Hope Filled Dirty Waters
Mark 1:4-11
John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, 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.”
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I believe it's fitting that this morning we should focus on the ancient Christian rite of baptism. You've heard me talk about baptism before, how early Christians viewed this sacrament as a burial of sorts. It was an act of putting to death the old life and exchanging it for something new. And today, we know baptism is also a promise—a visible promise where we are reminded that God has claimed us and seals us in divine love. There are consequences to baptism, and it is not an act of Christian worship that we should consider lightly. It truly is a matter of life and death. Is that something you are ready to consider? Are you, are we, willing to cast aside the ways that do not bring to fruition the life God desires for all?
To be baptized is to welcome death, death of the old ways and means. And to be baptized means to receive the rebirth of a new life promised by God, a bringing about of what is new. We cannot go back to the ways things were or the idealized ways we formed in our mind's eye. We can only move towards what is and what will be. Let me make this clear. We cannot worship the past, the "good ol' days," the past is only one moment in time. For those who put on the new mantle of Christ they commit themselves to turning away from the past, from death. The cost of worshipping death over life comes at a clear cost, a cost of life. Why can't we understand this? Why are we so stubborn? Why do we cling to death?
We should not be surprised that we ended up where we are today. We have failed to cast off the ways of death, and instead of embracing the truth of God's life-giving love and justice, we traded it for lies and beliefs that are not grounded in any reality. Let us be honest in saying that we have failed to uphold the promises we made to God at the moment of our baptism as a people. In our baptismal vows, we were asked, "Do you renounce all evil, and powers in the world which defy God's righteousness and love? Do you renounce the ways of sin that separate you from the love of God? Do you turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as your Lord and Savior?" And as this past week has shown, we have not renounced evil; we clung to it and embraced falsehoods over the truth that God and empirical evidence has shown to us.
Somewhere in the middle of the quagmire, we've created for ourselves sits the hope that we need to hear this morning. In the dirty waters of the Jordan, the Son of God is baptized, and even though the water was unclean, God still said, "You are my Beloved, with you, I am well pleased." That takes a lot of love, love we don't inherently deserve, but is shown nonetheless because that is who God is. I keep talking about love, and I fear that it may dilute the meaning of the word, but it is part of our calling to be disciples—the opposite of what we've seen this past week. We have to show the same kind of perfect love that God has freely given to us. In his book, "The Cost of Discipleship," Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes:
To the natural person, the very notion of loving their enemies is an intolerable offense, and quite beyond their capacity: It cuts right across their idea of good and evil… Jesus, however, takes the law of God in his own hands and expounds its true meaning. The will of God, to which the law gives expression, is that people should defeat their enemies by loving them. (Bonhoeffer, 127)
In Christ's baptism, we were claimed by the love of God. A love that writes a new law on our hearts; it's a law that draws our gaze from the valley of shadow and death to the city of God where the light of God guides our every step. It's a law that we embrace in our baptism; in the dying of our old selves, we don the law of love, which surpasses the common sense of the world. So do you renounce evil? Do you renounce the powers that separate you from the love of God? And do you turn to Jesus and accept him as your Lord and Savior? We will not find such love, such treasured life, in the empty and hollow bowls of conspiracy theories and hateful ideologies. As Bonhoeffer and our reading remind us, God is pleased when we turn and act on the divine law of love and life.
I cannot help but think that the waters of baptism hold more than what Is humanly possible together. It holds the waters of omission that Pontius Pilate used to wash his hands. It holds the waters of injustice that flowed from the side of Christ. And it also holds the waters of hope and love that remind us of the ways we are sealed in God's love. Somewhere in those waters, we may find a current that attempts to pull us astray and set us on a path of death and destruction. But may we, in those moments, intervene. May we be agents of promises of hope that were given to us at the moment of our baptism. Let us be agents of change, agents of truth and justice, agents of love and compassion, and agents of hope who are blessed with the words of God who is pleased when we carry out these ministries of Christ. Amen.