Sermons

Jan 13 - The Rev. Christopher McLaren - The Baptism of Our Lord

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January 13, 2008 The Baptism of Our Lord Year A
Preacher: Christopher McLaren
Theme: Christ’s Own Forever

The Church has never been entirely comfortable with the baptism of Jesus by his cousin Johnny B. Consider the various accounts found in the Gospels and you can sense the discomfort of Jesus submitting to a baptism that was understood as being of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Mark tells the story almost breathlessly at the very beginning of his gospel and has Jesus driven out into the wilderness to be tested immediately so that no one can ask any questions. Matthew elaborates on Mark’s story having John the Baptist try to talk Jesus out of being baptized while putting his serious inferiority complex on display.

John would have prevented him saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?

John’s question touches off a theological debate that Jesus wins with the enigmatic argument “it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” An argument that has seriously puzzled theologians and preachers for centuries. Incidentally it is a useful retort with your teenager when you can’t think of anything else convincing to say, “It is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness so you may not have the car this evening.” In all likelihood John was just as puzzled about it as we are, but when your cousin winks at you and says, “just do it cuz, I’ll explain later, its family right, you don’t have to understand everything.

The writer of Luke’s gospel will not even come out and say it was John who did the baptizing. And the 4th gospel is the most avoidant of all. John, bears witness that he saw the Spirit descend upon Jesus like a dove, but he fails to mention anything about Jesus getting wet in the Jordan river at the hands of his radical evangelist cousin who was often up to his knees in mud.

Biblical scholars assure us that all this discomfort, misdirection, and founching about is a sure sign of authenticity in the accounts of Jesus’ baptism. All the embarrassment on the part of all the evangelists goes along way in the burden of proof department. A messiah that submits to a ritual washing for repentance is not exactly a PR boon. In all the election hubbub of the season it is easy to see that if Jesus had had a campaign manager they would never have allowed him to get his feet muddy in the Jordan, especially with that lunatic cousin of his. Sure he might of made an appearance at the rivers edge, made speeches about religious renewal and personal growth, helped a few drenched happy people out of the river, but never, no never would he have been allowed into the river himself unless it was to succeed John, and take over the ministry.

But Jesus didn’t have a handler. Evidently he is unconcerned about being in the company of questionable sorts in need of healing, direction, compassion, and forgiveness. Jesus shows up at John’s River Revival Meetin and mingles with the whole sorry lot of sinners – faulty, conniving, grasping, desperate, guilty, depressed human beings who were hoping for healing, hoping that John’s passionate message and public act of repentance might actually give them the new start they so needed. This was truly a cross-section of humanity that came to experience John’s version of spiritual renewal and he was to be sure “inclusive,” although John probably didn’t hold with flowery language of that sort. He simply said, “All sinners are welcome.” So he had all kinds in attendance: there were folks who were serious criminals, petty thieves, thugs and mischief-makers of all kinds trying to make a new start. There were secret sinners, who had done wrong in their hearts, and no one but they and God knew of it. Into this menagerie of need, Jesus enters. He gets in line with the whole lot waiting his turn to be cleaned. Of course most of the people there didn’t know a thing about Jesus, he was just an unknown carpenter from Galilee willing to take a chance on John’s unusual therapeutic methods.

But Jesus’ baptism was a scandal to the early Church. Even if he did lead a sinless life as the gospels are at pains to proclaim, it was simply ruinous to his reputation to allow himself to be baptized by John. Who was going to believe that he did it simply to identify with the people? How many would be able to understand it as Jesus’ initiation into public ministry and not what it was for so many other desperate people?

One of the things to ponder about organized religion itself in light of this passage is our propensity to extol the deep love of God for flawed broken human beings while working like hell not to be mistaken for one ourselves. There is perhaps more truth spoken at AA meetings every night of the week than there ever has been on a Sunday morning. But Jesus doesn’t seem concerned about being lumped in with a bunch of sinners. He wades in the water and insists that John work his MoJo on him as well. In a profound way Jesus insists that God-being-with-us means that he will not be separate. It means that God will join us in the muddy waters of the Jordan, in the messiness of everyday life, in the stable of humanity, in the frailness of human flesh and weakness, in the joy and giddiness of new life and second chances, in the crushing pain and sorrow of death and loss. Jesus is not afraid of any of it and wades into the waters to share our humanity as fully as possible.

John Heagle expresses this truth beautifully, “In the human experience of Jesus, God became available to us as the depth of human life. Thus, a Christian believes that the experience of ultimate meaning comes not from a leap out of the human condition, but a journey through its dark waters.

Just as Jesus embraced our humanity at a depth so we too are called to embrace God through our own human experience. Each week we gather as the people of God in this place to embrace our humanity in all of its joy and pain, successes and failures. When we confess our sins we do not just confess our own individual sins, we confess the sins of our corporate humanity. We confess all of the ways we as a people have rejected and hidden from God’s love. We acknowledge the many ways we fail to forgive as God forgives, to care as God cares. We admit how narrow our view of who matters really is. When we celebrate in word and sacrament the gift of new life, the power of resurrection we do so on behalf of all who have found hope in the midst of despair, of all who have discovered healing through telling the truth about their lives, all who have known the life-altering presence of God with-us in their lives. Nothing we do in church is really a private matter between us and God. Like Jesus wading into the waters of Jordan to join his life and ministry to the lives of everyday people, our worship is a corporate act, something we do in communion with each other and all humanity. We call it common prayer for a reason.

Today we will baptize Sihler Shepherd and in doing so we will affirm the powerful promises of the baptismal covenant. Along with this child and his parents, we will say yes to questions intended to take us into the human experience at a depth with Christ as our companion. “Will seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as your self?” Whenever Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord? These questions are the center of our faith, intended to shape us as a people. “Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?”

Every time we welcome someone into the family of God we say the baptismal covenant with them. Yes, we say it over and over and over again, every time we see the household of God expanding. In fact, I know someone who carries the 5 questions of the baptismal covenant around with her in her daily organizer to remind her of her calling as a follower of Jesus. We say the words of the baptismal covenant with the one to be baptized to remind ourselves of our own promises made to God and to one another. We say these words to remind us of what it means to be a part of this family: that we will be fed and nourished by the scriptures, by our shared meal, and by this community, that we will admit when we have failed or fallen and ask God to help us get moving in the right direction again, that we will not shrink from showing others the goodness of God at work in us, that we will not stop trying to treat everyone, no matter how difficult as God’s beloved, and that we will do what is in our power to make things more fair and less violent in this world.

When we have renewed our commitment to these challenging promises we invite the new one to wade in the water with Jesus, to link themselves to Jesus, who has gone before us into the water of life, and to wrap themselves up with all of humanity, all that have gone before them the good-looking and the not-so-good-looking ones, the wild successes and the miserable failures, the collectors and the sorters, the sacrificial and the selfish, the sane and the crazy ones that are all God’s beloved.

Into that wild water of God all of us are asked to step. It is water capable of making clean, capable of sweeping our old selves away, water that brings something new every time the Spirit moves over it. We have all entered these waters whether of our own choosing or carried wonderstruck in our mother’s arms. We wade into these waters with the rest of God’s flawed humanity just as Jesus did. And there is no reason to hide or try to look better than we are, because like it or not we are all part of God’s flawed humanity just as that flawed humanity is part of us, and by God’s grace and love, we too are Christ’s own forever.