Today is about baptism – but it’s broken out into a lot of confusing pieces. We’ve got the story of Jesus’ baptism. But clearly it wasn’t the first one – John had been baptizing other people. And then we have baptisms today. We’ll baptize James and Aiden at 11:00. And then we say again our own baptismal covenant together, which is, in its own way, the ongoing story of our own baptisms.
And I need a way to makes these pieces fit together. Because right now they feel like a puzzle spread out over a table.
Clearly, baptism had existed before Jesus’ baptism. He wasn’t the first one. What John was doing was part of ancient Jewish practices that were about cleansing from impurities of one sort or another. And cleansing is certainly part of our view of baptism too.
But John was taking it further, and Jesus took it even further than that, and the apostles in Acts. And what evolves is this more complex picture that defines us as Christians today.
It’s about cleansing, but what happens in Jesus’ baptism gives us added meanings. Jesus’ baptism made clear that people didn’t just get clean – which they had to do over and over again. People got loved. Period. Not that we don’t need to hear it over and over again. But coming out of Jesus’ baptism is the idea that we are clean and loved, once and for all.
And not that the words “you are beloved and I’m well pleased with you” weren’t saying something about Jesus – they were. I just don’t think that’s all they were saying. My understanding is that, when Jesus told his apostles to baptize people, when it became one of the core experiences of following Jesus or loving Jesus, it became Jesus’ baptism that we were invited into – the experience of “I love you, you are pleasing, and that’s for good.”
In other words, when we are baptized, we are claimed by Jesus’ experience. We are claimed by the experience of hearing, You’re not held hostage by all the mistakes and pain of being human – and, more than that, you are actually beloved. And pleasing. Not for anything we did, but just by being.
In short, if we go ahead and claim baptism – as we do today, as we do with whatever mixed feelings or confusion we have about it – we have to claim it Jesus’ way, lay claim to the story of Jesus’ baptism. Which means, we have to let ourselves lay claim to being beloved. And pleasing. And to the fact that those around you – whether you know them or like them or agree with them – are beloved and pleasing, too, in some big-picture kind of way.
Now, that’s simple enough, and most of us can get behind it in theory. But of course, when we put that into the language of the baptismal covenant and the prayers, it can feel more complicated. Lots of us have trouble with one part of another of it, and that’s ok. There’s no one way to wrap language around the hugeness of what we try to believe in with baptism, and if we did come up with bumper-sticker language, I can promise you it wouldn’t end up meaning very much.
But still, if you have the inclination, let these words go back to what Jesus’ story tells us about baptism – that you’re beloved. And therefore that you belong. And being beloved and belonging are going to be an ongoing thing. You don’t have to keep renewing it, you don’t have to keep getting dunked. You may forget about it, but God doesn’t forget about it. That’s how baptism holds a kind of well-being at its center, it cradles a kind of well-being for each one of us.
The thing is – how do we actually experience it? Well, look at Jesus’ belovedness. It didn’t stop when this scene ends. It didn’t stop when he was on the cross. And it was real clear when something happened after death, whatever that was, that said No to death, that said, “No, death, you’re not the final answer.”
But as you know, that belovedness wasn’t always clear in his life. He was needed, he was wanted, he provoked people, but those things don’t mean you feel beloved. There are times when people seem to care about him, but lots of times they don’t. And there were plenty of times when people outright wanted him dead.
The point is, Jesus knew a lot of, shall we say, cognitive dissonance in his life, a lot of dislocation between the idea of being beloved – and the experience of feeling beloved.
Which, as far as I’m concerned, makes him all the more real. Did he have those real human moments of thinking, “What you call love, feels a lot like hate to me, thanks very much”? Did he stop and remember this experience of being told he was beloved – and holding that side by side with people’s hostile behavior?
I think he had enough time for these things to unfold in his mind. He lived that dislocation in the flesh. And so do we. Because it’s part of the human condition.
But here’s the thing – that dislocation is not the final word. That’s where baptism comes back around and chases us again. Because from the very beginning to the very end, it says, You belong, and others belong – and there’s a way of doing that’s not going to take anything away from anybody.
See, so often in the world, for someone to gain something, someone else has to lose something. Don’t we usually experience it that way? That when Person A does something to gain personhood, Person B has to do something to lose it? Whether they’re in Northern Philly, or Camden, or the Sudan, or Uganda?
But these vows of baptism say no to that emotional economy, and they say there’s a different way. Admittedly, the words are imperfect; there are no words that can wrap it up in a way that everyone agrees on – and it’s still worth trying. Because baptism is what creates an alternative for us where being beloved is the starting point and ending point in a way that can give us all power and hope.
It’s like the Isaiah reading, which I love, because though I believe that Scripture tells us God loves us on so many levels we can’t comprehend it, here is one of the most beautiful, direct, and explicit tributes to that. You’ve got it right here: I’ve made you, I’ve called you, I’ll be with you when the water and the fire feel overwhelming, I’ll give anything for you because I love you. Now that’s empowering, that strengthens us, encourages us.
And what’s really exciting is that it leads us to the questions, not just about ourselves as individuals, but to all of us as a community. Remember, those words were spoken to all of Israel. And being this beloved, whether in Isaiah or in Jesus’ baptism, leads us to the gorgeous questions of what it’s like to be a beloved community. What does a beloved community act like? How does it feel to be a beloved community?? Now there’s an exciting question.
Think about it. When does something happen that helps you feel belonging that you didn’t arrange yourself or wasn’t about agreement or disagreement. But belonging that was about how you use yourself here, how you feel connected to what you’re doing, how it makes you feel more like yourself – maybe that’s the well-being of baptism.
That’s the true incorporation that baptism is about, finding out over and over again that you’re a living breathing part of a living breathing body. In our programs here, we call it Incorporation Ministries, something you’ll hear more and more about as we focus on it in Lent and during the spring. But this is what’s at its core. It’s what one writer (Macrina Wiederkehr) describes as, “calling back home the scattered powers of our baptism.”
So let baptism today be a way you call your powers of being beloved back home here to Christ Church.
Let our baptism words be a way we can claim belovedness when the world or our work or family has told us otherwise.
And then above all – and this is important – let this community be a way we can celebrate being beloved. Because celebrating it is how we start to believe it. You know how that works – sometimes, when you get really good news, you can’t absorb it or totally believe it all at once. And it takes someone saying, Hey let’s raise a glass, let’s hug, let’s celebrate, go you!, in order to help you believe it.
See, I think this is how our baptism keeps chasing us, over time. It’s how it chases our lives as the words go by, whatever they mean on this particular day. And if our minds are preoccupied with exactly what the words mean, then maybe that’s ok, because it lets our hearts sneak in through the back door. Our minds may find logical problems with belonging to each other because of Jesus, but our hearts probably won’t. I think sometimes our minds stand at the end of baptism, going “but, but, but…” while our hearts are saying “Come on in!! The water’s warm!”
So let the baptismal covenant today be a way of saying it’s worth having a place based on being beloved, and reclaiming the scattered powers of that. For instance:
Do you turn away from the things that rob you of real life – that rob you or others of your integrity? There will always be differences, and life’s pain and loss, but can you still claim your personhood on the deepest level?
Do you turn away from things that take you away from God – in other words, do you turn away from the things that keep you from being more fully yourself than you ever thought possible – or the things that keep us from being more fully community than we ever thought possible?
Do you look to Jesus – who dipped down into the water with a bunch of other smelly people today – as a mystery and a hope, precisely because he says that you are mysterious and hopeful. Whether you were baptized today, or 5 years ago, or 50 years ago.
Do you put your trust in that? Can you trust that? Can we trust in that?
Ok – here we go.