Matthew 3:13-17
“Belovedness”
January 12, 2020 Baptism of Christ Sunday
Many of us have no memory of our baptisms, the vows of which we just renewed. My only memory is not of the event itself but of a photograph of me as a 4 week old infant being held in the arms of my godfather, Uncle Jim, while his wife my Aunt Mary Alice looks on in her role as stand-in for my Aunt Gerry, my godmother, who was home in Ohio caring for one baby cousin while pregnant with the next. My Uncle Ray, who was a priest, performed the baptism in the little area off to the side of the main sanctuary at St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church in Oneonta, NY on a Sunday afternoon. My mom and dad don’t remember a lot of the details as this was the first of 7 baptisms in under 10 years where they would, at least for a moment, be looking on as the newest baby was blessed with oil and had the sign of the cross made on their foreheads while being held by two other adults who agreed to share in the responsibility of making sure we knew we were beloved children of God, from that day forward and forevermore.
The teachings that were passed on back in the 1960s and 70s to we students in Catholic school and CCD were that a baby should be baptized as soon as possible so as not to risk dying unbaptized – another aunt refused to take my cousins outside until their baptisms happened – because the baby’s soul would land in a mysterious place called Limbo where the just who died before Christ arrived were also supposedly sitting in a holding pattern. The Catholic Church no longer teaches this theory but it sure made us wonder aloud at the fate of all those babies when I was growing up.
The baptism I remember most vividly is that of our daughter Selene at about 7 weeks old. It was a warm August day and there were easily 2 dozen Smiths and Clarks in attendance at Second Congregational Church in Bennington. Fussy Selene calmed down almost immediately when Tom Steffen took her on the walk around the congregation after the pouring on of water and there was also a different kind of calm because for almost all of our family members, this was the first non-Catholic baptism they had attended. They had plenty of questions before and after the regular Sunday service that the baptism was just a part of but for all their feelings of awkwardness, the hearing of Selene being proclaimed Beloved, enabled them to put to rest the differences in our traditions.
Water and love and family and community and God’s abiding presence are what made this a baptism. It was a ritual that had some different words and yet is the sacrament that we recognize in each other’s traditions even when not much else seems shared. Be it through aspersion also known as sprinkling that we most often use, affusion which is the pouring of the water over the head, partial immersion or total submersion as we get the sense Jesus experienced at the hands of John in the River Jordan, it is all Baptism and it is something that happens with others. As one writer describes it, “In baptism, the recipient of baptism is just that – recipient. You cannot very well do your own baptism. It is done to you, for you.” (William Willimon, Remember Who You Are: Baptism, A Model for Christian Life, 37)
Jesus and those around him in the river were experiencing a ritual cleansing that had been a part of Judaism for centuries. This one, though, was set apart. Jesus’ cousin was the one doing the dunking and the blessing but not without some resistance. The acknowledgment here of Jesus’ special status starts with John’s humility in the face of Jesus’ greatness and then the icing on the cake is the voice that makes clear that Jesus is indeed the Son of God, in this very human dripping wet body. To hear the words of belovedness uttered to Jesus is the signal that we are meant to hear of our belovedness.
When we are baptized, we are given our true name, Beloved of God. However it happens, inside or outside, with just a few drops or enough to cover every bodily inch, this name Beloved communicates to us that we are no longer just our own. Through our Baptism we are assured or reassured today, that we are God’s. That is why we renew our baptisms. We could all benefit from such reassurance, couldn’t we? When we grow fearful of the drumbeats of war, we are Beloved. When we watch in pain and concern for our struggling siblings battling fires in Australia or climbing out of the devastation of earthquakes in Puerto Rico, we are Beloved. When we grieve with those lost to addiction or gun violence or a plane crash in Iran, we are Beloved.
Baptism is what names the reality of God’s unending belovedness. The good news in this is that each of us is a beloved child of God. The bad news is that we don’t get to choose our siblings. Baptism names the reality that Jesus came to proclaim. We made the leap here in worship from last week where the 3 magi followed a star and came to pay homage to this new king child all the way to Jesus as a full-grown adult about to begin his ministry and that beginning is marked by the Holy Spirit and God’s own embrace of his identity. This is the starting place for the work which would have him ministering and teaching to and with many whom the rest of the world was hard-pressed to embrace. This message is what he will carry with him after his wilderness experience. It is what he will pass on to his disciples so that they might carry on this knowledge of their own belovedness and make that known to the desperate and grieving, the struggling and hungry, the abandoned and forgotten. This is about community.
When we baptize, whether it be a baby, child, teen or adult, we are saying we recognize each one as Beloved. How difficult it can be to remember that fact when we walk out into the world. To see every other one as Beloved is our life’s work. To value the stranger, those from other traditions or nations, the ones who we struggle to understand is to live out our Baptismal vows. When something as common and life-giving as water is used for this sacrament we then tie what happened in our baptisms to the people and events that fill our lives. We know that at the very most we humans can only live 7 days without water.
Water figured just as importantly throughout Jesus’ life and ministry.
Water carried Jesus’ body when it moved from Mary out into the world.
He went fishing in it and washed his friends’ feet with it. Jesus spit water into dirt and made mud and restored eyesight. He cast demons into water and he walked on it. And like all of us, Jesus got thirsty for water and ultimately wept tears made of it.
Don’t wait until the next Baptism to remind yourself, especially when life gets hard, of your belovedness. When you feel the next raindrop or snowflake, when the next tear falls from your eye or you wash out your mug or take your next shower. Know you are beloved. Take this short prayer to heart. “O God, remind me again and again, that I do not need to be worthy, I need only to be yours.” (Passage by Passage, Revised Common Lectionary Year A, 12) Amen.