Into the Water

Matthew 3:13-17

July 31, 2016 • Mount Pleasant UMC

I want you to think for a moment how many times throughout the day you use water. Many of you, hopefully, used water to shower this morning or perhaps last night. I know I don’t really function well in the morning until I’ve had my shower. You use water to brush your teeth, to wash your face—to do many things to “get ready” in the morning. Throughout the day, you might reach for a glass or a bottle of water to quench your thirst, or you go to wash your hands after you’ve been in the middle of something messy. Some of you may have spent part of this summer surrounded by water, swimming and otherwise playing with water. I’ve seen the pictures on Facebook of some of you visiting large bodies of water this summer and relaxing on the beach. In the evening, you might use water to cook with, and you certainly use water to clean up the dishes and wash our clothes. I always have to have a drink of water before I go to bed, so in many ways, water surrounds our entire day. And our entire lives. The first months of our lives we are surrounded by the water of our mother’s womb. It was water that signaled the arrival of both of our children—Cathy notified me that her water had broken. I assured her it would be fine, we would just get a new one, but she said that wasn’t what she meant! Water is everywhere; about seventy-one percent of our planet is covered in water, and the 3.5% that isn’t in the oceans fill our lakes, streams and rivers. While it’s true that a little bit of water in the wrong place can cause instant death, it’s also true that the human body cannot live without water.

That’s why water is one of the most prominent Christian symbols—because it’s everywhere. I often say that the bread and the cup in communion are meant to remind us of Jesus’ sacrifice, that Jesus chose ordinary symbols so we would see them often and remember. The same is true of water. Every time we see water, we’re meant to remember what it means to be part of the baptized. It means we are welcomed, loved, and part of God’s family—and it means so much more than that. This morning, as we conclude our series of sermons on “Questions in the Dark,” we’re going to explore the often-misunderstood practice of baptism, and whether or not this simple ritual of water makes any difference in our lives. Does baptism matter? And to begin to consider this sacrament, this sacred practice, we’re going to go down to the river—specifically, the Jordan River, where Jesus encounters his relative, John.

Now, let’s get the setting clear. John is in the wilderness, in the desert. He was born in a small village near Jerusalem, but at some point he has come here, near the Dead Sea, to a barren place and he has been preaching a message of repentance. He’s clear on his mission: he is to prepare the way for the Messiah. It’s hot in the desert, in the midst of this lowest point on Earth, and so imagine the heat we had last weekend while wearing clothes made of camel’s hair. He was not there for comfort or relaxation. Actually, John was the best show in the desert, and Matthew says people came from all over, including from Jerusalem, to hear him preach and to be baptized by him. Now, baptism wasn’t something John began or invented. Baptism had a long history in Judaism even before John came on the scene. When someone converted from paganism to Judaism, three things would happen. First, they offered prescribed sacrifices. Then all the males in the family, regardless of age, were circumcised. And third, the entire family was baptized. They were cleansed, their “Gentile impurities” were washed away (Green, Baptism, pg. 67). Still today, when you go to these ancient cities in Israel, you will find mikvot, or what we would call baptistries—places that were for ceremonial cleansing. In many places, you’ll find these mikvot have two sets of steps—one for going down into the water and one for coming out. You were to leave behind your sins on the way down and come out like a newborn baby. There are also several of these on the southern steps leading up to where the Temple would have been—you know, in case you had sinned on the way to Temple, you could be cleansed before going in. So baptism wasn’t new with John. But John brought new meaning to it.

John is out in the desert, and people are coming to him so that they can be baptized “for repentance” (Matthew 3:11). And the whole purpose in John’s baptism was to prepare people for the coming of the Messiah, the Savior. Of course, as I’ve shared before, the people had all sorts of expectations about who this Messiah would be and what he would be like. They probably even imagined what he might look like, how he might talk or walk…and then, all of a sudden, there he is, standing in the midst of the crowd and presenting himself to John. They were expecting a powerful figure, someone who could reclaim the throne in Jerusalem, a military conqueror or a warrior (cf. Wilkins, NIV Application Commentary: Matthew, pg. 139). Instead, here comes an ordinary-looking man. John is confused and doesn’t know what to do. Perhaps it happened something like this.

VIDEO: Jesus’ Baptism

In the text, Jesus says he wants to be baptized “to fulfill all righteousness” (3:15), but what does he mean by that? Before we can begin to understand what baptism means for today’s Christian, we ought to first seek to understand what it meant for Jesus and how he changed it from what it originally was. First of all, Jesus was baptized to identify with us. What shocks John so much is that he was offering baptism for repentance of sin, but Jesus had no sin. Jesus was the Son of God. When Jesus says he wants to “fulfill all righteousness,” though, at least part of what he is doing is identifying with us, with the people he came to rescue (Card, Matthew: The Gospel of Identity, pg. 41). He’s setting us an example, showing us that baptism is important, even vital.

The next thing that happens in Jesus’ baptism is the Spirit of God descends on him like a dove (not necessarily an actual dove, but “like” a dove) and rests on him. Jesus is empowered for ministry here; it’s after this moment that his ministry actually begins. The Holy Spirit is the power we all need to do what he has called us to do, and that Spirit symbolically rests on Jesus in this moment of baptism. It’s meant to remind us that, in our baptism, we are set apart for ministry. Each and every one of us has a ministry to fulfill because of our baptism. Baptism doesn’t give us special privileges; it sets us apart to do ministry to a broken and hurting world. Baptism makes us ministers…to offer food to the hungry, rest for the weary, healing for the broken and life to the dying. It’s been said that baptism is ordination for the layperson; it’s a reminder of what the great Reformers called the “priesthood of all believers.” If you are baptized, you are called to some form of ministry. You are a partner with Jesus in transforming the world (cf. Green 42-43).

And then, the final thing that happens there by the Jordan River is that a voice from heaven speaks. Matthew doesn’t tell us who heard it or understood it. We know from another time this voice speaks that some only heard thunder while others heard a voice (cf. John 12:29), but Jesus at the very least, and probably John, too, heard a word every child longs to hear: “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased” (3:17; Card 42). This word from heaven shows us the third purpose of Jesus’ baptism: it affirms his servant ministry. These words that come from heaven are nearly identical to words from the prophet Isaiah, words that describe the one Isaiah calls “the Servant of the Lord,” words that the early church quickly understood to refer to Jesus. In Isaiah 42, God says through the prophet, “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on his, and he will bring justice to the nations” (42:1). Those gathered there would have known that Scripture, and as the voice spoke, perhaps recognized in Jesus this same calling: to be a servant to the nations. The writer to the Hebrews affirms this as well: “Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered” (Hebrews 5:8). Baptism affirms that even though we are children of God, we are also servants. We are not better than others; we are called to serve, just as Jesus was, by virtue of our baptism (cf. Green 41-42).

So in Jesus’ baptism we see a call to forgiveness, ministry and servanthood. Baptism isn’t something that makes us better than others; it simply marks us as belonging to the Father. But whenever we talk about baptism today, there are always a lot of questions. I’ve learned in my twenty-three years of full-time ministry that often, though we use the same words and read the same Scriptures, we don’t always mean the same thing. There is a lot of room within different Christian traditions for disagreement about what baptism does, when a person should be baptized and how much water it takes. So, for the rest of our time together this morning, I want to share our own understanding and answers to those questions. Some of you may come from other traditions, and you may even want to argue with me. And we can have those conversations because let me tell you where I come down on these issues in the end. Baptism is not what saves a person. Jesus is the one who saves us. Baptism is a sign, a symbol, an act meant to represent something else, to point to something else. However, what I want to share for the next few minutes is a United Methodist understanding of the practice and power of baptism: the why, how and when of this sacred sign.

Of course, the “why” of baptism is fairly simple and fairly universal among most Christians. It might be one of the few things different traditions agree on. Basically, it boils down to this: Jesus told us to. In his final commission to the disciples, recorded at the end of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus tells us to “make disciples” of all nations, and one of the ways we do that is through baptizing them. As I mentioned a few moments ago, Jesus set the example himself by being baptized by John, and beyond an example, he also affirmed the purpose of John’s baptism: as a sign of the repentance of sins (3:11). Jesus echoed John so strongly that his first sermon was word-for-word the same as John’s: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near” (3:2; 4:17). Then, as he sends his disciples out on their continuing mission, he gives them specific directions to baptize with what we call a “Trinitarian formula:” in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit (28:19). And we do that to this day, because Jesus told us to.

The “how” of baptism is a little more complicated than the “why.” Obviously, the “symbol” or sign of baptism is water. In that regard, as Bishop Will Willimon often said, baptism means what water means. It’s cleansing, it’s refreshing and renewing, it’s celebration, and it can even mean death—in the case of baptism, death to the old self—and life—again, in the case of baptism, a rising to a new life, a life in Christ. Some insist that immersion, or being put under the water, is the only valid method of baptism, and the argument usually goes one of two ways. First, it will be said, that is the way Jesus was baptized. The problem is, there’s no proof of that. Jesus, we know, was baptized in the Jordan River, in the desert probably near Jericho. Next year, on our Holy Land trip, we’ll go to a place near there and have a chance to renew our baptisms in the Jordan River, as you see Rachel doing here in 2012. At some points during the year, the Jordan is deep enough to do that. At other points, during dry times, it might only be deep enough to have water poured over the head. The Gospels don’t say and we don’t know exactly what method John was using to baptize when Jesus came before him (though in this picture, when Rachel was there, it was deep enough for me to tell her I was going to hold her under and she really repented—she didn’t believe me, though).

The other argument I hear is that the word “baptize” means immerse. Yes, it does. But it also can mean “dip,” like dipping a chip into some dip. And it can also mean “to cleanse” or to wash, which is, of course, one of the meanings of baptism. It’s hard to make the argument for only immersion just fro the word itself. Early on, in a book called the Didache, one of the earliest church instruction manuals written, the recommendation is that “living water” should be used for baptism, that is, water that is moving. If none was available, then cold water should be used and poured over the person’s head, and if cold water was not available, then warm water was sufficient. As much of the area where Christianity initially spread was desert, places where water is in short supply, it was eventually decided that three drops of water was the bare minimum for baptism to take place—one drop each for the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. So, from earliest days, there were different ways of performing baptisms (early baptisms were even performed au natural, without clothes, and then the baptized was given a new set of clothes after coming out of the water, but I haven’t heard anyone arguing for that mode for a long time!), but all were agreed on the connection baptism made between Jesus and the one being baptized. To quote the great theologian Mark Lowry, no matter how much water you use, if you don’t know Jesus, all you get is wet.

And that brings us to the question I call the “when” of baptism. There may be no idea surrounding baptism that separates Christians more today than this one. I find it odd that this sacrament, this sacred sign that marks us all as being connected to Jesus, this outward sign that should bring us all together instead serves to put up huge barriers between Christians and denominations today. Some hold a firm line that only those who are adults can and should be baptized, and only if they understand all that is happening. I’ve heard the same statement made about communion, and my usual response is that I, as a pastor for twenty-three years and as a Christian for nearly 40 years, don’t understand everything that happens in either baptism or communion! Somehow, God takes these ordinary symbols, water in the case of baptism and bread and grape juice in the case of communion, and uses them in extraordinary ways to touch our lives. There is nothing magical in any of those symbols. In baptism, it’s not the water that saves us; it is only Jesus who can do that. Not even the water from the Jordan River, of which I have a little bit left here, is magical. If you were to break it down to its components, you’d find H20, just like in the water that comes from our tap. This is not a magical act; it is a sacred sign. Do I want people to understand what they are doing? As much as possible, yes, absolutely, but if we wait to completely understand it, none of us would ever be baptized.

Two experiences with that, as a pastor, stand out for me. One was with a mother who had, some time before I met her, been involved in a debilitating car accident. She was unable to speak or move or do much at all. Her parents were members of my church and they came to me one day asking if I would baptize her. Before her accident, she had professed her faith and gotten involved in another church in the community, but to their knowledge, she had never been baptized. Would I come to the nursing home and do that for her? Some folks would say no, because she couldn’t answer for herself. And, besides, as I just said, this isn’t a magic formula. It’s not fire insurance, and it’s not a free ticket into heaven. Jesus is the ticket into heaven. Some theologies of baptism are very narrow, but in our United Methodist tradition, we try to be more expansive. We believe God works in our lives even before we’re aware of it, in something we call prevenient grace. That word “prevenient” is an old word that basically means “goes before.” Prevenient grace is the grace that works in our lives before we’re aware or able to respond to God. Put another way, it’s the grace that keeps us from going too far away from God that we can’t come back. Some other traditions, like Presbyterians, will refer to it as common grace, but we both base it on the words Jesus spoke in Matthew 5, describing how the sun rises on the good and the evil and rain falls on the just and the unjust (5:45). God gives some grace to all humankind—prevenient grace. Without such grace, the world would self-destruct. Through such grace, God calls us to himself, and uses that grace to help us respond. This young mother had responded, but even if she hadn’t, I believe God has a special grace for persons in such conditions. We call it “grace unlimited” around here. And so I went, and we gathered friends, family and some of the nursing home staff, and we shared in baptism with her. To this day, it was one of the most memorable moments in my ministry.

The other moment when I found myself face-to-face with prevenient grace was late on a Thursday afternoon. A young couple in our church had been excitedly expecting their second child, and they knew it was a little girl. When mom began having complications, they hurried her to the University of Chicago hospital and she gave birth to Leah, extremely early. Leah had all sorts of health problems in those first few hours, and it became fairly clear Leah would not live very long. That Thursday afternoon, after I had finished with a funeral dinner, I was preparing to leave the office when I got a call from the dad. Could I come, as quickly as I could, to the hospital and baptize Leah? The doctors did not think she would make it through the night. So I quickly made arrangements to cover what I had going on that evening, and I headed north to the hospital as quickly as Chicago traffic would allow me to. I wound myself through the neighborhood and the hospital bureaucracy and finally found myself in the NICU with Mom, Dad and Leah. She was so small and frail, barely holding onto life. The nurse brought a bowl with some water, and together we shared in Leah’s baptism. Now, do I believe that if Leah hadn’t been baptized, she wouldn’t have gone to heaven? Not at all. I believe with every ounce of my being that Leah is a treasure to God. The baptism that evening was more of a sacred sign that was important to mom and dad, a moment that brought them comfort and hope, that even when Leah was gone (she lived another few days), she wasn’t really gone. Her funeral was amazing, beautiful, heartbreaking and hopeful, and we were all reminded of the power of prevenient grace.

Because of our belief in prevenient grace, it is part of our tradition to offer baptism at any age. Obviously, when those we baptize are adults, they answer the questions and affirm the faith for themselves. When they are children, generally younger than Confirmation age, baptism offers the children a “status in promise.” The promise is made by their parents. The parents take the vows and make the promises for their children, that they will raise the child in a Christian home and bring them up in the church, that they will help them to come to know Jesus until such a time as they can profess their faith on their own, and that’s a time we call Confirmation—youth confirming their faith and making the vows that had been taken in their name their own (Lawson, Introduction to Christian Doctrine, pg. 168). Now, it’s not just because of prevenient grace that children are invited into the baptismal covenant and promises. In the Old Testament, the mark of being part of God’s people was circumcision, and children were made a part of the covenant shortly after their birth; by Jesus’ time, circumcision took place on the eighth day after birth (Luke 2:21), long before any such child could make their own commitment or response to God. The emphasis was on the family, that the faith of the head of the household would be the faith of the entire household. There was none of this “let them choose when they are older, and let’s not force them to go to church or synagogue” stuff that you hear today. When a Gentile converted to Judaism, the whole family was baptized into the faith, and the same was true in the New Testament church. In fact, the New Testament reminds us that as circumcision was the sign of being part of the God-centered community in the Old Testament, so baptism is the sign of being part of the new God-centered community called the church, and as circumcision was extended to children, so too is baptism in believing families. This week, if you follow the daily readings, you’ll read of Lydia’s family being baptized (Acts 16:15), the Philippian jailer’s family being baptized (Acts 16:33) as well as another household headed by Stephanas (1 Corinthians 1:16). The ancient world was not so focused on the individual as we are today; the ancient world was centered in community, family. We would do well to view the world more this way today as well!

We go back to the fact that it is not baptism nor the water that saves us. It’s Jesus who saves us. So I don’t track down parents of newborns and tell them they need to have that child baptized or the child might go to hell! I never have and never will do that; it’s a parent’s choice and decision, based on their convictions. You may or may not agree with me this morning, but I want you to consider one more thing about what I might call “prevenient grace baptism,” and that is this: it reminds us that baptism is not something we do, it’s something God does. Jesus died for all, whether we accept it or not, whether we ever respond to it or not. And because it’s something God does, we believe God does it right the first time. There may come moments in our lives when we feel we have a need to renew our baptismal vows, as some will do this afternoon, but we don’t need to be re-baptized because God poured out his grace on us and continues to pour out his grace on us. And every time someone is baptized, at whatever age, we’re to be reminded of what God has done to make it possible for us to be saved, to be with him forever (Green 64-77; Lawson 168-169).

When we celebrate Confirmation, and at other times, we will ask confirmands and you to “remember your baptism.” Now, I was baptized as an infant, just about a month old. My children were as well, and sometimes people will say, “Why do we ask people to remember their baptism when they obviously can’t?” For me, that phrase, that invitation means to remember that I am baptized, that I am part of the people of God, that I belong to Jesus and am marked by him, called to live like him. But I should remember that more often than just when we have baptisms or renewals here. I’ve often said bread and juice should remind us always of communion. In the same way, water should always remember us of baptism. How often does water enter our lives each day? That’s how often we should remember our baptism, whether we can remember the actual event or not. And so, to that end, as you leave this morning, you’re going to get a card that contains a prayer for at least one of those moments in your daily life. It’s a prayer for when you shower or bathe, and it reads like this: “Lord, as I enter the water to bathe, I remember my baptism. Wash me by your grace. Fill me with your Spirit. Renew my soul. I pray that I might live as your child today and honor you in all that I do.” Put it somewhere you’ll see it as you head to bathe, and use that time as yet another reminder that you are one of the baptized.

Today is baptism and dedication day at Mount Pleasant. As we wrap up this series of questions which all sort of circled around one big question, the question of God’s trustworthiness, we’re going to demonstrate our trust in God by giving ourselves to him. In our first service, we’ve shared in dedicating two children to God; in our second service, we’re going to share in the baptism of a child. And then, this afternoon, out at Helton Lake, we’re going to be baptizing and renewing the vows of fifteen people. And, in the midst of it all, whether we are actually in the water or not, we are giving ourselves once again to the God who can be trusted. That’s why I hope you can join us this afternoon, whether you’re getting in the water or not, whether you know anyone who’s getting in the water. Together, we celebrate and we remember our baptism. We are the baptized, called to make a difference, called to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.