Jesus' Baptism

Life is full of Kodak moments. I don’t know if you can still talk about Kodak moments in the era of digital photography, but you know what I mean.

 

Times when families are together and good things are happening Birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, holidays. Things you’ll look back on with fondness in the years to come if you ever knuckle down and actually order the prints. Most of us have a drawer somewhere that’s overflowing with those kinds of photos. Some of us, at the more organised end of the spectrum, might even take the time to arrange them into an album.

 

Lots of Kodak moments in life. But this morning we’re thinking about a different kind of moment. Those which come to define our lives. In an average lifetime you could probably number them on the fingers of both hands. Your wedding day, if you’re married. The birth of your children. The death of a close relative. The day you made a particular decision which proved, with hindsight, to be life-changing. The day you got that particular piece of news.

 

Some of those moments come with pictures we can look back on, but most don’t. Most are just pasted in the album of our memories. Moments of deep signficance in our journey through life – some bringing gratitude and joy, others sorrow and pain.

 

Defining moments.

 

Baptism, in the life of the early church, was just such a moment in a person’s life.

 

Church writers from the first couple of centuries tell us that preparation for baptism normally took about two years of catchesis – or teaching. During that time the initiates could attend church, but they were screened off from the rest of the congregation. They would fast, along with the rest of the church, for forty days during Lent, and then have several days of intense fasting and prayer before their baptism, which usually took place at Eastertime in a solemn night-time ceremony.

 

It involved removing your clothing, being immersed in water, confessing your faith and being anointed with oil. You renounced your old way of life, and put on the new, along with the clean robes that awaited you once the ceremony was over. You then went joyfully to join the congregation in your first Eucharistic meal on Easter Morning.

 

After that kind of intense preparation, and in such a hostile cultural climate, is it any wonder that Baptism was such watershed in a person’s life? It was defining.

 

And although today’s gospel reading comes from even earlier days, it’s clear that John’s baptism, the precursor to Christian baptism, was seen in a similar light.

 

Why did folk flock into the desert to see John, I found myself wondering? Why did so many go down to see this maverick preacher and submit themselves to the public humiliation of the baptism he was performing?

 

No hiding you see – broad daylight. Confession of sins, though we’re not told how loudly and to whom. This wasn’t for the faint hearted.

 

Why did they go? What did they find in what John was doing that they didn’t find in the established rituals of the temple?

 

I’ve thought about that a lot this week, and I think that the most likely answer is change. The promise of change always gets our attention. Think about the books that will be flying off the shelves over the next couple of weeks as we enter a new year. Experts telling us how to lose weight or quit smoking or finally take a hold of our lives or practice mindfulness.

 

There’s nothing new under the sun. The promise of change has always piqued our interest. And the people of Israel were ripe for it.

 

They’d had the system of animal sacrifices for generations, and they’d followed the letter of the law. But the letter hadn’t touched their hearts. It hadn’t set them free from their doubts, or their guilt, or their tendency to sin. For many it had just become a routine – a necessary  bit of sin-management. Like washing the dishes after a meal.

 

The writer of the letter to the Hebrews puts it this way:

“the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, cannot make perfect those who draw near to worship. ²If it could, would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshippers would have been cleansed once for all, and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins.

 

But they did feel guilty – a thousand years of animal sacrifice for forgiveness of sins had shown them that they needed more than animal sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins! They needed a change of heart that they couldn’t muster themselves. And that’s what John was offering.  A once-for all cleansing and a new life that would follow. A before and an after. A defining moment - out there in the desert, where so many of Israel’s defining moments had come.

 

And they came to see him in their droves.

 

Some out of curiosity – John was the first prophet for something like 300 years. Folk believed that God had stopped speaking until John came among them, dressing, eating and preaching like one of the prophets of old – like Elijah. He was something to see.

 

Some came out of jealousy – the religious leaders marched down to the Jordan to make their presence felt and bring the collective weight of their disapproval to bear. But they were sent home with a flea in their ear. Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath, you brood of vipers? he roared at them.

 

But most came to go down into the waters, and even as John lowered them under, he cried ‘this is only the beginning. Another one is coming, one more powerful than I am. I’m not even worthy to be his servant and untie his shoes. I’m baptising you in water – he’ll baptise you in the Holy Spirit.”

 

And so John made way for the coming of the Lord.

 

And when HE came, he came, first of all, to submit to John’s baptism. And that puzzled the gospel writers as they reflected on it and set down their stories. Why would the Son of God, the sinless one, need a baptism of repentance?

 

There are two answers, it seems.

The first is to remember that repentance isn’t just a turning away from sin, it’s also a turning towards God – a setting of our minds on the new way he’s leading us in. Jesus had no sin to repent of, but here, he’s certainly setting his mind on following the way God had prepared for him. Like all of us who say we have faith, he had to set his own will aside so he could discover and live out God’s will for his life. There’s a turning from, but also a turning to.

 

But secondly, theologians have always held that Jesus’ submitting to John’s baptism was a powerful statement that he wanted to identify with us and stand alongside us in our sins. He wasn’t ashamed to be seen among those who’d failed and knew it. They were the very ones he’d come to save. It’s the sick, not the righteous who need a doctor, he went on to say.

 

And this baptism, this submersion with and for God’s beloved but fallen people, was the first step on the long journey that took him to his greater baptism, in the waters of death itself. When the concrete boots of our sin and selfishness dragged him all the way to the murky depths on that first Good Friday.

 

That’s why he came; that’s why, today, we find him making his way down to the Jordan along with all the others.

 

My good friend Paul Grant preached a wonderful sermon on this passage last year, and as I was preparing for today I couldn’t get it out of my head. So rather than try and paraphrase it, I asked Paul if I could just read a section of it, because he paints the picture far better than I ever could.

 

 

 

He had seen God in a beggars twisted limbs and in the folk who gave him nothing. God was there in the hopping sparrows pecking seed in the farmer’s fallow field. God passed when the fingers of the wind stirred the surface of the lake, or made the cedars sway.  He had heard God creak in the burden of labourers, waiting for a day’s work to come. He had heard the divine echo after the steps of a widow, who for a few pennies would service the garrison.

 

He had seen and heard God walk the face of the earth in sign and symbol. And now God led him here; to the river of new beginnings. To John and the Jordan; alongside the line of stragglers; the hopers the half believers the shivering women and men dripping wet; dipping their lives into a muddy river to churn up a repentance that might bless them with new beginnings.

 

Alongside them, Jesus stood, and watched each one disappear under the muddy waters and rise up again out of its churning to ask John for new direction.

 

And John would answer – do you have two coats, brother? Then give one away. Are you a guard on the border? Then don’t fleece the travellers. Be content with your pay.

 

They left the river dripping, half suspecting that their newfound repentance might end before even they were dry. Because when you’re a tax collector you’ve got kickbacks to pay or you lose the contract. And a widow with no income can’t feed her children on a good name.

 

Leaving the Jordan they wondered how long they could keep the resolution they had made before John and before God.

 

Standing in line - one of them - Jesus immersed himself in the dirty water. One with them.

 

And his held breath was a prayer for whores and tax collectors. For fat landlords and the landless. For bent judges and bankers with bonuses.  The guilty, too afraid to stop drinking. For the sad, who long forgot where they had left joy in their lives. For the battered and the bruised and the disillusioned., for the doubting and unbelieving and unrepentant. For the innocent and the deluded. All of them held in the prayer breath that Jesus took in, as John lowered him under the muddy waters of the Jordan.

 

Under the muddy water, Jesus held the whole world in a deep breath. Held even the lives that were not yet born. And he asked God this – what if I carry their sin in my soul?

 

What if I repent for the hurters and share the pain of those they’ve broken? What if I atone for the greedy and fill myself with the poverty of those who hunger? What if my baptism draws the lost world to me, that there you may find it again?

 

Jesus rose from the water and immediately an answer came. The heavens parted as though cut by a subtle knife, and from the hidden beyond came all the colour of God’s mercy. The music of forgiveness. The beat of justice, the laughter of peace. The riches of grace. The tenderness of welcome.

 

And like a flurry of snow, or a feather landing, the full gentleness of God’s clout swooped down on him, with the power to begin a perfect repentance on behalf of the line of stragglers, the doubters and half-believers, the shivering women and men dripping with the water of the Jordan. A perfect repentance for those not born yet. The power to complete this lands on Jesus as gently as a dove.

 

And in that moment Jesus hears it said – this is my Son, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased. Heard it said before he had done anything. Before he had healed or taught, before he had blessed or welcomed. Before he had told a single story of the kingdom, or gone the long lonely road to the cross. Before he rose from the waters of death in his resurrection. Before all of this, Jesus hears his name spoken as Beloved. As delighted in.

 

And all those who have entered in to baptism in his name find the same love, find the same delight of God spoken over them. For we are baptised into him, and into his death. And if we have shared in his death, we will surely also share in his life.

 

 

 

Sprinkled, dipped, infant or adult – these are the wrangles the church gets into over baptism, but they’re all secondary.

 

Today as we tell the story of the Lord’s baptism the only thing that matters is that we remember that we too are baptised.

 

Let it define you as God’s beloved, forgiven child. And let it define not only what you turn from, but what you turn to in all the years that lie ahead.