord Jesus Christ in whom the Father is pleased, and the one on whom the Spirit of God alights.

The Reverend Dr. Preston Parsons