Matthew 3:13-17
“Transformation”
January 8, 2023 Baptism of Christ Sunday
We’ve been told that this can be the year things are different.
If you’ve paid attention to any of the ads on our screens of all types and sizes over the last couple of weeks, you will have discovered that if you lose that weight, spend more time at the gym, navigate your debt differently, refinance your home, follow a different skincare regimen, invest in an electric vehicle, switch to lite beer, or adopt a rescue pet, your life will be transformed.
That which is holding you back or keeping you from your best life and what will make you a more responsible and honorable person is right there in front of you for the taking and all you need to do is apply yourself – and in many cases some money – and you will be changed for the better. It would seem, where there’s a will, there’s definitely a way.
What some of us hear when faced with those ads is – you need to fix yourself. There’s something wrong with you and you, only you, have the power to live an ideal existence.
It fits perfectly into the image that our culture has created of the rugged individualist. You and you alone are responsible for everything that happens and if you only want it bad enough, you will have it.
It’s saying that perfection is ours, if only we exert enough effort. And it may also lead to small envies of those whose lives seem all put together.
That concept of perfection begs the question that has troubled Christians almost from the start – why did Jesus, considered blameless, need to be baptized?
Before Jesus arrived at the river Jordan where John had been really busy with a long line of folks anxious for baptism, his selling point was that heaven was almost upon them and it was time to repent.
So, they each came before him confessing their individual sins, even the Pharisees and Sadducees who John did not mince words with, calling them out with some choice descriptors like “brood of vipers” and warning them that just repenting was not enough – their life and actions would be their true sign of repentance.
So, John, accustomed to receiving all sinners by this time, is taken aback.
He had just spoken about Jesus baptizing us with the figurative baptism of fire and no sooner had the words come out of his mouth then there is Jesus wanting John to literally baptize him with water.
John can’t help but counter Jesus’ request by turning it around and saying it should be Jesus doing the baptizing.
But this, in his very human start to his ministry, is Jesus’ way of drawing common ground with the people of Jerusalem and the countryside outside of Jerusalem.
Jesus was identifying himself as one of them.
He would have problems and failures and pain and loss just like all the rest of those broken souls by the river that day and the rest of us.
He came not to be above or over the people but among them – that’s a vision of the incarnation that is still so stunningly personal and hard to believe even now.
Soon Jesus would be called names by religious folks who would accuse him of spending too much time and getting too cozy with sinners – and they were right.
Maybe we could put aside that feeling that’s been in-bred in us of individualism and instead consider that the righteousness we are being called to with our baptismal promises is to mend the brokenness we have in our relationship with God.
And, maybe, as Jesus was God come to earth for all people, we might also consider the sin of the whole – societies, nations.
Jesus almost never scolds individuals for their brokenness. He was much more likely to take on and grieve the sins of the nation.
Jesus in joining in the rite of baptism is taking on the pain and suffering and injustice visited upon the collective of God’s people.
Jesus is a part of the greater whole.
He is together with us, repenting for the ways we do not love each other as God calls us to.
Jesus was taking on the embrace that God has for all people everywhere.
When we confess our sins and work at a repentance of the heart it is not just for the individual ways we have fallen away from God but also the collective ways.
When we celebrate a baptism, ours or anyone else’s, we are also celebrating the ways that the joys of the world – the lost lives found, the hurt that has found a path to healing, the rebuilding that comes after the devastation.
The baptismal promises we just renewed points to a new opportunity for life and ways of being.
We renewed our commitment to love and service – rightly and justly, we promised.
How ever we were first baptized, whether our parents held us as an infant or we were able to walk and talk for ourselves, we got into that water with Jesus and every other person ever baptized, all those who admitted to their flaws or the flaws that would come just by being human.
And we share in the assurance that no matter what we have or will do, we are beloved by God.
Let us then hear these words of assurance of that love from Unfolding Light:
My child, I know who you are.
You are the issue of my love,
myself spoken into this world.
At times if you doubt, remember
your secret name: Beloved.
I know the gifts I have given you,
the compassion I have planted in you,
how the world will call to those gifts,
will need you and feed on you
and wound you deeply.
Remember those gifts in you are me.
At times you may feel alone,
strange, unbelonging. Know that you Belong.
Know that I am in you and you in me
as deeply as you are in this water.
When you pass through raging waters
they will not overwhelm you.
I will be with you; I will be in you.
In all things, in your miracles and failures,
you are my light. You are my delight.
Go now, into your cobbled, radiant life
and shine with me. Amen.
(www.unfoldinglight.net)