After the Waters Dry

This is the sermon I gave this morning at the church I attend. It's not my finest. I know the transitions are sloppy and I jump around a bit, but a lot of thought went into it.

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might possibly be the Christ. John answered them all, "I baptize you with water. But one more powerful than I will come, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire."

When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too. And as he was praying, heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: "You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased."

You know, I’ve been reading this text over and over and thinking about it, praying about it, all week long. When preparing for a sermon, I reflect on words in the text and concepts associated with the text. I’ve meditated on John the Baptist’s words and I’ve meditated on water because of baptism. And all week, I’ve had this song stuck in my head, a song called “Washed by the Water.” It was written after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and in the refrain, the singer repeats over and over again, “We’re washed by the water. The water can’t wash us away.” It’s been playing in my head all week so naturally, I’ve been thinking about the hurricane. I’ve been remembering some of the remarks made after the storm about why such devastation had occurred, the remarks that sought to ascribe meaning to tragedy. I remember the fundamentalists like Pat Robertson who said God sent the wind and the water as punishment for sins and calling for repentance. If I’m being perfectly honest, I’ll admit that theories such as these don’t work for me and I can’t find any reason whatsoever for such a thing to have happened. In my own experience, I remember Hurricane Hugo. Now, believe me, I understand the risk of using such an illustration because some of you will surely ask, “How old were you then? Do you even remember Hugo?” You’d be right, I was 6 years old in 1989 and I don’t really remember much of the danger of the storm. I remember my parents boarding up windows. I remember going to town to stay with my aunt and uncle because at least they didn’t have trees surrounding their house like we did. I vaguely remember going outside holding my mom’s hand in the eye of the storm for the brief moment of calm. I remember all of that, but what I remember absolutely most, is what happened after the storm. After the rains stopped and the wind died down, I remember neighbors helping neighbors. I remember all the strangers coming into town and eating meals at church. I remember my Nana standing out by her swimming pool talking to the people who arrived in crowds with buckets wishing to fill them up with pool water so they could get cleaned up and flush their toilets. The conversations were almost always about how much damage they’d seen, whether or not they lost their roof, was anyone hurt, and if we can do anything, let us know. I didn’t know it then, but when I look back and reflect on those memories with what I know now, I know spirit of our rural community in Berkeley County. the spirit was in communities coming together, people helping people, after the water. I don’t know why such devastation occurred, whether in New Orleans or Charleston or any of the other places who know the destructive forces of wind and water, but I know what happened after and I know how it changed people, people with water on their minds and in their hearts.

The Christian calendar sets aside this Sunday as the day in which we celebrate the Baptism of Jesus. I find Gospel accounts of Jesus’ baptism intriguing because if you read them closely, you can practically hear the authors’ anxiety about reporting it. There is anxiety, and maybe even embarrassment about Jesus having been baptized because the Gospel writers’ understanding of baptism doesn’t quite sync up with who they understand Jesus to be, that is, God incarnate, sinless and therefore not needing baptism. John, in fact, doesn’t even talk about the baptism at all but only sort of maybe alludes to it having happened. Luke is no exception. Luke doesn’t even tell about the baptism itself, but picks up the story just afterwards. “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.” The account doesn’t even seem to support the fact the John the Baptist was the one to have baptized Jesus. I got to thinking about that, and researching it a little, and what I found was this: Luke wants to convey a particular message about the event. Throughout Luke’s Gospel, Jesus is proclaimed Messiah, son of God, and Luke would want some distance between Jesus and John because John’s agenda was baptism for repentance. You see, John the Baptist was set on preparing the way of the Lord and renewing the covenant between God and God’s people. John believed, rightfully, that it was not God who failed in the covenant relationship, but that it was the people who had broken covenant law and therefore needed to repent and be cleansed in the water as a symbol of that repentance. This being the case, it’s not too hard to see why the gospel writers are a little embarrassed about Jesus getting down in the Jordan with the sinners. In her published sermon “The River of Life,” Barbara Brown Taylor writes: “Even if Jesus were innocent, even if his intentions were nothing but good, it was ruinous to his reputation. Who was going to believe that he was there just because he cared about those people and refused to separate himself from them? Gossip being what it was, who was not going to think that he had just a few teeny-weeny things to get off his conscience before he went into public ministry?” So all that to say, Luke doesn’t understand Jesus’ baptism all that well, doesn’t understand it’s necessity, so he focuses on what happens after, what happens when the baptized has water on his mind and in his heart.

After Jesus’ baptism, Luke tells us that Jesus was praying and the heavens opened up and the Spirit descended upon him in bodily form, then empowering him for his public ministry that was ahead of him. You see, Luke emphasizes that in Christ, the spirit and the body are joined together, that the Spirit dwelt within the body of Jesus.

Have you ever wondered why it is that when the pastor baptizes someone, be it a child or otherwise, that there are questions for the congregation? It’s not a private act for the family and the pastor. It’s a community act. It’s a symbol not necessary for salvation, but it is a means of God’s grace and a sign of our being called by God into God’s great story. It is for us a moment that we can point to and remember as a symbol of God’s relationship with us. And sometimes we can’t remember the actual moment, but that’s one of the great things about it not being a personal experience, but one of a gathered community. The community is witness to that moment and participates in all the moments thereafter.

For a long time after Hurricane Hugo, my mom would get a little on edge at every storm that came up on the weather map. For years, she did the typical stocking up that you see when storms threaten the coast. She’d call the whole family and make sure we knew to be cautious wherever we were. When my sister would tell her to relax and that everything was fine, Mom would say, “But you just don’t remember how bad it was after Hugo. You don’t remember bathing in the lake and not having power for so long.” But in recent years, she hasn’t done that so much anymore. And I think that’s because she’s forgotten the water. It’s not as fresh on her mind and in her heart anymore.

That’s why we celebrate our baptism together. Because when Jesus prayed and the heavens opened up, the spirit descended upon the body of Christ. We are the body of Christ for one another. We worship, we fellowship, and we pray together. In an interview for a magazine, Barbara Brown Taylor talks a bit more about baptism in general (and if you haven’t noticed, I like her writing) She says, “Our baptisms are our ordinations, the moments at which we are set apart as God’s people to share Christ’s ministry, whether or not we ever wear clerical collars around our necks. The instant we rise from the dripping waters of baptism we are marked as Christ’s own forever.” If we, as we do, understand ourselves to be living as Christ’s and after the example of Christ, it would be a grave mistake for us to forget what followed Jesus’ baptism. The passage we’ve read tells us that it was in that moment that the Spirit came upon Jesus. If we skip ahead and read Luke’s 4th chapter, beginning with the 14th verse, we hear these words. “Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.” After Jesus was baptized and filled with the Spirit, he was sent out. In his ministry, he went out teaching and preaching, feeding the hungry, healing the sick, caring for the suffering. As individuals, sometimes we lose sight of God’s call on our lives, lose sight of what it means to be Christ’s own people, called by God into God’s story and sent forth as the body of Christ. As individuals, sometimes we forget, but as a community, we remember our shared story, we gather and support one another, and we remind each other what it means to washed by the water, filled with the Spirit, and empowered to do Christ’s important work.