You are welcome to use parts of this sermon, but if you do, please attribute them properly!
A
mother was at home with her two young daughters one afternoon. Everything
seemed to be just fine until something suddenly occurred to her. The house was
quiet – very quiet – maybe too quiet.
And as every Mom or Dad knows, a “maybe too quiet” house in the daytime
with the kids at home can all too often mean that those kids are up to
something – and something mischievous is not out-of-the-question.
Quietly
walking into each of the girls' rooms and not finding them there, she began to
get a bit concerned. What were they up
to? Then she heard it: the sound of
whispering followed by the flushing of a toilet.
Tracing
the sound, she realized that it was coming from her bathroom. Whispers, flush.
Whispers, flush. Whispers, flush. Silently
standing just outside the door, she was able to catch a fleeting glimpse of
both her daughters standing over the toilet. Whispers, flush.
One
of them was holding her very favorite doll, dripping wet, by the ankles. The other daughter had her finger on the handle.
Whispers, flush.
Wanting
to hear what her daughter was saying and see what the two of them were doing,
the mother slipped quietly into the doorway. Whispers, dunk, flush. And this is
when it all made sense – the soaking wet favorite doll, the water, and the
toilet. Whispers, dunk: "I baptize
you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and in the hole you go."
Flush.
Maybe
these two young children did not have all the ins and outs of baptism down
pat. However, they did recognize one
thing that we often forget. Baptism is
important. For the little girls, it was
important enough to subject a favorite doll to the ritual over and over
again.
We
here in church, of course, have no need to go that far (once is enough),
but that fact does not diminish the importance of baptism. Oh sure, if taken lightly, baptism might just
get you wet. But then again, it could –
and should - change your life.
It
is on this Sunday every year – year in and year out – that we remember and
reflect upon Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptizer.
It is a story that is told in all three of
the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), which, in and of itself, should
say something to us about the importance of this ritual, this ritual that the
church early on deemed to be a sacrament, a time when something holy happens.
In
fact, this story is so important to the author of the Gospel of Mark that he
begins his narrative about the life of Jesus with this singular event. No shepherds or angels for him. No crazy dreams or faraway magi or hoofing it
to Egypt for this writer.
No
- the very first sentence in his Gospel is: “This is the Good News about Jesus
Christ.” Then the writer immediately
goes on to talk about John doing his baptizing in the Jordan River – and
baptizing Jesus.
John,
with his scraggly clothes, wild-eyed expression, constant railing about the end
times, to say nothing of that preposterous diet of his, probably scared more
than a few people into repentance and baptism.
However, in his heart of hearts, John knew that he was into something
bigger than that.
This is all a matter of your
own will. But someone is coming who will do much more. He will baptize you with
the Holy Spirit. I’m just pouring water over you, but he will pour God into
you. I’m changing you from the outside in, but he will change you from the
inside out.”
After
all, he told the people who came to him, “Look. I’m
just baptizing you with water. This is all about outward change.
However, there are two pieces
of the story that our Gospel writer does want to be sure that we get right.
He spoke those words a lot – day after day – just so the
people knew what end was up and would not expect too much out of him. And then, of course, as the shadows began to
lengthen one afternoon, Jesus showed up.
As
one preacher wrote, “Jesus was probably about 30
years old, and he hadn’t yet begun his public ministry of preaching and
healing. He had no disciples of his own. He went out to the wilderness to find
John, and he asked to be baptized. John is (undoubtedly) flabbergasted. (After
all), he was (just) supposed to get things ready for Jesus, to announce his
coming.” End of story.
Now the narrative in the Gospel of Luke goes into great detail
about the conversation that ensued and soon became this rather awkward
encounter between Jesus and John. But in Mark, it is a three-sentence deal! In
this Gospel telling, John simply gets the job done. For the author of Mark, any
conversation between Jesus and John is unimportant.
First, the author seeks to be absolutely positive that we
understand that Jesus was baptized – and that this baptism signified the start
of his ministry, the go ahead time. His
baptism was a first step, the beginning.
And second, Mark wants us to know beyond the shadow of a doubt
that God was somehow present in it all.
Something holy happened. Many
translations tone it down though – saying simply that the heavens opened.
However, there is nothing tame or complacent or orderly about
baptism, according to this Gospel writer.
In fact, if we were to read the Greek, we would understand the words to
actually be “God tore open the heavens.”
Surely it was all a little terrifying!
God’s gonna trouble the waters!
And Jesus comes up out of the river. His beard and hair were dripping wet, and the
sun glistened off the droplets flying around him as he shook his shaggy head.
Gasping for breath, Jesus maybe senses that dove, the Holy Spirit, hovering
just out-of-reach above him,
the Spirit whose next act would
be to drive Jesus into the wilderness with no food or water, we are told, for
40 days to confront his fears.
And Jesus hears a voice. It is surely God’s own voice, heard
so rarely since the earliest days of the Old Testament, but now affirming: “You
are my Child. You are the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
“God tore open the heavens.”
What an image of power! Do you
remember that, on the first Sunday in Advent – not all that many weeks ago –
here in church we reflected on the words of the Psalmist who was pleading with
God to - same words in Greek - tear open
the heavens and come down and save us?
Well, guess what? Here on the muddy banks of the Jordan River
in the late afternoon sun, we as Christians affirm that God did just that. God could stand it no longer and so tore open
the heavens with words that have echoed and re-echoed down through the
ages: “You are my Child. You are the
Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
This tale of Jesus’ baptism is a wonderful story. I mean, there he is – ready to set out on what
the very earliest Christians called “The Way” – the way of living and being and
doing that he believed with all his heart would lead to only one place – the
Kingdom of God –
not a place you would find
yourself in after you die, but a place here, now, on this earth, a place where
justice was found, compassion was practiced, oppression was non-existent,
violence had no place, but the poor and the marginalized and the downtrodden
had a very special place.
There he is – ready to set out on this new way – but not alone
– rather with the sure and steadying knowledge that God had his back: “You are my Child. You are the Beloved; with
you I am well pleased.”
Now, if we in the church do believe that baptism is a
sacrament, that, during the ritual of baptism, something holy happens, then our
baptism – and our children’s baptisms – must somehow be connected to this
Gospel story.
Baptism, for us then, is surely
no more tame or orderly or complacent than it was for Jesus.
Baptism, for us then, must have something to do with a first
step, a beginning, the start of something.
Baptism, for us then, must have something to do with setting out, as
Jesus did, on “The Way”, knowing as he did, that God has our back. Baptism, for us then, must have something to
do with God tearing open the heavens, with those profoundly sacred words
showering down over us as the baptismal water once trickled down the back of
our necks: “You are my Child. You are
the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
Baptism – for us or for our children when we have it done on
their behalf – is important – as those two little girls standing by the toilet
intuitively sensed. Oh sure, baptism
might just get you wet. But then again,
it could – and should - change your life.
How? Three ways, I think.
First,
baptism alters who you are. Believe it
or not, when you are baptized, your life is transformed. Through baptism, you
take on a new identity. You become a
Christian, a disciple, a follower of Jesus.
Your life is changed too because you no longer are doing this spiritual
journey thing alone. You belong. You belong to a dispersed and oftentimes
argumentative and feisty community that sometimes does not seem to know what
end is up but that in one way or another is intent on being fellow travelers
with Jesus on “The Way”, the way he bushwhacked that leads to the Kingdom of
God here on earth.
You
know, it used to be that when a child was baptized, he or she was given a new
name – a baptismal or church name. That
tradition has been lost in the mist of time in many churches.
However,
the pastor still almost universally asks:
“By what name shall this child be called?” We do it not because we cannot remember if it
is Angelina or Jane, Percival or Bill, but rather we do it to recall that, through
the ritual of baptism, this child will become a new person, a Christian – with
all its comforts and joys, but also with all its challenges and deeply profound
and difficult behavioral and attitudinal expectations. Baptism is important – very important.
Second
(and perhaps a corollary to the first), baptism marks the beginning of a
journey. It signifies our go ahead time,
our first step, our beginning, the start of our ministry – just as it did for
Jesus. When we are baptized (or when we
have our children baptized), we pledge – we commit – that this journey we take
will be modeled after Jesus himself – earmarked as his journey was by
compassion, forgiveness, justice, non-violence, and a particular concern for
the poor. And if our journey is not
characterized by those things, then we kid ourselves to think that we are
Christians.
As
Episcopal priest, Charles Hoffacker wrote, “One reason the Church baptizes
people is in the hope that they will become servant leaders after the pattern
of Jesus. Sometimes this happens, and sometimes it does not. We may believe this is too much to ask of
people. God seems to believe otherwise.”
In other words, as Christians, our primary goal in all of life is to be
mistaken for Jesus. Baptism is important
– very important.
Third,
baptism reminds us whose we are – children of God, sons and daughters of the
Holy One. We are the Beloved. But do not let that fact leave you feeling
only all warm and cuddly inside. Remember
- God’s gonna trouble the waters.
There
is power and drama and risk in this story of Jesus’ baptism. There is the mud of the Jordan, the gasping
for breath, the heavens torn open, the Spirit hovering, getting all set to
drive Jesus into the wilderness, away from all that was familiar and easy.
Nestled
in the story of Jesus’ baptism as well is the start of something that will end
in the execution of this young man with his wide-eyed innocence, but will also
carve the way for personal transformation and a new way of living, will leave
up to us – you, me, all of sitting here in church this morning – will leave up
to us the continued bushwhacking of the way for the Kingdom of God here on
earth. Baptism is important – very
important. In
closing, then, I share with you a quote form Frank Yamada, Presbyterian pastor
and President of McCormick Theological Seminary: "Waters haunt all of us
who profess the Christian faith.” But no
more so I would say than when we open ourselves to first understanding and then
affirming the profound depth of the waters of baptism.
by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church (U.C.C.), Raymond Maine
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