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“…as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove.” My tour group was at the Yardenit baptism site—that place where the Sea of Galilee flows into the River Jordan. It was a little like Disneyland, only it seemed that you had to go through the gift shop to get into the attraction and to leave it. Those flocks of low swooping white birds—okay they were seagulls not doves—were somehow the only thing on the banks of the river that resonated with the picture in my head of Christ coming to this place… I wasn’t expecting the hand-rail clad ramps into the water, or the souvenir stand, or even the look of the terrain itself. Mark tells us that John is in the Judean wilderness—and nothing, nothing about the verdant green of the river bank or of the murky water itself LOOKED like the arid wasteland with the flowing wadi that I had pictured. So I amused myself snapping photos of single seagulls diving for tourist-tossed bread crumbs until one came into focus. I snapped the photos and wondered what it meant… What it meant that Jesus had once come to these waters. What it meant that Jesus had—at the hands of John—been submerged into the dark depths of this slow moving river. What it meant that Jesus had—upon emerging from the still rippling green waters—been anointed by the Holy Spirit and proclaimed God’s beloved Son. Mark—with his terse style—sketches in the heavy
outlines of a simple story. John—the one who is immersing
people in the Jordan out in the wilderness—is proclaiming
a Baptism of repentance INTO the forgiveness of sins…
Who’s going? EVERYONE! ALL the Judean country folk and
ALL the Jerusalem city-folk have left the comfort of their homes
and were being baptized by John. By the way—Mark is the first of the New Testament writers that begin using word baptize in this new and strange way. John isn’t inviting folks to wash themselves for ritual cleanliness in ways that might have mirrored 1st Century Jewish custom; INSTEAD John himself is doing the dipping and the this word baptidzo that Mark used to describe what John is doing carries with it an older Greek meaning of immersion that results in death. Think about Mark’s portrait of this John who is baptizing: he isn’t your average religious scholar or official or priest. He’s wearing partially dressed animal skins—hair still attached—the leather belt around his hips holding the important bits closed. He survives in the wilderness on a diet of grasshoppers and stolen honey. A prophet, Mark claims, crying out in the wilderness. Mark tells us that John’s preaching includes witness to one who will come. One who John describes as more powerful—or to be more precise—one who will have the strength of soul to prevail against the assaults of Satan. The difference between their relative worth is so great that John proclaims he wouldn’t even be worthy to stoop down like a slave to loose the coming one’s sandal strap. Even his work—this work of baptism—will pale in comparison. In the leanness of Mark’s narrative, we might miss the dissonance of what comes next. Jesus comes to Jordon and is baptized by John. In the water and out again. John—the one who is not worthy to undo a muddied sandal thong is called upon to wash the Son of God into the same covenant of God’s mercy and forgiveness with which he washed ALL the Judean country-folk and ALL the Jerusalem city-folk. Mark is not concerned with the questions this might raise. Why would Jesus the one “without sin” undergo a baptism of repentance? Why would the greater man come as a supplicant to the lesser? Mark is not concerned with our possible confusion. Mark moves “immediately” “suddenly” to what is truly important. The heavens tear apart and the Spirit descends—a dove swooping over the verdant green waters, swooping over the still dripping Christ. That was the image, I sought to imagine with my camera at Yardenit—even with the comic substitution of sea-gull for that Almighty, Spirit-bearing, dove. Amid the comedy of the “Jordan Water” gift shop, the concrete ramps and rails, I just wanted to imagine some of the awe-filled wonder of that moment so long ago. It’s the essential picture in the beginning of Mark’s good news… ESSENTIAL! It is, as Barbara Sholis claims, the transforming moment for all humanity. A moment that removed the barriers between heaven and earth; a moment that sets loose the same God-powered creative force that tamed the waters of chaos into the heavens and the earth; a moment still at work she writes, “birthing us, claiming us,” making us new.1 This passage in Mark is raw with the overtones of death and rebirth—a bookend with the end of his good news story that gives us the cross and empty tomb. But even though Mark is proclaiming this as GOOD NEWS for us, we might miss the good news if we set the baptism of Jesus apart—and don’t considering what it has to do with our own. Consider this: that Mark’s gospel—with its crisp, narrative—quickly brings us to the heart of the story. It brings us to the scene of the first baptism that brings together water and “involves Father, Son, and Spirit…” In his gospel commentary, Richard Deibert points out that the baptism of Jesus contains the two universal elements of baptism throughout Christian history the use of water and the invocation of baptism “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” Deibert suggests—rightly I think—that the baptism of Jesus contains “the essential meaning of all baptism…”2 Imagine the sense of being pulled from the chaotic depths—like a drowning victim—and being restored to the world of the living. Imagine being filled with God’s own Spirit as you rise from those waters. Imagine hearing “you are my child, my beloved child, and with you I am well pleased.” Deibert writes, “this is precisely what the church give us in baptism: the truth about ourselves, the bedrock of our identity, the sole foundation for discipleship, our only reliable hope…” We are each “God’s child, beloved, and pleasing to God.” This is the good news—in his baptism, Jesus claims fully what it is to be human. This is the good news—in our baptism, we claim fully God’s covenant promise that we belong to God. When I downloaded the photos from my trip to Israel, I felt a little silly—sitting in seminary housing, looking through the more than three-dozen snaps shots of oddly sturdy grey and white birds in various stages of swoop. They didn’t look like doves—not even in the picture that I kept, and the water of the Jordan looked suspiciously like the water of the Colorado River that runs through the center of Austin, Texas. It was… hard, hard to remember the driving urge of imagination that had me clicking frame after frame after frame. Barbara Sholis, understands. She writes of that same disconnect as we struggle to live into the new life we claim in baptism. “Inevitably,” she writes, “life has a way of ‘wringing us out,’ and we forget that God dwells in and among us. We forget our beloved identity.” “Spiritual amnesia,” she calls it. We forget to whom we belong. We forget that we have “died to sin, and been made alive to all that is good.” We forget the vision and dimensions of the new life. We struggle and we flounder. We might even feel a little silly, or lost, or hopeless… We might look out upon the brokenness and violence of the world—especially the warfare in the land where John proclaimed the coming savior and Jesus walked in sandaled feet—and we might wonder if God’s re-creative power is still present. We might look upon the difficulties in our own lives, in the lives of our families and friends and neighbors, and struggle with doubt. What does it mean to be God’s own children when this new life seems so hard to define and even harder to live? The words on the t-shirt, circulating through the Synod of the Sun a number of years ago read, “Sinfully proud to be Presbyterian.” In moments like these, with questions like these I am almost sinfully proud—glad really—that I belong to a church that does not shy away from the struggle of living the Christian life. We don’t claim that it is easy. We don’t claim to live it with perfection. We don’t rise from the waters of baptism, claiming to know God’s will. We do claim our identity—as beloved children of God. We do claim each other—as brothers and sisters in Christ and companions for the journey. We do confess—through the words of our 1967 Confession—that the “new life in Christ takes shape in a community in which people know that God loves and accepts them in spite of what they are. They therefore accept themselves and love others, knowing that no one has any ground on which to stand, except God’s grace. We do confess—that “The new life does not release us from conflict with unbelief, pride, lust, or fear. We still have to struggle with disheartening difficulties and problems. Nevertheless, as we mature in love and faithfulness in this life with Christ, we live in freedom and good cheer, bearing witness on good days and evil days, confident that the new life is pleasing to God and helpful to others.” Barbara Sholis claims that our baptism is the cure for spiritual amnesia; that it is our way back to knowing ourselves as God’s own beloved. Yet John Timmer notes that “We don’t understand baptism very well…” To paraphrase: It’s not part of our living experience. We haven’t stepped down into a river… never went under the water and came up again, as a symbol of dying and rising with Christ.3 So this morning, we are all called to consider the waters of baptism. We are called once again to claim the generative, rebirthing power from the vantage point of the baptismal font. We are called to believe in the promise, even as we pray in the words of our hymn: Lord, bring us to our Jordon AMEN.
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