Isaiah 42:1-9; Matthew 3:13-17
Baptism of Our Lord Sunday: January 9, 2011
Baptism is a sacrament – a rite of the church – and it all stems back to the bible. We Christians base our practice of baptism on two things: Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan and the command at the end of the gospel of Matthew to go and make disciples of all the nations baptizing them in the name of the triune God. From the very beginning, the church has taken this whole baptism thing pretty seriously.
In fact, for a long time, the church celebrated the baptism of Jesus with much greater fanfare than they did Christmas. It was a bigger deal because baptism is so central to the church’s understanding of what it means to be faithful, what it means to be a disciple, what it means to be people who worship the God that took on human flesh. But over the years I think we have lost that intense connection with baptism.
I’m guessing if asked, most of you would have a hard time saying exactly what your baptism means to you. I’m not going to ask, so don’t panic. But, based on casual conversations over many years, I think it’s hard for people to say what it means that they are baptized. It’s even hard for parents of newborns to say why they want their child baptized, even though they know it’s what they want. A part of us knows baptism is important in our faith tradition. It think for many of us it even feels important on an emotional and spiritual level, even if why it’s important is not always clear to us.
Partly this is the failing of the church – the church has not always done a good job of talking about baptism and its importance in our lives. But that’s only part of it. I think the truth is baptism defies exact explanation and so explaining exactly what it means is an impossible task. Knowing it’s important on an emotional and spiritual level without being able to articulate exactly why may, be perfectly fine where baptism is concerned. But each year, on this Sunday, we are afforded an opportunity to intentionally remember our baptisms and maybe gain a little insight as to what they might mean – at least in part. So we might as well take this opportunity for reflection. I mean, what can it hurt?
I’m going to suggest that one major themes of baptism is the divine drive for unity. However we understand the divine to be present in this world, moving in our midst, Christians throughout history have affirmed that the divine movement includes a movement toward unity, and baptism is one way they expressed this. In the ritual of baptism practiced by the earliest Christians, as well as the scriptures telling of Jesus’ baptism, we tell a story about a God who yearns for unity – and when we look at Matthew and Isaiah, I think we see this unity is comprised of three parts: First, God’s unity with us; second our unity with one another; and third our unity with the ministry and purposes of God in this world. In fact, all three of these are explicitly mentioned in our own baptismal liturgy, which is drawn from the earliest baptismal liturgies of the church.
Whenever we baptize someone in the church, our liturgy includes a statement on what we believe about baptism. This statement lays out these three aspects of unity found in the ritual of baptism. It begins, “In baptism God claims us…[by] uniting us with Jesus in [his life], death, and resurrection. In other words, the divine desire for unity with us is best shown in the incarnation, and it’s symbolized in the story of Jesus’ baptism. When John baptizes Jesus, Jesus – as a human manifestation of the divine – takes on the entire human condition.
The baptism of Jesus by John was a bit of an issue in the early church. You can tell by the squeamishness with which the story is told in all four gospels. Mark and Matthew relate the actual baptism in the passive voice, and put the focus squarely on the voice from heaven. Matthew adds to Mark the dialog in which John tries to talk Jesus out of being baptized by him. Luke says only that Jesus was baptized, but doesn't mention that it was John who did the baptism. The fourth gospel doesn't mention the baptism at all, only that the Spirit descended on Jesus like a dove.
These gospel writers believed baptism was for sinners and they really didn’t entertain the idea that Jesus was born a sinner in need of repentance just like everyone else. What was needed, they thought, was for John to be baptized by Jesus. Jesus asked to be baptized by John which was nothing less than God asking to be baptized by John – at least as the early Christians saw it. This upset their worldview and challenged their notions of God.
But still, Matthew, Mark, and Luke do tell the story of Jesus’ baptism – it was probably because they found something powerful and compelling in the baptism of Jesus, even if they didn’t know exactly why. Something about it resonated with what they knew of their own experience of Jesus. And I think it had to do with the profound unity they felt with Jesus, and through him, God.
This odd, disconcerting baptism was God's "full immersion" into the trials and tribulations of humankind. In solidarity with us, Jesus stands in line with sinners. God chooses unity with us instead of power over us. The baptism signals that Jesus' mission will not be punishment of sinners, but identification with sinners – identification with the fact that we live in a broken world in need of a God who understands and heals that brokenness. In Jesus God says, “Here I am – I’m with you…I am you.”
The baptism of Jesus is still, I think, an odd notion today that we at times try to explain away. We distance ourselves from Jesus and God by comparing our sinfulness and brokenness with divine perfection, just as John was doing with Jesus. We have no right to baptize Jesus with the same baptism we claim where we are cleansed of our sins. Yet we do, God says, because the divine is united with us and all that we experience. God enters fully into this broken world and thus needs what we need – yearns for what we yearn for. In baptism, we are united with God because in Jesus’ baptism, God chose to fully become one of us.
After proclaiming our unity with Christ in baptism, the liturgy goes on to say, “by water and the holy spirit we are made members of the church, the body of Christ.” To be clear, this does not mean members of a particular church… as in First Presbyterian Church, or St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, or St. Mary’s Catholic Church. We are made members of the church universal…members of the body of Christ – with all other Christians in this world. The water connects us intimately to God and then to one another in our common baptism.
In 1982, the World Council of Churches – a body that is constantly seeking unity of Christians across theological and denominational barriers – recognized the central role baptism could play in uniting us to one another. They drafted a beautiful document called, “Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry” in which they articulated a theology of baptism that could serve not just as common ground, but as the driving force for unity. They wrote in part,
“Our common baptism, which unites us to Christ in faith, is thus a basic bond of unity. We are one people and are called to confess and serve one [God] in each place and in all the world. The union with Christ which we share through baptism has important implications for Christian unity. When baptismal unity is realized in one holy, catholic, apostolic Church, a genuine Christian witness can be made to the healing and reconciling love of God. Therefore, our one baptism into Christ constitutes a call to the churches to overcome their divisions and visibly manifest their fellowship.”
Of course the sad irony is that the sacrament of baptism itself has been a source of division between Christian people of different faith traditions. We exploit the differences in practice and understanding of baptism in order to claim we have the truth and others fall short: infant baptism versus believer’s baptism; immersion versus sprinkling; necessary for salvation versus symbolic of God’s saving grace. The World Council of Churches acknowledged this as well, and lamented the negative witness such division makes to our world. They wrote:
“The inability of the churches mutually to recognize their various practices of baptism as sharing in the one baptism, and their actual dividedness in spite of mutual baptismal recognition, have given dramatic visibility to the broken witness of the Church.”
Among a whole host of other divisions we Presbyterians experience with other Christians, our differences with the Catholic Church have played a starring role ever since the reformation. Often the way we deal with our differences has been a violation of the baptismal covenant far more than a model to the world of the unity we find because of our unity with the divine. This division has been expressed in large and small ways over the years…at times it is found in subtle prejudices we have about each other, or comments of disrespect for differing beliefs and practices. At times it has meant bloodshed and large-scale violence.
Through much of our history, Catholics and Presbyterians did not recognize each others’ baptisms as valid. Among other things, this meant that when someone would convert from one to the other, they had to be “re-baptized”. More disturbingly, inasmuch as baptism signifies ones’ entrance into the Body of Christ, we denied that the other was considered a part of Christ’s church because the baptism was not “real” or valid.
This changed somewhat around the Second Vatican Council in the 1960’s, but it was only last month that our two denominations formally recognized each others’ baptism and wrote a joint document expressing in detail what this unity means in both theory and practice. Even if long overdue, this was a wonderful moment. One participant in the many years’ long conversation leading up to this agreement commented, “In the context of so much that divides us and upon which our churches may not agree, we remind ourselves that our fundamental unity begins and is rooted in our baptism.” In the document released last month, this ecumenical group wrote, “Christian baptism is a “basic bond of unity” that brings Christians “into union with Christ, with each other and with the Church of every time and place”. This “one baptism into Christ constitutes a call to the churches to overcome their divisions and visibly manifest their fellowship.”
Baptism is a symbol of the divine drive for unity among each other, and this is a great example of the church finally participating in that divine drive.
Finally, our baptismal liturgy says that through the water and the spirit we are “joined to Christ’s ministry of love, peace, and justice.” The divine drive for unity does not end at unity with God and each other. Such unity implies a shared purpose in this world. God yearns to share with us the work of healing creation. And Matthew, drawing on the prophet Isaiah, paints this work in no uncertain terms. Later in the gospel, Matthew will quote today’s passage from Isaiah in order to describe what he believed Jesus’ life was about: Jesus came to proclaim justice to all nations…bring justice to this world…open the eyes of the blind, bring out prisoners from the dungeon. And because we are united to Jesus in our baptisms, we are united to this divine purpose as well.
When we are baptized, we are united to Jesus and all that he did. Not only does Jesus take on our lives, our trials and tribulations, but we take on his purpose – we dedicate ourselves to the divine hope for this world. Jesus announces this in response to John’s embarrassment about baptizing Jesus: Jesus says, “Let it be so for now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Righteousness is the same word as “justice”. This baptism, Jesus tells John, is part of the plan of continuing God’s work for justice in the world. When Jesus is raised from the water, we are all raised with him, ready to embark on his ministry of healing, bringing good news to the poor, releasing captives. Baptism is our commissioning to a life of discipleship.
It may be hard to say what baptism means to us. Sacraments are kind of that way, really. They are meant to be meaningful, yet as symbols and rituals they speak truth beyond what we can verbalize. That is part of their power. They are gifts from God, not academic exercises. Yet in baptism, we see how driven God is toward unity. In baptism we are united with God, united with each other, and united with God’s purposes in this world. And this does not depend on whether we, as individuals, have been formally baptized. All of this was instituted at Jesus’ baptism for all of humanity. In actuality, this divine drive for unity has been present since the beginning of time – since all of creation was stamped with the divine imprint. Jesus is, for us, the most visible sign of this three-fold unity, and this unity holds for all of us, whether we have been baptized with water in a church or simply baptized through the waters in the womb at our birth. Baptism is a sign of something that is already true: God desires to be one with us, and desires our unity with each other and with God’s work for justice and peace in this world. Amen.
