When John baptizes Jesus, we’re witnessing the scandal of God’s true mission: that humans would participate at all in blessing the world.
the scandal of blessing all of creation
Epiphany 1C | Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
So Jesus grew up. I know it’s only been a week since the wise men came and gave him presents — you know those child-appropriate gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Who needs little cars and noisemakers when you have incense and ointment?
And somehow, a week later, he’s fully grown, hopping in a river, and getting baptized. It’s crazy how time flies, isn’t it? Our babies grow up so fast!
You might not want to hear this, but he didn’t suddenly turn into a middle-aged man. Shocker, isn’t it! But it wasn’t really just a week, 30 years for them is 30 years for us — time didn’t pass faster back then.
But that’s also no excuse for literalism or realism or historical accuracy, or whatever other fundamentalism gets its naughty grips on us.
This is all beside the point.
You might want to know what happened in those 30 years, but you don’t get to know. Knowing this literally won’t help you. Because Jesus didn’t come so you can dwell on the schedule of his bowel movements or if he had a girlfriend in high school. This is the definition of beside the point. As in hanging out in close proximity near the point but so much not the point itself.
And the point of the moment in this morning’s gospel story is that Jesus, the Messiah, Christ, God-sent King of Israel, son of the living God, walked into a river. And there, a human, a prophet, his slightly older cousin, baptized him in the name of God.
If we dare take that in, knowing who Jesus really is, we can see why this is part of the most scandalizing and divisive concepts in human history. God was baptized by a human being.
Followers of Jesus still fight over that and what it means.
Distracted
See how we’d rather get distracted by the other stuff? Who wants to bring up the troubling weirdness at the heart of our faith? Of course, you know I do, but I know I’m the weird one here. Because this is messy and frustrating and confusing.
Even the writers of the gospels resent having to write about this moment. Of all things, Jesus should be doing, not getting the baptizing! It makes God the passive recipient. This is unacceptable, right? The Almighty — letting a puny human baptize him? Some people let themselves off the bus right there. Nope, they say. That’s not God.
But don’t get too smug about the people who can’t hack it. From here it only gets more difficult, so don’t worry. You’ll get a chance to hope off, too. This bus is going there.
So it’s already theologically messy before we’ve even talked about what baptism is.
What is Baptism?
Again, Christians tend to argue over what all this stuff means, so we’ve got a lot of ideas about it. But what is the most common understanding of Baptism? From Roman Catholic to the super-protestant churches?
We most often talk about it as forgiveness of sin. We’ll get to the other stuff in a minute. But think about sin and forgiveness.
Baptism as forgiveness
In a nutshell, we talk about the sinfulness of human nature needing to be forgiven by God through baptism. But where does this come from? That isn’t in this text at all!
Well, it comes from somewhere else.
Think of it like we’ve all come out to build a porch. And it has these different posts we need to drive into the ground to hold up the deck. So in one post, you have Augustine’s concept of Original Sin, a product of the 4th Century. And another post is John the Baptist’s baptism, which is about repentance and turning away from sin.
So then we build the deck on these two posts and attach it to our house (which is our whole Christian faith) by way of a theological theory about God forgiving our sin when we repent for it. And then we glue it all together by saying it is all because of the cross.
Everyone sitting in this room right now has been taught that this deck we’ve been building is baptism and necessary and how we and all Christians everywhere have always thought about it this way. And if you aren’t confused yet, then you aren’t paying attention! Because that deck isn’t baptism. It’s handmade and rickety.
It’s the thing we’ve built to try and explain the necessity of baptism. But somehow we’ve managed to build something that separates us from what we most need. We’ve put these planks over it.
Under that deck, under that soil, running through the bedrock are the ancient streams of truth. That’s where we’ll find it.
Finding the River
Grab your Prayer Books, that red book in front of you. Turn to page 858. Read with me in a loud voice:
What is Holy Baptism?
Holy Baptism is the sacrament by which God adopts us
as his children and makes us members of Christ’s Body,
the Church, and inheritors of the kingdom of God.
Where is sin here? Where is forgiveness? Do you see repentance and turning? How about the part where God needs to sacrifice Jesus to balance the ledger. Or you are a terrible person who gets splashed to be forgiven? How about that part where baptism turns you into one of the good guys?
Where is the necessity and the philosophical conundrums in this definition? They’re not there! It’s almost as if all of these rules about baptism miss the point of baptism!
So what is the church getting at?
Perhaps that all of this messiness we argue over is an adventure in missing the point. It isn’t about the metaphysics of how or the rulebook that demands a particular form. It’s the resounding truth that we’re a family. We’re all a family. And even more important than that: we, the planet, the cosmos, and God are all one big family.
And as the smallest specks of that cosmic everything, we’re constantly needing to find the river buried beneath our feet.
The Nature of Everything
The nature of our baptism is not about entrance into our family, it’s accepting that God has already adopted us in. We’ve always been in the family.
There’s no rulebook to get in. No checkpoints or credentials. We don’t need IDs or visas. We’re in already; members already; family already. Every one of us. It doesn’t matter where you’re born, who you love, what your favorite sports team is! God isn’t a fan of the Yankees, but even they’re in. And even though it pains me to say it, yes Ohio State Buckeyes are in.
Think about the prodigal son(s) story. The younger son tries to throw his name away and believes he does! But when he comes home, he finds that he was never out. He’ll always be in the family. There’s no out!
And the older son? He was in the family the whole time! And yet somehow managed to think that’s a bad thing. So he tries to throw away his membership in the family because it’s too accepting! The thought of being in the same family as his brother! The traitor. And his father brought him in like its nothing? So he tries to leave it, too!
But the point is that they are all a part of the family. And these are bonds that don’t break with God. Even if we believe we’ve broken them. In the cosmic way of God, there is no breaking!
The scandal of baptism is that it’s sacramental! It reveals what God is already doing! It’s about what’s underneath it all.
“The sacraments are outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace, given by Christ as sure and certain means by which we receive that grace.”
God is doing this already!
And more importantly, God’s whole family — the very Cosmos itself is doing this already! We’re doing this already!
So we baptize each other in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit so that we can be baptized like Jesus! Not to get the sacred ID card to scan at the doors of all the best holy rooms, but so we can be named and affirmed and reminded of God’s love and presence and commitment. It’s already there!
Every one of us, being lifted up, praised in this holy community, this holy family! We lift each other up, praising God and to each of us, we get the blessing found in all of creation, from those deep, sacred waters to the smallest creeks and even rain puddles. A blessing.
“You are my child, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
This is a message for you. A message for your neighbor, for our neighborhood, for the cosmos. Delivered continuously through time, blessing and blessing again all of us. Hear it! In the roaring, the bubbling, the dribbling, the sound of water coming up from the ground or falling upon us in mighty showers. God’s love released upon everything.