I was reading Psalm 29 this week and I felt a rumble. You might have heard it, too, when we read it this morning. “The voice of the LORD is over the waters; the God of glory thunders, the LORD, over mighty waters. The voice of the LORD is powerful; the voice of the LORD is full of majesty. The voice of the LORD breaks the cedars; the LORD breaks the cedars of Lebanon. He makes Lebanon skip like a calf, and Sirion like a young wild ox. The voice of the LORD flashes forth flames of fire. The voice of the LORD shakes the wilderness; the LORD shakes the wilderness of Kadesh. The voice of the LORD causes the oaks to whirl, and strips the forest bare; and in his temple all say, ‘Glory!’” [Ps 29:3-8, NRSV]
How can you not read a passage like that and not feel moved? I want to hear that voice! I want to stand on the beach on Cobb Island and hear the voice of the Lord over the waters of the Atlantic. I want to feel the wilderness, the desert rumbling as the voice of the Lord shakes it. I want to see God making nations leap with life and swirling oak trees and every creature on earth shouting, “Glory!” Don’t you?
The strange thing is I think I have seen all those things. I feel it in here sometimes. I’ve felt it for the last few weeks. Have you felt it? Sometimes it is so clear to me that God has something to do with us yet. That God is not through with us yet. And it has nothing to do with how well the choir is singing or how well the preaching is going; it’s deeper than all that. There is a rumble in the earth and there is a creative disturbance in the air and there is a spirit moving across the face of the waters. There is, as C.S. Lewis describes it in his Narnia books, a deep mystery about this place in which we live. There is a deep truth invading Franktown Church, and if we don’t look out, God is liable to shake things up.
This is a mysterious Sunday in the Church year. Did you know that? It’s a mysterious Sunday. I say that because, in many traditions, including the United Methodist tradition, this is the Sunday when we read the gospel story of Jesus going to the River Jordan to be baptized by that old, wild man of the desert, John the Baptist. You remember how we talked about John the Baptist during Advent? Well, he’s baaaaaack.
They call this Baptism of Christ Sunday and it is a day to remember, not only Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan, but also our own baptisms in whatever water we were baptized in. That’s a great thing to do. I’m going to preach about baptism today. I’m going to gesture at the water and if I get really wound up I might start flinging it around the sanctuary. But it doesn’t matter how I say it; when all is said and done today, more will be said than done and baptism is still going to be a mysterious thing. And that’s a good thing. It’s OK to have a mysterious Sunday every so often.
About 16 years ago I went to be the pastor of the Orange Circuit in Orange County. On one of the first Sundays I was there a woman came up to me and said, “I want to get my son baptized.” Her son was about ten years old at the time. “But I want him dunked,” she said. “None of this candy dish sprinkling I know you Methodist preachers like to do. You’ve got to have more water than that.” So I nodded my head and agreed with her that many times we don’t use enough water and I told her that in the United Methodist Church there were actually several ways to be baptized, including full immersion. Did you know that? There aren’t many baptismal pools in United Methodist Churches, but it’s legal.
I wanted to talk to her a little more about this, though, and I asked her why she thought now was the best time for her son to be baptized. I mean, he was not quite to the age when we generally do confirmation and he was a lot older that the infants I was used to baptizing. She told me that she came from and interesting church background and that she was just Pentecostal enough to believe that you ought to be old enough to profess your faith before you got baptized and just Catholic enough to believe that if you died without getting baptized you’d go to hell. I realized right away that we had a lot of talking to do about baptism, and we did have some great talks together, the three of us, and a couple of years later, on a youth retreat at Virginia Beach, I had the honor of baptizing that boy using the biggest baptismal font I could find—the Atlantic Ocean. And it was full immersion.
So what do we get from baptism? It’s not really about when we’re old enough to understand what baptism is. In the United Methodist Church, we’ve always baptized people of any age, including babies, because we feel that there is NO age when we completely understand what baptism is. Can a 90-year-old man comprehend God’s love any better than a 2-week-old baby girl? He may have a little more experience of that love, but he’ll probably be the first to tell you that he can’t get his mind around God no matter how long he’s been walking the earth. Nobody can claim that. So we’re all equal before the waters of baptism.
That’s why, in the early Church, they stripped all those who were going to go under the waters of baptism. Stripped you right down to nothing. Then it was clear. It didn’t matter what your social standing was. It didn’t matter how fine your clothes were. It didn’t matter how many Sunday School perfect attendance badges you could pin on your chest. When you went under that water you were God’s child and there was nothing you could do about it. And when they came up from the water on the other side, everybody got a new, white robe and everybody got the same new, white robe. So yes, we’re all equal before that water.
It’s also true that what really matters in baptism is NOT how you receive the water. Some folks use a candy dish font. Some folks use a bigger font that can stand up by itself. Some folks use a large tank behind the pulpit and some folks use Occahannock Creek, like we did last summer at camp. Folks probably use fire hoses, for all I know. I used the Atlantic Ocean. That really isn’t the point. Lots of water helps us see, in a physical way, how excessive God’s love for us is, how it surrounds us, cleanses us, and gives us birth, but even the little bit of water most Methodists use is enough to point to the one who’s really acting in baptism. It’s enough to point to God.
But I still haven’t told you about the mystery. There is deep mystery at the heart of this story. So let’s go to the Bible.
The first thing that you notice when you go to the gospels is that the baptism of Jesus is not something that gets a lot of explanation. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell this story and none of them takes more than five verses to tell it. Luke gets it done in two, but Matthew, which is the version we read, gives us the most detail.
Jesus comes out into the wilderness where John is baptizing people for the repentance of sins. Matthew tells us that Jesus comes in order to be baptized by John but, of course, there is a problem here because Jesus certainly doesn’t need to be baptized to repent of sins. He is the one coming to save people from sin. John recognizes him and recognizes the problem immediately. He says, “Hold on just a cotton-pickin’ minute here, Jesus.” (He doesn’t actually say this, but I’m using the Alex Joyner translation.) “Wait a minute. I need to be baptized by you and you’re coming to me? What’s wrong with this picture?”
Jesus knows the problem but he calms John down by saying, “This is the way it has to be. Let it be for now. This is the way we will fulfill God’s plan.” So John relents. He stops trying to prevent Jesus from coming to baptism and he leads him into the water.
So far, so good. This is a strange conversation that John and Jesus have, but we can understand why they’re having it. They’re sorting out their roles in this whole drama. Now, though, is when things really get mysterious. Jesus goes under the water to be baptized, but as he comes up from the water, the skies split wide open. Have you ever seen this happen? Me either. And we’re not really sure if everybody around can see this or if it’s just Jesus who does. It’s not really clear and that’s OK. At any rate, it’s craziness. Skies just don’t split open and loud voices don’t just speak from the heavens, so if we’re not really sure who’s speaking and who’s listening, well, that’s just par for the course.
Then the Spirit of God descends in the form of a dove and rests on Jesus. Then this mysterious voice speaks which can only be the voice of God. The voice says, “This is my Son, the Beloved, in whom I am well pleased.”
Now that’s something you don’t see every day. At least when Jesus was talking to John we could keep the players straight. Now we don’t have a dialogue, we have a declaration, and we don’t just have Jesus the Baptized, we have Jesus the Son of God. This is a mystery.
Somehow, as Jesus rose from the waters and as the dove descended from heaven, the border that separates earth and heaven gets blurred and voice that comes from nowhere and everywhere says, “This is the One. You are the one. I am pleased to have you as my child.” It may have only taken five verses to get here, but this earth-shattering, mind-blowing, brain-bending stuff. To think it all happened because of a little water!
And brothers and sisters let me tell you, it happened at your baptism, too! Oh, sure, most of us didn’t see the skies open up, didn’t see a heavenly dove descending, didn’t hear a heavenly voice on the day we were baptized. If you did, I want to hear about it. None of us went through those waters of baptism as Jesus did because none of us it the only begotten Son of God. But, let me tell you something—all of us went under those waters and came up as children of God and THAT is what is so special about baptism. We all followed Jesus into the water, and because he led the way, because he represented all of us, none of us can ever be the same.
Because of all this…because we are followers of Christ and saved by his life and death and not by our own…because we bear Christ’s name and are Christ’s people before we are anything else…because God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but that the world might be saved through him…because of all this, the words which were spoken over Christ at his baptism in the Jordan River are the same words that are spoken over each one of us as well: “This is the one. You are the one. I am pleased to have you as my child.”
Do you know what an incredible gift this is, my brothers and sisters? Do you know how amazing it is that you and I could be called the children of God? Do you know how fantastic it is that me with my bald head and Aunt Lucy with her bad knee and Cousin Gertrude with her arthritis are all walking towards the kingdom and we can do it with our heads held high because we are baptized? Do you how wild it is that my cranky neighbor down the road, who annoys me no end, who plays his music too loud and who seems to be living a questionable life still shares one very important thing with me because we are both baptized?
You know, the story is told that Martin Luther, the great Reformation figure, used to get up every morning and make the sign of the cross on his forehead and say out loud, “I am baptized.” He said it to remind himself that he had nothing to fear from the demons he imagined around him. He said it to give him confidence that despite everything the world could fling at him, it could not take away the sign of water, which is God’s promise that we can be more than conquerors through the One who loves us.
So why am I telling you this? Because we are still looking for that rumble that tells us that the way the world looks can be deceiving. It just may NOT be true that you’ve got to accept who the world says that you are, who your peer group says that you are, who the ads on TV say that you are, or what the latest rap song says that you are. Because as “advanced” as a civilization as we are, the options the world allows for who men and women are are still pretty limited.
But you are more than a consumer, more than an observer in this world. And the world itself is more than a place of dead ends and broken hearts. The world is filled with the glory of God. There is a rumble just below the surface reminding us that God’s got plans for us…that God’s got plans for you. The voice of the Lord is flashing forth flames of fire. The voice of the Lord is claiming you in the waters of baptism, saying, “You are a child of God.” And mysterious as this is, this is the best news of all—a church of baptized people who live out of their baptisms is unstoppable and Franktown Church is just such a church. Thanks be to God.
Matthew 3:13-17
Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John in order to be baptized by him. But John stopped him saying, “I need to be baptized by you, yet you come to me?”
But Jesus answered him, “Let it be for now, because this is appropriate for us to fulfill all righteousness.”
Then he relented. When Jesus was baptized, just as he came up from the water, look, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming upon him. And, look, a voice from the heavens said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, in whom I am well pleased.”
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