Voices of God: A Sermon for the Baptism of Our Lord

Preached at All Saints, Collingwood, Anglican Diocese of Toronto, Sunday of the Baptism of Our Lord, 8 January, 2022.  Texts for this Sunday:  Isaiah 42:1-9; Psalm 29; Acts 10:34-43; Matthew 3:13-17.

¹⁷And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”  (Mt 3.17)

.After I was newly ordained and had given a few sermons in my first parish, a lady told me that I didn’t have a preacher’s voice.   Puzzled, I asked her what sort of voice that might be, and she told me that a real preacher sounded like the radio evangelists she had grown up with.   She wanted someone whose voice was loud and confident, which was a challenge for me because no one would cast me as a radio preacher.   I might get cast as a soft spoken, absent minded academic, but nobody would ever giving me the starring role in The Billy Graham Story!

 As I thought about it more, however, I realized that, above all else, my parishioner wanted to hear an authoritative voice.   Let me say up front that there’s a difference between authoritative and authoritarian.     An authoritarian voice is the strongman demagogue, ranting and raving behind a microphone.  That voice might be pleasing to those who want their pre-existing prejudices confirmed, but that voice is full of falsehoods, distortions, and gimmicks that can easily be seen through by the discerning.  

 On the other hand, an authoritative voice is one that you trust.    It’s the voice you want to give you directions during a natural disaster, or the voice that advises you when the markets are tanking.     An authoritative voice might be the voice of a beloved parent or grandparent, giving advice to a young adult whose realized that they’ve made a terrible mess of things.   Or it could be the voice of a trusted commander, rallying frightened troops on the front lines.

 Sadly, authoritative voices seem very rare today.   When I was a kid watching the TV news with my father, there were a few reliable voices that seemed to shape the world.  I remember the calm deep tones of Walter Cronkite, or the reassuring face of Knowlton Nash, who always seemed like he would remain calm and credible as he reported that Godzilla was loose on Parliament Hill.  Today there is a multitude of voices speaking about all sorts of things; most are highly biased, many are angry, some are conspiratorial and some just want to make a buck (or, sometimes, both).    As the Economist Magazine wrote recently, it’s not like there’s a free speech crisis, but there’s definitely a listening crisis, as more and more people today simply follow the voices they want to hear, voices that confirm their own biases and don’t challenge them with uncomfortable views.

 For today’s preachers, I think the challenge isn’t trying to find the right tone of voice to use, but rather, how do find a way to speak with any kind of authority in a world that increasingly isn’t listening.  The sociologist Joel Thiessen, in recent book on religion in Canada, says for most of the people he surveyed, they see religious beliefs as being all individual choices, and they ”detest it when others push religion on others” (Chp 1).   Thus churches like ours who want to grow, or even who just want to regain ground lost during COVID, have a difficult challenge in front of us.  How do we invite others to share our faith and join us when so many people today seem to distrust religious messages?  What gives our message any particular authority?  What voice do we use?

 I think the first thing we need to recognize is that we believe in a God who speaks.   Martin Luther wrote that God is “loquacious” (Deus Loquens) which is a fancy way of saying that God is chatty.   Think about how many times words like “voice” appear in our readings today.   In today’s psalm, the voice of God practically roars.  It is “powerful”, it “thunders”, it crackles with energy like a huge fire.  At times the voice of God seems like one of those giant wood chippers used by tree companies:  ^“The voice of the Lord causes the oaks to whirl, and strips the forest bare; and in his temple all say, “Glory!” (Ps 29.9).  This particular voice of God is certainly authoritative – it’s the same voice that calls that roars like wind over the dark waters of creation and calls light and the world into being (Gen 1.2).  This is the voice of the mighty creator God, the God who speaks and does stuff, but it would be unbearable to us poor mortals, though it is unfortunately the voice that some evangelists aim for when the wave a bible in the air and demand obedience (an authoritarian voice).

 Fortunately for us, the voice of God is also heard in our readings in other, gentler ways.    The prophet Isaiah speaks of God sending a servant who will be surprisingly soft-spoken:   “He will not cry or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street” (Isa 42.2).   As Christians, we see Isaiah as pointing towards Jesus, and we see Jesus as being the most important voice of God.   Jesus is indeed the living Word of God, the one who as John says in his gospel the Word who was with God in the beginning (John 1.1) and yet this word comes into the world with no voice of its own save a baby’s cry. 

 Jesus gains his voice slowly, as any other human child does, and when he does appear as a grown man in Matthew’s gospel, how does he speak?  Jesus does not speak with a voice of thunder or fire, as in the psalm, rather, he speaks to John with a voice of humility and obedience to his Father.   “Let it be so now” he tells a scandalized John the Baptist. “for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness” (Mt 3.15).  This is the voice of one who sees himself as a servant rather than one who expects to be served.   It is the voice full of love for God, a voice that wants to fulfil God’s desire to save humanity, and it has its own authority.

 And there is one more voice to be considered in this today’s readings, and it is the voice that speaks from heaven as Jesus rises from the water of the Jordan River.  “And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased” (Mt 3.17).  We aren’t told how loud this voice is, but it is affirming and it is loving and it is a voice that, like the voice of God in Genesis, is creative, because Jesus comes out the Jordan as a new kind of human, the new man who can save us from the sins of the first man, Adam.

 Each of us has also heard this voice at our own baptism.    At our baptisms we were named, and our identities were formed, for each of us was said to a son or a daughter, a beloved with whom God was well pleased.   The voice of God was at work in the water and in the oil we felt on our foreheads, and the Spirit of God was at work in us, moving over the water of the font and creating us anew (2 Cor 5.17), not just as a child of our parents and godparents, but as a child of God.   That I think is the authoritative voice that more people need to hear, a voice from God that says “you’re made by me, you’re beloved, you have an infinite value that no one can take away from you”.

 The voice of God is authoritative because it forms us, it tells us that we’re loved, and it tells us that our lives have value and purpose.   It’s also a voice that allows us to see a new and better world, a world without oppression or injustice.  Do you remember the soft-spoken, gentle servant that Isaiah spoke of in our first lesson?  That person is the same who will ^“open the eyes that are blind [and] bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness” (Isa 42.7).   How can such a gentle voice achieve such great things?  Let me close with a short story from the last few days.

 Every morning on Thursday’s our regional ministry clergy team has a short Zoom call to catch up and encourage one another.   Our beloved Deacon at St. Luke’s in Creemore was telling us of horrific conditions of neglect at the Huronia Guest Home in Stayner.   This business has managed to dodge the regulations around proper long term care facilities by calling itself a guest home, a glorified boarding house.  Residents were living in filthy conditions, infested with bedbugs, and lacking proper food, and the staff had gone without pay.   Lorna’s quiet voice was full of anger as she spoke about what she was hearing.

 That same day we connected Lorna with a reported from Village Media, and the next day a piece appeared in Collingwood Today onthe place residents were calling “Bedbug City”.   On Friday the Health Unit was there, and on Saturday morning Lorna told me a CTV news crew was on site.   I understand today the place will be closed as soon as the residents can be rehoused.    I’m very proud of Rev Lorna for whatever role she played in helping put heat and light on this situation.  Hers was the voice of the servant who cares about the prisoners and captives, and thus her voice had credibility and authority.

 Here, I think, is the authoritative voice that churches need to claim in an increasingly secular world, but a world that still cares about justice and goodness.    All Saints, all of us, must remember that we speak with the voice of God, the voice that God gives us.   It is not an authoritarian voice, it is not a voice that makes demands or issues harsh judgements.  It is a quiet voice that speaks in the darkness and affirms each person as a beloved child of God.  It’s a voice that calls us to repent of our old selves and to be the new people that God always wanted us to be.  It’s a voice that gives a damn about the victim and the downtrodden, a voice that is compassionate but which can also get angry when it needs to.  It’s a voice that is authoritative.

 This is the voice that preachers and people need to find and speak with.    May the Holy Spirit grant us this voice, and give us the courage to speak with it.