The River

Propers: The Baptism of Our Lord, A.D. 2017 B

Homily:

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

Every cradle of civilization has been centered on a river.

Egypt has the Nile. Mesopotamia has the Tigris and Euphrates. The Americas have the Amazon and the Mississippi; India, the Ganges and the Indus; and China, the Yellow River and the Yangtze. Rivers provide us with freshwater and fresh fish. They fertilize fields to grow crops. They attract wildlife and waterfowl. And they connect us along trade routes with other civilizations, other human beings.

The Garden of Eden is said to have had no less than four mighty rivers, and the antediluvian civilization of the Black Sea had at least five. In many ways, rivers make us human. They give us opportunity to become more than beasts or brutes.

Yet at the same time, rivers often demarcate boundaries. They are lines we ought not cross. The Roman Empire stopped at the Rhine. The Tiber was Caesar’s point of no return. The Isonzo cut a gash through the Alps that marked some of the bloodiest fighting of the First World War. And in America, well, we’ve had more than one clash over the Hudson and the Rio Grande.

It’s the same in the Bible. The River Jordan marks the eastern boundary of the Holy Land. It runs from the Galilee in the north to the Dead Sea in the south. When the time came for God’s people to cross into the Promised Land, to reclaim the inheritance of their ancestor Abraham, God broke open the Jordan, piled up the waters as He had at the Red Sea a generation earlier, to fling wide the gates of Canaan to His people Israel.

The Jordan is the border between the gentile and the Jew, between the promise and the curse. The Holy Land is holy; the pagans, not so much.

And so it means something that John the Baptist stakes the claim of his ministry in the Jordan—and not in the fertile, prosperous, temperate north, up by the Galilee. No, he preaches down south, amidst the wilderness, where the Jordan winds its way to the deepest point on earth, in the salty, stark, and sterile waters of the Dead Sea. And here come the Jews and here come the gentiles and here come all the wayward sinners of every type and stripe, to hear John proclaim in the wilderness, “Make straight the paths of the Lord! The Kingdom of God is at hand!”

Until one day, the One to whom John has been pointing arrives: “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” And as He steps into those waters, something astounding happens. The heavens are torn asunder, the Holy Spirit of God descends upon Christ as a dove, and the voice of the Almighty I AM thunders, as once He did atop Sinai: “You are My Son, the Beloved! With You I am well pleased!”

This is not the baptism of John. John’s was a baptism of repentance, of preparation, of turning hearts to receive the coming King of Kings. No, this is something altogether different. This baptism does not change Jesus. Rather, by entering into these waters, Jesus elevates Baptism to a new and greater reality.

The borders have been breached! The heavens, torn asunder! No longer does the Jordan mark the boundary between the promised and unpromised lands, but rather between the world of God and the world of Man. And God has invaded! He has not sent to us an emissary or a herald or a prophet but He has come Himself, in full force, Father, +Son, and Holy Spirit, breaking into our world, casting down the devil’s defenses, storming the beaches of the late great planet Earth.

That term, torn open, torn asunder, is very important in the Gospel of Mark. It is used only one other time, at the Crucifixion, at the tearing asunder of the curtain in the Temple that divides the Holy of Holies from the rest of the universe. It is the barrier between life and death; between Heaven and hell; between the ineffable realm of spirits and angels, and the jagged rocks of our own terra firma. And that barrier is battered down.

The eagle has landed. God has touched down upon earth in the person and mission of Jesus Christ, eternal Son of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God. We are invaded from above and our world is overthrown—which may sound scary to those with a vested interest in the established order. But it is sweet liberation for the prisoners in the dungeon to see the walls of the castle come tumbling down.

This is what Baptism is for us today. It is the broken border betwixt this world and the next. It is the portal, the gateway, through which God enters our world, through which God becomes one of us. When we enter the waters of Baptism, we are drowned. We die to our old sinful selves. And we are raised up, as Christ is raised, with the Holy Spirit now burning within us. It is the Spirit of God who makes of our bodies His Temple—which is to say, He makes our bodies into Jesus’ Body.

We are possessed, if you will, not with overriding demons but by the loving Spirit of life, the Spirit of Jesus Christ, who descended into hell and rose victorious with all the souls of hades resplendent in His train! The Spirit burns within us, burning up our sins, constantly forgiving, constantly refining, constantly raising up a sweet incense of prayer whereby we are daily risen from the dead. And no matter how wicked we are, we cannot extinguish that flame within us. Christ is come, and He isn’t going anywhere without you and me.

Baptism is Christmas continued in each and every one of us. It is the Incarnation of God expanded! In Christ, God became Man. And now, in Christ, Man becomes one in God. We are the vanguard. We are the soldiers of Heaven’s invading army. And we have been sent not to wage a violent war but to wage everlasting and unceasing peace—to feed the hungry and clothe the naked and care for the sick and visit the imprisoned—and to do all this in the Name of Jesus Christ who is making the world and all things new.

And when next we see the River, it will not be as a border, as a warzone, as an outpost in the desert. Rather, it will be the River of Life, coursing through the heart of the infinite City of God, with the Trees of Life along its banks bearing 12 harvests of fruit and leaves for the healing of the nations! We have seen where this mighty River leads, and there is no staunching its flow.

God meets us in the River. God meets us in the waters. God meets us in our Baptism.

And thereby God meets the world in you.

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