January 12, 2014 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Baptismal Surprise

Calum I. MacLeod
Executive Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 29
Isaiah 42:5–9
Matthew 3:13–17

“Jesus came . . . to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him.”
Matthew 3:13 (NRSV)

Goodness is stronger than evil;
love is stronger than hate;
light is stronger than darkness;
life is stronger than death;
victory is ours through him who loves us.

Desmond Tutu

What a week it has been since we gathered here last Sunday on that cold, snowy day. It has been a crazy week of weather and cold and snow and ice and warming and rain. We, of course, had the Polar Vortex, which meant for me that I received more unsolicited messages from friends and family in the United Kingdom than I’ve ever had before—emails, texts, phone calls to make sure that we were alright and trying to keep warm. I was very pleased to be cared for by so many family and friends.

And then on Wednesday we had an episode in the Parish House, the older part of the campus here, where we had a couple of broken pipes, and we were working very hard just to keep operations going here. So I wanted, publicly on your behalf, to thank particularly the house staff who worked so hard clearing the snow and ice and then dealing with the broken pipes. So Leszek, to you, and to O.C. and the rest of the house staff, thank you for all of you’ve done this week to keep us going.

We have this day the remembrance of the baptism of Jesus. I want to tell a story to frame our reflections this morning. It comes from a collection of stories by someone whom I’ve shared with you before from this pulpit, the Indian Jesuit priest Anthony de Mello, who was a collector of wisdom stories from different religious traditions, stories he would collect in volumes. I was introduced to his writings and to his stories when I visited the Island of Iona in Scotland more than twenty years ago. De Mello’s work has been an important part of my meditation and devotional life ever since, as I go back and reread some of these stories and try to glean some of his wisdom.

There is a particular favorite that I have that I wanted to share with you this morning as a frame for thinking about baptism, the baptism of Jesus, baptism as a sacrament.

The minister announced that Jesus Christ himself was coming to church the following Sunday. People turned up in large numbers to see him. Everyone expected that he would preach, but he only smiled when introduced and said hello. Everyone offered him hospitality for the night, especially the minister, but he refused politely. He said he would spend the night in church. How fitting, everyone thought.

He slipped away early the next morning before the church doors were opened, and to their horror the minister and people found that their church had been vandalized. Scribbled everywhere on the walls was the single word Beware. No part of the church was spared. The doors and windows, the pillars and the pulpit, the chancel, even the Bible that rested on the lectern. Beware. Scratched in large letters and in small, in pencil and pen and paint of every conceivable color wherever the eye rested one could see that word, Beware. Shocking. Irritating. Confusing. Terrifying.

What they were supposed to beware of, it did not say; it just said beware. The first impulse of the people was to wipe out every trace of this defilement, this sacrilege. They were restrained from doing this only by the thought that it was Jesus himself who had done this deed.

That mysterious word, beware, began to sink into the minds of the people each time they came to church. They began to beware of the scriptures so they were able to profit from the readings without falling into bigotry. They began to beware of the sacraments, so they were sanctified without becoming superstitious. The minister began to beware of his power over the people, so he was able to help without controlling, and everyone began to beware of religion that leads the unwary to self-righteousness. The people became law abiding, yet compassionate to the weak. They began to beware of prayer so it no longer stopped them from becoming self-reliant. They even began to beware of their notions of God, so they were able to recognize God outside the confines of their church.

The baptism of our Lord is remembered at this time of year because it is one of the three traditional texts read around Epiphany—Epiphany meaning the revelation of the divinity of Jesus. The first of those texts is the very familiar story of the magi, the wise men traveling to see and pay homage to the Christ child. Second is the story of the first miracle in John’s Gospel, the changing of water into wine at the wedding in Cana. And then this, the third Epiphany text, when rising out of the water after being baptized Jesus hears the voice of the Lord saying “This is my Son the Beloved with whom I am well pleased.”

When we think about baptism, naturally we reflect on water, the water that is used in baptism. When we do that we are reaching into some of the basic, very elemental building blocks of life. Water, of course, is of itself the giver of life. Without water there is no life. Water is an important symbol, an important metaphor in the scriptures, in the story of God’s relationship to God’s people and their relationship to God.

I hope you picked up some of that in the prayer that I said over the water during the baptismal liturgy earlier this morning. We remember the spirit of God hovering over the water in Genesis, in creation. We remember the cleansing of the flood and the new covenant, the new relationship that God has with God’s people through Noah. We remember the place of water in the Exodus, the children of Israel, led by Moses, being delivered or brought into liberation and new life by coming through the waters of the Red Sea. And then, for us, ultimately the story of Jesus being baptized by John in the Jordan, the proclamation of our salvation in that.

You’ll find that in many other parts of scripture. In the prophets, the great poets of scripture often used metaphor of water—Amos, for example, in the famous prophecy that let justice roll down like waters. Or in the psalms, as we read this morning, the Lord is enthroned over the flood.

That metaphor of water has continued to fascinate writers and poets reflecting on the spiritual life. Water in the life of faith is a common metaphor. It’s famously in a poem not about faith but about the loss of faith. In the poem “Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold, the Victorian poet, hearing the tide of the English Channel recede, reflects on how that speaks to the poet about his life in which faith is now lost:

The Sea of Faith
was once, too, at the full and round earth’s shore
lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
its melancholy long withdrawing roar
Retreating . . .

So Arnold uses this metaphor of the sea in many ways to pick up on the zeitgeist of that late-Victorian-era, post-Darwinian questioning in which it seemed all too easy to lose traditional concepts of faith.

One of my favorite contemporary poets, Denise Levertov, an American, engages with Arnold’s metaphor but in a different way in a poem called “The Tide,” in which she speaks about the tide coming in as meaning the fullness of faith.

Faith’s a tide it seems, ebbs and flows responsive
to action and inaction.
Remain in stasis, blown sand
stings your face, and anemones
shrivel and rock pulls no wave renews.
Clear the littered beach, clear
the lines of a forming poem,
the waters fled inward.
Dull stones again fulfill
their glowing destinies and emptiness
is a cup, and holds
the ocean.

Levertov has played with Arnold’s theme and used it as one to celebrate the fullness of our life of faith. Water is one of the things that connects us in our baptism with Jesus being baptized by John.

Scholars and people have sometimes struggled to understand why Jesus would be baptized by John. We’re told in the Gospels that John’s baptism is a baptism of repentance, and theologians have asked if Jesus was one without sin why would he need to be baptized by John? In our telling today in Matthew, this tension is made explicit. John says Jesus would have prevented him, would have preferred not to have baptized Jesus, but rather be baptized by him. But Jesus says no, that John should baptize him.

N.T. Wright the English New Testament scholar is helpful in this. He writes that if Jesus is to fulfill God’s plan this is how he must do it: by humbly identifying himself with God’s people by taking their place, sharing their penitence, living their life, and, ultimately, dying their death. Here’s another deep connection of our own baptism with the baptism that Jesus undergoes. Jesus’ baptism and the recognition by God of the sonship of Jesus is itself a proclamation of the coming death and the promise of resurrection and new life. And that is symbolized in the act of baptism.

Presbyterian pastor and writer Frederick Buechner is often helpful when we come to unpack some of the words we use in church, such as sacrament. He writes this, “A sacrament is when something wholly happens.” Think of that in the layers of meaning of what happened earlier in the service as we baptized these beautiful children. It’s a celebration of new life for the families and new life for us as a community of faith. It’s a family gathering, of sorts. It’s a naming ceremony, a public recognition of the individual child. And a photo opportunity, of course. But also something wholly happens, because in the symbol of the water of baptism is the gift of life, the gift of God’s renewing love which we call grace.

We talk in baptism about death, about dying to self. There is death in this. Buechner again discusses this in the context of how we do baptism. Sometimes in a baptism we will sprinkle the child with water, much like I did this morning. But in other traditions there is what Buechner calls dunking, full immersion baptism. Buechner reflects that dunking, full immersion, is a better symbol because you go right under, and going under, he writes, symbolizes the end of everything about your life that is less than human, and coming up again, coming back out of the water, symbolizes the beginning, the new of something strange and new and hopeful. You can breathe again.

You see there is something that’s surprising in baptism. Jesus undergoes this baptism of repentance by John. That word repentance in Greek means a turning, and this is indeed—as we come to see—a turning point for Jesus, because immediately after his baptism Jesus will begin his earthly ministry, first by entering into the wilderness and undergoing the temptations.

Baptism is a turning point for all who undergo the experience of the waters of baptism. It’s a turning point because it evokes a response in our lives. Ultimately for these little ones, in due time, it will evoke a response, a response of love, which is why during the baptismal liturgy we evoke the scripture “we love because God loved us first.” And that is the surprise of baptism.

Thanks be to God. Amen.