Matthew 3:13-17 2024/01/21 Osaka Church
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit
The story of Matthew tells us that when Jesus was baptized by John in the Jordan River, the heavens suddenly opened. Mark even more impressively describes the same event as “the heavens being rent.”
“The heavens are opened” or “the heavens are torn apart.” This image confronts us with the reality in which we live, that “the heavens are closed.” We can’t see what we should really be able to see. We can’t really hear what we should be hearing. We don’t really taste what we are supposed to taste… This is because the reality in which we live our lives believing that “this is the only way” is a closed reality. This is because it is a reality that is closed to the reality that God originally gave to humans and that humans were created to live in. We have been trapped in this reality for so long that we have come to believe that this reality is everything.
However, Jesus, the Son of God who became a man, came to this world. Through his death on the cross and resurrection, he reunited heaven and earth. It’s a new reality. The question for us is how to live in this new reality.
When the heavens opened, Christ was standing by the waters of the Jordan River, the Holy Spirit hovering over him in the form of a dove, and the voice of his Father echoeing from heaven. “The heavens opened” and the new reality revealed was the reality of the love of One God of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” In a world overflowing with the realities of conflict and division, hatred and loneliness, the reality of the unity of love between “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” was experienced by people as a “manifestation of God” or “Theophany.” .
Until now, we have lived our lives as though conflict, division, hatred, and loneliness are the reality, and that love is just a temporary illusion. We have forgotten that the heaven that covers this world is actually a heaven that was closed a long time ago, and we believed that there is no other place to live than under that heaven. But now, in a new reality of love, “water” has been transformed into holy water, and those of us submerged in that water have been literally “scooped out” and lifted up into the open heavens and into a new reality.
I said that it is the reality of the love of the One, “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” However, this love is not the kind of “love” that is covered up as morality. “Love” is not a commandment that threatens us with “those who do not love will be damned to hell.” The taste of love is, without fear of misunderstanding, very similar to the taste of love attracting man and woman to each other. The sky will split open. Just like lovers who have finally fulfilled their love, all the sensations that had been closed off enter their mind and body, making them tremble in ecstasy.
The Gospel of John teaches that “There is no greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends,” and for those who live that love, people will give up their souls and bodies to give themselves for it. It promises “joy” that is united with the trembling of pleasure.
The lives of the saints are full of episodes of this wonderful love. Countless people laid down their lives for love of God. We have overcome the hatred that has burned the hearts of countless people. Countless people sacrificed themselves to serve the fallen. Were they really people who were afraid that if they did not do so, they would be damned to hell, and pushed themselves into such “self-sacrifice” and into a “morality” named “love”? Were they really people who worked hard at deeds of love expecting a reward as though “If they do so, they will be admitted to heaven?”’
That can’t be right. They all looked up to see the heavens opened, together with the Lord Jesus who was always with them. Loving is now a sharing of God’s own joy. God gives us opportunities for love throughout our lives, saying, “Come, enter into my joy.” When we receives it willingly, in a numbing tremor of our soul, that divine joy becomes one with our own joy.
All this is because God deeply grieved those of us who thought love was an illusion, and loved us through his only begotten son, Jesus. We ascend into the open heavens and into the love of God on the vehicle God has given us, the Divine Liturgy. To know love as joy… To know that heaven is no longer closed…