Baptism of Our Lord 2022

 My family has been watching the television show Lost over the month of December, through the snow and ice and on New Year’s Eve.  Maybe you remember it, a jet crashes on a desert island and people learn to survive.  We see each character’s back story and what makes them think and act the way they do.  It is a show about community, sharing your gifts, starting over.  It is a show about values and spirituality and connection and forgiveness and discovery.

            At one point a young woman decides she wants to be baptized and one of the other characters tells her that baptism as he understands it is an insurance policy to get into heaven.  Another character sees it as protection.  These two perspectives express the way most of our society sees baptism.  But the changed life and the community connection and the faith that people are learning to have on this island after this crash is more of how I think about baptism.

            The reading from Matthew is very short today, but it’s packed with meaning and images that get us thinking about who Jesus is for us in our own baptismal identity and life of faith.  Jesus goes to John to be baptized.  I heard that all of Judea and Jerusalem were there!  Jesus was there, too.  John has been preaching and cleansing all kinds of people but stops short when he sees Jesus.  Jesus is the Messiah.  John is bowing before him.  John doesn’t feel worthy, but Jesus insists. 

            Jesus is above all, the Messiah, and yet he comes into community, relies on others, and humbles himself to be washed by John in the River.  Jesus’ very first words in this Gospel are these, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.”  Sounds kind of stiff and strange.  I looked it up in The Message, a more common language Bible and there it is translated this way, “Do it.  God’s work, putting things right all these centuries, is coming together right now in this baptism.”  This is the right thing to do.  It is in alignment with all God’s plans and works over the years.  It is a fulfillment of God’s promises to bless people and to be their God. 

            When we think of righteousness, I often think of self-righteousness.  I think of being proud and maybe even arrogant.  But for God, we’re learning here that righteousness, right relationship is about humility.  In some of the Advent readings this year we meet Joseph.  The angel comes to him, a righteous man.  Joseph is starting to show us a picture of what righteousness is.  You would think a righteous man would avoid any appearance of sin and send Mary away.  But Joseph humbles himself and takes her as his wife.  He may never have the respect of his neighbors and friends and family again, but right relationship with God, doing the right thing are more important to him than any pride or what anyone thinks.  So he becomes the protector of the Son of God.  He gives up his job, his home, everything, to flee to Egypt to protect Jesus who isn’t even his blood relative. 

            In the Gospel, Jesus is a model of righteousness.  He is humble.  He needs people.  He needs his cousin to baptize him.  Jesus needs to bow down and be washed.  Jesus needs to hear the words that he is beloved of God.  He is a model for us of humility.  Jesus is showing us that we need each other and there is no shame in that.  Jesus is showing us what it means to receive and that it is important to humble ourselves to receive from others.

            I hear almost every day from people in this congregation struggling to accept help from others.  We value independence so much.  We take pride in our abilities to do things for ourselves.  Even using a walker or cane can feel embarrassing and awkward.  Here is our example for humbling ourselves, for admitting we can’t do it on our own—our Savior Jesus at age 30, needing to be baptized to fulfill all righteousness.  We come to this church because we can’t do it ourselves.  We humble ourselves.  We need Jesus.  We need each other.  And do we ever need Jesus when life and health humbles us and we are vulnerable and unable to do what we have always done.  I felt this way when I was pregnant.  I loved being pregnant.  I felt good.  I felt strong.  But people wanted to help me and I did not want to be helped.  They wanted to bring me a chair and give me gifts and I did not want to be fawned over.  One day my husband put me in my place.  He said, “You can’t tell people how to love you.”  I realized that I had to be more gracious.  I had to humble myself to accept their blessing and care.  I hope I will someday live long enough to need a cane, a walker, a wheelchair to get to church.  I hope I will more easily humble myself to using one.

            Speaking of humble, here comes the Holy Spirit descending upon Jesus as a dove—not an eagle, not a heron, but a dove.  What is a dove but one of the most common birds there are.  A dove is technically no different than a pigeon.  I love how God uses what is common—water, bread, grapes, wheat, mustard weeds, shepherds, sheep, pigeons, and uses them for blessing and life.  What is common is special to God, because everyone has access.  Everyone can get some bread and a little juice or water for a blessing.  Everyone can see a pigeon right outside their door.  God is in the ordinary people, the hungry people, little kids, widows, people walking with canes and walkers.  That God is love and shown through love makes God so accessible.  You don’t have to be rich—I feel like I’m about to break out in a Prince song.  What God offers is love, forgiveness, relationship and we can all participate in those things and that is what makes them holy, beautiful, wondrous, and maybe even righteous. 

            The baptized life is about embracing what is common and seeing the holy there, using what is common to bless people, God using what is common to come to us and make us family.  Being in God’s family changes us.  Jesus says in his farewell discourse, when he knows he is leaving his disciples, “ ¹⁷ This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him because he abides with you, and he will be^[i] in^[j] you. ¹⁸ “I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. ¹⁹ In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. ²⁰ On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.” 

            We know Jesus is special, we know he is different, but he spends like 4 chapters in John’s Gospel going on about the unity he has with God and the unity we have with Jesus and each other.  The blessing given to Jesus on the day of his baptism was never meant to be just for him.  First of all it is not addressed to him.  God is talking to someone else and whoever else heard it that day, we hear it today.  We are blessed just to hear that blessing of who Jesus is, God’s son, God’s beloved, who makes God happy, in whom God delights.  We are Jesus’ friends and siblings and Jesus wasn’t just blessed for himself.  He was blessed to do everything it says in Isaiah, bring justice, teach, open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, take us by the hand, not just to comfort us, but so that we would also do the work to which he is called.  The former promises are coming true.  It starts with Jesus and it goes on through his disciples and it goes on through you and me and this blessing is passed on through baptism.  We get washed and humbled just like Jesus did.  We get blessed and doved with the most common of everything.  We get to know how happy we make God and our lives are changed.  We are no longer strangers, we are family.  When our siblings hurt, we hurt.  We are in agony that anyone should be out in the cold on these January nights.  We’re doing anything and everything in our power.  These are members of the body of Christ, Jesus’ eyes, and fingers, and heart.  It was this kind of radical transformation that attracted whole households to be baptized, even before Peter was ready, people were clamoring for what was common, what was humble, what was astounding, the change they saw in the lives of Christians, living differently, living Kingdom lives here and now and not waiting for someday.