Beloved Son

Scriptures:     Genesis 1:1-5, Psalm 29

Acts 19:1-7,   Mark 1:4-11

When’s the last time you got really, really drenched?  Maybe it was intentional – a swim at the shore or a backyard swimming pool.  Or maybe accidental – maybe you got caught in the rain.  But I’d like us to think of what it feels like to be drenched, soaked, soggy, dripping wet.  Water has a way of getting into everything – into our clothes, into our hair, our ears, our eyes – which, if the water is chlorinated, can sting a bit – if we’re in deep water, up our nose, down our throats.  Water isn’t necessarily polite or well-behaved, doesn’t ask permission to insert itself…if water can find a crack or a crevice, it’ll find a way in.  Years ago a contractor told me that when he tries to stop flooding in a home, he can’t actually stop the water, but can only redirect it - Water finds a way in unless someone creates a way around for it.  Water finds a way.

Today  we read Mark’s account of Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist.  Characteristically, Mark doesn’t give us a lot of detail.  But it was at his baptism that Jesus was proclaimed by God as his beloved son.

I think that, in our rush to get to Jesus, we tend to pass John the Baptist by perhaps without giving him the attention he deserves.  We think of John as the fore-runner of Jesus, but John was leading a movement in his own right, a renewal movement within Judaism.  While Luke’s Gospel tells us that John’s father, Zechariah, was a priest who served at the Temple in Jerusalem, John evidently broke away from his father’s associates and led a religious movement in the wilderness.  He drew many who wanted a more powerful sense of connection to the divine than the rituals of the Temple could provide them.   When people came to John, he pointed out that the peoples’ own attitudes and behavior kept them separated from experiencing  God’s presence

…and so the key to joining John’s movement was to repent and be baptized.   To repent:  to turn away from one’s old way of living, to turn away from anything that got in the way of loving God and neighbor.  And to be baptized, as a sign of being cleansed of sin, in preparation for beginning anew as part of John’s renewal movement.  Now, baptism, a form of ritual bath, was already a part of Judaism, used as part of the process of conversion to Judaism, and also as a process of purification for entering the Temple.  But those coming to John were already members of the Jewish faith, and were nowhere near the Temple. To join John’s movement was to begin to live in a new way, and in order to live in a new way, old thoughts and habits had to be left behind.  For John, baptism was not only a sign of conversion, but an act of initiation into the movement, sort of like signing one’s name on the dotted line, in blood.  In the book of Acts, chapters 18 and 19, the apostles encounter people who had previously been baptized by John; one of these was Apollos, about whom we read today and who also pops up from time to time in Paul’s letters.   To this day, in Iraq, there is a small religious community, called the Mandeans, who follow the teachings of John the Baptist as preserved in the writings of their community.

For those of John’s time – and for us as well – water was a blessing, but a dangerous blessing.  Water was and is needed for life, and indeed half or more of the human body consists of water.  Water was needed for crops and animals, but too much water can be as bad as not enough.  Water as a means of transportation was especially hazardous; the Gospels and the book of Acts tells us of times when Jesus’ disciples and when Paul were out on boats and got caught in storms, and indeed Paul was shipwrecked at least once.  So water is a blessing, but not always a well-behaved blessing.  Though our context is very different, the same is true with us – we need water to live, and in many parts of the world and in communities in our own country, drinkable water is increasingly scarce, and yet with rising sea levels, many small islands and some coastal communities may well become permanently covered with water and disappear.  Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink.

So the crowds came to John, and one day in the crowd, along came Jesus to be baptized – not to break from his own sins, but on our behalf.  Jesus came, and was baptized, and we’re told that as Jesus was coming out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart, ripped open, and the Spirit descending on him like a dove – and heard a voice saying, “you are my Son, the Beloved, in you I am well pleased. “  I can almost imagine the visuals – Jesus’ face is breaking up through the water and into the fresh air, and as his face emerges from the water, at the same instant, Jesus sees something breaking down through the heavens and into Jesus’ field of vision, and he sees the dove, and hears the voice.  Mark tells us that immediately after seeing this vision, Jesus was led by the spirit into the wilderness, where he was tempted for 40 days.  And so Jesus’ baptism was not only a kind of initiation, but also a preparation for the rigors of the wilderness, and for his life of ministry.  And the preparation was the knowledge that he was God’s beloved son.

In a few moments we’ll be baptizing Baby Caden.  Caden’s parents, Alchemy and Henry, and Caden’s godparents will make promises on Caden’s behalf, to raise Caden up in the Christian faith, to renounce the power of evil, to live as a disciple of Christ, to resist oppression and evil, to show love and justice, and to be a faithful member of the church of Jesus Christ.   When Caden is baptized, there will be no doves, no voices from heaven – and that’s ok.  That happened for Jesus, and only Jesus gets to be Jesus.  But though Caden’s baptism doesn’t come with the special effects of Jesus’ baptism, the message is still the same, that through the work of Jesus Christ, Caden is a child of God, disciple of Christ, member of Christ’s church.   Caden is created in God’s image, as we all are created in God’s image and, through the work of Jesus, Caden and we are likewise beloved children of God. 

In the Revised Common Lectionary, the three-year cycle of readings, the text about the baptism of Jesus comes up every year, on the Sunday after Epiphany.  On this Sunday, we have a remembrance of our own baptisms – and today, we have the baptism of Baby Caden.  We need to be reminded – whether we actually remember our own baptisms or not, we need to be reminded that we are baptized – because in being reminded that we are baptized, we’re reminded who we are – children of God, disciples of Christ, members of Christ’s church.  We are reminded that we are beloved of God.  And we’re reminded that we, or our parents on our behalf, made promises to follow in the way of Jesus.  We need to be reminded, because we forget.

What would it mean, what difference would it make, if as we went through our daily lives, we remembered that we are God’s beloved, that God loves us, and nothing we do, nothing we don’t do, nothing anyone else does or doesn’t do, can change that.  And what difference would it make if we remembered that the same applies to our sisters and brothers in Christ, those others who have been baptized – that they, too, are God’s beloved, and nothing can change that either.  And the same is true of those not baptized, because all people have been created in God’s image, with something of the divine within us.  Beyond that, the creation reflects God’s glory.  How would it change the way we go through our day, how we treat others, how we treat ourselves, how we treat the environment in which we and others live, if we knew from the tips of our fingers to the marrow of our bones, from the hair on our heads to the tips of our toes, that God passionately loves us, and our neighbors – the ones we like and the ones we don’t like - and the natural environment in which we live? 

Because this is a very different message than we get from our society.   In our society, we are valued largely by the work we do – often times, when we meet someone for the first time, after we learn their names, we ask, “well, what do you do?” – and they may tell you they’re a cashier or a mechanic or a hairdresser or a construction worker or such.  Or if we’re talking to an older person, they may tell us, “I’m retired now, but I used to be…” – a cashier, a mechanic, a hairdresser, a construction worker or such.   And we treat this information as the most important thing about that person, as if being or having been a cashier or mechanic or hairdresser or construction worker defines a person, that their job is all they are, that they’re like robots or droids programmed for nothing but being a cashier or mechanic or hairdresser or construction worker.  And, of course, if our society values us mostly by our jobs, our paid work, the money we generate, our society puts less value on those who for any number of reasons can’t or don’t do paid work – stay-at-home parents who raise children and do the most important work of any society, but probably won’t put it on a resume - but also those who are disabled, and those on public assistance.   In our society, whether or not we can work, and the kind of work we do, and how that work is compensated, determines our quality of life - determines whether we have enough food and clothing for our families or not, determines whether we live in a gated mansion – or maybe own several gated mansions – or a split-level home in the suburbs or a row home in the city or rental housing or an abandoned house or live outdoors under a bridge, determines whether we have access to good healthcare or lousy healthcare or no healthcare at all, determines our quality of life in so many ways.   Taken to its extreme, this mindset leads us toward the policies of Germany circa 1930’s and 1940’s, where disabled persons were labeled as “useless eaters” and targeted for extermination – many of the measures that were later employed against Jews and other disfavored groups were tried out first on the disabled. 

But, at least in our better moments, we know better than this.  We’re human beings, with lives outside our workplace.  Our job may define what we do for a portion of our time, but it doesn’t define who we are.  As Christians, we believe that all people, baptized or not, Christian or not, are created in God’s image, have something of God inside them.  And as Christians, we believe that we who are baptized are called in a special way, reminded that we are beloved, and also called to live and act in a certain way, following in the way of Jesus, living at least somewhat as Christ lived, choosing good and rejecting evil, loving God with all we have and all that we are, and our neighbor as ourselves.  Now, let me tell you, these words are dangerous, dangerous in a good way! Imagine how our society would change if we actually believed that each person, regardless of their job or lack thereof, is of infinite value, and that we are called by God to care for one another as we’d care for ourselves.  This would have huge implications for our society, our culture, would turn the system upside down and inside out.  To live in a way that’s mindful of our baptism has been called to “live wet” – to live as if we’ve just been baptized, with the words of baptism and the promises of God’s love still ringing in our ears.

The water defenders at Standing Rock last year, who fought against the Dakota Access Pipeline, used a phrase in their protests:  the Indian words “Mni Wiconi” and the English equivalent “Water is life”.   These words remind us that we cannot live without water, and that indeed our own bodies are largely made of water.  For us as Christians, the water of baptism is life…our journey as Christians begins with baptism.  The rest of our lives are marked by the promises we make or that our parents made for us – and are marked by God’s promise that we are God’s beloved. May we “live wet” – live in a way that’s mindful of the promises of our baptism, and God’s promise of love, for us, and for all the baptized.  May we live knowing that we – and our neighbors – are God’s beloved.  Amen.