Carpos was an old priest from Crete, more than a thousand years ago.

A holy man, he experienced heavenly visions. One day he heard of two men he knew that had renounced their baptism, turning to a life of godlessness. So, of course, Carpos prayed for them. Yet when he prayed, he discovered in his soul a nagging sense of “hostility and bitterness.” Bothered, Carpos went to bed, but rising in the middle of the night to say his prayers, as was his custom, he felt only more anger toward these two backsliding Christians. He said to himself it wasn’t right “for impious men, men who had turned from the straight paths of the Lord, to be allowed to live.” And so, Carpos prayed God to “hurl his pitiless thunderbolt” and kill these two men who had turned away from the truth.

But as he prayed, the ground began to shake, and the roof of his house opened. Looking up into the stars, “in the vault of heaven Jesus appeared amid an endless throng of angels;” he was amazed at the sight. But then looking down, Carpos saw that “the ground seemed to open into a yawning, shadowy chasm,” and there the two men whom Carpos had cursed were standing on the edge of it. “[T]rembling and pitiful…bit by bit they were starting to fall in,” serpents lashing and biting at their feet. As Carpos watched them struggle, he noticed that “the spectacle delighted him.” He was entertained by the sight of their destruction, so entertained in fact he “forgot the sight to be seen above in the sky.” He even grew “impatient…because the evil pair had not fallen in” yet. The old priest even tried to help them fall, nudge them a bit; but they wouldn’t fall, and this made him “angry and he cursed.”

In his anger, however, Carpos finally looked up and saw again that heavenly spectacle.  By this time, though, “Jesus had risen from his heavenly throne,” come down “to the unfaithful two” men and “reached a rescuing hand out to them.” The old angry priest saw all of this, and then Jesus said to him, “So your hand is raised up and I now am the one you must hit…Look to yourself. Maybe you should be living with the serpents in the pit rather than with God and with the good angels who are the friends of man.”^[1] Here the story of Carpos ends. We know nothing else about him.

An ancient story, but one, my guess is, you understand. If we’re honest, perhaps we can admit that sometimes we delight in the sins and struggles of others. We too know this poisonous pleasure. It’s true, isn’t it, that sometimes we enjoy the spectacle of another person’s ruin—“Schadenfreude” is the pretentious term for it. Carpos lived centuries ago, but that sinister side of our sinful nature is still familiar. There has always been in us what King once called the “internal violence of the spirit.”^[2] Carpos may be long gone, but there are plenty of us still around to hate in his place.

There is little new under the sun. Jesus himself said, “Wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will gather.”^[3] We’ve always been on the lookout, it seems, for the next human train wreck to enjoy and consume. Today it’s an industry, mass entertainment, a diversion. Have you ever been on Twitter? Now I’m not accusing anyone, only myself. I’m a professional Catholic, and still, I have these thoughts. But am I alone here? Saint Gregory the Great said once that often we feast on the subjection of others in the “hidden reveries” of our hearts?^[4] Is that true for you too? It is for me, I’ll admit. I think it’s just the way we are.

But why? I don’t know what to say other than to point to sin, that very ancient thing. Even Adam blamed Eve. Long before we were ever born, there has been this damnable inclination to point to the sinful demise of others with a little twinkle in our eye, a smile—helping it along, enjoying it. And we hold grudges too, don’t we; we have a hard time letting things go. Mark Twain once was cheated by a publisher, and it was only years after that publisher’s death that Twain had anything good to say about him. And even then, the only thing Twain would say is, “I feel only compassion for him…if I could send him a fan I would.”^[5] There is something enduringly stubborn about us, something permanently ornery. It’s part of the human condition. There are many theories about it: biological, psychological theories. Yet however experts have tried to explain it, the Church has simply cried out with Isaiah, “Woe is me…a man of unclean lips…among a people of unclean lips.”^[6] There is really no explanation more basic than this. “Truly, that is the way of the world,” to quote the Brothers Grimm.^[7] It’s just the way we are.

It’s tragic and pathetic—spiritually and philosophically so. But even more so when we in our bitterness begin to imagine that somehow God is like us, that he too shares our bitterness. Carpos fantasized that his anger was God’s anger. In the Church and outside it, sometimes people mistake the merciful nature of God because of the judgmental bitterness of others. We have, if we’re honest, often misrepresented God by our anger. How many seeking the Lord through us, we should ask ourselves, have been confounded by our bitterness, our coldness, our lack of hospitality? “[L]et not those that seek thee be confounded through me,” it says in the Psalms, a haunting little prayer that has long haunted me.^[8]

Now, what I am not delivering today is that vacuous and false message that you are not all miserable sinners, because you undoubtedly are. And so am I. I have been with you long enough, and with myself long enough, to know that to be a fact. In that old story about Carpos, Jesus didn’t suggest that the two wayward men were somehow falsely accused; they were indeed sinners. I’m not letting anyone off the hook. But what I am saying is simply this: God does not share our sinister joy and our sick delight in the failure and destruction of others. God does not take pleasure in damnation. He is very much unlike us in this. Instead, God comes to the broken and the sinful, to you and to me, in compassion. In the garden after our first sin, he came to us, calling out, “Where are you?”^[9] Even though Isaiah was a sinner of unclean lips, God still gave him the vision, still called him, still put the fire of the prophet in his mouth.^[10] And as Isaiah saw in prophecy, God sent a gentle and faithful servant, not breaking the bruised reed. What he saw in prophecy, of course, was Christ. And God in Christ doesn’t blow out the dimly burning light of your soul; he keeps the flame alight. “I, the Lord, have called you…I have grasped you by the hand.”^[11] God is mighty and gentle, righteous and compassionate. And he is, as Peter said, “Lord of all,” saints and sinners, come not because of any righteousness of our own, but simply because he loves us. ^[12]

Which is why Jesus was baptized, because he loves us. But we’ve not always understood this, because we sometimes have a hard time believing God loves really loves us. Matthew records that little detail in his account of Jesus’ baptism—that John the Baptist hesitated and tried to stop him.^[13] I’ve always seen that as a symbol of our resistance. We like the idea of Jesus, but we don’t want him to come too close. Because if God gets too close; if Jesus gets too real, well, we might have to change, maybe even die a little.  We talk ourselves out of being true disciples simply by being what we like to call “reasonable” and “realistic,” vaccinating ourselves against the teachings of Jesus by saying, “Yes, but…” Jesus stands before us to share our life, to be baptized for us and to die for us, to show us the way out of toxic despair, out of the dead-ends of our sins and hatreds. He stands on bank of the river of life wanting to show us how; but again and again, like John, we try to stop him. How often with our pious talk we keep the Lord at arm’s length. We don’t want to see Jesus baptized. We don’t really want to think he’s come that close to us. But Jesus says, “Allow it.”^[14] He wants to love you; it’s just that you must let him love you.

But what do we learn about the Lord in his baptism? That he’s a king unlike any other because he’s also a servant. “[M]y beloved Son,” that is a royal son, King of kings and Lord of lords.^[15] But a son in whom the Father is “pleased;” this is servant talk, sacrifice talk, a deliberate allusion to that shadowy prophetic figure upon whom is laid the guilt of all and by whose sufferings we are healed.^[16] Both a king and servant, at once almighty and powerless—this Jesus; that’s what his baptism means; he sets before us a mystery of divine love and gentle power which most of the world still finds incredible. We all want the power of the king, but we don’t want to accept the powerlessness of the servant. This is the lesson hidden within the mystery of Jesus’ baptism. In Jesus’ baptism we find the royal mercy of God, but also the way in which we ourselves should be merciful—with that gentle power found most purely in a willingness to suffer, a willingness to suffer and still bless, a willingness to love even an evil world, even an enemy. I don’t know how many of us get this, but this way is really the only way to follow Jesus. The rest is fraud. The proof is that God loves you, and he shouldn’t. And all he wants us to do is to love like that.

None of you are excluded from this grace and this responsibility. Think of the worst thing you have ever done. Jesus knows about it, yet he still stands by you. Jesus still wants to save you even after that. No one is excluded. The parable is true. The wedding is ready, the master has instructed his servants to “invite to the feast whomever you find.”^[17] Everyone who comes to the waters of baptism and stands where Jesus stands in his baptism, and lives in his baptism, will be given the gift of life, saved by the Lord. But that means that you must love like the one who loved you and serve the way he serves. That’s the challenge—to be like the Beloved in whom the Father is pleased. To be kings yet remembering first to be servants, remembering we must wear crowns of thorns before we can wear crowns of glory. That’s what baptism means—his and ours—to wear both these crowns, and in the right order. Amen.

[1] Pseudo-Dionysius, Letter 8 1097B-1100D

[2] Martin Luther King, Jr., I Have a Dream: Writings and Speeches the Changed the World, 31

[3] Matthew 24:28

[4] Gregory the Great, Pastoral Rule 1.8

[5] Braude’s Treasury of Wit and Humor, 80

[6] Isaiah 6:5

[7] Jacob and Wilhem Grimm, “The Cat and the Mouse in Partnership”

[8] Psalm 69:7 (Coverdale)

[9] Genesis 3:9

[10] Isaiah 6:5-6

[11] Isaiah 42:2-3,6

[12] Acts 10:36

[13] Matthew 3:14

[14] Matthew 3:15

[15] Psalm 2:7

[16] Isaiah 49:5-6

[17] Matthew 22:8-9

© 2022 Rev. Joshua J. Whitfield