Two Way Street

Matthew 3:13-17

Baptism of the Lord:  January 12, 2014

I’m grateful that at least once a year I am, by the liturgical cycle of the church calendar, reminded of my baptism.  Or in my case (and maybe yours), I’m reminded that I was baptized, because I was a baby and have no memory of the actual event.   In all honestly, it’s not something I think about much…I don’t spend much of my day thinking about what it means to be baptized, and what it means that Jesus was baptized.  Baptism is a given in our tradition, but unlike communion, we don’t do baptisms every month (though wouldn’t that be nice!).  Consequently, it’s good for me – and maybe even all of us – to think about this important ritual in the life of our tradition.

Many have written about what baptism means.  And like many rituals, it ultimately has a mystery that can’t fully be captured in words and explanations.  But we do try to say some things in our baptismal liturgy about what we’re doing and what we think is going on.

If you read the liturgy of baptism in our book of worship, you will see that there is a kind of two-fold meaning in baptism.  First, in baptism, we are united with God in Jesus, and second in baptism we are united with one another.  In fact we even said this at the end of our prayer of confession:  “Unite us with you and with each other as we remember our baptism today that we might be better reflections of your love and justice in the world.”

What does it mean to be united with God, in Jesus’ baptism?  We talk about all of our sins being washed away.  That we take on the garment of Christ – the sinless one.  We die and are raised with him.  We become, in God’s eyes, like Christ.  Even though we sin, even though we die, because Jesus was resurrected, we are lifted out of that sin and death.  But most important is that we are united with Christ’s purposes in this world.  In baptism we are forever connected to the divine movement all around us.

This union with Christ, of course, only marks the beginning of the journey, because baptism is not the end to our sinning.  But having been united with Christ, we are forever pulled in the direction…We are united with God’s purposes in history.  We are bound to God’s will for human kind.  Life, wholeness, justice, peace.

We are also, we say in baptism, united with one another.  We are, as our liturgy says, grafted into the body of Christ…becoming a member of a body with many parts.  We become a part of the living, breathing Christ in this world, working with one another to bring about the realm of God here on earth.  The baptized one becomes a part of this body of people trying to be faithful in the world.  It is an inclusion in community – the community of Christ.

In this, baptism reconciles us with one another and, having been united to Christ, we become the ongoing work of reconciliation in the world…as our prayer of confession says we will be “better reflections of God’s love and justice in the world.”  Our baptism affirms union with God and with each other, for the purpose of becoming more like God and making the world more like God intended.  It is the beginning of a journey of faith…and that journey is in the direction of God. 

But I feel like there’s something missing in our liturgy of baptism; maybe it’s implied, but it’s definitely not explicit.  It’s a missing direction on the street of union.

We are united to Christ – to God, but that’s just one direction – us to God.  In baptism, God is, in Jesus, also united to us – God to us.  Maybe that’s a fine distinction, but in this union the emphasis is on God becoming human, rather than us taking on the characteristics of God.  I think this I where the baptism of Jesus, rather than our own, becomes so important.

It confused the earliest Christians that Jesus had to be baptized by John. Why would God in flesh need to be baptized?  Surely he has never sinned.  He had nothing to repent of.  He is already fully united to God – fully God.  They were uncomfortable with the fact that John baptized him.  But it makes sense to me.  This is when Jesus chooses to take on our likeness.  God chooses to become us fully. 

We tend to distance ourselves from Jesus and God by comparing our sinfulness and brokenness with divine perfection.  Or we say that we can only be connected to God because our sins are forgiven…we are washed clean.  But the divine is united with us in all our sinfulness and limitations.  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.

God is wedded to our lives...our lives as they are at the moment in all their messiness.  This means God is united to the suffering of the world.  It means God is not disinterested; not indifferent; not distant.  God needs nothing from us, but is everything with us.   This is God’s act of solidarity.  Taking on our sufferings as if they were God’s own.  And there is power in solidarity. 

It’s a two way union – us with God and God with us.  I’m not sure you can have one without the other.  If God is not fully united with us where we are, there is no solidarity.  If we aren’t united to the God that is wholeness, completeness, justice, compassion, there would be no movement out of suffering – no pull toward that divine nature.  You need both.  As God looks more like us, we begin to look more like God.  It’s the paradox of the Christian faith. 

This two way street of unity – us being united to God through Jesus and God being united to us through Jesus – might change a little what we hear when we say we are united to one another.  It is a two way street as well. 

When we are united to another, we are reconciled with them – we become like Christ in our unity.  When we come together as the body of Christ we become more and more a reflection of Christ in this world.

But we are also united to each other in the same way God is with us.  We become one another, taking on who they are without condition.  We suffer with. We look into each other’s eyes and see ourselves because we are all created as God’s children – beloved.  In baptism we affirm that though we are individuals, we share universal conditions:  we are limited, broken people living in a world that both reflects God’s goodness and cries out with people’s pain.

Becoming the other is an act of solidarity as well.  We choose to see life from another person’s perspective.  We let go of our egos and imagine what life is like for someone else.  We feel what they feel, even if it’s not a perfect reflection.  We allow ourselves to be affected by their life.  Rather than just understanding what another person is experiencing, we try to feel it as well – take it on as our experience.

I was once reading a book in which the author talks about being stuck in the depths of depression.  He described it as being in a swap land – a murky, mucky, sticky place that he could not make himself plod through.  He told of a therapist that built on that metaphor to describe their relationship to one another.  She said that while he is stuck in the swap land, she is standing on the shore beckoning him out – giving him a direction to go.

But that direction – that path – is only a one-way street; the one who is depressed moving toward the one who is not.  I need the other direction.  I know when I am in the murky, mucky waters, anyone standing on the shore is too distant, too impossible to reach.  I want that person to jump in the swamp with me, and walk with me toward the shore. 

In some ways I’m even willing to give up the shore in order to have someone with me in the swamp.  I know perfection is not attainable.  Life will always have its swampy moments.  Grief, depression, loneliness, poverty, homelessness.  And because our world is not perfect, we are not perfect, there will not always be a fix for those things.  At least not an immediate one. 

But we always have the choice to be united with the other where they are – without condition.  Standing on the shore we are too distant, too indifferent, too detached.  Jumping into the swamp is the act of solidarity.  Of course, solidarity can be uncomfortable.  We might have to sit in pain that cannon immediately be eased, and we don’t like that.

I remember when, right before I was to go get Lydia in Vietnam, I was told I wasn’t going to be able to adopt her.  I was plunged into the swamp.  Some people in my life, who I know loved me and hated to see me in pain, tried to make it better – fix it.  “There will be another child,” they said.  While well intended, I found it unhelpful, and I think it had as much to do with easing their pain as mine. 

Others just felt my pain, and understood there was no fix for it.  They sat with me, as uncomfortable as that was.  That I found helpful – redemptive even.  Not because I felt less pain, but because I didn’t feel alone. 

In baptism we remember that Jesus took on our pain even when he couldn’t make all the pain of the world go away.  That is the God we have.  And that is who we can be to each other.

And then, when we remember the two-way street, we realize that solidarity with another is already union with God – we become the divine movement just by becoming like the other.  Just as when God becomes more like us, we become more like God, when we become more like one another, we together become better and better reflections of God in this world.   And that is redemptive.  Amen.