Waters of Creation

Scripture: The Baptism of Our Lord, A.D. 2015 B

Sermon:

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. AMEN.

It always begins with water.

The ancient Celts taught that the mother goddess Danu fell from the heavens as rain and became a sacred river, from which the heroes and gods of old emerged. The Danube in Europe is still named for her today. The Egyptians spoke of primordial gods emerging from the sea. And of course we have the book of Genesis, in which the world began as formless deeps, and the Spirit of God hovered over the waters.

Water always has this dual nature, in that it brings both chaos and creation—or, put another way, it brings both death and life. Few things prove more terrifying than the ocean in a storm, yet the oceans are where all life began. Few places are safer than the waters of the womb, yet we must be pulled violently from our mother’s water in order to be born into the wider world.

In the Bible we encounter water over and again, always in this dual role of chaos and creation, death and new birth. It begins in the beginning, as I mentioned, with the Holy Spirit hovering over the waters of chaos. Note the difference here between the Bible and the pagan myths. The pagan gods were the first to emerge from the waters of chaos. The Judeo-Christian God hovers above the waters, precedes the waters, shapes them to His will. God alone is able to walk atop the waters, says the Psalmist—as indeed Jesus does.

When sin enters the world and threatens to corrupt the earth entirely, God sends the great Flood to wash away evil and give the seed of life a second chance. Noah’s Flood is a story of sweeping destruction that nevertheless saves humankind. In the Exodus, God sends Moses to lead His people from slavery in Egypt to freedom in the Promised Land. And they escape their bondage by the miraculous parting of the Red Sea. God divides the waters of chaos, leads His people safely through to a new and brighter birth. And when their enemies pursue—enemies who embrace slavery over freedom, who worship created things over the Creator—the sea simply falls back into place and washes them away. Chaos for Egypt is the new creation of Israel.

Through Joshua, God brings His people home across the Jordan River, which, like the Red Sea, God miraculously parts. Here again, water is a symbol of the old generation passing away, the generation that wandered in the wilderness. But from their death comes new birth, a new beginning for the people of Israel. They retake their home and embrace the fulfilment of all God’s promises to their ancestor Abraham—all of this through water, always water. And so it is little wonder that God’s people embraced baptism as a religious rite.

Now there are many sorts of baptism in this world practiced by many sorts of people. One of the most dramatic examples, to my mind, is Hindu devotion to the River Ganges in India. The Hindus are in fact related to the Celts, who viewed their mother goddess as a river, so it’s not terribly surprising that in India the Ganges is viewed in much the same way. She’s not just a river to them. She’s divine. She is the water of life.

Unfortunately she’s also filthy. For thousands of years the Ganges has been a dumping ground for laundry, sewage, garbage, and animal remains. Corpses are buried in the river. Funeral pyres burn on her shores. The Ganges is absolutely revolting. Yet every day, thousands, millions of devotees, descend from her banks to bathe themselves in the sacred river. They do so because they understand that the purification here sought is not physical but spiritual. It doesn’t matter that her water is not fit for the body. This baptism is to cleanse the soul.

At the time of Jesus, God’s people Israel understood baptism in different ways. One group, the Pharisees, used baptism to mark major turning points in life, such as conversion to Judaism. A proselyte would descend into a ritual mikvah bath and emerge no longer as a Gentile but as a Jew, a member of God’s people Israel. His old life had washed away. Another group, the Essenes, believed that baptism was a ritual that needed to be done every day in order to remain spiritually or ritually pure. They baptized themselves over and over again, a constant process of renewal and rebirth.

Note that Christians have inherited both of these traditions. We still use Holy Baptism as a rite of entry into God’s people, the Church. And we still return to the Font of our Baptism before worship to confess our sins and receive God’s forgiveness. When Jesus talks about how we must be “born again,” not of flesh but of the Spirit, He’s talking about Holy Baptism. These are the waters of our second birth. Anyone baptized in the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit is born again.

Of course, there was another famous proponent of baptism at the time of Jesus, and that was Jesus’ own cousin, John the Baptist. John was a very curious fellow. He inherited the spirit of a great prophet. He lived out in the wilderness, a monastic ascetic, much like the Essenes. And he called people out from the cities and countryside to be baptized in the Jordan River.

John baptized neither to convert people nor for daily ritual purity. What’s really fascinating is that John clearly baptized people who were already observant, faithful Jews alongside pagans, who were outside God’s people Israel. His was a baptism of repentance—which means “turning”—and he was quite specific that the purpose of this baptism was to turn people toward the Messiah, the Christ. John was preparing the way for Jew and Gentile alike to receive Jesus Christ as the Lamb of God Who takes away the sins of the world.

I find it very interesting that he did so at the Jordan River. If we know our Old Testament, this should ring all kinds of bells in our heads. By calling people into the Jordan, John appears to be reenacting Joshua’s crossing the Jordan, crossing into the Promised Land. And of course, when God parted the Jordan for Joshua, it was an echo of God parting the Red Sea for Moses—leading His people from slavery to freedom. John’s baptism is calling people to a new Promised Land, a new liberation from our bondage to sin, a new birth in the waters, a new Creation from the chaos. In short, John is calling people to Jesus.

So it really confuses the heck out of John when Jesus Himself shows up to be baptized. “Wait. What are You doing?” John protests. “It is I who should be baptized by You!” But Jesus reassures John, “It is fitting for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” When Jesus enters those waters, and John pours the Jordan over His head, suddenly the sky is sundered and the Holy Spirit descends as a dove, and the voice of God the Father thunders: “This is My Son, the Beloved! Listen to Him!” And we have this massive revelation of the Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And from that moment on, Baptism will never be the same.

What I said earlier about Christian Baptism is true. It is our entry into the people of God and the Body of Christ. We do return to our Baptism in confession, trusting in God’s sure promise of mercy, forgiveness, and healing. But Baptism has become more for us than this. In entering the waters of Baptism, Jesus changed Baptism itself. John’s baptism turned us towards the Messiah; Jesus’ Baptism turns the Messiah towards us.

Whenever we enter these waters, we know that our God meets us there. We often speak of Baptism as a bath, as a cleansing, but it’s more accurate to call it a drowning. Christian Baptism joins us to Jesus’ death on the Cross, already died for us, so that we need never fear death again. And Baptism joins us to Jesus’ own eternal life, risen from the tomb, and already begun. In Baptism, we are given Jesus’ own Holy Spirit, Who comes to dwell in us as His new Temple. We are made members of Jesus’ Body, the Church, still at work forgiving and healing and saving this world. And if we have Jesus’ own Spirit and Body, well then, brothers and sisters, what does that make us? It makes us Jesus.

It all comes together. Chaos and creation. Death and life. Birth and rebirth. We enter these waters as sinners and arise children of God, forever. And this promise, this Sacrament, this Baptism, cannot ever be destroyed—because it is not our promise to God, but God’s promise to us. It is God choosing us, choosing to love us, promising to forgive us, forever! Every time we seek forgiveness in the waters of Baptism, it is given. Period.

This is the promise of Jesus Christ, the promise given to each and every one of us in the waters of Holy Baptism. And God does not break promises.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. AMEN.