"The River of Life" - January 8, 2011

Text: Mark 1:4-11

Last semester I received an email from a student who was taking a religion course. The class had been assigned to visit a place of worship in a tradition different from their own. They were to interview a religious leader, and especially pay attention to the sacred space. What was important about the building, about the structure, about the symbols, why had the group chosen this location, why had they chosen to gather in this place?

It is not unusual to be contacted by a student who wants to talk to me about a religion class assignment. Students call me because our church is nearby or because they want to investigate this strange group called Baptists. Well, we made arrangements and at the appointed time this young man showed up. His tradition was Roman Catholic, and he asked some good questions. I enjoyed visiting with him and we looked around the building, especially the sanctuary. I talked a little about the New England meetinghouse style of our church building. The New England Puritans believed in a simple, unadorned worship space that was free of worldly distractions so that people might worship God. They didn’t even have crosses, they certainly wouldn’t have banners, and would have been mortified at the thought of pew cushions. (I didn’t mention to this student that the Puritans adopted this very plain style because they rejected anything that smacked of Catholicism).

We don’t have a lot of ornamentation in our sanctuary, no fancy stained windows, but we do have something that a person looking at the architecture of sacred spaces might be interested in: I showed him the baptistry and talked about our tradition of baptism. We have the curtains open on the baptistry today as we think about baptism – Jesus’ baptism as well as our own.

Some of you were baptized here in this church. For some, that may have been 50 or more years ago. Some of you have been here early on a Sunday morning, filling the baptistry with water. Some of you have been present to assist baptismal candidates get in and out of the water. But I suspect that a good number of you have never seen the inside of our baptistry.

Ours is actually a huge baptismal pool. The architect made it much larger than it would need to be – we could have big old hot tub parties in there.

All things considered, it really is a strange thing we do, baptism.

Peter Gomes was much-loved chaplain at the Memorial Church at Harvard who died last year. He recalled that a number of years ago, an undergraduate couple approached him asking to be baptized. He talked it over with them, they discussed what baptism meant and he said yes, he would be glad to baptize them. They wanted to be baptized by immersion, which was great, he was a Baptist - an American Baptist, at that - but they did not have a baptistry at the Memorial Church, they had a baptismal font, and it just would not do. So they had to find a place to hold the baptism.

Walden Pond was a special place for this couple, so it was decided to have the baptism there. Unfortunately, it was October, but they found a decent day and headed off to Walden Pond. Gomes said that he went into the water, the two young people followed, there were words of testimony shared, and then Gomes wrote:

I performed the deed as I was taught: down and up, down and up. As soon as I brought the woman up from the water, she being the second, there was a great burst of applause. We were not alone. We looked and found that the shore was full of people who had come out of the woods and were absolutely fascinated at this bizarre activity going on at Walden Pond. Many strange things have been seen at Walden Pond but nothing, I’m sure, quite as strange as this, and clearly some word of explanation was in order lest they call the police. I explained that this was what Christians did when they wanted to make a profession of their faith, and I quoted a little scripture. One of the fellows on the shore asked, “Do you do a lot of this sort of thing?” I replied, “Not as much as I would like, but yes, I do.” He and his friends on the shore scratched their heads and said, “Well, it looks like fun,” and off they went into the woods.

It is a bit more domesticated perhaps with indoor plumbing, but wherever you do it, at Walden Pond or at First Baptist, it is still a bit odd. As a testimony to our faith in Jesus, we put on a robe and get dunked in a pool of water while friends and family watch in anticipation. Someone who wasn’t familiar with the idea, who had no background whatsoever in Christian faith and walked in on a Sunday morning and observed a baptism, would surely scratch their heads like those onlookers at Walden Pond and ask, “What is up with that?”

Well, that is a good question. Since we are called Baptists, the rite of baptism probably deserves some thought. Why do we baptize, and what does it mean? A good place to begin is Jesus’ baptism. It is reported in all four gospels. Only Matthew and Luke tell about Jesus’ birth, but all of the gospels tell about his baptism. We read this morning from Mark, who actually begins his gospel with John the Baptist baptizing Jesus. We read this same scripture back in Advent. Mark identifies John the Baptist as the prophet of whom Isaiah spoke when he said, “A voice cries in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord.”

We read that people came from all over the countryside as well as Jerusalem, confessing their sins and being baptized. And then, Jesus himself comes to John for baptism. In Mark’s gospel, the very first thing we know about Jesus is that along with scores of other folks, he goes to John the Baptist in order to be baptized.

Mark makes a point to say how many people were coming to John, confessing their sins. The place was just teeming with sinners – flawed, faulty, sorry, guilty human beings who were hoping that John could help them clean their lives up. These were people who were trying to come clean – with others, with themselves, with God. People who had no illusions about their own innocence.

And them Jesus comes along. He just jumps right in line with everybody else, with all of the sinful humanity to be found there.

Why did Jesus come to John for baptism? While Mark does not include any stories about Jesus’ birth, there is a sense in which he begins his gospel just like Matthew and Luke. Jesus comes and identifies fully with us, in all of our humanity. Matthew and Luke tell of Jesus being born as a baby, born in poverty, born in troubled times to parents of little means or power or reputation. Mark begins with Jesus’ baptism, with Jesus identifying with us in all of our need and brokenness and sin.

If he had listened to his PR people, Jesus might have just stood on the shore and offered words of encouragement. He might not have gotten into the water at all, except perhaps to tap John on the shoulder and say, “Why don’t you take a break? I’ll take it from here.”

Even if he were completely innocent, without sin, submitting to this baptism for sinners could damage a person’s reputation. Who would believe he was their only because he cared about these people and did not want to separate himself from them?

We learn a couple of things from Jesus’ baptism. One of them is that Jesus identifies completely with us.

And then, as Jesus comes out of the water, the heavens open up, the Spirit descends like a dove, and a voice from heaven says, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

What is God pleased with? Jesus has not done anything, not yet. He has simply been baptized, and God says, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” Baptism has to do with identity – it’s not about what we do but who we are. Jesus’ identity as God’s beloved son is affirmed.

John preached a baptism of repentance, and that word repentance, metanoia in Greek, means a turning around, a change of direction. One could argue that Jesus’ baptism was a change of direction for him. This is the inauguration of his life work. He is turning toward the ministry ahead, turning toward his calling. Clearly, something very significant took place for Jesus.

John’s baptism was not the same as Christian baptism, but it certainly anticipates it. As practiced in the New Testament, we believe that baptism is for those who have accepted God’s gift of grace and chosen for themselves to follow Christ. As Paul describes it, it is a symbol of dying to sin and rising to new life in Christ. Many of you grew up in other traditions – some of you were baptized as infants and then at a later point professed your own faith in Christ. We honor those who have had that experience of faith even while we practice baptism of believers.

Jesus’ baptism points out for us a dimension of faith that we need to take seriously, and that is, authentic, vital faith is both individual and communal. It is deeply personal, but it also happens in community and involves the community.

At his baptism, Jesus demonstrates a very personal and intimate relationship with God. He decides for himself that this is the path he will follow. As he rises from the water, there is a voice from heaven: “this is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.” This is a deeply personal experience.

And yet, it happens in community, it happens in the midst of all of those who have come to be baptized by John, it happens as Jesus identifies with the wider community – with us.

Faith is a deeply personal for all of us. We cannot scoot by on our parents’ faith or our church’s faith or anyone else’s faith: it has to be our own. And God says to each of us, even as God said to Jesus, “You are my beloved child.” It is personal, and yet it happens in community. We are baptized into the Church, into a community of faith made of those flawed, imperfect, yes, sinful people who are seeking together to follow Jesus.

We don’t do private baptisms because the community is an essential part of what happens. Jesus doesn’t go to John after business hours, he goes like everyone else; he goes with the crowds to the Jordan River where John is doing his thing. Sometimes we can get into trouble with our emphasis on individual faith and wind up with a kind of “just me and Jesus” spirituality. We have to own our faith for ourselves, it is true; but we come to faith and grow in faith and live out our faith in community with others.

The Church is a community where we encourage one another and challenge one another and support one another and teach one another, a place where we remind each other who we are – God’s beloved children.

Now, the question might be raised as to whether baptism is still a meaningful ritual. I mean, ritual and tradition is not what it used to be. And we don’t believe that baptism is magic – it doesn’t transform a person just by virtue of getting wet. The faith that is present and the commitment that is made and more than that, God’s love and grace toward us are what really matters. We don’t believe that baptism saves us, not in a transactional sense. And so, why even bother with it?

Well, it might be argued that in a world where tradition and ritual and symbol have been kind of devalued, baptism is even more important – not in a legalistic sense but in a very real sense. There is something powerful about entering the waters of baptism as people have for hundreds of years, over the centuries, back to Jesus himself. There is something about having the waters wash over you and experiencing this very tangible sign that we have been made clean, that we have risen to new life. Ritual, symbol, tradition can be very powerful.

The story is told of a Christian community in the old Russian Gulag. These men were unable to have any outward show of their faith. To do so would mean dire consequences. And yet this community celebrated Communion each week during the Sunday meal at the mess hall.

They would silently lift and break their bread together and then eat it. And then they would silently lift their cups of water together and drink it. By doing this, they were strengthened and renewed to face another week in the company of guards who never knew that communion had been celebrated - without clergy or words, but with powerful symbols and a powerful simplicity of faith. These men knew the power and the importance of Christian community and the power and importance of ritual and tradition.

We observe two ordinances, or sacraments, in our church: baptism and communion. Both tell us that we are a part of God’s family. Each connects us to God and to one another and to all who have shared at God’s Table or entered the waters of baptism. And those words that Jesus heard at his baptism are words for each of us: “You are my beloved child.” Amen.