First Sunday After Epiphany Year A

The Bath
01 Epiphany 08
January 13, 2008

Isaiah 42:1-9
Matthew 3:13-17

Here at Philippi, and in our denomination, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), we practice baptism by immersion. This is to say that we take the candidate into the water and put them completely under. We also only baptize people who are old enough to more-or-less know what is happening to them. We don’t baptize infants.

Elizabeth Myer Boulton, the pastor of Hope Christian Church in Boston, told a story at the Assembly in Fort Worth this summer. It was about a good Christian mother who had recently given birth. She was bathing her brand new baby in the little bathtub she and her husband had bought special for the little tyke. The baby was happy that morning in the warm soapy water and very relaxed. And the mother was really enjoying her time of closeness with the baby.
She was cupping the water in her hand and pouring it over the baby’s head and staring into the baby’s eyes and talking to the baby, and she was saying, “Look at you! Just look at you! Aren’t you special? Aren’t you the most beautiful baby in the whole wide world?”

And she was so full of love for her baby, she started to pray. “Oh God, please bless my beautiful baby. Make him strong and healthy and loving and wise. Lead him to great adventures and to mighty acts. Let his life glorify you and shine like a light in the world.”

All of a sudden she stopped. Her face clouded in worry and anxiety. Being the good Christian woman that she was, she said, “Oh Lord, did I just baptize this baby by accident?”

This week has been a powerful one in my life, I can tell you. Yesterday our church was packed to bursting with hundreds of people that had come to say goodbye to Lorraine Stewart, who had died on Thursday.

I mentioned in the sermon that Lorraine was baptized at the age of nine in the year 1922. I’m not sure where, but I know it was in one of the creeks around here, probably Jackson Creek, the body of water she lived by her whole life. She was 95 when she died.

For eighty-six years after her baptism, Lorraine attended this congregation. If she was able to get out of bed she came to church on Sunday morning. And most every Sunday, she attended a Sunday School class. And whenever there was work to do, she rolled up her sleeves and did her part.

You see, her baptism wasn’t so much about what she had already done. Lorraine was only nine when she went into the waters. Her baptism was about what she was going to do. And, perhaps more importantly, what God was going to do.

When we hear this passage from Isaiah we recognize our Savior Jesus. But note what God says. After he says, “This is my servant,” he doesn’t talk about what the servant has already done. He talks about what the servant will do. “This is my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am well-pleased,” comes before Jesus has taken any action except being baptized by John. God speaks not because of what Jesus has already done, or even whom he already is, but because of what he has been sent to do.

To bring forth justice to the nations, to give sight to the blind, to bring the prisoners from the dungeons, this is the mission. Jesus carries this mission out by refusing to give glory to anyone by his Father in heaven or to any other idol. To those of us who follow him, this is the first and most important mission, to give glory to God above any other power that lays claim to us in the world.

Baptism is a bath. It’s about being cleaned. We don’t clean ourselves, the water is what cleans us. In Jewish culture of that time, washing was an important religious ritual. If anything was regarded as “unclean,” that is, unfit to go into the presence of God, then it was washed, not because Jews had some prescient understanding that getting clean was healthy, even though it is, but because God had in many and various ways commanded them to wash themselves.
John the Baptist took this basic Jewish ritual and elevated it to a much more powerful status. Here in Matthew, we read that John was the one who began the teaching about the kingdom of God coming soon. The vision he had was of a Jewish Messiah who would bring God’s rule back to Israel.

Now the key to the power of any ruler is the commitment of his followers. This was what John’s baptism was all about. He was preparing the people of Israel to receive their new king. His baptism was about changing direction, about giving up the old ways, about renouncing the rulers and powers that held them down, about giving themselves completely to the rule of God, no matter what that might entail.

And so this washing was to wash away unfaithfulness, idolatry, and all the powers of the world, including, of course, the Romans. It was about being emptied of everything. It was about making oneself entirely open to God and God alone.

John immersed his followers in the Jordan River, in living water that had a lot of symbolic importance to Jews. Now, immersion was a powerful metaphor, and still is. You see, Lorraine really could not have become the person she was if she was not immersed in the teaching and practice of Jesus Christ. She came to church not just when she felt she needed to, but every week. She went to bible study not just when the topic was of interest, but even when it wasn’t. She stepped up to do the work necessary to the church not just when it was easy, but even when it was dreary and difficult. She immersed herself in her Christian life, she immersed herself in God’s word, she immersed herself in the community of those who believe.

Luther said baptism only takes a minute to do, but it takes a lifetime to complete.

One evening the New Testament professor from Princeton Seminary visited a high school youth group. After the professor finished speaking about the significance of Christ's baptism as a revelation of God's presence in Jesus, the high schooler said without looking up, "That ain't what it means."

Glad that the student had been listening enough to disagree, the professor asked, "What do you think it means?"

"The story says that the heavens were opened, right?"

"Right."

"The heavens were opened and the Spirit of God came down, right?"

"That's right."

The boy finally looked up and leaned forward, saying, "It means that God is on the loose in the world. That’s dangerous."

We were amazed yesterday to reflect on the power of Lorraine’s life. Her ministry of love, we found, has literally spread around the world. Baptism, this immersion in God’s word and community, is the way that God fills those he calls with his own Holy Spirit. As we come week after week, as we engage in the disciplines of prayer and study and self-examination and forgiveness, God’s Spirit fills us more and more, and we truly become, one day at a time, one kind act at a time, or in Lorraine’s case, one stitch at a time, God’s real presence in the real world.

Christians, you see, are made, not born.

At the same time, this word to Jesus, “You are my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased,” is the same word he offers to everyone who is baptized. It is not only a call to mission, marching orders from God, if you will, but it is also his promise to you.

That promise carried Lorraine through some very difficult tragedies. The loss of both her son and his wife just about broke Lorraine’s heart. But just as the community of faith shaped and transformed her, so it also carried her like a life-raft through the darker and more despairing times of her life.

Martin Luther may very well have been chemically depressed. He underwent terrible dark times when he doubted everything he was doing. There were nights so awful, he would sometimes rush to the baptismal font in his local church, thrust his hands into the water and splash himself, repeating again and again, “I am baptized, I am baptized.”

On the same day that Lorraine passed away, a colleague of mine, the pastor of two Methodist churches here in Middlesex county, took his own life. All of us who cared about him are reminded about just how dark the times can get. How much we wish we might have had the opportunity to tell him, “You are baptized. You are God’s beloved child, with whom he is well-pleased.”

And I want to point something out to you that you have probably already figured out. This may look like a sanctuary or a meeting hall, friends, but you know it’s really just a big bathtub. And right now, God is standing over it, and God is pouring that water over us all, and God is saying:
“Look at you! Just look at you! Aren’t you special? Aren’t you the most beautiful baby in the whole wide world?”

Amen.