by the Very Rev. Jered Weber-Johnson
Watch the sermon recording on YouTube here.
If I close my eyes I can see it like it was yesterday. In truth it was months ago in the heart of summer. I was standing in Glen Brittle at the foot of the Cuilin mountains on the Isle of Skye. My ears were full of the sound of rushing water. A crystalline blue pool at my feet. A soft cold rain was beginning to fall. And, as hundreds of tourists walked the path above me, I was cautiously stripping down to just my shorts, about to step into the frigid waters of Scotland’s famous Fairy Pools. I had read on some touristy website that swimming in the Fairy Pools was a definitively Scottish experience. Perhaps I could commune with the Fairies, I thought! Having swam before in our beloved Gitchi Gami off of Minnesota’s North Shore, and in childhood frollicked in the coastal waters of Alaska’s Inside Passage, I can say nothing prepared me for just how cold the Fairy Pools would be. As I waded into the flow of the stream, my feet slipped out from under me on the sheer smooth stone beneath the waters and all breath left my lungs as I plunged below the surface. I wanted to shout, but I had no air with which to create sound. My ears pulsed with the noise of my own heartbeat as blood rushed to my extremities. Skin electric, body tingling, adrenaline racing, I reemerged from the waters and began to quickly dry off and dress before hypothermia set in. Above me, over the roar of the waters and the pounding in my ears, I heard a voice shouting down to me – “You’re a hero, mate!”
I know there was nothing particularly heroic about my polar plunge. It wasn’t really brave, though I admit it did take some courage to get half naked in front of hundreds of spectators. But, those words felt like a deep affirmation of the person I wanted to be, and I felt my demeanor change, standing a little straighter, feeling a little stronger, almost as if my outside matched the person I wanted to be on the inside.
When reading the gospel for this morning, this recent memory was the first story to come to mind, a small if somewhat funny connection back to the story of the baptism of Jesus – a story which comes to us in a strange succession of events in the life of the church. Only a month ago, in the season of Advent, we heard John the Baptist, in the passages just prior to this morning’s gospel lesson, proclaiming the coming messiah, bidding his followers repent for the kingdom was at hand. Then we flashed back in time to the infancy narrative at Christmas, and in Matthew’s gospel, just this past week, we see the story of the magi, followed closely, in Matthew’s chronology, by the fear of Herod, his murderous rage against the infants of his kingdom, the flight of the holy family to Egypt as they become undocumented immigrants to another land, seeking to save Jesus from the violent and destructive power of empire. And, then, we arrive this morning, having skipped over decades of untold story of his childhood and youth to find Jesus on the precipice of his adult ministry, in the wilderness, and we are back to John the Baptist and the story of Jesus’ baptism. John plunges Jesus into the waters of the Jordan, somewhat reluctantly, and as he emerges from the water, a divine proclamation echoes out over the wilderness, “This is my son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
I wondered as I read this gospel passage how those words must’ve felt, spoken while Jesus was in front of the crowds following John the Baptist, this public affirmation of who he was called to be, an endorsement of his primary identity – Beloved, Son. Scholars tell us we should be careful to conflate the baptism of Jesus with our own baptisms. Yet, the church in all her wisdom has linked this story in our tradition to the practice of baptism, making today one of four baptismal feast days. So, for better or worse, every year, we hear this story of Jesus’ baptism on the same day we remember our own. Which is, in itself, a tricky proposition given that most of us were baptized as infants, and cannot, except through story and the memory of a community, directly recall our own baptisms. That is to say, baptism most often occurs to those who are most vulnerable among us, infants and children. In fact there are multiple children whose families are ready to baptize them, but for reasons of care for the child, wanting to avoid the numerous illnesses going around, are not here this morning and have opted to wait for the Easter Vigil or Pentecost. All of which brings to mind how much care it takes to protect and raise up our children, to not only bring them into the world, but to keep them safe in a world that so often seems hostile and unforgiving. As theologian and biblical scholar Karri Aldridge points out of this story of Jesus’ adult baptism,
“it is important to honor the many people who made it possible for Jesus to arrive at this point. For Jesus would not have made it to adulthood, much less his baptism, without individuals and communities attuned to listening to God and protecting the vulnerable.”
She goes on to highlight how Matthew’s story is at pains to share the lineage of Jesus, to show the generations of his predecessors whose faithfulness to God enabled a day when Jesus could be welcomed into the caring and nurturing arms of his mother, Mary, and the protection of his earthly father, Joseph. Jesus’ story is connected to stories of all his forebears in faith, ancestors whose lives and witnesses shape the community and the faith of his present moment and enable his ministry. Like Jesus, our baptism reminds us that we are connected to the story of a people, shepherded and cared for by a God who liberates, protects, and nurtures.
When we baptize our most vulnerable, our children, we are also bestowing upon them their truest and fullest identity – Beloved Child of God. This affirmation, remembered year after, should remind them and us, of who we are. And, the acknowledgment of that identity, should galvanize us, helping us know that we are seen on the outside for who we sense we are called to be deep down inside.
And, that identity comes with a vocation, a calling, of who we are meant to be in this world. It is no mistake that the baptism of Jesus falls just before the beginning of his earthly ministry. From this moment at the Jordan proceeds a life of liberating, loving, and healing those whom he will meet. So too, for us, from the waters of baptism are our beginning into a life following the way of Jesus. In the midst of a world shaped by violence, shaped by oppression, greed, and inhumanity, we are emboldened, given the power to not be afraid, knowing who and whose we are, to do that which our baptismal promises call us to do – to “persevere in resisting evil”, to “seek and serve Christ in all persons loving our neighbors as ourselves”, and to “strive for justice and peace, and respect the dignity of every human being.” This is our calling, in short, as those who were brought to the waters of baptism, vulnerable, often unable to speak for ourselves, by a community of love and care, we are sent out to be a people who care for the vulnerable. Which is to say, our calling in baptism begins in community and is enacted in community – never alone. Or, as Audre Lorde so succinctly put it “Without community, there is no liberation, only the most vulnerable and temporary armistice between an individual and her oppression.”
In this moment in our nation, in the face of the murder of Renee Good, the abduction of immigrants and citizens alike, the ripping apart of families and communities, and the terrorizing of our cities by armed and masked agents of empire, I know our hearts are troubled. As we watch the brutality and cruelty of a government exacted indiscriminately on the most vulnerable, I know that some, perhaps for the most privileged among us, keenly for the first time, feel what it means to be vulnerable, to be uncertain about our lives and the lives of those we love. Know this, in the waters of baptism we may not have been proclaimed heroes (as much as it is fun to hear those words). Instead, linked forever into the body Christ, a community, the Church, sharing in Jesus’ baptism by the power of the Holy Spirit, we remember that we too are beloved children of God, that we are claimed, marked, and sealed by his love forever. Collectively as a community we ensure that nothing can take that identity away from each individual who finds themselves connected to us. Likewise, through that connection we are a part of a people of mutual care, sharing in a legacy of faithful people over generations who make possible our being here for this very moment. And, in that legacy, we are called to step forth in faith, to do what God calls God’s people to do in every generation, to protect the vulnerable, to give ourselves and our resources for the care of others, to resist evil, and to love all God’s children wherever we meet them. Today we will reaffirm this covenant, God’s emboldening and empowering affirmation of our belovedness and kinship and our commitment to share that love and connection in radical and tangible acts of sacrificial care in the shadow of empire, to a hurting and broken world!
