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August 23, 2009 | 4:00 p.m.

Baptized as God’s Beloved

Victoria G. Curtiss
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 84
Mark 1:9–13

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“I am haunted by waters.” So states Norman Maclean in a story he wrote about his childhood, A River Runs through It. Maclean grew up in Montana at the beginning of the twentieth century. His story—of being a son of a preacher and a loving mother, with a younger brother often in trouble—is uniquely his story. Yet it carries scenarios of everybody’s life—times of estrangement and reconciliation, separation and reunion. The Maclean family goes through some rough times. But they discover that whenever life is askew, whenever they lose a sense of their true selves or become disconnected from one another, it’s time to go to the river and fish. When the Maclean brothers go to the river, especially when they go there with their father, everything is made right. Life returns to the way it is supposed to be. The river is primordial, the source of life where, when we return to it, we know who we are and to whom we belong.

Perhaps this is the meaning of the last words of Maclean’s story: “Eventually all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. . . . Under the rocks are the words. . . . I am haunted by waters.”

What are the words? Maclean doesn’t say. But we can guess, because our story is also about a river—the River Jordan, where Jesus was baptized. When Jesus arose from the waters, he heard God say, “You are my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” These are the words written under the rocks, from the basement of time. These words are for all of us from our Creator God: “You are my Beloved.”

Perhaps you thought God said “You are my Beloved” only to Jesus Christ. But God speaks this to us all. When we are baptized, God claims us and puts a sign on us to show that we belong to God. Our true identity is as children of God. Our baptism is the seal of the Holy Spirit and of our being grafted onto Christ. Through the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Christ, the power of sin was broken and God’s kingdom entered our world. Through our baptism we are adopted into God’s family and made children of God’s covenant. We are washed from sin and become a new creation.

It’s noteworthy that immediately after Jesus was baptized, the Spirit drove him into the wilderness to face temptations. Before he began his ministry, Jesus was tempted to rely on his own power, to do that which was popular, to seek status. All these temptations would have taken him off track from his true identity and calling. In the wilderness, Jesus found the help of the Spirit to remember who he truly was as God’s Beloved and to place his trust and find his worth only in God. He lived out his baptism.

The great reformer Martin Luther was baptized on St. Martin’s Day, November 11, 1483, at St Peter’s Church in Eisleben, Germany. Throughout Luther’s life, he celebrated and adored this event. Whenever he was in doubt or despair, tormented by evil, he would cry out, “I am baptized!” Luther saw baptism as the purest and most beautiful picture of God’s gracious and unconditional love (Daniel Erlander, Let the Children Come: A Baptismal Manual for Parents and Sponsors,” p. 13).

Two persons have independently told me of their having had a dream in which they experienced God’s presence and heard the words “You are my Beloved. With you I am well pleased.” Both persons awakened feeling such power in the depth of this affirmation that they knew a peace in the very core of their being that they had never known before. And they were both uncomfortable. The words of their dreams made them feel special, and yet they also knew they had done nothing to be set apart from anyone else. Gradually they came to realize what all Christians are meant to experience: Christ is alive in each one of us. In the deepest core of who we are, God’s Spirit lives. We are made in God’s image. New life is ours not because of anything we have done, but because of God’s grace. “You are my Beloved” reveals the most intimate truth about you as a human being.

Baptism is so much deeper than the intellect. From the water in the font, it goes back to the water in which Jesus was baptized, back to the water of the Red Sea through which the Hebrew people passed to freedom, back to the water of the flood after which we received the covenant of God’s love for us, back to the basement of time, back to creation when all was water and the Spirit hovered over the waters as a dove, back to where in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.

Etched into our very essence is that we belong to God. But temptations face us all the time that would take us off track from the truth of our baptism. We must continually return to the voice that declares our worth is in God’s love. Like the Maclean brothers, we must return now and then to the waters where we can be renewed and reconciled with God and with our true selves.

You have an opportunity now to renew your baptismal covenant. In the words of the bulletin are questions you may choose to answer. And later, after communion, you are invited to go to one of the bowls of water at either end of the aisle, receive a sign of the cross on your forehead with water, and take a small rock with you as a way to remember “You are God’s Beloved.”

So friends, let us celebrate the freedom and redemption through the renewal of the promises made at our baptism. I ask you, therefore, once again to reject sin, to profess your faith in Christ Jesus, and to confess the faith of the church in which we were baptized. As you choose, please give answer to these questions:

Leader: Trusting in the gracious mercy of God, do you turn from the ways of sin and renounce evil and its powers in the world?

All: I do.

Leader: Do you turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as your Lord and Savior, trusting in his grace and love?

All: I do.

Leader: Will you be Christ’s faithful disciple, obeying his Word and showing his love?

All: I will, with God’s help.

Let us pray:

Loving God, we rejoice that you claimed us in our baptism
and that by your grace we are born anew.
By your Holy Spirit renew us,
that we may be empowered to do your will
and continue forever in the risen life of Christ,
to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit,
be all glory and honor,
now and forever,
Amen.

Sermon © Fourth Presbyterian Church