January 12 -- Baptism of Christ Sunday

Grace to you and peace, from God in Christ Jesus...

There may be things that we do in worship, that we may not be 100% behind; but we do them anyway, because that’s what we do in church.  Do you ever feel like that?  Do you ever come to church and you’re not 100% there, but you just come anyway.  (I think I may have just described all of us.)  It’s as if the Holy Spirit is whispering in your ear:  “Just go along with me here.”  And somehow, when we do just that “go along”...when we join in the hymns, read along with the prayers, something happens at times, and we are swept up with the assembly of the faithful -- not always in a completely dramatic way, not like a raging river, but in the way a small current can help you swim or float a little easier.  (Jordan River as a polluted, little stream.)

One example: I have a colleague-pastor who says to her critical and very academic friends who won’t say the Nicene Creed because of this part or that, in which they can’t believe...that she doesn’t generally say the Nicene Creed either, except when she’s with the community, because when she’s with the community, they carry one another in faith: the part I can’t believe today, your faith carries me, the part you can’t speak today, my faith carries you.  Like a small current our shared and borrowed faith helps us swim a little easier.

I find this to be true, as well, with singing the great hymns of the faith...particularly at Christian funerals:  “Beautiful Savior”, “Abide with Me”, “Amazing Grace”.  If you can sing — and I don’t mean if you can sing in key or with a perfect voice, but — if you can get the words of the hymns out, then sing out as well has God gifted you, because there are others there who can’t, and they need you to carry them.  Another day, they will carry you, like a small current helping you swim a little easier.
Today in our Gospel lesson, Christ Jesus asks John to baptize him — a strange request as John the Baptist quickly identifies: “Wait a minute, Lord: you should be the one baptizing me!”
But what does Jesus say?  “It is necessary to fulfill all righteousness,” he says, [whisper] “just go with me here, John.”

Theologian and scholar Dale Bruner puts it like this:  “The first thing Jesus does for the human race is go down with it into the deep waters of repentance and baptism.”  

Jesus didn’t need to be baptized, but in so doing we are carried as Christ allows himself to be carried.  In other words, Jesus enters the stream, Jesus too gets washed in the current.  In other words Jesus joins with the community of the faithful, and receives and accepts God’s blessing and God’s call to serve in this world.  It is necessary to fulfill all righteousness.

And through Christ, because of Christ, we accept and receive the same thing from God above: the name “Beloved”.  Peace.

I like to take Confirmation kids in our first session of Confirmation (it was this time last year...we have some amazing kids!) — I like to take them out to discuss for 5 Saturdays the 5 parts of our baptismal covenant.  (Turn to p. 236) “Living among God’s faithful people.”  [explain]  These long-time members, of our church, describe how God has been with them through it all: through walks in the evening, through the death of children and siblings, through holidays, and job changes, working through the daily grind...Necessary to fulfill all righteousness — it’s not just about going to church, doing religious rituals (although worship is central): it’s the whole package — like a small current helping you swim a little easier.

Sisters and brothers in Christ, Jesus comes among us, is baptized in the same earthly waters as we are, washed in the same current, sharing with us in this life and the many and various ministries we do.  Christ gets down with us.

You are all “at ministry” during the week!  Whether, that’s at home, or in a government building, or on a ship, or in a field, Christ is there and “gets down with us” in our daily lives, as we make decisions, follow instructions, create, lead, prosecute, lecture, diagnose.  Christ has entered your same water ways (as polluted as they may be), and like a small current, carries you through our days.

And...Christ is with you when the sun sets and the temperatures drop, when the distractions of the daylight are gone, when doubts and fears can overwhelm, as we worry, as we age...as a beautiful hymn in our red hymnal puts it: “when memory fades, and recognition falters, when eyes...grow dim and minds confused, as frailness grows and youthful strengths diminish”.  Christ is with you at the end of the day too, like a small current carrying you through the night.  Christ enters our waters in order to fulfill all righteousness, in order to help us understand the holistic nature of this life of faith — that even as we simply walk and talk, eat and play, worry and  lose sleep, Christ is with us.  Through all the changes — reading a new scholar who says the Gospel of Matthew is all about living through both small and large-scale changes — through it all God, Emmanuel, is here and still calls us Beloved.  Through this life and ministry, and into the next, Christ is with us, and so we then are able to carry others at one moment, and we ourselves are carried at others.

Christ enters the waters, and is baptized.  “Just go with me here, John.  This is what it means,” Jesus says, “to live among God’s people: I too must be baptized for I am in this flow of the faithful.  I am at the center of it,” Christ says.

Sisters and brothers in Christ, you too are part of this flow of the faithful, and you too are named Beloved — not by any human necessarily, but by God, who showers down affection, parental pride and love, and grace upon grace, forgiveness and new life.  In these waters, in this flow we serve, we reach out, we love and we care for one another -- we can’t help ourselves.  The gentle current has got us.  Thanks be to God.  AMEN.