Text: Isaiah 42:1-9, Matthew 3:13-17
This weekend, I’ve been gathered along with our confirmation students and mentors and teachers for a retreat. Our focus has been what makes us distinctly United Methodist. We’ve talked about our church structure, the way of discipleship, how we discover wo God is, and what we believe about grace.
Along the way, I keep thinking about how our time together was kind of a boot camp, a crash course in the foundations of who we are.
We’ve been talking about our shared theology as Christians and our place in the history of the church, but this was a chance to really step into a tradition.
To learn about it.
As questions.
Get ready to claim it as their own.
Earlier in the week, I read a lovely reflection by Debie Thomas. Her weekly essays at Journey with Jesus help pastors and laity alike reflect on the what the lectionary texts mean for us today.
This week, she wrote of her own experience being baptized and how it felt like such a personal commitment. She was choosing Jesus. It was all about her and her faith in that moment. As a young girl, she believed it was all about what she was doing, her obedience, her choice.
But when she thinks back on the story we just shared with you of Jesus going to the River Jordan to be baptized by John, she didn’t see it as a personal stepping out.
Instead, she saw it as stepping in.
“A stepping into a history, a lineage, a geography, an identity. In receiving baptism, Jesus doesn’t set himself apart from us; he aligns himself with us.”
For a normal person, that wouldn’t be a big deal…
To identify with others…
To join in what they were doing…
But this was Jesus!
He didn’t need us.
He didn’t need to repent and be forgiven.
He didn’t need to humble himself that way in those dirty waters of the river.
But he did.
Debie Thomas reminds us that the very first public act of Jesus was to step into our lives.
He submitted to John the Baptist… because he gives away his power.
He entered the Jordan River, that sacred place filled with so much history.
“Jesus stepped into the whole Story of God’s work on earth, and allowed that story to resonate, deepen, and find completion.”
Although it was only last week we were thinking about the babe in the manger and the wise ones who visited, this was really the first public act of Jesus.
For many at the time, this moment was the beginning of their encounter with Christ.
It was the first moment that they recognized what God was doing in their midst.
And when the Servant of God, the Beloved One, appeared before them, it wasn’t a spectacle.
It wasn’t to take over.
It wasn’t to transform everything in an moment.
It was an invitation.
An invitation for us to step in as well.
An invitation for us to surrender.
A invitation for us to enter that tradition, that history, that community of faith that has gone before us.
As Debie Thomas writes,
“To embrace Christ’s baptism story is to embrace the core truth that we are united, interdependent, connected, one. It is to sit with the staggering reality that we are deeply, deeply loved.”
I remember the day my youngest brother Darren was baptized.
He and my mom had transferred to a new church and they had missed a window for confirmation, so when it came around again, he signed up.
Unfortunately for Darren, this new church held confirmation during the seventh grade year, and he was a junior in high school.
He was about a foot and a half taller than the rest of his classmates, but Darren went through the entire class with them and was confirmed that spring.
I got to be there the day my little brother was confirmed and baptized and it was such a special moment.
All throughout the class, while he had been slightly out of place, those young kids looked up to him and they grew to be great friends.
As Darren knelt to be baptized, the pastor invited friends and family to come up and lay their hands on him.
Every single one of the kids in that confirmation class came forward and stood around us and reached out their hands to affirm and bless him.
It was quite powerful.
Darren’s baptism reminded me that whether we are young or old, whether we remember it happening to us or not, our baptisms are not private or personal events.
We are baptized in the midst of the church because those who surround us are also making commitments and vows:
the church affirms its own faith
the church pledges to act as spiritual mentors for those being baptized
the church vows their ongoing support.
In our United Methodist resources on baptism it claims that the covenant of baptism “connects God, the community of faith, and the person being baptized; all three are essential to the fulfillment of the baptismal covenant.”
Every baptism is a chance for the whole congregation to reaffirm our faith and to progress farther on the journey with Christ.
We are all stepping into live together.
“United, interdependent, connected, one.”
We are remembering that each of us, every single one, is deeply loved.
And whenever we remember our baptisms,
We have a chance to refocus on Jesus.
We have a chance to renew our whereabouts.
We have a chance to re-engage our spirits.
As we heard from the book of Isaiah this morning:
“Here is my servant, whom I uphold, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations… I am the LORD, I have called you in righteousness… I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations”
And this calling, this ministry is sealed when the Spirit of the Lord descends upon him in the waters of the River Jordan.
We are remind of the spirit of God hovering over the waters in creation and God speaking, “Let there be light.”
God shows up and new life is among us.
The new creation.
New things that God declares.
A new journey for us to take.
And through our baptism, Isaiah’s servant of God… Matthew’s beloved… invites us to follow.
The light of Christ becomes part of us.
His mission becomes our own.
His journey becomes our path.
I’m reminded of a poem from Wendell Berry called the Gift of Gravity.
For those of you who don’t know Berry, he is a writer and a farmer from Kentucky who often writes about the ordinary and mundane ways that God shows up in our lives. Hear these words about the river, about the light, about the cycle of giving and taking.
All that passes descends,
and ascends again unseen
into the light: the river
coming down from sky
to hills, from hills to sea,
and carving as it moves,
to rise invisible,
gathered to light, to return
again… “The river’s injury
is its shape.” I’ve learned no more.
We are what we are given
and what is taken away;
blessed be the name
of the giver and taker.
For everything that comes
is a gift, the meaning always
carried out of sight
to renew our whereabouts,
always a starting place.
And every gift is perfect
in its beginning, for it
is “from above, and cometh down
from the Father of lights.”
Gravity is grace.
The rain and snow that falls upon us comes from God.
It washes us clean.
It surrounds us and refreshes the ground upon which we walk…
But the light comes down from God as well.
It melts the snow and ice and warms the earth and the moisture evaporates.
It is a cycle necessary for life.
“for everything that comes/ is a gift, the meaning always/ carried out of sight/ to renew our whereabouts,/ always a starting place.”
To renew our whereabouts… always a starting place.
Like rain and light, grace is poured down upon us from God.
Whether you first stepped into the faith through baptism 1 year ago or 90 years ago, grace always gives us a fresh start.
As Berry writes, it comes down upon us to renew our whereabouts… it is always a starting place.
These waters are new life for us now.
They are the chance to re-enter the journey.
To recommit to these people.
To re-energize your spirit.
To refocus on Jesus.
After all, as Debie Thomas reminds us,
“He’s the one who opens the barrier, and shows us the God we long for. He’s the one who stands in line with us at the water’s edge, willing to immerse himself in shame, scandal, repentance, and pain — all so that we might hear the only Voice that will tell us who we are and whose we are in this sacred season. Listen. We are God’s chosen. God’s children. God’s own. Even in the deepest, darkest water, we are the Beloved.”
This is the promise of God… Amen.
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