I’ll never forget the new mother who
came up to me hesitantly before the first “baptismal prep” class for her baby
girl. She was excited that her friends from college had come to town to serve
as godparents and that her daughter was going to wear her grandmother’s
gorgeous baptismal gown. But as the mother approached me, her cheerful face
grew somber. “How could God send my sweet little baby to Hell?” she asked with
a tremble in her voice. I cringed as I pictured her adorable daughter somehow
shut out from God’s loving presence just because I had not yet baptized her. I
told this young mother emphatically that this baptism was not just to save her baby
from Hell. “Then why do we baptize
babies?” she asked, confused. “Isn’t that why we hurry it up, in case they die
first?”
Most of us have
so many questions about baptism, as well as concerns about its meaning and
purpose, that we find it safer to rejoice over form rather than content.
Christianity embraces a variety of theologies and practices surrounding
baptism, and we could spend hours examining the history and merits of those
beliefs. Today’s Gospel, however, sheds its own light on that young mother’s
question. As we examine Jesus’ baptism, we see how our own baptism as Christians
contains layers of meaning that make it about so much more than “where we go after
we die.” Our Gospel lesson shows us that our baptism is more about God’s desire to come to us, than it is about the destination of our souls.
Aware of our own shortcomings, we human
beings look for ways to remove the gritty film of sin and death and chaos that
clings so persistently to our humanity. “Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
and cleanse me from my sin … Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow,” pleads
the Psalmist in Psalm 51. Traditions of washing with water for purification existed
early on in Judaism, as well as in other religions of the ancient world. It
makes sense: if we wash the dirt from our hands with water, we would naturally
symbolically cleanse our hearts in the same way. On a tour of the Holy Land today,
one can still see an abundance of mikvah’s
or deep stone cisterns, in which Jews would perform the ritual washings
demanded by the Law. These baths were a daily personal practice, a kind of
preparation for the cleansing that God would do someday, at the Day of Judgment.
There is nothing wrong with this practice, yet it is not all there is to Christian
baptism. If this ritual cleansing were the only meaning of Christian baptism,
that young mother’s little girl would indeed need washing from the stains of
the world, over and over again, from birth on, each time the purity of her body
or heart was compromised, each time chaos touched her life.
When John the Baptist comes on the
scene, however, this kind of ritual washing is already transformed by the
prophet, as he bends and shifts the meaning of the ritual.[1]
In coming to John at the Jordan River, people are no longer washing themselves
in private, but they are coming together as a group to watch one another go
under the waters. As God’s prophet, John stands in for God, who is now the one
doing the cleansing, rather than the individual himself. And the people are now
being bathed in the Jordan River, the holy place where the Israelites first entered
into the Promised Land. As we sing in the old Spiritual, to enter the waters of
the Jordan is to come home, to enter into the promises of God. Gordon Lathrop
tells the story of another 1st century Jew who led a crowd of people
into the Jordan in order to walk through the waters and reclaim the Promised
Land for the Jews. This symbolic action was enough of a threat to Rome that it
brought out Roman soldiers to imprison the crowd and carry the leader’s severed
head to Jerusalem.[2]
John, of course, meets a similar fate in the verses that are left out of our
lectionary passage today. John’s baptizing in the Jordan is more than ritual
cleansing; it is a rehearsal for the triumph of the God of Israel, orchestrated
by the Lord and coming soon. The people who wait on the banks of the Jordan
with bated breath in today’s Gospel, wondering whether or not John is the
Messiah, are wondering if the Day of the Lord has come and the promises to the
righteous are about to be fulfilled. If John’s baptism were the only meaning of
Christian baptism, that young mother’s little girl would indeed receive the
holy water as a sign of the coming Day of Judgment, to mark her as part of
God’s righteous people, as one who, with others, is safe from the unquenchable
fire.
But there is more. Jesus arrives at the
waters. In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus joins with the crowds, waiting for his turn in
the Jordan. He stands among the people, among those who are suffering, among
those who are seeking freedom from oppression, among those who are weighed down
with sin and grief. Why must Jesus be baptized, we ask? If he is God, if he has
no sins, why does he even need to enter the river? Jesus is baptized because he
stands with us. Jesus’ baptism is the second unveiling—the second epiphany—of incarnation,
of God made flesh. On the banks of the Jordan, Jesus is no longer God as a
vulnerable little baby, but God as a grown man, a Jewish man standing among the
people of Israel.
Right after today’s passage, Luke inserts what
seems on first glance to be a boring and pointless genealogy: it traces Jesus,
son of Joseph, son of Heli, son of Matthat … all the way back to Enos, son of
Seth, son of Adam, son of God. Luke juxtaposes Adam, the symbolic first man,
the fallible first son of the Creator, with Jesus, who, after he comes out of
the waters of the Jordan, prays and receives God’s Spirit, God’s creating breath
of life, that announces that he is the
beloved Son of God. Suddenly, our lives, as children of Adam and Eve, are bound
to God’s life in Jesus as he rises from the Jordan. With Jesus, and in Jesus,
we too are called beloved children of God. To be baptized in Christ is to
become the Beloved, to be uplifted by God’s most holy Spirit, just as Jesus
was. It is to turn our lives to his purposes, to live in him and to allow him to
live in us. As Christians, in baptizing that young mother’s baby girl, we are
not saving her from Hell but welcoming her into a world that is saved by the
light of God’s great mercy, of God’s undying love that even the Cross cannot kill,
of God’s constant presence among us, the Body of Jesus Christ.
In a wonderful sermon, the Rt. Rev.
Robert Wright invites us into this life that Jesus’ baptism gives us: “Slip
into a holiness that can envelope you, even the defects. A holiness not
made of human hands. More buoyant than Moses’ baby basket…Walk around in this
love. Stand in front of the mirror, see how it fits. You have been
changed. Test it out. It’s durable. Stains wipe right off… Slip into this
holiness that is made of God’s love for you.”[3]
That is the glorious invitation of Christian
baptism. So, as you leave today, headed out into the chaotic and unclean world,
headed into the sticky business of a church meeting, dip your fingers into the
waters of baptism in our font in the center of the back aisle. Bring your
fingers to your heart in the sign of the Cross and let the Holy Spirit tie any rigid
preconceptions that you have about baptism into knots. Feel only the water of
mercy and join in prayer with Jesus—with Jesus, whose prayers open the heavens
above us all.
Thank you so much for your thoughts. A phrase that will stay with me
ReplyDelete"To be baptized in Christ is to become the Beloved, to be uplifted by God’s most holy Spirit, just as Jesus was."
I will be meditating on that.