The Recklessness of Water
For audio, click here: https://soundcloud.com/emsworthup/january-11-2015-11-20-42-am
Mark 1:4-11
4John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of
repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 5And people from the whole Judean
countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were
baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. 6Now John was
clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate
locusts and wild honey. 7He proclaimed, “The one who is more
powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the
thong of his sandals. 8I have baptized you with water; but he
will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
9In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by
John in the Jordan. 10And just as he was coming up out of the
water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on
him. 11And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I
am well pleased.”
It is a classic question on the ordination exams. It is something my care team emphasized
to me while I was preparing to become a minister. One of the distinctive marks of mainline, reformed
Protestants – Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians -- is that we baptize
infants. We do adult baptisms too,
but mostly we baptize babies. And
the reason we do that, according to our Book of Order – is this: “The Baptism
of children witnesses to the truth that God’s love claims people before they
are able to respond in faith” (W-2.3008).
In other words, the gift of grace we receive in our baptism is God’s
gift to us, not one we choose for ourselves. And baptizing little bitty babies who cannot speak for
themselves is an extremely persuasive and visible symbol that we believe God is
in charge, not us. Just as
circumcision of infant boys was the sign and symbol of inclusion in God’s grace
and covenant with Israel, so too baptism of infants is a sign of inclusion in
God’s grace and covenant with the Church.
When we were at Community Presbyterian the Sunday after Christmas, we
witnessed the baptism of a baby named Mason. Everything about the service was beautiful – right down to
Mason’s white satin suit with matching bow tie and booties. Most baptisms I’ve seen look a lot like
Mason’s – cute babies who seem to cry on cue, parents looking anxiously on as
they hand over their precious bundle to the minister, beaming family members
sitting in the front pew. I
remember very little about the baptism of my children, but I do remember the
promises we made to nurture Rachel and David’s faith and help them grow into
the baptismal vows we made on their behalf.
All of that is great.
Both of my kids were baptized decently and in order. Baptisms are fun. Baptisms are joyful
events in the life of any congregation.
But baptism today bears little if any resemblance to the scene we have
just heard described in the Gospel of Mark.
For one thing, there’s a whole lot more water involved when Jesus
shows up at the Jordon River to be baptized by John. We’re talking about a big river in the middle of
nowhere. No church sanctuary, no
session meetings, no gentles sprinkles of water on the forehead. Mark’s description of Jesus’ baptism is
stark and spare. All we’ve got is
a wild flowing river and a wild-eyed John the Baptist, clothed in camel hair
with bugs and honey stuck in his teeth. There’s no well-dressed group of congregation members
on the scene, or even a cadre of Pharisees as there is in Matthew’s
gospel. Instead, there’s just this
teeming mass of motley people – unapproved, unexamined, uninstructed – waiting
in line to be dunked under by John.
And twithout introduction or explanation, Jesus comes out of nowhere and
gets in line with everyone else.
In Mark’s gospel, this is our first glimpse of Jesus – there are no
accounts of Jesus’ birth. No
angels, no annunciation, no nothing.
Nobody knows who Jesus was.
Not even John, it seems.
Jesus is just one of the folks waiting to be baptized, hanging out with
all the sinners who knew, somehow, that getting down into that river with that
crazy prophet, John, might just be their last, best chance to change their
lives.
Jesus is dunked under by John, just like everyone else. But after Jesus comes up out of the
water, we can see this is no ordinary baptism. Or maybe it is.
Maybe what happens next happens all the time, and we have just never
noticed it before.
Back on the first Sunday of Advent, Mark Shannon preached on Isaiah
64, which begins with: “O that you would tear open the heavens and come
down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence!” Today’s text doesn’t tell us if anyone
else sees it, but Jesus sure does – the heavens being ripped apart – not just opened
as in Matthew and Luke – but TORN open, split at the seams, with the Spirit of
God descending upon Jesus not like a cooing dove, but like a crazy,
dive-bombing bird. And then the
thunderous voice of God:
“You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
And then, not ten minutes later, his hair still wet from his baptism,
that same Spirit kicks God’s beloved Son into the wilderness to battle
Satan. So much for comforting
words. From the get go, being baptized seems to mean that life will take a very
different course. For 30 something
years, Jesus has been a child of Joseph and Mary, a carpenter, living an
ordinary life in Nazareth. But
that’s all changed now. Jesus
knows who he is and there’s no turning back.
All of this seems to suggest that baptism was never meant to prepare
us for a quiet, Christian life, but for a rather wild ride. Perhaps, as the great writer, Annie
Dillard, once suggested, in our baptism “…we should all wear crash helmets and
life preservers. Perhaps we should
issue warnings with our baptismal certificates – ‘This is a passport to places
you never thought you would go, to be an emissary of the living God in the
desert and the wilderness, to plant seeds of hope and healing and life.’”[1] Maybe that is reason enough to baptize
babies instead of those of us with graying hair and creaking joints, who are
not at all in the mood for adventure.
Or maybe it’s reason enough to rethink whether we’re doing our babies
any favors by giving them that particular bath.
Even if the mechanics of make us a little queasy, you must admit that
God does some of God’s best work if not completely underwater, then in the
middle of watery chaos. We heard
that in the text from Genesis read earlier. The earth begins in chaos with dark deep swirling water, and
the Spirit of God brooding and hovering over it and suddenly there is a
thunderous voice saying, “Let there be light!”
You see it again when God gets so disgusted with everything that God
decides to drown the whole creation operation, but preserves life on the planet
because God just can’t help being who God is – a God of mercy and love. Even when human beings completely do
not deserve the benefit of the doubt.
Later, the Israelites stand at the edge of a swirling Red Sea, scared
to death that they will either be destroyed by Pharaoh’s army or drowned in the
water. And we hear it again, God’s
voice telling Moses to lift up his rod and lead the people through the parting
of the waters.
Such watery terror seems far removed from our cautious sprinkling of
water on a baby’s forehead, or even full immersion in a sanitized swimming
pool. But people who have had
their homes flooded by a creek rising in a heart beat, or farmers who have seen
their crops dry up and blow away from lack of rain, or sailors who have been
caught in a raging storm-- all of
them know that water is a powerful thing.
It is life and it is death.
So we baptize our children and we baptize adults, but somewhere along
the line we’ve lost the power of our own baptism. Perhaps we need to consider the recklessness of that
baptismal scene in Mark. Perhaps
we need to reclaim our baptism and let it remind us of who we are, to whom we
belong, and the power that resides in us.
I read an article this week in which the writer said it’s far too easy
to join a church these days. He
said, in fact, that it’s harder to get a Costco membership than it is to become
a baptized Christian. He said he
wished that baptism was understood to be a much bigger deal. He wondered what would happen if the
only way to join a church was by skydiving? He writes:
“What are the reality of sin and redemption and the dangerous thrill of
falling and the great vista of salvation and the recognition that our lives are
not really in our own hands, if they aren’t like skydiving? Imagine what it
would mean to go through that experience, with its terrors and its rushes and
its ultimate relief – and then show up at church on Sunday to be greeted by a
room full of people who had been through all of that too?”[2]
Skydiving does seem to have much more in common to what Jesus
experiences on the Jordon than we experience in our baptisms in the modern
church. I’m not suggesting we all
take up skydiving. What I’m
suggesting is that we see our baptisms as a radical act of radical faith in a
God who has radically broken into the world. I am suggesting we see our baptisms not as the day when we
settled into a settled life of faith, but as a moment when we took a leap into
thin air and into the hands of God.
I am suggesting we live as though believe the promise that we are still
being held.
And just as he
was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit
descending like a dove on him. 11And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son,
the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
The tears in heaven are reflected by the tears in the lives of God’s
beloved children. Not just little
tears, but big giant gaping holes with ragged edges. All over the world.
Once scarcely knows where to begin or how to respond to the Spirit’s
urgent nudging into the wilderness.
But respond we must.
Somehow. But it’s
hard. Hard in South Sudan. Hard in Paris. Hard in Ferguson and New York. Hard in Emsworth.
But this is the life we were promised when water was poured recklessly
over our heads when we were babies, or even more recently. What were our parents thinking? What were we thinking? This is the life we get for being
grafted into the body of Christ.
This is what we get for becoming a member of the family of God. This is what we get for being sealed by
the Holy Spirit. This is what we
get for receiving the gift of sheer grace that we never asked for, but was
given to us anyway and now we’ve got to spend our lives responding to God’s
grace.
Lots of people doubt that the Western church has it in us anymore to
reflect the reckless spirit of John and Jesus and that crowd of sinners at the
River Jordon. I’m not sure we have the energy to be skydivers for
Jesus. And I think if you pushed
most ministers, they would admit it, too.
They are tired. Their
congregations are tired. It’s as
if we’re pushing a very big boulder up a very big hill, and we’re all getting
older, and there aren’t as many of us as there used to be and, gee – is it my
imagination, or is that boulder getting bigger?
One of my favorite writers, Frederick Buechner, writes: “Maybe the best thing that could happen
to the church would be some great tidal wave of history to wash it all away –
the church buildings tumbling, the church money all lost, the church bulletins
blowing through the wind like dead leaves, the differences between preachers
and congregations all lost too.
Then all we would have left would be each other and Christ, which was
all there was in the first place.”[3]
The other night, I was sitting with the folks with whom I will be
journeying to South Sudan. And one
of them, a young woman I do not know well, asked, “Will each one of you tell me
why you’re going on this trip?”
Two months ago, I would answered her question this way – I’m going for
my congregation. Perhaps my journey to Africa will kick start a new commitment
to engage directly in the mission partnership between the presbytery and the
Malawi/South Sudan churches. And,
frankly, it seems like a once in a lifetime opportunity to go to a part of Africa
hardly anyone goes to.
But in the last two months, I have realized that I am being called to
this trip so I can learn something I need to learn and something Christians in
developing countries seem to know that we in the established, mainline church
have forgotten. I need to learn
again to love Jesus like my life depends upon it. Because right now, my life depends on many other things
that, as far as I can tell, have pretty much nothing to do with Jesus. Right now this congregation depends
upon many, many things that, as far as I can tell, have nothing to do with
Jesus. I don’t have a thing to
offer our brothers and sisters in South Sudan. Not one useful skill.
I’m not a doctor or a nurse.
I don’t know how to dig a well.
All I have are ears to listen, a heart to pray, and a voice to
encourage. That’s it. Pretty small potatoes.
A friend of mine who actually is a doctor just returned from another
part of East Africa a few months ago.
When I asked him what he learned there, he said he came back less
fearful and more loving. And that
seems to me to be what we in the church need more than anything. More love. Less fear. And,
I might add, we need to depend upon the reckless water of our baptism that
still clings to us as we venture out to places we are afraid to go and people
we are hesitant to love – even if that place is not 7,000 miles away like
Africa, but even 7 miles
away. Or seven blocks.
I have performed two baptisms.
Just two. Both in hospitals.
Both with dying babies. The
first time was when I was a student chaplain at Children’s Hospital. My supervisor and I were with a family
who’s new born baby was in crisis in the NICU, when we received a page about
another family whose baby was about to be taken off life support and the parents
decided they wanted to have their child baptized right now. My supervisor took me out into the
hallway and said, “Susan, go up and baptize that baby.”
My mind was spinning. I wasn’t ordained yet. I didn’t know the baptismal liturgy. I didn’t know if I had to use a special holy water or if tap water would do. What would the presbytery say if I baptized someone without a license? Why couldn’t my supervisor do the baptism? It all seemed very reckless to me.
I must have been babbling badly because supervisor held my face in her
hands, stared deeply into my eyes and said, “Susan, I want you to go up there
and I want you to baptize that baby and I want you to do it in the name of the
Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Now
GO!!”
I went. I went up and
prayed over the sick baby, baptized her in the name of the Father, Son and Holy
Spirit. Reckless. Reckless. Reckless. The heavens were torn open and I could
hear a voice saying, “You are my beloved child. With you I am well pleased.”
Although I am as frightened as anyone to dive into that crazy river, I
know that it is where God leads you and me and all of us. Because we bear God’s name. You are God’s son. You are God’s daughter. With you God is well pleased.
Now, let’s dry off and get to work.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
[1] Diane Roth,
“Living By The Word.” Christian Century,
January 7, 2015.
[2] Maxwell
Grant, “Torn Open By God.” http://day1.org/6319-torn_open_by_god
Downloaded on 1/8/15.
[3] Frederick
Buechner, “The Church” in Secrets in the
Dark, 169.