Water is an essential element of life. Think of some biblical settings: the Jordan River, the Sea of Galilee, the Samaritan woman at the well. God also gave us oceans and waterways that the biblical authors never imagined, life-giving water plentiful for all living creatures.
Many of us have heard of Helen Keller, the 20th century writer, lecturer and inspiration to many. She was stricken with a virus at nineteen months that left her deaf and blind. In her autobiography, she wrote about the day the outside world broke into the darkness of her childhood. The catalyst was water. Helen wrote, “My teacher, Anne Sullivan, placed my hand under the spout. And as the cool stream of water gushed over one hand, she spelled into the other hand the word water, first slowly, then rapidly. And then suddenly…somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that w-a-t-e-r meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand....”
Helen Keller’s experience of water was the beginning of a new journey, giving her the courage to learn and inspire others to overcome their disabilities with her positive, can-do, attitude.
So too our baptism began a new journey, to the eternal dwelling place of God, with Jesus as our guide and teacher. We not only experienced water, as Jesus did, but through that baptismal font we became disciples of Jesus. That experience changed our lives. We became new creatures, alive with God’s life.
The word of God today takes us back in our imaginations to the sixth century before Jesus, to the Hebrew exile in Babylonia (what we know today as Iraq). This passage is a poem, a song, about the vocation or calling of a future “servant” who will be a light to those who live in darkness, a doer of justice, a liberator, a faithful keeper of God’s covenant.
The early Christian community saw in this Hebrew “servant” Jesus: whose vocation or calling was to proclaim a transcendent purpose for us: eternal life with God beyond our earthly life. This word may challenge us to ask whether we have our priorities straight: always to be in a right relationship with God and one another.
In the Book of Acts, the story about the beginnings of Christianity, the author describes Peter, fired up by the grace of God, proclaiming to Jew as well as non-Jew that Jesus is the Messiah, God’s anointed One.
We might ask whether we are fired up by the grace of God, whether we witness to Jesus by trying, as best we can, to live a life of virtue: self-discipline, compassion, responsibility, courage, friendship, honesty, loyalty, and faith in God.
In the Gospel according to Matthew, John baptizes Jesus in the Jordan river. And as Jesus comes up out of the waters, the power of God overwhelms him and he, fired up by the spirit of God, begins his public ministry in Galilee.
John the Baptist’s focus was clearly to point to Jesus as the Messiah. As we reflect upon John’s vocation or calling, we might ask, by virtue of who we are and what we do, whether we reflect Jesus Christ in our attitudes and behaviors.
And what is John doing here? He is baptizing. He’s inviting people to turn their lives around, to live a God-centered, other-centered life.
Baptism is a rite of initiation into a world-wide community of Christian disciples. In early Christianity, candidates were often immersed in a pool of water. Water can symbolize life and death: life-giving (when we’re dehydrated) or death-threatening (when we’re in a hurricane). When the candidate stepped into the baptismal pool and then came up, that stepping down and up symbolized a dying to self-centeredness and a rising to a God-centered life.
By the 11th century, baptism by pouring water over the head of the candidate became a common practice. We baptize children to emphasize that baptism is a gift from God, like human life, not just something we choose to have.
Why be baptized? To understand baptism, we first have to recognize who we are in relationship to God. The Book of Genesis captures this very graphically.
In the beginning, man and woman walked with God; they had friendship with God and with one another.
But somehow they lost that friendship. They fell from grace. Genesis describes very powerfully their fall. They hid from God; man blamed woman; and even earthly elements worked against them. Ever since, human beings have cried out for God’s friendship again.
And that’s why God became flesh – one with us -- in Jesus of Nazareth. God, through the dying/rising of Jesus Christ by the power of the Spirit, re-establishes that friendship. God lives within us; and we live within God. We have become new creatures, and one day in death God will transform us into a new kind of spiritual embodiment.
This new relationship makes very straight-forward demands upon us. The so-called Ten Commandments are all about freeing ourselves from attitudes and behaviors that undermine our relationship with God and one another. Put simply, our God is an awesome creator God who loves us unconditionally; and our response always is gratitude.
This planet of ours, and the people on it, reflect the image of God and therefore are worthy of reverence.
Yes, God deserves our worship. That’s why we take time every Sunday to get in touch with God. God also challenges us to live virtuous lives,
caring for family;
cherishing life from beginning to end;
being faithful to our promises;
respecting the rights of others;
speaking the truth;
not exploiting people or treating them as objects;
and being generous, rather than greedy, with what we have.
These Ten Commandments underscore virtues we should practice every day.
And so as we celebrate Jesus’s baptism and conclude the Christmas season, I invite all of us to renew our baptismal promises now, to be missionary disciples of Jesus, gloriously alive especially in word and sacrament.
May God grace so that we can live a life worthy of our calling as adopted sons and daughters of God our Father.
