Remember Your Baptism!

Today was a travel day, leaving Denver by plane for Helena, and then heading out from Helena to Salmon, Idaho, where I will be preaching in the morning. I love traveling through our area and stopping by our churches for a quick prayer. Unfortunately, we were trying to outrun a snowstorm so I had to pray from the highway as we passed by!

Tomorrow is one of my favorite Sundays of the Church year: the baptism of Jesus (okay, being totally transparent, I have a LOT of favorite Sundays!). This Sunday, we remember Jesus coming to the Jordan, where John is baptizing people. Jesus asks to be baptized and John pulls back, “I am the one who needs to be baptized by YOU.” Jesus is insistent, and so John pulls him down into the Jordan and when he emerges from the water, the Spirit of God descends on him and a voice is heard, saying, ““This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased.”

Every time I go to the Holy Lands, I look forward with anticipation stopping at the Jordan. However, I can’t say that the setting is especially pretty--the Jordan is a muddy river. In fact, it looks fairly unremarkable, as rivers go. But it is the longest and most important river in Palestine. Standing on its banks I couldn't help but recall all the songs and stories of my Christian upbringing that taught me about its important place in religious tradition: “River Jordan is deep and wide, Alleluia! Milk and honey on the other side. Alleluia!” “Yes, we'll gather at the river, the beautiful the beautiful river; Gather with the saints at the river that flows by the throne of God.” “On Jordan's stormy banks I stand and cast a wishful eye to Canaan's fair and happy land, where my possessions lie."

The heart of the Gospels begins at the Jordan River. It is where John the Baptist came out of the wilderness to preach the coming realm of heaven, offering to cure the people not of physical illness but of moral sickness, and that they should bathe in the Jordan and repent of their sins. He was preparing the people, Jews and Gentiles alike, for a future baptism to be administered by one who is greater: "the thong of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie; he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire."

And it is at the Jordan where Jesus comes to be baptized by John. Upon his baptism, Jesus began to pray, and we're told that the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended to Jesus like a dove, and God proclaimed Jesus as God's beloved child.

From the original Greek, the traditional words, "with you I am well pleased" can be better translated "in you I have willed the good." Jesus is not simply pleasing to God. In Jesus' baptism and openness in prayer, God proclaimed and empowered him for God's purpose--to be God's liberating agent of Good News of great joy for all people.

Because Jesus now baptizes with the Holy Spirit, baptism marks us also as God's beloved children and agents of God's goodwill in our lives today. When you were baptized, God claimed you as God's own, and said to you just as God said to Jesus, "In you I have willed the good."

Through Jesus' life and ministry, we have seen the power present to do good--Jesus opened himself fully to God's will and strengthened that relationship through prayer and times of renewal. We today still are inspired by the good that he demonstrated. Whether it was healing the sick, or standing up for the outcast, or challenging oppressive powers, in all that he did, Jesus reflected God's love and power.

Nothing deterred him from his mission to spread this goodness. Even when faced with death, he refused to break solidarity with God. So strong was this relationship that not even death could put a stop to it. Through the resurrection, God's goodness has been made available to all people.

We are called, no, we are claimed by God in our baptism to follow in the example of Jesus and let God's goodness flow through us. This is why, when we reaffirm our baptismal vows, we are told these words: "Remember your baptism, and be thankful."

Even when we backslide and break relationship with God and others, remember that God isn't going to leave you. In moments of despair and doubt and desolation, the great church reformer Martin Luther would say to himself as a reminder, "I was baptized." I was baptized. This makes a difference in my life and in what I can do in this world.

Tomorrow, be sure to stop by the baptismal font and let your hands dip in the water. Bring that water to your forehead and let it drip down your face, remembering your baptism and all that was promised. May you seek to strengthen and deepen your relationship with the Divine, that in all you do, in all that you say, in your work, in all your relationships, God may be seen in you. And in everything you do, may you work for the good.

The Warm Up Act

I am in Helena, Montana this weekend for the ordination and consecration of the Episcopal Bishop of Montana. The congregation of St Paul’s UMC hosted the service, providing great hospitality for our Episcopal kin. This morning, when I got on the hotel elevator, I realized Kenny G was on the elevator with me! I did a quick google search to make sure it was him—sure enough it was! What was missing from the concert listing was who the warm-up act was.

Warm-up acts are interesting—they play second fiddle (so to speak!) to the people you really have come to see. Most of the time, they don’t have name recognition. But they did get a crowd ready for the main act. Warm-up acts have a very important role to play, as they help get people realy to enjoy the show, and then they fade out of the picture.

Every year in Advent, we set aside one Sunday to remember the ministry of John the Baptist, Jesus’ cousin. John had his own unique role and mission. As I consider John in relation to Jesus, I realize that John was the warm-up act. John prepared the way, and then fades away, yielding, as he said he would, to Jesus, the main act.

John could only take people so far.  He led people to the point of departure from the old life, but could not help them enter into the new.  His warm up act included a baptism of water, a cleansing of the past in which a person was made ready for a fuller, richer word to come, the abundant life brought by Jesus Christ.

He told the people, “The real action comes next: the star in this drama, to whom I’m a mere stagehand, will change your life. I’m baptizing you here in the river, turning your old life in for a kin-dom life.  His baptism—a holy baptism by the Holy Spirit—will change you from the inside out.” (Matthew 3:11-12. The Message)

John isn’t preparing people to coo over a baby lying in a manger or cuddle a child. John is preparing his followers to encounter a man who will transform their living, and ultimately, their dying. Jesus, as the main act, will care and comfort us in our brokenness, and confront and challenge us in our sinfulness. People through the centuries have encountered his words, his life, his spirit, this wonderful counselor, this mighty God, this everlasting One, this Prince of Peace, and their lives have been changed forever.

They have felt something being born within them, a spark of hope, a flame of love, a passion for justice, a desire for wholeness, that is truer and purer than anything they have ever known before.  Ever since he came into the world, there have been “countless different kinds of people who in countless different kinds of ways have been filled with his spirit, who have been grasped by him, caught up into his life, who have found themselves in deep and private ways healed and transformed by their relationships with him, so much so that they have had no choice but to share this Good News with others…that in this man is the power of God to bring light into the shadows of our lives, to make us whole, to give a new kind of life to anybody who turns toward him in faith, even to people like you and me.” (Frederick Buechner)

The warm-up act is just about over. Have you been able to clear you life of the past, so that Jesus might come and enter in, be born in you, transforming your life so completely your future will look nothing like your past?  May we welcome Destiny’s Child onto the stage of our lives and hearts and discover the power this One possesses to change us forever.