Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, John answered all of them by saying, "I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire."
Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased."
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Well, John the Baptist. So we meet again.
In case you hadn’t gotten your fill of this guy back in Advent, here we are one more time, in that same wilderness moment, next to that same river, with the same crowds, preaching the same message of forgiveness and baptism and preparation for the coming of the messiah. (And no, John wants you to know, he isn’t the messiah. Just in case you were wondering.)
John preaches a baptism of repentance, which is to say that he is preaches a baptism of turning around. John sees the baptism he offers as something that will be, for each person who enters those waters, a turning point in their lives.
Which is why it is so interesting that Jesus, too, comes to be baptized. Without much fanfare, he makes the trek out into the wilderness and stands in line with the rest of the crowds, waiting his turn to enter those swirling waters.
For, the last 30 years or so, Jesus has pretty much just been a regular guy. Except for one episode in Matthew’s gospel where he wanders off from his parents as a pre-teen, the gospels don’t bother talking much about Jesus’s life between his birth and his baptism as an adult. We get the sense that during his youth and young adulthood, Jesus maybe has just been doing all the regular stuff a regular person would do - learning the trade from his father, learning the scriptures in the synagogue, eating and sleeping and hanging out with his friends.
But when Jesus is baptized, everything changes. When he hits that water, his life hits a turning point.
In the words of Barbara Brown Taylor, Jesus "goes into the waters of the Jordan a carpenter and comes out a Messiah. He is the same person, but with a new direction. His being is the same, but his doing is about to take a radical turn."
Scholars point to Jesus’s baptism as the beginning of his public ministry - the beginning of three short but incredibly intense years of healing and teaching, gathering disciples and performing deeds of power, proclaiming forgiveness and extending the reach of God’s love.
There are two gifts that are given to Jesus at his baptism that prepare him for the ministry he is about to begin. He receives the gift of the Holy Spirit, and he receives the gift of being named “beloved.” But let’s be honest about something. These gifts might empower and encourage him, but they definitely do not protect him or make his life easier.
Jesus’s life gets waaaaaay more difficult after being named "beloved." He is immediately cast into the wilderness, alone and hungry and tempted. He starts doing the hard and beautiful work of the kingdom in earnest, and offends a whole bunch of people in the process. He claims the title "Beloved Son of God," and yet this very identity puts him at odds with the political system and the religious tradition and the very leaders who taught him and formed him.
So what, then, are we to expect from our own lives of baptism?
Paul, in Romans, tells us that “all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death, and just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.”
Again, in Ephesians, Paul tells us that we have been adopted as God’s children through Christ.
And, according to the writer of 1 John, it is out of the love of God that we are called God’s children, children who are and will be like Christ.
This means that in baptism, we, like Christ, receive the affirmation of our belovedness before God, and we receive the gift of the Spirit, a Spirit that sometimes whisks us off into the wilderness and a Spirit that always pushes us beyond ourselves and beyond the boundaries for the sake of the kingdom.
And that’s the catch, right?
It is easy and lovely to read the story of Christ’s baptism and to hear in it an affirmation of our belovedness. But are we as quick to embrace the other half of the story - the calling and the challenge that this baptism and this belovedness put before us?
The covenant of baptism is always a point of turning and re-turning for us. For all of the promises that God makes to us, we make promises right back about how we will reflect the image and hopes and dreams of God in the world - how we will participate in the kingdom work that God has begun in Christ. Even when that work is hard. And unpopular. Even when our identities as children of God put us at odds with the traditions and leaders and families of origin and cultures that formed us.
There’s an old adage about the role of the newspaper that has long been appropriated to speak also of the message of the gospel: if it is doing its job correctly, it will comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.
If the saying is true of the gospel message - and I think it is - then it is especially true about baptism.
For those who are seriously struggling, we return to the font to find comfort in fellowship with Christ and all the beloved, remembering that we are numbered among them. For those who are too comfortable with the-world-as-it-is, we return to the font to be challenged into discipleship again and again.
When asked by a small girl named Sasha, “Is this the water that God puts on you to make you safe?” author Sara Miles considered the experience of her own baptism just a few months before:
Nothing about that water had made me safe. It had pushed me further out from the certainties and habits of my former life, taken me away from my family, and launched me on this mad and frustrating mission to [start a food pantry] to feed multitudes. It had eroded my identity as an objective journalist and given me an unsettling glimpse of how very little I knew. I was no less flawed or frightened or capable of being hurt than I’d been before my conversion, and now, in addition, I was adrift in this water, yoked together with all kinds of other Christians, many of whom I didn’t like or trust. How could I tell this child that a drop of water could make her safe? Baptism, if it signified anything, signified the unavoidable reality of the cross at the heart of Christian faith. It wasn’t a magic charm, but a reminder of God’s presence in the midst of unresolved human pain. (Take this Bread, 236-8)
Baptism does not make us safe. But it names us beloved. It pours upon us the gifts of the Spirit. It gives us everything that we need. It does not protect us from vulnerability. It does not remove us from the needs and griefs of this world. In fact, baptism makes us more sensitive to the needs around us and dissatisfied with the world-as-usual.
Baptism does not make us safe. But it does bind us in a real, holy, tangible way to the grace and mercy of God, which will not ever let us go.
Martin Luther clung tightly to the remembrance of his baptism. When he felt like the devil or the world or his own demons were out to get him, he depended on those touchable waters of baptism, that definitive moment of the declaration of God’s grace for him.
We, too, can we return to the river, as often as necessary, to dip our fingers into that real water that hold for us the real promise of God’s grace. For us. For always.
But remember: these waters are always moving. They are always shifting. God’s promise holds true, but the waters of baptism are always being stirred up by the Holy Spirit. There is something new to be found in these waters every time you visit them; some new understanding of grace to be had every time you remember them.
And so at these waters, we pray for God’s blessing, and the strength to live as Christ lived. We pray for the gift of God’s love and the gift of God’s Spirit. As we, with Christ, enter into whatever the next wilderness of this life of faith, we carry these gifts with us as our assurance and our reassurance.
We turn to these waters and these waters turn our hearts.
We are changed.
We are challenged.
And we are always - always - beloved.