Epiphany 1, Year A
Baptism of our Lord
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.
Children,
I wonder if any of you have ever avoided bath-time? Have you dawdled around in
your room, perhaps? Or begged your parents, “just let me beat this one level …
?” When I was a child, I would head into the bathroom and 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 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 often 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.
As
I thought about baptism this week, it brought up for me this childhood image of
bath-time. If my soul is really not feeling all that dirty, why should I bother
with a washing that involves uncomfortable vulnerability and change? How
involved do I really have to be with those heavy promises that we make in our
baptismal covenant? It can be discouraging to resist evil over and over again.
It’s hard work to see Christ in annoying people. It can be such a slog to be
truly faithful in prayer. Can’t I just pretend to be dutifully scrubbing away at
my smudges, when I’m really sitting cross-legged and comfy on the floor beside the tub?
Let’s
contrast for a moment the image of a child avoiding the bath with the image of
Jesus at the Jordan River. I’ve seen the Jordan, and believe me, it doesn’t
look like the outskirts of the Promised Land. Now, I know that there used to be
more water in it in Jesus’ day, before human industry sucked it dry. But the
Jordan is a brown, muddy little river, flanked by brown, muddy banks. Imagine scraggly
John the Baptizer standing waist-deep in the brown, muddy water, waving his
arms and shouting about sins like some revival preacher, while his unkempt hair
and long beard flap in the breeze. Imagine dozens of down-and-out folks in
shabby cloaks and worried faces milling around on the brown, muddy banks. It
wasn’t the wealthy elite who were hanging out at the river with the prophet
John. It wasn’t the powerful politicians, or the holy Temple priests, or the
educated scribes. It was the poor and the distressed, the sick, the outcasts,
the political radicals, the desperate ones, loaded down by their sins.
And
into this motley crowd strides Jesus, the clean and sinless Son of God. He
doesn’t hold back, watching safely from behind a palm tree. He doesn’t wait for
the crowd to disperse in order to get a back-slapping private session with his
Cousin John. He doesn’t avoid anything. He stands among the others on the
brown, muddy banks and, in turn, hikes up his robes to be washed in the brown,
muddy waters. His willingness to submit to a bathing that he doesn’t need
shocks John the Baptizer. It shocks the Evangelist Matthew, too, who hurries to
explain Jesus’ actions to his readers. It shocks us as we sit next to the tub,
pretending to be inside of it. But Jesus’ shocking presence in those muddy
waters lies at the heart of what baptism is all about.
Eastern
Orthodox icons give us a glimpse underneath the brown water of the Jordan. In
the ancient Eastern imagery, we see Jesus submerged up to his chin in turbulent
waves of water, while John and several onlookers lean in to watch from the
safety of the shore. Deep within the river, under Jesus’ feet, are sea monsters—the
mythological representations of chaos, the face of all
of the dark, dangerous forces that threaten the very order of creation. In his
baptism, Jesus not only hangs out with us sinners on the riverbank, Jesus fully
enters into chaos itself. He goes under the raging waves with the all of the
powerful forces that seek to unmake the world.[1] He submerges himself in
all of our inner turmoil and in the bedlam of our world.
Matthew has Jesus explain to John that he
needs to be baptized “in order to fulfill all righteousness.” At first, that
sounded to me as if Jesus enters chaos just to fulfil some theological formula.
You know, we mess up and make God mad, so Jesus has to come and get punished in
our place, because somebody’s got to do it. But when I looked at the other
places in the New Testament where this phrase is used, the light dawned![2] The “righteousness” or right
relationship with God that Jesus fulfills—is Love. To fulfill all righteousness
is to live in God’s love, to love God, and to love one another as God loves us.
Jesus comes down into our chaos in order to bring God’s Love even into those depths.
As he rises, wet and vulnerable, we rise with him, beloved children of a loving
Father.
For us Christians, baptized in Jesus’
Name, there is really no question of sitting comfortably beside the tub, then, is
there? If we stick close to Jesus, we are going to find ourselves thrust into
the troublesome crowds. We are going to find ourselves, as Rowan Williams
writes, with Jesus “in the neighborhood of chaos …. Where humanity is most
disordered, disfigured, and needy.”[3] Staying dry and comfy,
merely pretending to bathe, is a barrier to our participation in God’s new creation.
We have to risk the muddy waters before we can rise as beloved sons and
daughters, as brothers and sisters in Christ.
This winter, I have been agonizing over
the chaos that is Aleppo. My heart has been almost unbearably heavy, ever since
I saw the news photo of that young dust-covered boy who sits in shock in that
ambulance, unbearably alone, cast under unceasing waves of violence. It was as
if he was calling to me in his anguish, and I was too far removed to help or even
to hear his voice. I wanted to hold his hand and whisper that everything was
going to be OK. I wanted to feed him, and put bandages on his wounds, and hunt in
the rubble for his relatives, and go after the people who hurt him. But I
couldn’t do anything except to sit dry and clothed and cross-legged on the
floor, turning my gaze away from the painful chaos and reading my book.
Around Christmastime, I saw a painting by Judith Mehr that is a
variation of that photo. Maybe you have seen it. It shows the same little boy
with the same anguished eyes. But this time, he is not alone. The three angelic
figures from Rublev’s famous icon of the Trinity are ministering to him. One
angel hovers softly on his right and another on his left, and behind him,
another angel holds up a loving hand that beams a stream of golden light onto
his head. I can almost perceive a dove in that strand of light, and I can
almost hear that angel whisper firmly, “this is my son, my beloved.”
It somehow melted the stone weight in my
heart to see this image, to feel God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—ministering to
this boy whom I so longed to touch. Today, thinking about Jesus’ baptism, and
mine, it all came together: God’s loving presence in the worst chaos our world
can dish out; my deep desire to join in God’s love for the world; and the
mighty act that Jesus does when he walks into that muddy Jordan water—pulling me
and you in after him, giving us a new commandment to love one another, and always
reaching between us when the chasms are too large for us to manage on our own. As in the Rublev icon of the Trinity, in this
picture, the seat opposite the little boy, the fourth seat in the circle of
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is my seat, and your seat. We don’t sit off to
the side while the love pours out like water somewhere else. But the eyes into
which the pained and piercing eyes of suffering look, are ours.
[1]
Rowan Williams, Being Christian: Baptism,
Bible, Eucharist, Prayer (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014), 3.
[2]
Thank you to Jill Duffield, at https://pres-outlook.org/2017/01/baptism-lord-january-8-2017
who pointed me to these verses.
