The Father Delights in the Son
Sermon Text || Year C: First Sunday After Epiphany
For those of you like me who don’t know Epiphany from Lent, Epiphany is the celebration of the revelation of Jesus to the Gentiles via the magi in Matthew 2. Epiphany falls on the day after the twelve days of Christmas. So on Sunday you should have gotten twelve drummers drumming; if not, you’re eligible for a no-questions-asked refund on Christmas gifts.
For the next six weeks leading up to Ash Wednesday and Lent, churches survey several key events in the early life of Jesus in which he was revealed to be the Son of God: his baptism, turning water to wine, and various miracles and sermons in the ministry of Jesus. It all culminates with the Transfiguration of Jesus on the first Sunday of March.
The Father Delights in the Son
Can Those in the Flesh Please God?
If “those who are in the flesh cannot please God” (Romans 8:8), then how could God ever become flesh? While Paul may have not been talking about physical flesh in Romans 8, as if our bodies are inherently evil, some in the ancient world did believe that human flesh and the divine were irreconcilably incompatible.
So when God looked down from heaven and said, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased” (Luke 3:21-22), this idea was forever robbed of its potency. From this point forward, anyone who would slander the physical creation as being incompatible with divine Love and Goodness would be shooting the dove that descended on Jesus out of the sky.
Yet many have persisted in separating flesh and spirit as if the two were diametrically opposed to one another: “we have a body, but we are a soul.” While I get why people say this and probably agree with a lot of their logic up to a certain point, I think that this line of thought can contribute to violence towards other believers and to creation itself.
When God spoke from heaven, the voice did not single out Jesus’s flesh or his spirit; the voice said, “You are my Son, the Beloved.”
This included Jesus’s humanity and divinity; there’s know reason to isolate the two.
Jesus wasn’t loved despite his flesh, God loved his entire self.
Without taking on flesh, Jesus wouldn’t have been able to do all the things he did on our behalf: weeping, healing, walking, resting, relaxing, praying, dying, and rising again. Without taking on flesh, we would not know God as we do now.
So instead of being a hinderance to our walk with God, we might view our humanity as the pathway to get to know God because it was the vehicle Jesus used to show us who the Father is.
Why this Matters
Have you ever heard the idea that God cannot be in the presence of sin? that our sins have so separated us from God that God’s holiness simply doesn’t allow us to be in the presence of the Divine?
I’ve heard that before. In fact, that’s why I believed there was some kind of actual waiting place for souls to go before the resurrection.
Yet Jesus, who was God, had no problem being in the presence of sin. He was raised in a household of sinners. He walked the streets admit sinners. He worshipped alongside sinners. He touched and dined and spent all of his time with sinners. He hung on the cross and was buried among sinners.
When Isaiah proclaimed that Israel’s sins had separated them from God, he goes on to say that God was so displeased by such a situation that God dressed in righteousness and salvation to intervene and bring justice as Zion’s Redeemer (Isaiah 59).
Jesus taking on flesh should change our mind about how we view God. When the Spirit descended like a dove in bodily form and God spoke those words from heaven, it wasn’t just Jesus that was receiving a blessing, it was all of us who belong to the body of Christ. We are beloved. We are pleasing to God. God delights in us.
Jesus’s birth is our birth. Jesus’s baptism is our baptism. Jesus’s death is our death. And Jesus’s life is our life.
It wasn’t that God’s holiness couldn’t handle being around sinners; it was that God’s holiness and goodness and loving kindness and graciousness couldn’t handle being away from sinners, so Jesus took on flesh and dwelt among us, and in this God took great delight.
And God takes delight in you, my friend. God is pleased with you, beloved.
Lectionary Reading: January 12, 2024 - First Sunday After Epiphany
Old Testament: Isaiah 43:1-7
Psalm: Psalm 29
New Testament: Acts 8:14-17
Gospel: Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
Hey Daniel,
I like that you stress the motivation behind God doing what He did, in Jesus coming in human flesh (to draw closer to us, His creation, in whom He delights). And that may have just been the point of your post here. Which is an important one, since so many preachers have presented God as someone who does not really want to put on dirty flesh but prefers to remain aloof in different kind of cleaner or holier environment.
However, what do you think is really going on in the point that Paul makes in Romans 8:8, concerning our inability to please God in the flesh? Do you think literal physical flesh is what he is referencing here? Is what Christ accomplished for us merely a renunciation of a wrong doctrine, that all flesh is sinful and incapable of drawing close to God? Or could it be that Paul is just using the term "flesh" as shorthand for a mindset that is at odds with God's higher "spiritual" agenda?
If we follow Paul's train of thought from Romans 8:1-14 we see that our problem is not really physical flesh at all, but a life that is devoid of the leading of His Holy Spirit. And to make the point even more clear starting in v.15 Paul distinguished God's Spirit from the "spirit of slavery" which we are ruled by if God's Spirit is not leading us.
There seems to be blind spot in our focus, because we identify ourselves so much by our physical properties, which are indeed created to be good, to then overlook the deeper issues at play. Certainly God has no problem entering our human flesh that He created, but the bigger question is, can God work in a heart that is not submitted fully to Him? According to Romans 10:9-10 this issue is indeed a heart condition problem.
"If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses resulting in salvation."