Down by the Riverside

Why are we celebrating the baptism of Jesus today? Why did Jesus need to be baptized? Wasn’t baptism, at least as John proclaimed it, all about repentance? And why would Jesus have needed to repent? And does it really matter to us that Jesus was baptized? These are real questions, and they are questions with which the earliest Christian communities wrestled, most likely even the community for whom the Gospel of Matthew was written.

To answer these questions, we need to start with what our belief in the incarnation really means. Stay with me here, because I’m going give you a little theology. As Christians, we believe that to be human involves being physical, to be tangible, to have senses. We’re not just souls trapped temporarily in a body that has nothing to do with who we really are. We are body and soul inextricably woven together. As Christians, we also believe that the Word was made flesh in a very particular body in a very particular time and place. We believe that Jesus’ body was just like ours, that even as the Word he had a body that was subject to all the limits and constraints on human bodies from the very beginning to the very end of his life, and as a human being he experienced all that human beings experienced, with the exception of sin.

Ponder this for a moment: all that human beings experienced, from conception to death. Some of you know that in the last few years I have been discovering the beauty and power of icons. Icons, those strange mosaics, frescoes, and paintings to which Orthodox Christians are so devoted, but which most Protestants find so mysterious. Recently I read a lovely book, Ponder These Things, by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, about praying with four different icons of Mary. It was Williams’s discussion of the third of these icons, the Virgin of the Sign, that helped me to see the baptism of Jesus in a new and arresting way.

As you can see from your bulletin, the Virgin of the Sign depicts the child Jesus within the body of the Virgin. Mary’s hands are extended in what’s called the orans position, i.e., the position for prayer. It’s the same gesture I use when I pray the Great Thanksgiving in the Eucharist. In his reflections on this icon, Williams suggests that Mary stands for the Church, for all of us who are members of Christ’s Body, and that Christ lives within us and the Church, teaching us and enabling us to live with his life and pray with his prayer. But what caught my attention most sharply as I read about the icon was how Williams related the icon to our understanding of the incarnation, our claim that the Word became flesh and blood and came among us in a real human body. Williams says, “We are pointed towards one of the most mysterious bits of our belief in God’s coming in flesh among us: for nine months, God was incarnate on earth, God was human, in a completely hidden way, as a fetus growing in Mary’s womb. We hear sometimes of the paradox of the newborn Christ child, the divine Word who cannot speak a literal human word; how much more striking the recognition of the Word growing silently in Mary’s body.” (Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2006, pp. 44-5). In becoming flesh Jesus the Word of God experienced all that real human bodies, real human beings experience, not only hunger, thirst, fatigue, joy, anger, disappointment, and death, but also the utter powerlessness and dependence on another human being that being conceived, being born, and growing to adulthood entailed.

Fast forward now with Matthew to Jesus’ baptism. We learn from Matthew’s account that Jesus intended to be baptized, that he came from Galilee to the Jordan where John was issuing his call for repentance, in order himself to be baptized. He was the Word made flesh, he was sinless, why did he do this? He did this to experience all that human beings experience, including the need to be cleansed from sin. Unlike him, we are sinful creatures, who need to turn our lives around, who need the sacrament of ritual cleansing to help us do that. Jesus persuaded John to baptize him over John’s objections. Needing no repentance for sin, Jesus nevertheless went down into the waters of the Jordan, in order to be in full solidarity with us. He entered those waters to be in full solidarity with the lost, the needy, the broken, and the broken-hearted, with all those who came to John for healing. He entered those waters to identify with us, to take into his own personhood, our need for repentance. And because Jesus was baptized in water, the water itself became a means of saving grace for all those baptized in his name.

In addition to experiencing the cleansing ritual of baptism for and with us, something else happened to Jesus when he came up out of the water. He was anointed by the Holy Spirit and heard God speaking to him. Through God’s words to him, it was fully clear to Jesus himself, and to anyone else who may have heard the words, that God affirmed Jesus’ identity as God’s Son, and that God fully approved of his human life and the earthly mission which he was about to begin. At the very beginning of his ministry, Jesus was ceremonially anointed by God to take up the ministry for which he was born, as a unique and true human being.

So now, why does all this matter to us? If Jesus is in full solidarity with human beings, human beings are also now in full solidarity with him. Through Jesus’ baptism, the water of baptism becomes a means of saving grace for us. Through baptism God’s grace cleanses us from sin. Through baptism we are buried with Christ in his death, and we share in his resurrection. We are truly made new human beings. And – and this is the most important part – in baptism, just like Jesus, we too are anointed by the Holy Spirit, we too are anointed by God to take up the ministry for which we were born as unique human beings. We too are commissioned for ministry in Jesus’ name.

But – and this is also an important part – your Christian life is neither finished nor complete with baptism. You are still growing and developing as the unique human being that God created you to be. That is why the Church also has a rite of Confirmation. Perhaps Confirmation should be called Commissioning, for that is what it really is, a commissioning ceremony for ministry. For those baptized as infants, Confirmation is the way in which we affirm what was done on our behalf by others, or what we began as children. We make an adult commitment to a way of life more closely modeled on Jesus’ way of life. Most important, we acknowledge that we too have been anointed by the Holy Spirit, that we too have been commissioned by the Spirit, for mission to the world. Ah, some of you might say, I was confirmed when I was twelve or thirteen. In our world, you can hardly call that an adult commitment, can you? My answer is, ”Probably not.” That’s why, in the current prayer book, we have one more rite, Reaffirmation. This rite is a means by which those who want to make another, deeper commitment to the promises made in baptism and confirmation may do so. And, like confirmation, this rite also includes the laying on of hands by the bishop. However, even without Reaffirmation, our Christian life doesn’t stop with baptism or confirmation. Just as Jesus was commissioned for ministry through his baptism, similarly, through the power of the Holy Spirit, we continue to deepen our relationship with Jesus, we continue to develop as the people God created us to be, and we continue to grow in our ability to carry out the ministry God has given us. When we are baptized or confirmed, when we reaffirm our baptismal vows, even when we are ordained, we cannot sit back and say, “Done, finished, I’ve arrived.” At each point, we must claim the unique ministry to which we have been called, for which we have been commissioned, into which we must grow.

Who knew that water could be so powerful? Who knew that a trip to the river or the font could change our lives forever? Who knew that a bishop’s hands on one’s head could empower us for ministry to a world that so desperately needs us? Have we lost our astonishment that the wonderful thing that happened to Jesus at the Jordan also happened to us? One spiritual writer suggests that whether we are conservatives, moderates, or liberals, we’re no longer any fun. Have we forgotten that God has called us, truly called us, into partnership in ministry? Perhaps what we all need is what this writer called “a good dunking like Jesus received, and then to breathe in the fresh air of the Spirit hovering over the waters.”

In a few minutes, we will renew our baptismal vows. As we do, God willing, we will all of us emerge with a deeper sense of God’s affirmation of us as distinct human beings and a clearer vision of the ministries to which God calls us.