Jump In, Beloved
Audio Version can be heard at:
https://soundcloud.com/emsworthup/january-12-2014-11-03-36-am-1
Matthew 3:13-17
13Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be
baptized by him. 14John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to
be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” 15But Jesus answered
him, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all
righteousness.” Then he consented. 16And when Jesus had been
baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened
to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on
him. 17And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved,
with whom I am well pleased.”
One summer we were
vacationing in South Carolina with some friends, and on the day we arrived at
the place were staying, we got our keys and began unloading the cars to move
into the condominium we had rented.
As the grown ups were lugging bags and suitcases, we somehow lost track
of our friends’ youngest son who was around 5 or 6 years old at the time. We realized he was missing when were
heard shouts and whistles coming from the nearby swimming pool. Turns out that he was so excited to go
swimming that he ran to the pool, climbed up the ladder of the slide, and
without bothering to take off his clothes, slid head first into the water. Unfortunately, he didn’t know how to
swim. Fortunately, there was a lifeguard
nearby to immediately scoop him out of the water. The crazy thing is that by the time his parents got to him,
he was laughing like a hyena. The
fact that he nearly drowned did not penetrate his sheer joy of going down that
water slide.
That’s the thing about
kids, isn’t it? For a five year old brain, it made perfect
sense to head straight for the pool.
The sun was hot. The water
was cool and inviting. And that
big slide looked really fun and totally awesome. He didn’t think about what would happen after he hit the
water. It never occurred to him to
be afraid. He just went for it.
We are surrounded by water
in our mother’s wombs and we are born out of water into the world. Our bodies are mostly made of
water. Water is essential in
keeping us alive. We see water’s negative potential when
there is too much of it in floods and too little of it in droughts. Water can make us nervous when a pipe
bursts during a deep freeze or when a kid who can’t swim gets a little too
close to the edge of the pool. We
experience water’s creative power when we bite into a juicy ripe tomato or take
a long hot shower or drink a cool glass of lemonade on a hot day. And water runs like babbling brook
through Scripture as well, from the very beginning when God summons life itself
out of the deep, separating the safety and protection of dry land from the
chaos and wildness of water.
Today, the author of
Matthew directs us to the water’s edge, the shoreline of the River Jordon and
plants us among a crowd of people who have been drawn there by the fiery
preaching and teaching of John the Baptist. John is not on the shore but standing waist-deep in the
swirling river. And we remember
those who were there to keep an eye on the Baptizer– the Pharisees and the
Sadducees. For now, the religious
leaders are content to sit and watch from their dry perch above the chaotic
scene in the muddy Jordon River below. What is happening in the water below
them seems careless and dangerous.
The rag tag people being baptized by John look like a bunch of ornery
kids who haven’t had proper swimming lessons yet and are behaving
recklessly.
And yet that is where Jesus
shows up for his first public appearance as an adult in the gospel of Matthew.
And Jesus’ first public act of his ministry is to present himself for baptism
to his cousin John. I can imagine
the two of them in the water together, surrounded by a teaming crowd of people
bobbing in the river. I have
always imagined that scene must have looked a lot like the wave pool at
Sandcastle on a really hot summer day.
Too crowded. Too loud. Not too clean. A silly human soup packed with all
kinds of people.
From their perch above the
river, the whole scene must look like one unholy mess to the Pharisees and
Sadducees. And from a distance,
Jesus looks like just one more guy out in the water with John. John, however, is close enough to Jesus
to know who he is and immediately John recognizes that there is something
entirely wrong in him baptizing
Jesus. But Jesus says, “let it be
so now,” because Jesus recognizes John’s authority to baptize Jesus as part of
God’s plan. And John is nothing if not obedient to God. So there in the midst of many, Jesus is
baptized in the river by his cousin John.
And ever since, Christians
have struggled with the question – why did Jesus need to be baptized at
all? Since we typically connect
baptism to forgiveness of sin, why does the sinless Son of God need to be
baptized? How does John baptizing
Jesus fulfill all righteousness if Jesus is already righteous?
Although we think of
baptism as simply a mechanism for forgiveness of sins, all of the gospel
writers agree that baptism means something much more. The words of Jesus’ baptismal blessing in all four gospels
are exactly the same. Baptism
announces God’s favor and establishes Jesus’ identity. Here in Matthew’s account, the voice
from heaven announces that Jesus is God’s Son, the One with whom God is well
pleased. And if we look at this
scene closely, baptism becomes less about forgiveness and more about preparing Jesus for
his mission and ministry. Just
like us, the fully human Jesus needed to put on his baptismal identity as God’s
beloved so he could go out and do the hard work of being Jesus. Jesus will need to hold on to that
identity when he goes out in the wilderness and experiences the real human
thirst, the real human hunger, and the real human temptation to sell himself
short and be something less than God intends Jesus to be.
Last week, Jenn talked
about John’s beautiful nativity story and what it says about who we are, and that
John’s nativity story is actually the story of our birth with Jesus. And Jesus
blazes a path for us today to the shores of the Jordan River and the waters of
baptism. It is a path we follow
all of our lives, a path that ends at the cross and resurrection. Like Jesus, our lives are filled with
the temptation to be something other than the person God created us to be. We need to hold on to our true identity
of being God’s beloved. We
too are God’s beloved children, with whom God is well pleased. We are created in God’s image made with
water, light and love. Jesus’
birth is our birth. Jesus’ baptism
is our baptism. Jesus’ life is our
life. And Jesus’ death and
resurrection is our death and our resurrection.
My former teacher, Craig
Barnes says this: "After we baptize a child, everyone is smiling. They don’t
realize that we just killed off that child. We’ve taken a new life and ended
that life so a better one can be lived. In baptism, we’ve said, ‘Lord, make
this child dead to everything else but you.’ The beaming parents’ dream for
this damp, unknowing baby might be law school, but if your dream, Lord, is for
this child to be a social worker—then, Lord, let nothing stop that from
happening. Kill off anything in this child’s future that is going to prevent
them from being exactly who you created them to be. Preempt any family
scripting, social conditioning, limitation, agenda, or outcome that stands in
the way of this, your child from being anything—anyone—but yours alone.[1]
Today we will ordain and
install new church officers for the coming year. As part of that service, we will remember and affirm the
baptismal vows that were made on our behalf by our families when we were children,
or vows we made ourselves as adults.
We do this to remind one another who we are, to whom we belong and to
affirm that we each have a mission to fulfill that is particular for each of us
and is God’s particular intention for us.
Each time we remember our
baptism and affirm those vows, we risk participating again in God’s re-creation
of us. We take the risk of jumping
headfirst, down into the depths, to the chaos, to the place of where it’s hard
to breathe sometimes, to an experience that feels an awful lot like death
because it is death of everything that isn’t God in us. It is, in fat, the
beginning of new life.
We can follow Jesus into
those chaotic, murky depths and realize that he has gone before us, and the
pattern of his going under the water and rising, like the pattern of his death
and resurrection, gives us courage to reclaim the meaning of baptism for our
lives. To claim that we are enough
for God, just as we are. That the
Holy Spirit dwells in us always, whispering to us and encouraging us. That God
desires to do wonderful things for and through us. Just as we are.
We need to hear that. We need to believe it. We need to wrap our identity as God’s
beloved children around us like a warm winter coat against a polar vortex world
that tells us relentlessly we are not young enough, beautiful enough, rich
enough, healthy enough, skinny enough, big enough or strong enough. God has declared in our baptism that we
are enough, that God accepts us. We
are God’s beloved people and God is well-pleased with us.
Today, I invite you to come
forward to be anointed and hear these words: “You are God’s child, deserving of love and respect, and God
will use you to change the world.”
Please repeat after me:
I am God’s child.
Deserving of love and
respect.
And God will use me to
change the world.
You are God's beloved. With you, God is well-pleased. Thanks be to God. Amen.
[1] Craig Barnes,
Festival of Homiletics, 2010.
