Baptism of Our Lord A

Have you ever noticed that water is something over which we have very little control? As much as we would like to have control of it, as we build dams and dig canals and reservoirs often water is beyond our control.

Sometimes we have great intentions to drive to visit family but it is cold out and there is water resulting in a sheet of ice covering the cars and the roadways or several feet of snow blocking our path. So then we resolve to ski and it warms up and that darn snow turns back into water leaving the slopes bare but causing flooding in all the valleys and lowlands. Some parts of the midwest are in terrible shape right now, whole towns having to evacuate because of flooding, recently a levee broke in Nevada flooding a place that is known more for droughts than flooding. I think one thing we can agree on is that as well as we plan a picnic sometimes it rains and we just can't control it. Water is not ours to control.

But we also can't live without water. We need to drink it, we need to water our crops with it, we need it in the atmosphere to help regulate the temperature. On a slightly less dire scale we need to it to keeps the streets clean and the lawns pretty and even to bathe ourselves.

Water is essential to our survival and beyond our control. It can be life-saving and breathtakingly beautiful. It can be hugely destructive or it can bring life to the driest dessert. Maybe this is part of the reason that water has always been used by God as a sign and as a promise to us. In the stories of the Old testament water is a huge part of the faith story of God's people.

The creation story says that in the beginning the very beginning there was God and there was water. It says that the first thing that God did was to separate water from water. The very basis of the whole world is God and water, the very basis of each of us is God and water. The promise that we are made in the image of God, specially loved by a mysterious creator is a promise that begins with the stirrings of water.

Again and again as biblical time goes on water is a promise. In the stories of the old testament there is a point at which the world has been destroyed by people, ruined somehow by sinful and lost humanity and so God gathers up his child Noah along with Noah's family and he puts them safely in an ark while water washes the earth clean. It isn't the happiest story and it is certainly full of mystery but it is a promise that water will save the children of God.

Then as God's people are enslaved in Egypt a child is found among the reeds on the river. This child, Moses, Moses whose staff could bring life giving water from the very stones, grows to lead all of the enslaved Israelites to freedom. But as they left the emperor changed his mind about letting them go and sent the army after them. So Moses put down his staff and parted a sea, leading God's people to safety again. Again in this story we hear the promise that water will save the children of God.

All through Advent and Christmas we heard the wonderful peaceful prophecies of Isaiah promising that the justice and mercy of the Lord would flow like streams that there would be peace and abundance framed in the promises of God and with water.

Skipping ahead to today's gospel we find John the baptist calling people to be baptized, to be dipped in the water of the river jordan to be cleansed and called. And Jesus walks to the riverbank with all the penitent and asks to be baptized as well. Asks to be washed in the loving promises of God the father. John is taken aback but finally does as Jesus asks and when he does a voice calls from heaven and a dove descends and the water stirs and God utters his promise to Jesus and to all those gathered around. The voice says: This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.

This is the son of God who has been sent to you, who is revealed to you in the waters of baptism who asks to be washed clean with all his brothers and sisters, all the children of God and who will be with you always to the end of the age.

It is interesting that John is baptizing already before Jesus even starts his ministry. There is evidence that Jewish people at the time had baptismal pools and structures similar to fonts in their homes and outside of the temple where they would baptize and be baptized in order to be ritually clean. Baptism was a way to make themselves worthy to be in the presence of the Lord this is something like what John was doing or at least what John thought he was doing.

But then Jesus came along and asked to be baptized John was confused and kind of insulted and very troubled. He was the one who knew about baptism of course and also if you remember the one who knew about Jesus and so he knew that there was absolutely no reason for the Christ to baptized by him. John figured that really if anyone should be baptizing now that Jesus was around it was Jesus. Maybe even the people who John had baptized would need another dip from Christ.

Now this is where the problem with controlling water or having no control over water comes back in. John thought that he was controlling that Jordan river. He knew just what specific role the water was playing. It was making people clean and ready to meet Jesus. But Jesus had news for John. He told him that he wasn't in control. That water, especially when it meets up with the power and promise of God, is almost impossible to control.

He might have been declaring a cleansing from sin but we find out once Jesus is baptized that that cleansing spills over into an anointing with the Holy Spirit which spills over into the voice and call of God which spills over into the power to heal and a ministry to all people.

Water runs and moves and flows and evaporates and condenses and sometimes it falls in the strangest places and sometimes it fills up the most unlikely of spaces and we believe that through the great mystery of the Holy Spirit, God does too. In, with and through the water of our baptisms.

I mentioned before the flooding in Nevada that was so intense that it caused a levee to break. I was born in the Nevada desert, we moved away when I was young I only have a few memories of the place but my parents would fascinate me when I was small telling me about rain storms in the desert.

They said that the first thing that happened was a loud sound almost like drums beating, the rain falling onto dry, dry cracked, dead earth.

Next would be floods, flash floods. The land was unaccustomed to water and so it wouldn't soak in, it would just sit there a layer of water on top of baked earth.

Then it would start to flow. It would fill river and creek beds that had been dry for so long they had forgotten that they were rivers and creeks. The water would remind them what they were, what they were meant for all along.

Finally after the storm with its great drum roll and unreal theatrics the water would sink in and thats when the real show started. Dead dry land would come to life. Flowers would spring up and grow where nothing had been. Animals would come out, some who traveled to be where the water was and others, frogs mostly who live in something like a state of hibernation from one storm to the next, stretched there legs and began to hop around the desert turned oasis.

This is how baptism is. You can't control it but you can't live without it. Not really. We pour water with great ceremony, almost like drums beating and it stands there for a while before it flows And then it begins to move, as we learn what it means to be children of God, as we gather together with other children of God and then it flows like rivers and streams, reminding us of what we really are of what we are created to be. It spills over and finds its way into the driest parts of our world and our lives.

And that is when the real show starts. When we all remember and know that we are baptized children of God and that that baptism made us who we are. Then flowers begin to bloom in deserts. Miraculous and wonderful things happen. And like in our gospel lesson today we feel the spirit of God and we hear a voice saying, you are my child with whom I am well pleased I have promised you salvation through water and it is yours now and until the end of the ages.

I would like for us all to stand now and take a moment to remember our baptisms. This is the prayer of thanksgiving that is part of our baptismal rite:

Blessed are you, O God, maker and ruler of all things. Your voice thundered over the waters at creation. You water the mountains and send springs into the valleys to refresh and satisfy all living things.

Through the waters of the flood you carried those in the ark to safety. Through the sea you led your people Israel from slavery to freedom. In the wilderness you nourished them with water from the rock, and you brought them across the river Jordan to the promised land.

By the baptism of his death and resurrection, your Son Jesus has carried us to safety and freedom. The floods shall not overwhelm us, and the deep shall not swallow us up, for Christ has brought us over to the land of promise. He sends us to make disciples, baptizing in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Pour out your Holy Spirit; wash away sin in this cleansing water; clothe the baptized with Christ; and claim your daughters and sons, no longer slave and free, no longer male and female, but one with all the baptized in Christ Jesus, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.