Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
January 13, 2008
Matthew 3:13-17
That wild-eyed prophet, John the Baptizer, has been out at the Jordan River calling people to repentance and then baptizing them. And people have been responding. The place is crawling with sinners - faulty, guilty, sorry human beings whose hope against hope is that John and his baptism can clean them up, turn them around, which is the actual meaning of repentance, and get them moving in some new and hopeful direction. There were notorious sinners whose misdeeds were obvious, there were those whose shortcomings and failures were known only to themselves. But none of them had any illusions about their own innocence. They had come to the river to be cleansed. They knew they needed it. And Jesus shows up and gets in line with them, waiting his turn like everyone else.
Honestly, the Christian church has never been comfortable with the baptism of Jesus. Just look how the Gospels deal with it. You cannot miss their un-ease. Mark is the first to tell the story. Matthew elaborates on Mark adding that John actually tried to talk Jesus out of being baptized. Luke will not even come out and say it was John who did it. While in the fourth Gospel, we never read about an actual baptism. They all seem unsure of what on earth Jesus was doing there at the river with them...those sinners! Jesus – just like everyone else.
I think of the current presidential campaign, (it's not that big a leap), with the candidates surrounded with their handlers and their PR people and their spin-doctors. Can you imagine what Jesus handlers would have had to say about his baptism? "Jesus, don't you even think about getting in that water. Stand on the shore, shout encouragement, yes, even help people in and out of the water, that would be a great photo op; say kind and loving words, but don't you, under any circumstances, get in the water with John. Everyone knows he's crazy anyway, so don’t let yourself get baptized. How will that look on Jerusalem television? Jesus in the water, receiving baptism with a bunch of sinners. It will make you look like one of them! It will ruin your reputation. Even if your intentions are good, you just know that Rush Limbaugh is going to suggest you must have a few things you wanted to get off your conscience. I can hear the commentators now demanding it's time for Jesus to come clean about his past. If you have any regard for what is good for you, don't go near the water!" Funny how Jesus never seems to pay attention to the prudent, cautious voice of reason, instead, he wades right in. What does it mean? Why do you suppose he does it?
In her book, Operating Instructions, Anne Lamontt tells of a family being interviewed on 60 Minutes. The family was a religiously devout mother in her thirties, a somewhat older and painfully shy father, and their ten-year-old daughter bound to a wheel chair by spina bifida. Every year this family made the pilgrimage to Lourdes in France, a place, as you've heard, where physical healing is said to occur. According to Lamontt, the interviewer, Ed Bradley, was giving the family a hard time for being so gullible. At one point he turned to the little girl and asked, "When you pray, what do you pray for?" She replied, "I pray that my father won't be so shy. It makes him terribly lonely."
Well, that stopped Bradley for a few moments, but then he pressed on, questioning the family's priorities and wisdom, saying to the mother that they spend thousands of dollars every year going to Lourdes and still they have had no miracle. But looking at her loving daughter, the mother answered, "Oh, Mr. Bradley, don't you get it? We already have our miracle."
Commenting on this story, New Testament scholar and preacher, Tom Long says, "Bradley had his expectations and the only miracle worth noticing, the only miracle that would count, was the one that fit his definition: namely the little girl would get up out of that chair and walk. But he missed the miracle of a daughter's growing love – pray for my father. He missed the miracle of a family held together in faith. He missed the miracle of joy growing in soil that should not, by all rights, sustain joy. God does not work in the world in ways we expect, because God's mercy breaks the bounds of our narrow imaginations."
And that, I believe, is why Jesus does it. He enters into the murky waters of the Jordan, into the often murky and turbulent water of the river of life we all share, so that we may know that he's there with us, in the river with us, in the flesh with us, in the failure and triumph, the sorrow and the joy with us.
Reflecting on the Jesus who chooses to be baptized, like one of us, Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann, says, "Jesus always resonated with human suffering, human pain. He had no solution. All he had was his body and his presence. But, when that kind of body and that kind of presence walk into human pain, it has transformative power. Jesus was the embodiment of the compassionate God." This is the Jesus experienced by that family with their daughter - always in the river with us, in communion with us, bringing forth hope and healing, miracles, in often unexpected ways. And always, always reminding us that we are kin, all in the river together, all in need of forgiveness, all in need of hope, all in need of grace and renewal. All in it together. For if we forget that, we are truly lost.
And one final thought on Jesus’ baptism, which leads to one final story, this from the book that became a popular television show, so many years ago now... Alex Haley's Roots. You might recall this scene: One night the slave who had been captured in Africa, Kunta Kinte, drove his master to a ball at the big plantation house. He heard the music from inside the house, music for the white folks to dance to. He parked the buggy and settled down to wait out the long night. But after a while, he began to hear other music, music coming from the slaves' quarters behind the big house. It was different music with a different rhythm. He felt his legs carrying him down the path to those little cabins, and there he found a man playing African music, music he remembered hearing as a child - the music he had almost forgotten. He discovered the man was from his part of Africa. They talked excitedly in the language of home of the things of home.
Later that night, after driving his master back from the dance, Kunta Kinte lay upon the dirt floor of his little cabin and wept. He wept in sadness that he had almost forgotten, he wept in joy that he had at last remembered. The terrifying, degrading experience of slavery had almost obliterated his memory of who he was. But the music, the music helped him to remember.
“This is my son, the beloved - this is my daughter, the beloved - with whom I am well pleased." Do you get it? Do you get it? Do you understand that the words spoken to Jesus are spoken to each of us? You might say that his baptism is the music that helps us to remember who we are and whose we are, because it's so easy to forget. I once heard it said that the world has a way of "Wringing us out." We are squeezed, and pushed, and pulled in so many directions with so many expectations to be this, to do that, to measure up in a particular way.
I remember back when I baptized our grandson, Ben, just a few months ago. Well, actually it happens whenever I baptize a child. I look into his or her wonderful eyes and I realize how many forces will seek to shape that child after he or she leaves the baptismal font. Commercial messages will attempt to convince her that she is owned by a great economic machine whose purpose is to turn her into a voracious consumer. Other voices will tell him that he belongs to his job, to his profession, that he is what he does, his worth is what he produces. That's one that continues to echo loudly in my own heart. Other voices will tell them that they belong to no one but themselves, and that they and their needs are the supreme god. Government will attempt in myriad ways to establish its ultimate claim on them and their lives, and so it goes.
But over and against all that, you see, another word is spoken - hopefully spoken here, if no where else - and that word is that you are a child of God, a disciple of Christ, you are the beloved, the Creator of heaven and earth takes delight in you. God has claimed you as God's very own and nothing, nothing can change that!
I've been preaching for over thirty years and, you know, I still haven't figured it out. Half the time I really feel like I don't have the slightest idea what I'm doing up here on Sunday morning. I talk and I talk and I talk but I realize I cannot somehow talk people into faith. Each Sunday you come here, and believe me I'm glad you do. And every Sunday we hear it in the prayer concerns. Every Sunday I know there is someone here for whom death has been an intruder, another whose life has been wrenched by divorce, someone else for whom a failure seems like the end of the world, who feels there is no future. You come here vulnerable, hurting, dying. You come here hoping, rejoicing dreaming. What can a preacher say? What can I possibly offer? Words are inadequate.
But maybe it's enough if in the midst of the worship you hrar the message, "You are mine. I know your name, I know your pain." No matter what else may be going on in your life, simply rest in the knowledge that you are beloved. As that great saint of church, Henry Nouwen once said, "Just listen, listen as God says to you, 'I have loved you with an everlasting love. I have called you before you were born. I have molded you in the depths of the earth. I have knitted you together in your mother's womb. I have written your name on the palm of my hand. You are mine and I am yours and I will never leave you alone. The love I have loved you with from all eternity is a love I will love you with even after you have finished your life on earth. I love you so much that I have sent you into the world for a little while to give you a chance to say yes to that love." If somewhere along the way you have heard that and believed it and taken it to heart, well then, yes maybe that has been just about enough. No matter what life's circumstance or our own regrettable choices, let us not be afraid to return to the water, yes wade in the water, of the one who calls us to be the beloved sons and daughters with whom God is well pleased.