Text: Mark 1:4-11January 8, 2012
Last Tuesday evening, I called my son’s family Lake Oswego, Oregon. While I enjoy talking with Mike or DeAnna, my real reason for the call was to talk to my 4 year old grandson, Derek. DeAnna answered and told me that she had a story to tell me. She said that when Derek came home from preschool that day, she was taking down the Christmas decorations. He looked at her with a puzzled and sad look on his face, and asked, “Mommy, what are you doing?” She answered, “I am taking down the decorations. Christmas is over.” DeAnna said, “Derek threw his hands up in the air and said, ‘Now What?’”
That is a great question. Christmas is over. Our joyous celebration of the Feast of the Nativity has ended. God has taken on flesh and moved in with us. Now what? We have moved from Advent anticipation to Christmas celebration. Expectation has become reality. Now what? It is a great question, theologically speaking.
Well, we could say that liturgically speaking we move from Christmas to Epiphany, from the birth in Bethlehem to the revelation to the whole world of this One who is God with us. The covenant relationship between God and His people is finding new expressions; God’s liberating love is being revealed in new ways. For us this morning, this epiphany is encountered in Jesus’ baptism. Standing knee-deep in the Jordan River, John the Baptizer announces the coming of the more powerful One. “I baptize you with water,” says John, “but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
No sooner had John made this announcement, than Jesus shows up on the banks of the Jordan. He gets in line with those to be baptized and when it comes His turn, He wades in the water and asks John to baptize Him. In Mark’s story of the baptism, John does not recognize Jesus as the more powerful One. Unlike Matthew, there is no discussion about who should baptize whom; a discussion that expresses the discomfort of the Church with Jesus submitting to a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. John simply complies with the request and baptizes Jesus. And then all heaven breaks loose, so to speak.
Mark tells us that the heavens are “torn apart”—not just opened, but torn apart, the Spirit of God descends like a dove, landing on Jesus, and a voice from heaven proclaims, “You are my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” I once asked the confirmation class why “the heavens were torn apart”? A delightful, but shy seventh grade girl answered rather tentatively, “To let God out!” Perhaps in some ways she was right. Mark’s rather terse and lean account of Jesus’ baptism ends in dramatic fashion, an epiphany to be sure, another expression of God’s covenant, without question.
But we ask, “Now what?” What are we, you and I, to make of this epiphany? I think there are a couple of things for us to take away. First, the epiphany reveals Jesus’ identity, albeit to Jesus and Mark’s readers, not the public. He is the Son, the Son of God, and He is the Beloved or the Chosen. These are titles borrowed from Psalm 2:7 where the King is proclaimed the Son of God as he ascends to his throne; and from Isaiah 42:1, where the Beloved or Chosen is God’s Servant, God’s Suffering Servant. Jesus is both Son and Servant. Second, the epiphany reveals Jesus’ empowerment by the Spirit coming to Him. He is commissioned to do God’s work of redemption in the world.
With His identity confirmed and His mission empowered Jesus is ready to begin His public ministry; that is, after a brief trip into the wilderness where both are tested. Will He live His identity? Will He be faithful to His calling? After 40 days, He emerges with identity affirmed and mission confirmed and ready to begin His work.
What does this mean for you and me? Let me respond to this question broadly and then specifically. Broadly speaking, the church relatively early came to understand that baptism was an expression of its self-understanding. Simply put, the church understood itself as the community of the New Covenant in Christ Jesus, the community of the baptized. Drawing on this understanding, John Wesley writes in his sermon, “On Baptism”, “By baptism, we enter covenant with God into that everlasting covenant which he hath commanded forever…” So, this we believe as United Methodists: the church is the covenant community. More specifically, baptism is the means by which we enter into this covenant community. As Wesley puts it in that same sermon: “Baptism is the initiatory sacrament which enters us into covenant with God and by which we are admitted to the Church.” In other words, baptism is the sacrament of entrance. With these two understandings we can draw on Jesus’ baptism and offer encounter what it means for us and for our faith.
First, as the sacrament of entrance, baptism is the act in which we are given our identity. We are marked as a member of the covenant community and as a child of God. “What name is given this child?” these familiar words of the liturgy mark the moment when the child is “Christianized,” that is given his or her identity. In that same liturgy we hear God whispering, “You are my daughter, my son. You belong to me.” Each time I say, ”I baptize you in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” I am reminded that this child, this youth, this adult, is now marked with a new identity.
And this is no small matter. One of the greatest struggles in our day is to discern who we are and whose we are. There seems to be no enduring understanding of identity beneath the varied and various roles that each of us must play. This reality was highlighted for me several months ago as I watched four young women being interviewed on TV. Each of these women were trying to balance roles of wife, mother, career person, daughter, sister, friend, citizen. Each commented that all they seemed to do was put on and take off identities as demanded, constantly adapting and altering who they were, depending on the situation. What became clear is that there was no fixed identity. I do not think such an issue is gender specific. I know men who struggle with these same issues. The point is we have become as psychologist Robert Jay Lifton suggests, “protean selves”, adapting accommodating shifting who we are to fit whatever is before us. Baptism offers a counter reality, a fixed identity. This we believe: we belong to God; our identity is given. Who we are is defined by whose we are.
Early in my first appointment I shared a baptism with an elderly, wise retired UM pastor. I will never forget that experience. We were to baptize John Christopher Michaelson III. Just as the water was to be sprinkled, the Reverend John Christopher Michaelson took his grandson in his arms and began walking among the congregation, saying, “John, we are about to baptize you and mark you as a Son of God. We are going to welcome you as a member of the church, the family of God. We do this because we love you and God loves you and has great plans for your life. But you are going to need for us to tell you the story and help you grow as a disciple of Jesus. When you are hurt or disappointed, we promise to comfort you. When you achieve honor, we will rejoice with you. And when you fall short, and act in ways that deny who you are, we will call you into account, forgive you and love you like a brother.” Then John Christopher was baptized. I will never forget that baptism. In fact each time, I hold an infant for baptism, I am reminded that here is a child of God, a new member of the family for whom we are now responsible. Baptism is the sacrament of entrance, where the church begins, that moment when we, you and I, are given our identity. Will you live your identity?
As the sacrament of entrance, baptism is also the moment when we are commissioned, dare I say “ordained,” to serve, to walk as disciple of Jesus, to participate in God’s mission in the world. Before the water has a chance to dry on the head of the newly baptized, Pastor Cynthia and I lay on hands, saying, “The Holy Spirit work within you that being born through water and the Spirit you may be a faithful disciple of Jesus Christ.” The prayer calls the Spirit of God to empower the person’s life of discipleship, their faithful service and witness. This is followed by the congregation’s promise to order their lives in such ways that the baptized disciple is nurtured in faith and love. This is all about our calling to live out our new identity, to be in mission in Jesus’ name.
The covenant community is an engaged community, engaged in worship, learning, caring, spiritual growth, in mission, engaged in sharing the Good News. Everyone is to be engaged. There are no spectators in the covenant community. There are only called, empowered, engaged disciples, committed to serve and witness to the Gospel. Such disciples come to know that spiritual growth comes from being nurtured in the faith by others and then being nurturing for others; to be fed and then share in the feeding of others. I believe the best way to grow spiritually is to serve others.
Let me close with a story I told you a couple of years ago. It is a good story and deserves to be heard more than once. Tom Potenza’s congregation in Glen Ellyn went on several Volunteer in Mission trips to Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina. They adopted a small coastal town and committed themselves to help the town rebuild. The community had been devastated to the point of just about being wiped off the map. As the church went on trips year after year, in some cases more than once in a year, the stories were shared, relationships were built, and the number of participants grew. About four years ago, a group from Glen Ellyn went at Thanksgiving time. Tom tells that this was a special trip. At a community Thanksgiving Dinner, several townspeople expressed their gratitude to the folks from Glen Ellyn for their help and their friendship. The pastor of the local UMC spoke. He said, “After the hurricane, the government and several agencies and churches came to help us. We are grateful for the work of FEMA, for the financial assistance, the medical help, the rebuilding and all that was done. But those groups left. You came and stayed, coming back year after year. You became our friends in Christ. You brought us hope, the hope we have in Jesus. It is this hope that enabled us to survive.” What a great story. This is what it means to share in God’s mission, to live out our calling and be servants faithful to our baptism. This we believe, so we are called and empowered to be God’s people, the body of Christ in the world.
What now? I challenge each of you and myself to live the identity our baptism gives us and to live out our calling to participate in God’s mission. This would be the witness of an engaged church, a vital congregation, a loud and clear answer to the “Now What?” Will you make that commitment? Thanks be to God! Amen.
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