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January 11th, 2009 – The Baptism of the Lord
Readings: Genesis 1:1-5; Psalm 29; Acts 19:1-7; Mark 1:4-11
We all have events that shape the rest of our lives. Those who know me well know I am not a great fan of water. I love sports and would consider myself somewhat athletic yet for some reason I have never conquered those sports that take place on water, whether it be frozen ice or snow, or on top of the lake water of my friend’s cottage. And I’ve never been a strong swimmer – I famously once said, “Swimming just seems like a whole lot of work to just not drown.” When I was a young boy I was very nervous around water so my mother decided to put me in swimming lessons – and my greatest accomplishment in six weeks of lessons? Sticking my face under the water.
Now I don’t know if I was just born timid of water or not, but perhaps some of it comes down to my earliest childhood memory in the water. While on vacation my family was staying at one of those hotels that had a pool and a little slide. I had my little floaters on, but I was still nervous to go down the slide (I think I was only 4 years old at the time). With my family coaxing me on, and my father waiting for me at the bottom of the slide to catch me, I propelled myself down the slide. Kerplunk! I went straight through my dad’s outstretched arms and hit my bottom on the bottom of the pool before my father reached down to pluck me out of the water. It was very traumatic – and it was all caught on Kodak paper – the picture is still around my house of little Stevie in the air about to slip right through dad’s arms.
Several years later I would have flashbacks to this event as I gazed down at my father standing inside a baptismal tank of a small Pentecostal church in St. John, NB. I was 10 years old now and was about to be baptized by my father the pastor, the old-fashioned way, by total immersion. My anxiety towards water made the event that much more exciting, and for a moment my stocking feet slipped on the wet surface of the tank as my father ‘dunked’ me, but he quickly scooped me up and lifted me up out of the water.
I’ll always remember that day, one of the benefits of being baptized as an older child. Something special happened to me in those moments and I am still learning what it meant for my life in the context of God’s great story of creating and redeeming his creation.
Water always seems to be in the middle of this great story. In our first reading today we hear described the way in which God creates life. The earth is a ‘formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep.’ The world was without life, without light. The scene may be an apt description of the state of our hearts as we suffer loss and brokenness– we feel a void in our hearts, the darkness of despair, the threat of sorrow looming. But in that dark scene Scripture tells us that wind or spirit of God swept over the face of the waters and God said, “Let there be light!”
New life emerges! Light is separated from darkness, night from day, the stage is set for God to establish a heavenly order to his beautiful creation. But as the story continues we hear of how the first humans would reject the light of God’s presence. They disobey his command, break their covenant relationship, and flee from God’s presence. They run to the darkness. They try to hide their guilt and shame. God seeks them out and banishes them from paradise. Years later the spiral of sin has infected the entire human race so God uses the waters of the Great Flood to baptize the earth by purging it from its sin. Only Noah’s family would survive.
But the powers of Sin and Death continued to work in the world, until one day a loud voice was heard shouting, “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” John the Baptist appeared, baptizing for the forgiveness of sins – God using water again to cleanse those who would serve him, to fashion new life out of the hearts and lives of those twisted by sin and despair. And as Jesus would humble himself to receive baptism, to stand as an example for all of us, God’s voice, the same voice that spoke light into the darkness and shaped our beautiful world, cries out: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” The Spirit descends on Jesus as like a dove so the picture is complete: out of darkness God brings light, He uses water to bring new life in the Spirit.
God has promised all of us here today this life in the Spirit. In baptism we are cleansed from the dirt of sin so that we may reflect the image of God – so that we may look like God in our acts of compassion, in our pursuit of justice, in our commitment to forgiveness. In baptism we are received into God’s family and sealed with the Holy Spirit, our reading from Acts today demonstrates that sometimes this life will be characterized by radical expressions of the Spirit’s power, but as Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians, above all the Spirit is working inside us to shape the loving character of Christ into us.
One of the ways Christ transforms us is through receiving the wonderful gifts or sacraments of baptism, and the Eucharist. In Baptism we make use of water: a symbol for life, a building block for organic matter. In water we are baptized into Christ’s body, while inwardly the Spirit of God takes residence in our hearts.
In the Eucharist we take Christ’s command seriously to remember his death and resurrection. We hold to the ancient custom that when we remember someone, their presence is truly with us. We remember Christ – the great sacrifice he made for us by dying on the cross for our sins, and the great victory he won for us by rising again to new life. And we believe his presence is with us. We mix water with the wine in the Eucharist – partnering the water used at our baptism with the sacrifice of Christ so that we may know that it is in Christ’s life and death that we have entered. We hold to the hope that through the pouring out of God’s Spirit upon our lives are transformed into a great sacrament – Spirit inhabiting matter, divinity and humanity united within us as it was in Christ’s person.
Today four members of our church family are entering into a new relationship with Christ through baptism. We will be asked for our commitment to support these individuals in their spiritual lives – we must pray for them, challenge them to greater levels of commitment and growth, and love them as Christ loves us. Those of us who were baptized years ago are also invited to renew our baptismal covenant – to recommit ourselves as a husband and wife may recommit themselves in a renewal of vows service. Martin Luther believed that every day we need this kind of renewal – we renew our commitment to Christ, and his Spirit renews our lives, we are washed afresh each morning in the waters of baptism.
We have much cause to be anxious about our lives: our frail bodies battle injury and illness, our hearts are pushed and pulled around by the many disappointments and hardships we endure, the threat of suffering and death seems perpetually at our door. Yet this we can hold too: Just as my father’s strong arms scooped me up out of the pool, and let me down into and raised me up from the baptismal waters, so we have a heavenly Father who holds us safe within his arms. Let us hold to the sacred promise of our baptism, that our lives are forever secure in Christ. And may we hear the voice of our Father speaking into the dark voids of our hearts, “Let there be light!” Amen.
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