In the season of Epiphany, the lectionary readings are designed to give us some “epiphanies” about who Jesus is. Today, we get a view of the human Jesus, beginning his earthly ministry, being baptized by his cousin John. So today is a good day to consider what it means to be baptized, and what it means for us that we ARE baptized.
When you think of baptism, what do you picture in your mind’s eye? For those of us who have witnessed more than few baptisms in the Episcopal Church, what may immediately jump to mind is: a group of happy adults, self-consciously standing in front of the congregation with a baby dressed in either an heirloom white christening gown or one that will never be worn again. And after the baby is baptized and sealed by the Holy Spirit, the congregation welcomes the baby into the household of God. Then there is applause and everyone sits down and we go back to our “regular” worship. But if you come from another Protestant tradition, you may envision people lining a river bank and singing as the preacher wades out into the water, where adults come out, one-by-one, to be dunked under the water and then join in the singing on shore.
You all know that I love movies. There is one movie image that always comes to my mind when I think of baptism. In The Shawshank Redemption, (which it seems that the TBS network runs at least once a day), Tim Robbins plays Andy Dufresne, a wrongly-convicted prisoner, serving a life sentence in a particularly brutal institution. As one Christian writer put it, “He is assigned to assist the church-going, hymn-whistling, Bible-quoting warden who is also a vicious, vengeful megalomaniac embezzling millions of dollars from the state.”
During his cruel, dangerous and seemingly hopeless incarceration, Andy patiently works on an escape plan. For years he tediously works to make a hole in the wall of his cell (and keep it covered) as he works out every detail of his escape. The night he breaks out there is a terrible electrical storm. As the thunder crashes Andy pounds through a sewer pipe behind the wall of his cell. He makes his way into the sewer pipe and out of the prison, getting to a nearby river, stopping frequently to be sick. Finally he emerges from the pipe and collapses in the water. In this wonderful scene, he struggles to his feet, and in the torrential downpour, as lightning flashing around him, he pulls off his prison uniform and is washed clean by the rain.
So why would that particular scene jump to mind when I think of baptism?
There are two elements that are burned into my mind from this portrayal of baptism. The first is that Andy Dufresne emerged from that sewer pipe, covered from head to toe in filth and muck; and covered on the inside with mental and emotional corruption and sludge from his time in a horrible place. But when he makes his way through all of that and gets to the other side, God’s renewing rain, literally water from heaven, washes everything away and gives him a brand-new start. The water allows him to begin again, as someone reborn.
I would suggest to you that that is analogous to what happened on that day at the Jordan river when John baptized Jesus. Jesus came into the world to save us from sin; to be our redeemer – the one who sacrifices something valuable in order to give us a new future. Think about it this way: this young carpenter from Nazareth who is also the Incarnation of God, made His way to the Jordan that day, covered with the sins of all humanity. From head to toe, He was covered in every imaginable vile and contemptible thing ever thought or done by any person. But as John covered him with the waters of baptism, all of that was washed away. Jesus did not need to be baptized for his own sins … any more than infants need to be baptized to wash away their own sins. Jesus was baptized in order to wash away ALL of the sin in the entire world. And when Jesus came out of the waters of baptism and reached the other side, He was not born again … the WORLD was born again.
When we recreate Jesus’ baptismal event, we are remembering what He did for us, while we also take part in the rebirth of creation … being reborn ourselves, in the power of the Spirit. But there is another aspect of all of this that is also important for us.
When Jesus stood up after being baptized, Mark tells us, “he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’” In other words, when Jesus came out of the baptismal waters, there was an instant of “What now?” followed by God’s direction to Him to go out into the world as “the beloved,” the one who would show God’s gracious and abundant good pleasure to the world.
When Andy Dufresne was washed clean in his own waters of baptism, there was the same instant of looking heavenward and silently wondering “What now?” Then Andy’s impeccable plan came back to mind and he began life again, as a new person with a new destination and a new mission. That’s where we come in on this Sunday of baptismal reminders.
Christ Church is truly at a “What now?” point in its history, as are most other churches that are trying to survive a pandemic along with economic and civil turmoil. As the household of faith – a community of beloved and redeemed children of God – we are at a place in which we should look at how we give of ourselves in this community and the wider world. The “What now?” for us is: how do we reflect our redeemed and beloved nature to the community around us? Or put another way, now that we have been baptized into the household of God, and become (as St. Paul put it) the adopted children of the loving God, how should we live our lives?
All around us in this country today, we see, hear, and feel hatred. If not outright hatred, then at least a sense that no one really cares about anyone else anymore. The news shows nothing but people sick and dying, and our fellow citizens who make it plain that the lives of other children of God amount to nothing, if it means that I don’t get my way. Make no mistake here, this is not a political rant. I don’t do that from the pulpit. This is a lamentation about the state of Christianity in America today.
It seems to me that there is a paucity of people who even give lip-service to the message of the Gospel of Jesus. Those who do publicly speak about Jesus’ message seem to consistently get it wrong. You see, Jesus did not come to the earth in order to teach us to judge each other. Nor did he preach a message of vengeance, violence, cruelty, or comparisons in which we put ourselves above others. Anyone who tells you any of that, is preaching their own gospel, not the one of Jesus Christ.
If you want to boil the Gospel down into something that you could write on a Post-it note, it is this: Because of Jesus we have been redeemed and forgiven, given a new life in which love for God and each other is our only mission. As our Presiding Bishop, +Michael Curry says, “If it’s not about love, it’s not about God.”
We have been baptized into the baptism of Jesus. So what is next for us is what is next for the Kingdom of God on earth. Our mission in that is to speak the love of God in Christ and to act out that love, toward God AND EVERY OTHER CHILD OF GOD (which naturally includes every person in the world).
Now go out and change the world, one kind word and one act of love at a time. In the name of one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen.
[Epiphany 1B baptism sermon 010812, Genesis 1:1-5; Psalm 29, Acts 19:1-7; Mark 1:4-11]
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