Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
“Bathtubs, Tea Kettles and Estuaries”
January 13, 2019 The Baptism of Christ
Exactly fifty years ago this week, on a brutally cold Saturday night just like last night, the family of nine was settled into their year-old home, most of them watching television together with a fire going in the fireplace when the parents suddenly smelled smoke. The dad first opened the door to the basement but it wasn’t coming from there.
He then realized the smell was coming from upstairs and he quickly dashed up the stairs, where he could see the smoke. He pounded on the bathroom door to get the oldest child out of the bathtub. It seemed the fire was across the hall in the parents’ bedroom, with the bed linens engulfed in flames when he got there. While the daughter dashed out of the bathroom dripping wet and running down the stairs and into the basement to put on boots and coat before joining her mom and brothers and sisters in the bitter cold, the dad tried to control the fire by dragging the burning sheets into the full bathtub that his daughter had just deserted, in the process burning his hand as three fire trucks arrived, loaded with volunteer firefighters who worked mightily to maneuver their ladders up to the second floor atop the iced over layer of snow.
Neighbors gathered outside in the bitter cold and soon the fire was extinguished, having left the master bedroom destroyed along with all its contents. The rest of the house sustained water and smoke damage. The dad was taken to a local doctor for treatment of the burns to his hand and the family of nine was divided into three teams of three, whom kind neighbors graciously housed and fed for three days until it was safe, if still smelling heavily of smoke, to return to their home and rebuild what was lost.
Fire and water, and undoubtedly the Holy Spirit, were all a part of the experience of our family in what we, over the past five decades, have always just referred to as “The Fire.” Water was in the bathtub, in the fire hoses, in solid form on that frigid January night. Fire was both a source of warmth and comfort in the confines of our cozy fireplace as well as the destructive force that began with a spark, probably from a faulty radio next to the bed.
We find ourselves now firmly in the midst of the season of Epiphany – the time of revelation, when in the Gospel lessons we come to discover who and what Jesus is meant to be to the world. John humbly recognizes that although crowds were surrounding him, all pushing their way into what they believe would be a transformation through the ritual of baptism, wanting to be close enough to him to have some of this specialness rub off on them, he knows he’s not the one that is the embodiment of all their hopes.
This story opens John and the rest of us to the revelation of who Jesus is. John here is baptizing all comers – the rich and poor, men and women, Jew and non-Jew. He spends no time determining whether someone is prepared or worthy. John leaves the judgment business to Jesus. He is a man on a mission, so determined in his work that he might almost have missed the one whose sandals he feels he is not worthy of untying, who waded into the Jordan just like everyone else.
Barbara Brown Taylor said that Jesus “goes into the waters of the Jordan a carpenter and comes out a Messiah. He is the same person but with a new direction. His being is the same, but his doing is about to take a radical turn.” (“Sacramental Mud” in Mixed Blessings) With water, the element that signals a washing away of the old and the opportunity to start anew, Jesus is being revealed, by God, as set apart. The repentance, the turning away toward something better, that is part of this baptismal ritual that we reaffirmed today, is a call toward the inclusion that God offers us. Jesus is at this point officially named Messiah by God and God is well-pleased.
This was a quiet and unassuming stage on which the 30 year old Jesus would begin his work. This baptism, in the company of sinning strangers, speaks to the presence in the hard work of living that Jesus is taking up. He comes not with trumpets and entourage, but rather the power that descends upon him comes from the affirmation of the God within. It’s the love – that’s the enduring message. .”
In his Baptism, Jesus was claimed by God as his own who was loved more than can be imagined and this is the message of each of our Baptisms. The both human and divine Jesus was forever changed by his Baptism and this is what we can take away from our Baptisms as we try every day to live into them. Jesus was to go forth from his Baptism and teach a new world order, modeling it by who he chose to break bread with and whose house he chose to sleep in and those he laid his hands upon to heal.
We are meant to notice that Jesus often chose to shower love, in all its forms, on those the rest of the world had little use for. The love he knew was his was also the love that he knew was the birthright of every other person and his baptism is a jumping off point for him. Rather than begin his earthly ministry with fanfare and a big to-do, Jesus gets in line with all the riff raff and has John, the one who has been preparing the way, be the one who actually conducts the baptism.
Forgiveness is a significant part of baptism but maybe not in the way that forgiveness is often thrown around as a concept. It’s not what we have to seek in order to be claimed as God’s beloved but rather it happens because we – flawed, insecure, hurting – are already God’s beloved children. Baptism is a way of assuring us that we are called and named. One of the most powerful parts of this story that involves water, fire and the Holy Spirit is not that Jesus is baptized just like us but that we get to be baptized, named and loved just like Jesus.
One of the early church leaders – a theologian, writer and bishop – was Athanasius who was one of the first make the point that Jesus became one of us so we might become like Jesus. That means the message of belovedness is ours, even when it’s hard for us to imagine. Think right now about that one dear soul you know who finds it hard to accept love, whose self-worth is extremely limited or whose life has made it really tough to imagine and embrace the knowledge of such a love…Those are the ones that we might be especially mindful of offering the unconditional love to that we know is ours. It is not that those hurting ones are unloved. They are only unaware of such a love. That’s where we come in, suspending judgment, accepting difference and sharing a love that has the power to change lives – our own and those whose lives we might touch. We are called, named and loved – that is the souvenir of our Baptism and our life’s work as disciples of Jesus to live into.
Let us then pray these words from Ted Loder:
Holy One, untamed by the names I give you
In the silence name me,
That I may know who I am,
Hear the truth you have put into me,
Trust the love you have for me,
Which you call me to live out
with my sisters and brothers
in your human family.
(Guerrillas of Grace: Prayers for the Battle, 24) Amen.