We
liturgical Christians perform rituals,
symbolic actions that mean something
-- though we are not precisely certain what they mean.
We are wise
to keep our hearts and minds open
about the meaning because rituals
are a kind of dance with God,
in which God leads; we
follow.
Even if we
know what we mean,
God may have something else --or
something more -- in mind.
John
probably intended Baptism to mean a cleansing from sin.
But after Jesus stepped out of the river,
something unexpected happened with a
different meaning.
He was
praying, perhaps asking God
what his baptism was about,
when the sky
opened, the Holy Spirit descended on him,
and a voice from heaven said,
“You are my Son, the beloved.”
So what does
this suggest is going on Baptism?
It may have
something to do with this:
I once heard
of an old Bishop who had a spiritual practice.
At the start
of each day he would look in the mirror and say,
“Whatever happens this day, I am
baptized.”//
His Baptism
gave him an assurance he could count on
despite all the up, down and
sideways vicissitudes of life.
Here’s why:
The waters of Baptism can represent many things.
But one
thing they would surely have represented for Jesus
was the primordial waters of chaos.
Call it
entropy or Murphy’s Law. It’s the way things tend to go wrong.
That’s what
waters stood for in antiquity.
Isaiah says
in today’s lesson,
“When you pass through the waters
I will be with you
and the rivers will not overwhelm you.” . . . .
“Do not fear for I have redeemed
you.
I have called you by name. You are mine.”
Baptism is
God saying that to us,
“When you pass thorugh the waters
[when everything falls apart] I will
be with you. . . .
Fear not for I have redeemed you. You
are mine.”
Baptism
isn’t just us talking.
God is
acting here too. God redeems us –
buys us back from all
the world’s chaos,
all the powers of sin, death, and
madness
that lay claim to
precious human lives.
God redeems
us from the world and reclaims us as his own.
That’s what
we can take to the bank.
No matter
what happens – no matter how badly we fail,
when we are good and when we are
bad,
when we are wise and when we are
foolish,
when we are holy and when we are
profane,
in the darkness or the
light, we are God’s
Blessed Paul
said it best:
“If God is for us, who can be
against us? . . . .
What shall separate us from the love
of Christ?
Shall trouble or hardship or
persecution or famine
or nakedness or danger or sword? . . . . .
No. In all these things we are more
than conquerors
through him who loved
us.
For I am convinced” Paul said, “that
neither death nor life,
neither angels nor
demons,
neither the present nor the future,
nor any powers,
neither height nor depth nor anything
in all creation
can separate us from the love of God
that
is in Christ Jesus Our Lord.”
To be
claimed by God is to be set free of our burden.
The basic
existential threat is resolved: we are already justified.
That doesn’t
mean nothing bad will happen.
All those
threats Paul listed – trouble, hardship, danger, famine, sword
--- all of that is real and may happen at any time.
Life and
death will assuredly happen.
But they do
not and cannot separate us from our fundamental well-being,
the love of God in Christ Jesus Our
Lord.
People
sweat, lose sleep, spike their blood pressure,
and wreck their relationships trying
to justify their existence,
trying to make themselves ok.
But guess
what: that’s already a done deal.
In our
Baptism, God has made it so.
God has set
us free from bondage to the hopeless task
of justifying ourselves, making ourselves ok.
So what are
we now to do with our freedom?
Once the
Holy Spirit comes upon us in Baptism
naming us as God’s children,
what are we going to do with that
freedom?
As Mary
Oliver asked in her poem Summer Day,
“Tell me what is it you plan to do
with your one wild precious life?”
Well that’s
exactly what Jesus was wondering
after he got the good news,
“You are my Son, the Beloved.”
He was so
perplexed about it that he had to spend
40 days out in the desert praying on
it.
Only after
all that prayer did he figure it out.
He came back
from the desert with the answer.
Now listen
up because if you call yourself a Christian,
his answer is your answer too.
Jesus said:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me
because he has anointed me to
proclaim good news to the poor,
. . . freedom to the prisoners,
recovery of sight to the blind,
to set the oppressed free . . . .”
In Baptism,
God claims us as his own,
breaks our chains and gives us
“our one wild precious
life.”
We are
redeemed. We are ok.
But whether
the life we live with that freedom
amounts to a hill of beans is still
up for grabs.
To make our
lives as holy as our redeemed souls,
we take the next step.
We give our
lives back to God.
That’s
Confirmation.
We take vows
to live in the Spirit that sets us free,
the Spirit that “proclaim(s) good
news to the poor,
. . . freedom to the prisoners,
recovery of sight to the blind,
(and) sets the oppressed go free . .
. .”
We stand up
to our God eyeball to eyeball and promise
“to proclaim by word and deed the
good news of God in Christ,
to seek and serve Christ in all persons,
to strive for justice and peace
among all people
and respect the dignity of every
human being.”
If we make
those promises without our fingers crossed,
it will change our lives, our whole
lives,
our family lives, our friendships,
our politics.
If 10% of
the Christians took those vows for what they are
-- a chance to live a life that
counts --
we’d do what those first Christians
in Acts were accused of doing.
We’d turn
the world upside down,
which Bishop Curry reminds us is
really right side up.
Now I’ll
close with a word of wisdom and a question.
The word of
wisdom is from Ralph Waldo Emerson.
He said:
“The purpose of life is not to be
happy.
It is to be useful, to be honorable,
to be compassionate,
to have it make some difference that
you have lived
and lived well.”
I’ll leave
you with that and Mary Oliver’s question:
“(W)hat is it you plan to do
with your one wild precious life?”
