Mark 1:4-11
The Water and the Promise
The Water and the Promise
In your mind’s eye see a baptismal pool, a river, a creek or a pond and a live dove! Ponder why does the dove symbolize the Holy Spirit? Do you remember where and perhaps celebrate as another birthday when you were baptized?
The Jordan River is not very deep, nor wide at many places. At some points it is an impassible obstacle; at others you can wade across from one side to the other. Like all rivers, its very movement constantly stirs up the debris of its bottom, collects all the chaff and dirt that is washed to it by the rain, accepts all that the rotting tree limbs drop into its waters. The river carries all this along, I believe, making it seem both beautiful and dirty at the same time.
On the shores of the Jordan, Mark tells us that John the Baptizer gathered yet another congregation of people seeking God. The group was not made up of the elite or the holy, the self-righteous or the confident faithful. Why would they subject themselves to John’s harangue, his accusations of sin and call to repentance? No, John’s congregation was full of people who were uncertain and despairing. Some looking for a second chance, others sure that no more chances were available. The people who gathered around John were sinners. They came to the Jordan to add their own dirt to its flowage, hoping that somehow, in John’s baptism, the river – God – would wash away what kept them from being whole.
On that day Mark describes for us, among the rabble that had come out to see John was Jesus of Nazareth. This is in fact the very first story Mark tells us of Jesus. After announcing in the opening verse that “this is the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ,” the first image we have of Jesus is that of a man hanging out with a bunch of desperate souls running out to the Jordan to repent. Why is the Christ - the Messiah -the Son of God - the spotless Lamb of God there? Why is Jesus seeking to be baptized?
Matthew, Luke and John also wrestle with this, adding arguments between John and Jesus, or ignoring the bath altogether. Mark, however, leaves us simply with the image of a Savior coming to the dirty water for baptism – unexplained, unadorned. Our Lord enters the debris-filled water of the Jordan, he joins the rabble in the water where they have dragged their sins that cling so closely, and he shares in the beautiful but dirty water with the beautiful but dirty people. Only after this does Mark tell us that “and just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him” (Mk 1:10).
In that moment, I imagine a shadow appearing over the riverbank, a big, cross-shaped shadow. In this beginning of Jesus’ journey, in this humble encounter with the muck and mire of all creation and the broken and despairing of humanity, the cross looms as the ultimate outcome of one who will go to any length to save and love us. The saving work of Jesus does not begin and end in the cross and the resurrection. No, I believe, it is here in the waters of the Jordan that the gift, the saving, the loving, and the new life begin. Jesus was indeed clean when he went into the water and needed nothing washed away. It was done for us – you and I need a savior who does more than pity us from a distance. We need a savior who is willing to put on the dirt to give us the gift of life.
One early leader of the church wrote of Jesus’ baptism: “As man he was baptized, but he absolved sins as God: he indeed needed no purifying rites himself – his purpose was to hallow the water.” In doing this Jesus has given us a way of knowing that we are cleansed by his blood. Jesus has given us a means of grace that, once and for all, connects us to his life, death, and resurrection. In doing this, Jesus gives us the gift that bestows the Spirit on us for a lifetime, and more – the Sacrament or the Ordinance of Holy Baptism.
A pastor from a small rural church in Minnesota with little growth once told a story that went something like this: We did not have many baptisms to celebrate. The way we celebrated baptism was mostly at funerals. You see, like this story of Jesus’ baptism, the water begins the journey to the cross, to death. As we placed the pall over the casket at a funeral and recalled the words of promise from Romans 6:3 that tell us that as we have been baptized into Christ’s death, so too, are we baptized into his resurrection, we rooted the end of life in the baptismal waters entered many years ago. We spoke of baptism and death.
This pastor went on to share that one time a leader of his congregation, a dairy farmer named Leo, stopped him in the café after a funeral. Most of the town had been there. Jimmy, a farmer from down the road who belonged to different church, had asked Leo, “Why does your preacher talk so much about baptism at every funeral?” Leo had been taken by surprise and asked what he should say. They talked awhile, and the pastor wondered aloud what they talked about at Jimmy’s church at funerals. Leo sensed he should find that out before they settled on an answer, so off he went.
A couple of weeks passed, and the pastor asked Leo one day what had come of the conversation. He smiled and said, “Well, I asked Jimmy what they talked about at his church when someone dies. He told me that they talk about Jesus and how he died on the cross for us. They talk about how they hope – they hope - that Jesus will welcome the soul of the dead, how the person who has died was a good person, worthy of salvation. They pray that Jesus will have mercy on the sinner who had died and let her or him enter the gates of heaven.”
Leo said that he looked at Jimmy and said, “Well, there is the difference. We don’t wonder if we’re going to be with the Lord, we know for sure.” Jimmy asked, “Well, How’s that?” Leo said, “Baptism, Jimmy. The water is a promise and I don’t wonder, I know.” Leo said to the pastor, “Once Jimmy told me what he expected at a funeral, I knew how to answer.”
Then this pastor shared that he thought the heavens opened and the Spirit rested on Leo like a dove, and God said, “Leo, my beloved, you are my child forever.”
We may give Thanks and Praise to God as we remember our Baptisms and the fact that we are children of God!
PRAYER:
Come, Holy Spirit – claim us again as your own.
Come, Holy Spirit – cleanse us once more from our sin.
Come, Holy Spirit – call us today, as you do every day, to Christ’s work.
Descend upon us with mercy and might.
Descend upon us with pardon and purpose.
Descend upon us with power and peace.
Bathe us in blessing, that we might be a blessing to your world.
This we ask in the name of God’s beloved child, Jesus Christ. Amen.
