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Baptism of the Lord
I was cleaning out the trunk of my car when I came across this device. It’s a hammer designed for breaking your car window if you drive off a bridge and sink in the river. It wouldn’t help much being in the trunk. Can’t you visualize the conversation: the car is sinking in the lagoon, bubbles coming up, car filling with water. I say, “Honey, didn’t we used to have one of those little hammers for breaking your window in situations just like this,” and she says, “Yes, but it’s in the trunk.” A friend of mine in this church got me this hammer; I’ve always wondered why. There are several possibilities. Maybe it was genuine concern and she wanted me to be prepared for any eventuality. Or, maybe it was a tongue-in-cheek kind of gift – you know, for the man who has everything. Maybe it’s commentary on the quality of my driving. Maybe it was at the check-out stand at the “dollar store.” The point is that it means something, regardless of the reason for the gift or the likelihood that I will never actually use it. It has no intrinsic value – a cheep cast little pointed hammer. But, it means something; every time I see it, it reminds me that someone saw it and thought of me. I love that. That’s the kind of friends I need more of. The fact that it means something, means everything. Got a call a couple of months ago from a woman who wanted her child baptized. She had no church connections and was not inclined to establish any. She didn’t want the baptism on Sunday morning but a private service for family and friends. Rather like a wedding, you do the little ceremony, take some cute pictures then go to a hotel for a sit-down reception. She had the date picked out and wanted to know if I was available. There is nothing I would rather do than baptize her child into the family of faith and I told her so. But, first I needed to make sure that she understood what it meant. It’s just a brief ceremony and a few drops of water unless it means something. She reluctantly agreed to meet with me. It was about three weeks before she could squeeze me into her busy schedule. I suggested that she might visit one of our worship services in the interim. She gave a reluctant assent to that notion obviously to placate me. Then the day before our appointment she called and canceled the meeting. Baptism means something. It is a sacrament. It establishes a covenant relationship with God. It has no intrinsic value other than its meaning. It’s not holy water, its tap water. Some people bring back river water from the Jordan and I will use that if it’s properly boiled. Old Naaman the leper complained to Elisha that the rivers back in Syria were just as good to wash in as the muddy old Jordan, and he was right. It wasn’t about the water; it was about the meaning of the act as the vehicle of healing. It’s not the water that makes it a sacrament; it’s the establishment of the covenant relationship. The fact that it means something means everything. In “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” Ray stuns his wife and children into silence when, at the dinner table, he empties the entire bowl of mashed potatoes on his plate. Then he begins to sculpt the heap of potatoes with his fork all the while muttering, “This means something.” To his shocked family it was just a stack of mashed potatoes – but it meant something to Ray. And, as it turned out, what it meant had cosmic implications. Baptism was not invented by John the Baptist. It was a common Jewish cleansing ritual. And other cultures also had their versions of the water ritual. The people were familiar with and comfortable with baptism. The power of John’s baptism lay in the meaning he attached to it. He was very clear about it; it was baptism to repentance. The baptismal candidate was challenged to turn from their old way of being and begin a new life. The water of baptism was a symbolic washing away of old sins in preparation for a new birth. So, it caught old John a bit off guard when Jesus stepped forward and asked to be baptized. What did it mean? Jesus didn’t need to repent, he was sinless. He didn’t need to be cleansed before beginning a new life; he was the embodiment of new life. Mark’s gospel always gives just the bear bones of the story. In the other synoptics there is a period of debate about who ought to be baptizing who. But, Jesus persists and John relents. I asked a clergy friend of mine how he handles those phone calls asking for baptisms from people with no understanding of the meaning. He said that he just does it and lets God worry about what happens next. Maybe a covenant is established whether the parent knows it or not and that child is bound to the faith in some mysterious way even if the parent intended it just as a photo op. I don’t know. I do know that there are times when you don’t argue theology or even propriety. I ministered to a young man dying of cancer; he was nineteen. His parents were not religious and had never been to church, neither had Rusty. His mother was a nurse for the doctor I saw and that’s how she knew me. When the crises came, I was the only minister she knew, so she called. Nearing Rusty’s death, he asked to be baptized. We set the day for Saturday so his dad would be home too. So I baptized Rusty in the name of God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in his living room a week before he died. After I baptized Rusty, his father asked if he could be baptized too. I didn’t hesitate. I didn’t explain what it meant. I was sure that it meant something very precious to him, something more than enough to make it sacramental. So, Jesus was baptized by John and left it to theologians for the next twenty centuries to argue about what it meant. I think it meant what it always means, the establishment of a covenant relationship with God. The whole Bible is the story of covenants, covenants made, broken, re-established. The Bible is divided into two parts, the old and new covenants. Covenants are to be taken very seriously or there are consequences. One of the Ten Commandments forbids taking the Lord’s name in vain. Some people think that’s about swearing. No! It’s about calling on God frivolously. Texting during the Lord’s Prayer. Mostly it’s about making a promise to God that you are not all that serious about keeping. People say “I do, until death do us part.” All the time thinking, “If it doesn’t work out I can always get a divorce – or take her on a vacation to Aruba.” God is offended by insincerity, especially being frivolous about covenants. Jeptha’s daughter knew that. He made a rash promise to God for deliverance in exchange for his daughter’s life. When his deliverance miraculously came he was distraught – in anguish – “what have I done?” His daughter put the issue succinctly, “If you have opened your mouth to the Lord, you must fulfill your vow.” She knew that the keeping of a covenant, even an ill-considered one was more important than her own life. I wanted to tell the woman who called that – that there was nothing I would love more than to baptize her child, but I couldn’t risk being party to her entering into a covenant frivolously, violating one of the Ten Commandments. We tend to present God as a creampuff who forgives everything absolutely. The Bible doesn’t portray God like that – rather as a God who gets angry, especially with arrogance and indifference. Is it possible that some people have such awful lives because their problems are compounded by an offense to God? It’s just a few drops of water off the finger tips – a brief ritual. That’s all. Except it is a sacrament, a means of grace. It invokes God’s presence and God’s action. It establishes a covenant between us and our divine Creator and Protector. You don’t want to take that lightly. At his baptism, Jesus confirmed the covenant. He committed himself to the calling to which God had ordained him. That’s why the voice from heaven announced its pleasure. That’s why Paul would write that we are baptized into his death. For Jesus the covenant he would make and keep included that clause. He kept the covenant and God gave him a name that is above every name on earth and in heaven. John said that the One who would come after him would baptize not with water but with fire. The saints in Ephesus were re-baptized – this time in the name of Jesus, and were filled with the Holy Spirit whose symbol is fire. You don’t want to play with fire. When people come to be baptized, they need to know that. It means something and that means everything.
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