Drowned

Scriptures: Baptism of Our Lord, A.D. 2014 A

Sermon:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. AMEN.

I do hope that everyone has survived our little cold snap intact. Wind chill in the negative forties doesn’t much faze a tried-and-true Minnesotan, but the rest of the country seems relatively shocked by just a few days of what we live through every year. Sort of makes you proud to be part of the frozen chosen, doesn’t it? Ah, but not too proud. We’re Lutherans, after all.

A friend of mine down in Kentucky told me that her issue wasn’t so much braving the “polar vortex” as it was that Kentucky homes simply aren’t built for this sort of weather. Their pipes had frozen fast, and she feared one might burst. Can’t say as I blame her. We’ve been quite fortunate with our plumbing, by grace of God. Even in the bitterest cold, the harshest of winds, we still have plenty of nice, hot, steamy water to warm the bones and soothe the soul. It would be awfully hard to brave the bleak midwinter without a hot bath or shower, I should think.

If you’ve ever read anything by Tolkien, you know that he loves to pepper his stories with songs of his own device. In Lord of the Rings he even includes a bath song:

O! Sweet is the sound of falling rain,

and the brook that leaps from hill to plain;

but better than rain or rippling streams

is Water Hot that smokes and steams.

Bathing is a bit of a religious experience, isn’t it?—washing away the cares and stress, cleansing both body and spirit alike. “We wash our hands of this,” as Pilate so famously quipped.

The joys of bathing are so universally refreshing that it’s no surprise to find that bathing is an integral aspect of many religious customs and traditions. Muslims practice ritual ablution before prayers, washing different parts of the body so as to appear cleansed and purified before God. In India, Hindus worship the ancient river Ganges as a goddess, and despite the fact that she is choked by filth and pollutants, millions daily immerse themselves in her waters for spiritual renewal.

The Bible has all sorts of images for water. When God first creates the universe, when it is still formless and void, Scripture describes the cosmos as deep waters—waters of chaos, waters of creation. Life, as we know, began in the great deep. Later, when sin threatens to destroy all the good that God has wrought in the world, the Lord sends the great Flood to wash away corruption and give humanity a second chance. Again, when His people Israel cry out from slavery in Egypt, God leads them to freedom in the Promised Land through the parting of the Red Sea. But what is liberation for Israel becomes catastrophe for Egypt, when the seas fall down again upon the savage armies of Pharaoh. Water, water everywhere. Water creates, water destroys, and water offers to us new birth.

Little wonder, then, that the people of God used water and bathing as a religious rite. It just makes sense, don’t you think? We all know how a good physical cleansing can leave us feeling spiritually washed as well. One group of Israelites, the Pharisees, used a ritual bath, or mikveh, to mark important transitions in life—mainly the entrance into the Jewish community. Judaism was very popular amongst non-Jews some 2,000 years back. Throughout the Roman Empire and the Middle East, many grew interested in the Hebrew Bible and in the one God therein professed. They were called “God-fearers,” or, if they went all the way, “proselytes.”

Proselytes were not born Jewish; they converted. Part of the ritual was for proselytes to walk down a flight of steps into the mikveh, completely submerging themselves in the bath, and when they rose back out—well, they were new men! Their old lives had been washed away. They were no longer outsiders, no longer Gentiles, but had become fully members of God’s people Israel. Out with the old, in with the new, as it were. In this way, the ancient Jewish practice of baptism sounds a lot like the Christian practice of Baptism, at least in this respect.

Pharisees weren’t the only denomination within Judaism, however. Another group, the Essenes, led a rigorous monastic lifestyle in remote desert communities. They loved mikvehs, built them everywhere they could, because for the Essenes baptism wasn’t saved for special occasions. Essenes baptized themselves in mikvehs every day, several times a day. They sought out spiritual cleansing, and sought it often. Every day, people sin. And every day, the Essenes would try to wash their sins away.

Then there was this other guy, John the Baptist. He was a peculiar fellow. He lived out in the desert, leading a very ascetic lifestyle, a lot like those Essenes. He baptized people not in specially built mikveh baths, but in the River Jordan, that famous border over which the people of Israel crossed into the Promised Land. John’s baptism was neither one of daily cleansing, nor one of conversion to Judaism. Rather, John was baptizing people who were already Jewish. Imagine that! It seems he was probably baptizing others too—proselytes and perhaps even God-fearers—but his was a baptism of repentance, of turning: turning to the Messiah. Everyone knew that the long-awaited Christ would soon be here, so long as the prophets could be trusted. And everyone knew to expect a forerunner who would prepare the Christ’s way in the wilderness. John claimed to be that forerunner.

“Repent!” he proclaimed, “for the Kingdom of God has come near!” And that’s what he did: he repented people, he turned people, turning them towards the Messiah. The job of John the Baptist was to prepare the way for Jesus Christ.

Then one day Jesus shows up at the Jordan to be baptized, and John finds himself flummoxed. “You come to me?” he asks. “But I am the one who needs to be baptized by You!” John knows, you see, that Jesus needs no baptism. He doesn’t need to be converted to Judaism, for He lives and worships as an observant and loyal Israelite. He doesn’t need to be cleansed of sin for He is God, thus cannot be separated from God, which is what sin is. And He doesn’t need to be turned towards the Messiah because He is the Messiah. So why does Jesus turn up to be baptized? Why does Jesus come to the waters?

The short answer is this: baptism doesn’t change Jesus. But Jesus changes baptism.

When Jesus enters the waters, the heavens are torn open and the Voice of God the Father thunders: “This is My Son, the Beloved, with Whom I am well pleased.” The Holy Spirit alights as a dove, and the entirety of God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—is revealed unto mankind. This is an epiphany of the highest order. This is the fullness of God brought down to us, to meet us in the waters.

Christian Baptism is not like other baptisms, the earlier ablutions of our faith or the ritual washings of other religions. For most peoples, baptism is a symbolic bath, an outward sign of inward repentance, a rejecting and cleansing of our own sin. If only our brokenness were so easily washed away! In truth, however, we are more like Lady MacBeth, forever scrubbing our murderous fingers, yet never truly able to expunge the bloodstains on our hands. Sin does not just wash away, not by any power of ours. That’s why we always have to wash again, like the Essenes dipping themselves in the mikveh baths over and over again, all day, every day.

Christian Baptism is something different entirely. It is more than just a ritual, more than just a symbol. Indeed it is more than just a bath. While we talk about how Baptism washes away our sin, Scripture more often refers to Baptism not as bathing but as drowning. We are Baptized into death—into Christ’s death on the Cross. In Baptism we are drowned and resurrected. We are bound to Jesus Christ’s death, already died for us, and joined in Christ’s own eternal life, already begun. Our old identity, the old Adam, drowns in the font, and when we rise up again it is no longer we who live but Christ Who lives in us.

It’s not the water that does this. It isn’t the water that’s important. Rather, when we enter this font, Christ promises always to meet us in these waters. He promises to take upon Himself all of our brokenness and to give to us in exchange His perfection, His holiness, His abundance of life, once and forever. It’s not a symbol. It’s not magic. It’s simpler and stronger than that! It’s a promise—the promise of Almighty God. And because that promise relies on God’s faithfulness rather than on the fallible will of Man, we know that our salvation is assured. That’s why we only have to do it once. That’s why we can always trust our Baptism. Because it’s not about us or what we do. It’s about what Christ has done for us.

Every time you look to these waters—indeed, every night you fall asleep to rise again—hear the Voice of your Heavenly Father proclaim, “You are My son, My daughter, My precious child. You are My beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” That’s you! There is no sin, no wound, no possible crime that can ever separate you from that promise, from that eternal steadfast love. You are the child of God, forever.

So put all fears and doubts aside. Christ has drowned them all. You are forgiven. You are reborn. And you are freed to live as God’s own heir now and evermore.

Thanks be to Christ, Who meets us in the waters. In Jesus’ Name. AMEN.