We are so used to this baptismal story that we could be excused for missing its power. But that would be a terrible loss. For these words bring us back to the transfigurative moment in Jesus’ life, the point of no return, his point of no return, where whatever Jesus had been doing or being in the first thirty years of his life — and the gospels tell us pathetically little of that, and none of it is clear — all that past is gone.

We live in troubled times, at least as troubled as the first century, more so I would say. So maybe we need a John the Baptist in our midst. Maybe it would do us some good to hear ourselves called a brood of vipers.

I love this story of Hannah, not so much its main plot, which is Hannah’s distress, but its subplot, a picture of marital love, so rarely presented to us in scripture. For we are told that Elkanah, Hannah’s husband, gives Hannah a double portion “because he loved her,” and when he finds her heart sad, he says to her, “Am I not more to you than ten sons.”

The king said to the Cushite: “Is it well with the young man Absalom?”
The Cushite answered, “May the enemies of my Lord, the King,
And all who rise up to do you harm, be like that young man,”
The king, deeply moved, went up to his chamber ... and wept.
And as he went, he said, “O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom.
Would I had died instead of you. O Absalom, my son, my son.”

Why would these three fishermen leave everything to follow Jesus? How could they be capable of such a radical turnaround, to willingly give up everything, their way of life, their identity, put it all behind them, take on a new way of being, a new life, a new identity?

--- well, as I said, when I thought about it, what flew into my head, bear with me now, I know it will seem like a stretch, (what flew into my head) was a news story I had read that very morning in the New York Times about a baker who had refused, on religious grounds, to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple, and the Supreme Court had just ruled in the baker’s favor.   Happy baker.

I know these commandments are old hat, a boring old hat, to boot, but as I stared at them these past few days, their words fell on me like a blow to the head.  For the Bible is telling us that there are other gods besides God; and the Bible is implying that there are negative consequences for those of us who use God’s name wrongfully, who take God’s name in vain, as the King James version likes to say!  These commandments, at first, seem a stretch --- who believes anymore that there are lots of gods? who worries about taking God’s name in vain? --- so what truth is the Bible trying to hammer into our thick heads?  Where to begin?

The Lord said to Moses ...
I will strike down every first born in the land of Egypt,
Both human beings and animals ...
When I see the blood on the houses where you live,
I will pass over you, and no plague shall destroy you
When I strike the land of Egypt.

These words, striking down every first born, both human beings and animals, if read
unsympathetically, could make our blood run cold---

“Come, let us kill him.”  Not exactly what we expect of brothers.  Not exactly, perhaps, what we might expect of the Bible, a holy book.  Shouldn’t a holy book be filled with exemplary lives?   But this holy book is full of stories of the way people, even brothers, are consumed by hate and impelled to harm each other.