Jan 8
- Media Links
- Play Audio
- Download
- Subscribe
Sermon – 1 Epiphany: Baptism
January 8, 2011
Michael R. Sullivan
Way back in Advent, we were in the wilderness, and I suppose, we all expected to be. After all, when you are waiting on the Son of God, the Messiah, to come marching into the world – into all that is messy and crazy and chaotic – the wilderness seems to fit.
And indeed, Jesus came in the midst of things that are hard and difficult, challenging and overwhelming. But surprisingly, he did not escape the wilderness. He came to a manger. A trough. A farm implement. To the ordinary world. And he didn’t leave it. For today with John out there in the middle of nowhere crying aloud that one is coming, one so great John is unworthy to stoop before him, there in the wilderness, Jesus comes.
From Bethlehem all the way to the Baptism of our Lord at the River Jordan, Jesus is about wilderness, the wild earth, the chaos that we call life. And knowing what follows the manger and baptism, we realize he will hang out in the wilderness of life, with sinners, and not just people who told a lie or two, but with really scorned and despised people like prostitutes and tax collectors who cheated. He will also be with people who lived outside the city gates because they were too diseased to touch, to care for, to know by name.
Yes, knowing the whole the story, we realize fully that Jesus will spend his life amidst the wild - in Greek, the eramo - the arid, desert-life, wilderness transforming the “unholy muddle” into God’s marvelous and evolving “holy sense.”
From our vantage point here on the ridge with expansive views of Buckhead and vistas overlooking the towers of commerce, it’s a challenge to see Jesus as he is, standing there with John at the River Jordan on the cusp of a ministry in the wilderness. But we need to see Jesus as he is for only in seeing him as he is can we see ourselves as we really are.
Can you see him, standing on the shore of the river, stones and sticks under his feet amidst sand and muck? He’s dirty from the dust of his journey, sweaty from the heat. He’s enjoyed thirty birthdays. But thirty is not young in his day. He stands worn by the sun, probably hunched over from hard labor as a carpenter. He is old in his society; the average person lives, if lucky, to the age of 40. This Jesus, this tired, dirty, worn human being, comes to John in the wilderness and those who can see him as he is, gather on the shore, on the river side.
Can you imagine a better place to meet Jesus?
Coming to you where you are in your life, in your eramo, your wilderness? Sure today, we dress things up. We’ve got 2000 years of liturgy and ceremony surrounding us as we baptize children and renew our vows. Those years surround us with baptism that is less messy, pure and white, linen-like and sterling clad.
That’s not all bad. To enter into baptism is to enter into the Kingdom of God, and we should at all times and in all places proclaim that kingdom; it is meet and right so to do. But let not our celebration fail to see Jesus standing there in the River Jordan, to see him as he really is.
The children baptized today at the 9:00, you, renewing your baptism today, we together recall, remember, re-tell, re-see and re-envision Jesus standing there in the wilderness. That’s where we need him, and that’s where his humanity and ours collide: where in the unity of the water we experience oneness with him and our very belovedness as children of God. For in the wilderness with Jesus in the River, we realize despite what the world teaches us about success, we cannot earn our salvation. We cannot earn baptism. From the wilderness of life, we just dive in. Head first.
Like jumping into a black river, a river that flows with the tide, a river that might be 40 feet deep cool and refreshing, or one that might take our feet into the dark pluff mud, covering us with earth and the dust of the generations.
In The Pilgrim’s Regress, C. S. Lewis’s allegorical self-portrait of faith, he put it this way in one of the great scenes of literature.
“I have come to give myself up.” [John] said.
“It is well,” said Mother Kirk. “You have come a long way round to reach this place, whither I would have carried you in a few moments. But it is very well.”
“What must I do?” said John. “You must take off your rags,” said she, “as your friend has done already, and then you must dive into this water.”
“Alas,” said he, “I have never learned to dive.”
“There is nothing to learn.” said she. The art of diving is not to do anything new but simply to cease doing something. You have only to let yourself go.”
Oh you who claim the name of Jesus, gather at the river, the one in the wilderness, the one in your wilderness, where Jesus waits for you. And then, don’t even thing about it, just jump in.