Sermons

Baptism Remembrances

John Wilkinson                               Third Presbyterian Church  January 9, 2005                               Matthew 3:13-17

We read a portion of Psalm 29 as our call to worship a few minutes ago. We will consider Jesus’ baptism very soon. It would be difficult to encounter these very words—“The voice of the Lord is over the waters”—without thinking of events that began soon after Christmas in Southeast Asia and that continue to reverberate even now. We will do our best to respond. We will pray without ceasing, give generously, donate band-aids and aspirin.

And yet we will wonder how and perhaps why. These are not new questions. Nor are they answerable this morning. The theologians use the word “theodicy,” the presence of evil in the world. I am not so sure that an earthquake or a tsunami is evil, anymore than cancer or a car accident is. There is evil, of course. But perhaps not this.

And yet we ask why bad things happen, and more importantly, what God’s role may be. Our tradition speaks of God as immutable, inscrutable, unknowable. There is more about God that we don’t know than that we do know.

And yet we know this. That with the rabbis we believe that just as God rejoiced when the Israelites passed safely through the Red Sea, so God mourned for the Egyptians that followed.

So God’s heart is sad now. So God is known as love, love that at its birth is vulnerable, love that at its maturity suffered for us, and even died. Where is God, we may ask, with all those whose lives have been lost? With all those who continue to search. With all those who give aid and comfort. With all who hunger and thirst.

Let us pray. O God, hear us as we cry out, and allow us to hear your voice as it calls to us. Be with all those who mourn, who seek, who suffer, and allow us to be as your healing presence in a world at need. And now open your mind to us, and speak to us with a voice that is powerful and true. Amen.

***

For these middle three Sundays of January, we will explore some common themes. There is not quite enough architecture to call this a sermon series. Nonetheless, we will be sharing something of a journey together. If you are at all interested in following the steps of this loosely organized conversation, the ushers have something of an outline available.

Like all journeys that are worth taking, this one may be both exhilarating and maddening. We may feel ill-prepared. We will not always travel a direct route, not always have a clear destination. We may not always appreciate those who journey with us. We may even want to get off board, from time to time. Nonetheless, here we are.

The rhythm will go something like this: whose we are, who we are, what we do. And like all journeys, it begins with baptism. Whose we are. And we are God’s. We would be God’s anyway, with or without baptism. That’s what our faith teaches us. But our faith teaches us that baptism is a central act of the church, a central act of faith, for the very reason that it proclaims clearly and profoundly and publicly whose we are and what difference that will make to us and to the world. And it will make all the difference.

Matthew’s version is fairly lean. It begins, and this is worth noting, with John the Baptist. Following the Christmas story, as we are doing, we move quickly to the adulthood of these two cousins, John or Jesus.

John’s public ministry begins first. A strangely appealing wilderness ministry, a provocative message of repentance. And when concern begins to develop about his own popularity, he quickly dismisses it and points to another. “I am not worthy to carry his sandals,” John says. “I baptize with water but he will baptize you with fire and the Holy Spirit.”

And then Jesus shows up. At first John will have none of it. “Me baptize you?” But Jesus persists, and they enter the water. And lest we miss the point, as Jesus emerges from the water, the heavens open, the Spirit of God descends like a dove and a voice booms out.

It is a provocative question at the beginning of a new year. What voices are booming out to you? Or, what still, small voices are whispering to you in the quiet moments? As we have suggested, this faith is ultimately not about proposition or neatly arranged arguments and proofs. It is about a journey. And it begins with baptism, the primary identification that you, and I, and all of us together, are children of God. Named by God. Claimed by God.

Comforted and challenged, welcomed and provoked by God. Day by day, moment by moment, step by step, we discover and re-discover that identity. In his moments of doubt and fear, Martin Luther used to repeat over and over to himself, as something to which he could cling, that he had been baptized. And John Calvin recommended that whenever we are “troubled by a consciousness of our faults,” that we may venture to remind ourselves of our baptism.

Theologian William Placher reminds us that “baptism is not magic. It welcomes us into Christian community and callus us to a Christian life but offers no guarantees.” (Jesus the Savior, page 187).

We do not know Jesus’ reaction at his own baptism. He knew now who he was, and whose he was. Did he know what awaited? Welsh poet R.S. Thomas speculates:

“And God held in his hand
A small globe. Look he said.
The son looked. Far off,
As through water, he saw
A scorched land of fierce
Colour. The light burned
There: crusted buildings
Cast their shadows; a bright serpent, a river
Uncoiled itself, radiant
With slime.

On a bare
Hill a bare tree saddened
The sky. Many people
Held out their thin arms
To it, as though waiting
For a vanished April
To return to its crossed
Boughs. The son watched
Them. Let me go there, he said.” (The Coming)

We do not know where the journey will take us, and there are no guarantees.

Then why bother at all? Why bother with baptism at all?

William Placher offers one response. “We sinners need all the help we can get. We need the comfort and the challenge that baptism provides: the special assurance that we are under God’s care, and the call to live up to our identity as baptized in Christ.” (page 187)

That is what this day is about, a day when we remember Jesus’ baptism and use it as a mirror to our own lives and to our own journey of faith. It is a day of big words: identity, call, meaning. Who we are because of whose we are, and what we are called to do. It may be about choices: do this rather than that, or go in that direction rather than the other one. But on many days, if we are honest, even those choices are not always clear.

So this day is about something even more fundamental, the promise that whatever choice we make, whatever direction we take, good or bad, right or wrong, that God will be with us. And that we will never be defined by those steps that we take or the choices that we make, but by the one who chooses us, over and over again. It is not magic and it is not a guarantee. Bad things may happen to us, will happen to us, and there may be moments when we wonder and doubt. It is not magic, baptism, nor the faith that baptism leads us forward. But it is a promise and a vision, a journey that will transform our lives and the life of the world.

Perhaps you, as a child, read C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia, or perhaps you’ve read them to your children or grandchildren. We are re-discovering this little series at our house. Lewis tells the story of a land called Narnia, ruled by a very Christ-like figure, a lion named Aslan. In one of the books, The House and His Boy, a young boy named Shasta escapes slavery in another country and journeys to Narnia. In a particularly difficult moment, a strange creature comes upon him and walks beside him. He is scared at first, lonely, cold, dark. Ye he begins a conversation with the creature and eventually tells him his life story. His story, as far as he can tell, has been a life filled with bad luck and misfortune. Hear this interchange:

“I do not call you unfortunate,” said the Large Voice.
“Don’t you think it was bad luck to meet so many lions?” said Shasta.
“There was only one lion,” said the Voice.
“What on earth do you mean?... How do you know?”
“I was the lion.” And as Shasta gaped with open mouth and said nothing, the Voice continued…
“I was the cat who comforted you among the house of the dead. I was the lion who drove the jackals from you while you slept… And I was the lion you do not remember who pushed the boat in which you lay, a child near death, so that it came to shore where a man sat, wakeful at midnight, to receive you.”
“Who are you?” asked Shasta.
“Myself,” said the Voice (and here I would say that the Moses references are fairly straightforward, from the baby in the basket to the voice booming out “I am who I am.”). “Myself,” said the voice; very deep and low so that the earth shook: and again “Myself,” loud and clear: and then the third time “Myself,” whispered so softly you could hardly hear it, and yet it seemed to come from all round you as if the leaves rustled with it.”

And then Lewis concludes this episode: “Shasta was no longer afraid that the voice belonged to something that would eat him, nor that it was the voice of a ghost. But a new and different sort of trembling came over him. Yet he felt glad too.”

The gospel story does not consider Jesus’ own response at his baptism, his human response as the water flows over him, the heavens opening and a voice booming out. Perhaps he trembled.

I do not know if you remember your own baptism. Perhaps you trembled then. Perhaps you tremble now as you think about it. But perhaps it is a new and different story of trembling, and a sort of gladness. That would be about right.

Remember your baptism this day. Remember it, rely on it, lean into it, tremble before it. Remember your baptism, and be grateful. In the name of the beloved one, who makes all things new, and who leads us on a most remarkable journey. Amen.