What time are we living in now? 

Our immediate answer is that we’re in the first 100 days of the Trump Administration. And we’re facing a blizzard of Executive actions and legislative initiatives all intended to flood the zone and over-ride opposition. So frantically, many are trying to mobilize resistance and strategize our responses. All that is needed and critical.

But what if we looked to an alternative way to frame the time we are in? 

The framework offered by the church, in its liturgical progression through God’s Word, followed globally by tens of millions of Christians. It locates us right in the heart of the time from the baptism of Jesus, through his 40 days in the wilderness, to the beginning of his ministry in Nazareth and then beyond. Does this alternative sequence of about 100 days speak to us today?

It starts with John the Baptist. Luke names the political and religious figures holding what seemed like all the power: Emperor Tiberius Caesar, Quirinius Governor of Syria, Herod, proclaimed by Caesar to be “king of the Jews,” his brother Philip, the high priests Annas and Caiaphas. And then Luke says the word of God came to John, son of Zachariah, in the wilderness.

He was at the Jordan River, a day’s journey from the power center of Jerusalem, in a remote area, with a message condemning a corrupt political and religious establishment and calling for repentance, offering a new way to live as faithful people.

Jesus arrives. When John baptizes him, the Spirit descends upon Jesus like a dove, and a voice declares that he is God’s “Beloved.” His identity is publicly proclaimed and inwardly received. That’s what baptism is always intended to do.

Jesus is then led into the wilderness where his identity is tested. Those temptations come like this:  Will he be self-sufficient, or dependent on God’s sustenance for daily bread?  Will he flaunt an invincibility in grandiose ways, or will he be grounded in humble trust? Will he seek power and authority at any cost, or remain rooted in his relationship to God?

In that time Jesus embodies his identity as God’s Beloved Son.Tested and secured, he returns to Galilee in the power of the Spirit to begin his ministry.

On the Sunday following the Trump Inauguration and Bishop Marion Budde’s prophetic plea to him at the National Cathedral, the Gospel lesson designated by the lectionary was Jesus’ first sermon, from Luke 4. Tens of thousands of pastors and priests around the world preached from it. 

All that Jesus says in that synagogue in Nazareth flowed from what precedes it — at the Jordan and in the wilderness. He makes this clear in his first words, which we often overlook or rush through: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news…”

That same Spirit is available to us, as promised by John and then by Jesus. In these first 100 days of Trump and beyond, many are now reflecting on what we will say, and preach, and do. But like in the life of Jesus, let’s give our attention to what precedes our public witness.

Are we remembering our own identity as God’s Beloved? Is that at the core of who we are? And what might the result be?

The late Henri Nouwen, in his meditation on The Return of the Prodigal Son, describes what it means to live as the Beloved:

As the Beloved, I can confront, console, admonish and encourage without fear of rejection or need for affirmation.  As the Beloved, I can suffer persecution without the desire for revenge and receive praise without using it as a proof of my own goodness.

That’s a picture of what it looks like to live out of this identity, knowing who we are, and whose we are. And this will prepare us for the temptations which will surely come our way in these coming days. In the face of evil, will we resist reliance on our own self-sufficiency? Will we find our subsistence from the bread of heaven? We will defuse the lure of seeking our own power and recognition?  Can trust, humility, and faithfulness be the fruit of our identity as God’s Beloved?

If we truly know who we are, then all we say and do will be rooted in God’s overflowing love. Our identity as God’s Beloved connects and engages us with everyone and all that God loves. Then our actions will not be rooted in contempt, or fear, or self-righteousness, but in faithfulness, trust, and an all-inclusive love.

That will be needed as we follow the trajectory of Jesus’ witness in these days. Last Sunday, February 2, completed the story of Jesus’ initial sermon.  Speaking out of God’s all-inclusive love, he reminds those in Nazareth that in times of social and religious crisis, Elijah and Elisha reached out intentionally to those outside the boundaries of their parochial, protective community. Those hearing him wanted to push him off a cliff.  Bishop Budde could relate.

Last week as my wife Kaarin and I were out having lunch, a young woman came by wearing a t-shirt that said, “Justice is what love looks like in public.” — a slogan attributed to Cornell West. It should be our inaugural sermon for our ministry in this time.

Let’s realize that we are in a culture war, but not the one commonly described. We are faced with an ascendant culture rooted in lawless self-promotion, determined vengeance, flagrant resentments, demonization of strangers, idolatrous nationalism, and habitual deceit. This culture’s metaphor is two men in an ultimate fighting cage cheered on to do anything to destroy their opponent and win.

In our communities and ministries, we are nurturing a culture where the poor inherit the Kingdom, where the hungry are nourished, where those who mourn find comfort, when the marginalized are included, where peacemakers know blessing, where the rich experience loss instead of gain, where purity of heart unveils God’s presence, where enemies are disarmed by love, and were mercy infuses all our shared life. 

Friends of Jesus Christ, this is God’s time, not Donald Trump’s time. Yes, we will resist, act, and witness. But remember that history is always marked by unexpected irony. This new regime eventually will falter, sabotaged by its own inner wounds and dark shadows which it tries in every way to repress. Pockets of disillusionment will set in. Openings will be created as truth, slowly but surely, begins to be unveiled. Growing numbers will begin to hunger and thirst for righteousness.

We don’t know when or how. But the question is, will we be ready? Even if now, we are voices crying in the wilderness, can we prepare the way of the Lord?  Will our souls be nourished by the waters of Jordan, and tested by the barren wilderness, so we are anointed as the Beloved by God’s Spirit, and ready to announce the year of the Lord’s favor to all who will listen?