Today we celebrate the story
of the Baptism of Christ in the waters of the river Jordan, and it is a very
appropriate moment to do so, because the news right now seems to be dominated
by water. If it isn’t pouring from the skies it is crashing over sea walls, or
rushing down swollen rivers, or seeping across flood plains and up into through
the floorboards of vulnerable houses. Floodwaters have claimed several lives,
and caused a great deal of misery. I am sure there are many in the UK this week
who would be quite happy never to have to see or think about water again.
Of course that’s not possible
though, because water is essential to life. It’s just as much a problem when we
haven’t got enough as when we’ve got too much. Whatever those who’ve been flooded out might feel at
the moment, we all know we can’t do without water.
That is probably why water is
so often used in religious practices. Hindus immerse themselves in the Ganges, Muslims
ritually wash before worship, and the ancient inhabitants of this land threw
offerings into sacred springs, a custom that lingers in the habit of throwing
coins into wishing wells and fountains. For Christians, of course, water is
mainly associated with the rite of baptism, but what is it we are doing when we
baptise a child or an adult? What is it about? What is it for? What is it meant
to achieve?
The truth is that if you ask
any two Christians you’ll get at least three answers to those questions. Baptism
can be about belonging, forgiveness, thanksgiving, naming, the washing away of
sin, initiation into a new way of life and a new community, or just a jolly
family gathering, and a host of other things as well. The meaning of baptism is
as hard to pin down as the water we use to do it. There’s been a bit of debate in the press this week about baptism – you may have seen accusations that the
Church of England is dumbing down the baptism service. Actually it is just a
small trial of some alternative wording which might become available to use in
parts of the service if it seems appropriate. We nearly always use an existing
alternative set of words for the promises of parents and godparents anyway, as
do many churches, so it really is a complete storm in a teacup, but what was
clear from the debate is that even within the same denomination, people’s ideas
about what baptism is, and what it’s for, vary wildly.
And there’s nothing new about
that sense that baptism can have many meanings . Christians have always done baptisms; Jesus told his first disciples to go out into the
world and make disciples, baptising them in the name of the Father, the Son and
the Holy Spirit, and they took him at his word. But today’s Gospel story of
Jesus’ own baptism is an illustration of the confusion that has often
surrounded this rite. John’s reluctance to baptise Jesus hints that even in the
earliest days of the Church people weren’t sure what to make of baptism. Why
does Jesus insist on being baptised? Surely he doesn’t need a baptism of
repentance?
The awkwardness around this
story is a sign, oddly, that points to its authenticity – that it really did
happen. You don’t invent stories which you will then have a hard time
explaining. And that authenticity is
supported by the fact that this story comes in all four Gospels, which is quite
unusual. The only other stories that appear in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are
the cleansing of the Temple, the feeding of the 5000 and the stories of Jesus’
death and resurrection.
So, the evidence suggests
that Jesus really did come to John for baptism, but why? People quite
reasonably assumed that God's Messiah, his chosen one, would be someone who was
already walking in the way of God, someone who , in Isaiah's words, was already
full of God's spirit, faithfully bringing forth justice, caring for the bruised
reeds and the flickering lights, the vulnerable and the broken . Jesus seemed
to his first followers to fit that bill. So what could he possibly have to
repent of?
The idea that he was totally
sinless – sinless in his essence, right from conception - is really a later
development in Christian thought, but even at this early stage it clearly felt
wrong to those who wrote the Gospels that Jesus should have asked for baptism.
All four Gospels record John’s uneasiness, which reflects their own sense that
there is something rather puzzling -
perhaps a bit embarrassing - about this incident.
Jesus words don’t really make
things much clearer.
“Let it be so now, for it is proper for us in
this way to fulfil all righteousness.”
What’s that supposed to mean?
Commentators have argued endlessly about it, without coming to any real
conclusions, so I don’t suppose I will get it all sorted out this morning either.
But at the very least, it is clear that Jesus is insisting that this is
something that he has to do, just as he later insisted that he had to wash his
disciples’ feet and, of course, die a shameful and apparently pointless death
on the cross, things his followers also found baffling. Going down into the
waters of the river Jordan somehow sits alongside those other moments of
humiliation, moments when Jesus could have turned away, retreated, left it to
someone else, taken the safe, easy route, but chose not to. It was that
determination which gave his message and his ministry such power to help and to
save, because in sticking with it, and sticking with us, he came to where we
are, lived as we live and died as we die, enduring all those inescapable
realities of loss, sorrow and fear that are part of every human life.
As those who have been
flooded can testify, there’s nothing like water to remind us of how little we
are really able to control the world. Water exists on its own terms, not on
ours; it flows where it wants to. Sometimes we manage to tame it and it appears
friendly and safe – a tranquil pool, a gentle, refreshing stream - but as we’ve
seen in recent weeks, it can also be wild and dangerous; crashing waves,
engulfing floods, roaring torrents. Water is such a powerful symbol of life
because, just like life, it can bring delight or disaster.
The message of Jesus’ baptism
is that whatever life brings – calm water or floods - he is in those waters
with us, immersed in it, drowning in it. He is in them symbolically at his
baptism, but he is in them for real as he hangs on the cross and goes through
the “deep waters of death” as the prayer of blessing over the waters of baptism
puts it. We don’t usually baptise by total immersion, as some churches do but
the symbolism is still there in our liturgy.
When we baptise people -
children or adults - one of the things we are assuring them of is that God is
with them not only in the good times, when all is going well, but in the
moments when they realise they are all at sea, out of their depths, “not
waving, but drowning” as the poet Stevie Smith put it. When the waters are
closing over our heads, when we feel like we are sinking without trace, we are
not alone – Jesus goes down to the depths with us. He doesn’t just sit safely
on dry land, shouting to us to pull ourselves together and swim harder. He
doesn’t just throw us a line and hope we might manage to catch hold of it. He
jumps into the water with us and stays with us until we finally come to land on
the other side, whether that is in this world or the world to come. That is
good news, powerful news – far better than him just being just some kind of
super-hero, whom death and failure can’t touch.
“The voice of the Lord is
upon the waters,” said our Psalm this
morning, “the God of glory thunders, the Lord is upon the mighty waters.” God
speaks to us not just from the triumphant halls of heaven, but in the murky
depths of the floods that sweep us away. And the message that voice proclaims
is the one which Jesus embodied and lived out - in his baptism, in his
ministry, in his death and resurrection. It is the message that’s there in the
title the Gospel writers give him at his birth; Emmanuel, which means “God is
with us.”
Amen
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