First Sunday after the Epiphany |
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The Baptism of our Lord
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Acts 10:34-43
Matthew 3:13-17
Psalm 29
Father in heaven, who at the baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan proclaimed him your beloved Son and anointed him with the Holy Spirit: Grant that all who are baptized into his Name may keep the covenant they have made, and boldly confess him as Lord and Savior; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.
When I was in elementary school, I was supposed to be in
charge of my own nightly bath, as is any eight-or-ten-year-old child. I didn’t put up a fuss when it was time to get
ready for bed. Without arguing, I would head for the bathroom. But I rarely
took a bath. Oh, I would run the water—long and loudly, at full tilt—so that my
mother would hear it coursing through the pipes in the house. I would even splash
around in it for a minute with my hands or kick at it with my feet, in case
someone was listening at the door. I would certainly remember to wet the
washrag and the soap. But I spent my whole bath time sitting cross-legged on
the bathroom floor, fully clothed, reading a book. “Why should I actually get
in the water?” I reasoned. “I’m not really dirty. I don’t smell. I’ve just been
sitting at my desk at school all day. What I really need is to finish this
chapter in my book! And this next chapter. And this next.” I took really long “baths.” I don’t think my
mother ever caught on.
For first-century Jews, baptism was a purity
ritual, a “bath,” if you will, that would wash off not just the dust of the
road but the sins that cloak the heart, as well. John baptized “with water for
repentance,” for amendment of life, so that one would be clean for the Day of the Lord, for the Day of Judgment that was
coming. But here’s the problem: If baptism was about purification, why, early
Christians wondered, would Jesus need to take a bath like this? Jesus, the
sinless Son of God, the pure and perfect Victim—why would he need to be
baptized for the forgiveness of his sins? Why on earth would scrawny John the
Forerunner ever consent to baptize the powerful Son of Man? Why didn't Jesus baptize John instead? Why couldn’t
spotless Jesus just sit down on the banks of the Jordan and read a good book
while all of the dirty people bathed?
Was he just pretending to wash?
Each Gospel
writer answers that question a bit differently, but for Matthew, Jesus
participates in the bath in the Jordan as an act of humble obedience to God and to God's teaching. Jesus and
John together "bring to fulfillment all righteousness” as they proceed to wash God the Son
in the river. Not only does Jesus agree to take a bath that he does not need,
he enters and arises from the water as the suffering Servant, in a reference to
our Old Testament reading for today. When Matthew explains that God announces,
“This one is my beloved Son in whom I have taken delight,” he is paraphrasing
the words called out to Isaiah’s beloved servant, using Isaiah’s words to identify Jesus as one who is
so gentle that he will not even break a bruised reed or cry out in the streets,
yet as one whose obedience will bring about such powerful outcomes as justice for the captive and healing
for the blind. Moreover, when Jesus is baptized, the perfect sphere in the
heavens, the dome that holds up the sky, is pierced like the Temple veil at the
moment of Jesus’ death. A tear is made in the barrier that divides humankind
from God, and God’s love comes pouring down—first on Jesus, God’s beloved and
obedient Son, and then later on us, beloved of God in Christ.[1]
We modern
Christians are perhaps less concerned about Jesus’ sinlessness than we are
about knowing what Jesus’ obedience means for our own Christian lives. What
does it mean for us to follow a Lord who paradoxically washes to become unclean
with the unclean? What kind of righteousness, or “right relationship” does
Jesus expect then from us? We know, of
course, that baptism in Christ is a gift, a gift of God’s grace. It is not
something that we earn, but something that God pours over us like living water.
That’s why little babies can be baptized before they even know what's going
on; they aren’t able to do anything but snuggle in their parents’ arms, yet God
fills them with new life in baptism. But baptism also eventually demands some
kind of response, a conversion of life, a time of learning and a decision to accept the Baptismal Covenant as our own. When babies are baptized, their parents and godparents carry
this part of the meaning for them until they are old enough to assume it
themselves. But God expects the baptized to walk in the ways of righteousness,
to learn and grow and act as Christ-followers in the world.
Two examples
of humble obedience really brought home
to me this week what kind of righteousness Jesus fulfilled for us.
First, I read
that in the Eastern Orthodox Church, Christians celebrate and remember Jesus’
baptism by a big Church procession to the nearest local body of water. The
Bishop or Patriarch then throws a cross out into the water, and the faithful
jump in and race to see who can rescue it first and return it to the church
official (a chilly proposition in places like Russia in January!) Such public
processions, however, are downright dangerous in parts of the world where
Christians are still persecuted. In Turkish-controlled northern Cyprus, for
example, where only a few Christians live, the ceremony was allowed this year
for the first time in almost 40 years. Danger, relative obscurity, and small
size do not deter these Christians from remembering publicly the baptism of
our Lord. Just as impressive, though, is that Patriarch Bartholomew, the
senior official of the Orthodox world, tends to conduct this Epiphany water-blessing
ceremony not in nearby rivers but in unlikely places all around the world,
including in the Amazon basin, or on the melting coast of Greenland or at the oily
Gulf of Mexico. These rituals, he explains, have become part of a campaign
against water pollution and other environmental problems.[2]
(Do you think that he showed up in West Virginia this year, perhaps?) In any
case, what struck me was the paradox that the leaders of these small, weak
groups of Christians, nevertheless hold positions of global importance. As one
writer put it, “The ‘weakness’ part does nothing to diminish their moral
authority. Rather the opposite, in fact.”[3] ….Just like Jesus humbling himself in John’s
baptism. How do we use our weakness as strength? How do we let God use us on a
global scale, despite small size and obscurity?
The other
image that stuck me this week is from the movie, Blue Like Jazz. It is the story of a pious young Southern Baptist
from Texas who rejects his religious upbringing and joins in the agnostic
mockery of ultra-liberal students at Reed College in Oregon. One of the scornful
rituals at Reed is for the students to elect one of their most anti-religious
members as “pope” each year. The school’s “pope” wears a cope and miter and, the
night of his election, must enter a fake confessional booth and perform
absolution upon the crowds of drunken students who enter one by one to confess
their sins. It’s all supposed to be a parody, but when Don, the young Texan, is
elected Pope at the end of the movie, he is starting to understand what real
Christianity is all about. In the final scene, we see crowds waiting outside of
the confessional, just like the crowds were waiting on the banks of the Jordan.
Like Jesus, Don puts on the cope and miter that he has been given and looks
like he is merely going to play the game… Yet also like Jesus, he changes
the game around. Instead of pronouncing mock absolution, Don asks each student,
in full humility, to forgive him, as a human being and as a representative of
the Church, for all that he and the Church have done to hurt that student. And
he begins by asking the forgiveness of a man who has suffered sexual abuse at
the hands of a priest. After a long hesitation, the abuse victim forgives and
receives some measure of freedom. By
humbling himself, by turning the ritual inside out, Don leaves room for the Spirit
to come in and make true forgiveness possible, even in the hardened hearts of
those deeply wounded by the sins of the Church. When the world lifts us up in positions
of power, can we lower ourselves to let God’s love transform and even break the
very structures that support us?
Or do we pretend
to be dutifully scrubbing away at the sins of the world and at the smudges on
our own skin, when we are really still fully clothed and doing what we want,
sitting cross-legged and comfy on the floor beside the tub?
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