The Baptism of Jesus: Is this Really Necessary?
Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
January 11, 2009
Mark 1:4-11
On this Sunday, as we reflect on the baptism of Jesus and indeed on our own baptism, I find myself returning to a scene from the novel, The Patron Saint of Liars, written by Ann Patchett. It's the story of Rose Clinton and her daughter, Cecilia, who live at Saint Elizabeth's Home for Unwed Mothers in Habit, Kentucky. Rose is the cook, Cecilia is pretty much the darling of the place, cuddled and mothered by all the young women who will soon be giving up their own babies for adoption. One spring day when she is fifteen years old, Cecilia meets one of the new girls who has come to Saint Elizabeth's. Her name is Lorraine. She is skinny, with a head of red curls and she is extremely nervous as she waits to be interviewed by Mother Corinne, the nun in charge. Cecilia decides to help her out by giving her a little advice.
"The guy who got you pregnant," she tells Lorraine. "Don't say he's dead. Everybody says that. It makes Mother Corinne crazy."
Lorraine sits on her hands and is quiet for a moment. "I was going to say that." She says. "So what do I tell her?"
"I don't know," Cecilia says. "Tell her the truth. Or tell her you don't remember."
"What did you tell her?" Lorraine asks
Cecilia is speechless. "I sat there, absolutely frozen," she writes later. "I felt like I had just been mistaken for some escaped mass murderer. I felt like I was going to be sick, but that would have only proved her assumption. No one had ever, ever mistaken me for one of them, not even as a joke. I thought I was going to pass out."
Reflecting on this scene, Barbara Brown Taylor writes, "It was because she had been mistaken for one of them - one of the weak people whose bad decisions had derailed their lives, who had done something so shameful that their own families packed them off to live with strangers until the evidence could be put up for adoption. In theological terms, Cecilia thought she was going to pass out because she had been mistaken for a sinner, when she had done absolutely nothing wrong. It was not that she disliked sinners. She had grown up with them. She was friendly and helpful and gave them good advice. She just never expected to be mistaken for one of them, because in her own mind, she was of another order of being."
So, one day Jesus folded his carpenter's apron, having shaken the shavings from it and put it on the bench. He left the shop, went to the house, told his mother and sisters and brothers good-bye. Then he made the long journey to the Jordan River where he presented himself to John for baptism. We guess he was about thirty years old. Why was this the time? Why now? Had he heard something read or said in the local synagogue that made him decide this was the time? Perhaps he had taken a long walk in the hills of Nazareth following his day of work and felt something stirring within. Maybe he had had enough of Roman oppression and the corruption of religious leaders. Maybe it was his mother's prayers. Maybe he never really liked being a carpenter. But why then? It's a good question - I don't have an answer for it, but, it's a good question. Why then? I think of the Gospel of John reminding us that the Spirit will blow where it will. You don't know whence it comes or whither it goes, but blow it will. And I guess it just finally decided to blow in and through Jesus' heart and soul.
So there he is, standing in the muddy water, preparing to be baptized by that wild-eyed prophet. And look who's in the water with him. Mark tells us there were "people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem." Maybe just a little Markan hyperbole here. But there they are, in the water, faulty, sorry, guilty human beings, confessing their sins, hoping for forgiveness, hoping for a new beginning. And there is Jesus right in the middle of them...all the sinners, all those kinds of people. But why? Churches have always wondered why? Jesus is this really necessary? I mean, there in the river it is so easy to mistake you for one of them...or maybe one of us. And maybe that's the point.
A while back I shared with you a story told by Fred Craddock about a man he knew when he served a little church in the little town of Custer City, Oklahoma. Says Craddock, "There were four churches in town. Each had its share of the population and attendance rose and fell...The best and most consistent attendance in town, however, was at the little cafe where all the pickup trucks were parked and all the men were inside discussing the weather and the cattle and the wheat bugs and the hail and wind and whether we were going to have a crop. The churches had good attendance and poor attendance but that cafe had consistently good attendance. The men were always there.
"Once in a while they would lose a member because his wife finally got to him or maybe his kids did. So you would see him go off sheepishly to one of the churches. But the men at the cafe still felt that they were the biggest and strongest group in town...They were not bad men. Indeed, they were good men, family men, hard-working men. The patron saint of the group was Frank. He was seventy-seven years old when I met him. He was a good man, a strong man, a pioneer rancher, farmer and cattleman. He had been born in a sod house and had prospered. He had his credentials and all the men at the cafe said, 'Old Frank will never go to church.'
"One day I met Frank on the street. He knew I was a preacher. It has never been my custom to accost people in the name of Jesus, so I just shook hands and visited with him. Then he took the offensive, saying, 'I work hard and I take care of my family and I mind my own business.' 'He was telling me,' says Craddock, 'Leave me alone. I'm not a prospect.' So I left him alone.
"That is why I was surprised, the church was surprised, indeed the whole town was surprised and the men at the cafe were absolutely bumfuzzled, when Frank, seventy-seven years old, presented himself before me one Sunday morning for baptism. Some in the community said he must be sick, maybe heart trouble, said he must be scared to meet his maker. 'Never thought old Frank would do that.' There were all kinds of stories. But this is the way he told it to me. We were talking the day after the baptism and I said, 'Frank do you remember that little saying you used to give me about working hard and caring for your family and minding your own business?'
" 'Yeah, I remember, I used to say that a lot.'
" 'Do you still say that?'
" 'Yes,' he said.
" 'Then what's the difference?'
"He said, 'I didn't know then what my true business was.' "
Could it be, as he stands there in the water with all those kinds of people, that both Jesus and us are given a glimpse of what his business truly is? As he stands there in the water, could Jesus be saying that he has come for us, that we are the subject of his work, that we are his business - face upon face, life upon life - and that, no matter what, he refuses to be separated from us? As he stands in the water we see clearly that he is one of us, one with us, and that his Gospel is down to earth, grounded in a real, fleshy world. This, all the joy and pain of this, this is his business.
And. of course, he invites us to join him there, in the water, with the sinners. "Wash off the old dirt," he says, "shake the dust of sin and guilt from your feet. God has created a new day and a new way. Come walk with me out of the darkness into the light of this new day." Sounds pretty good, but you can see the problem can't you? I mean, that's why I am still standing here high and dry. Because if I get down into the water with him then I am in it with them, and much like young Cecilia, how will anyone know that I really am not one of them? Except, that maybe I am - I probably am. You see, his baptism leads me to reflect on my baptism; his embrace of his true business begins to make me wonder, well, just what is my true business.
And so, almost in spite of myself, I find myself standing there on the edge of the water. When I hear a voice that speaks to me from out of water, you might say, like the narrator of A River Runs Through It, I too am "haunted by waters." And this voice proclaims to the world of conflict and division that we are all "very good." And this voice announces that we are all the beloved. And it beckons me - us - to a different order, to a new creation.
So I step in, and what do I discover? I discover, in the words of a pastor, Joy Jordan-Lake, that something peculiar happens. You see, there in the water - you and I and them - all of us, "we are all approaching 95 and widowed; we are all getting married in July. We are all without the children we long for, have prayed for, we are all raising children who are handicapped, rebellious, precocious, impossible, delightful; we are all expecting a baby. We are all torn between tremendously flattering job offers, in Singapore and San Diego; we are all on SSI, permanently unemployed. We are all planning on jogging the 20-mile Walk for Hunger; we are all facing major surgery." All of it. Our Business.
But so many of you already know this. You may not give it a lot of conscious thought, you may not give it any thought, but you already know this. You know this. Those of you who teach school and work for the care and dignity of children in a world that tries to strip all that away; those of you who are in business and strive for fairness and integrity in a world where those concepts often seem hopelessly old fashioned; those of you in the health care field who work for the good health of all in a land of disease and dis-ease; those of you in the law who work for justice in a world of such unfairness and injustice; those of you working twenty-four hours a day to care for and nurture a family in a world that gives families lip service but precious little support. All of you who will get up tomorrow and do what you can to make the world just a little better place, who will strive another day for justice and hope and peace even when you cannot see them. And if someone were to come up to you and ask, "Theologically, exactly what are you doing?" You might not immediately be able to say, "I'm joining Jesus in the water." Nevertheless, that's exactly what you're doing, even if you can't fully say why or for what purpose or where it might be taking you. Because, finally, we are many and we are one and we are happy and hurt and so much in need of grace, so much in need of hearing him say, "Come on in, the water's just fine.”