This is the sermon I preached at Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., on Saturday and Sunday, Jan. 9–10, 2010, for the Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord.
+ + +
Readings
Isaiah 43:1–7
Psalm 29 (antiphon v. 3)
Acts 8:14–17
Luke 3:15–17, 21–22
+ + +
Prayer
Gracious God, open our eyes to the life-giving light that shines through your Son Jesus Christ, so that your Holy Spirit may empower us to share the Good News with others. Amen.
+ + +
Message
When I was getting ready to start high school,
I signed up to be a member of the marching band.
That meant going to band camp in August
for a week of drills and practices.
My instrument was the alto saxophone
and I was pretty confident
that I could play the music.
So my only real concern
was learning how to march.
What I wasn’t prepared for
were the unpublished rites of initiation
that older band members—all males—
foisted upon the freshmen—again, just the males.
I’ve probably blocked out the more unsavory bits,
but I do remember that the upperclassmen made each freshman
pick a grapefruit-sized piece of limestone—
common in that part of Pennsylvania—
and fashion a little rope harness for it
and wear it around his waist.
I had my rock for the week.
And that was a part of my initiation.
That and learning, without being instructed,
not to step on the falcon—the school mascot—
tiled into the floor outside the principal’s office.
But whether it involves carrying rocks
or learning secret handshakes
or snipe hunting
or other, more worthwhile activities,
many groups mark the rites of passage
that lead new members, neophytes, rookies
across the threshold into full membership.
In some ways, the Christian faith
as we live it together in a community
has its own rites and traditions
marking initiation into its membership.
That’s not to say that we haze anyone,
but that the Church,
because it is a human community,
has rites of initiation that mark one’s entry
into that community.
For us, this rite is Baptism.
It is the sacrament of washing and naming,
the ritual that divides a person’s life
into two parts, before and after.
In Luke’s Gospel for today,
the Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord,
we hear the account of Christ’s Baptism.
This marks a kind of before and after in his life.
Before his Baptism lies his birth
and the mostly silent decades
of his childhood, youth, and early manhood.
But then, when Jesus comes to the Jordan
and stands in the muddy water with John, his cousin,
he receives a ritual washing.
But uniquely in this case,
John points to Jesus and proclaims
that this one will baptize,
not just with water,
but with fire and Spirit.
Jesus will serve God his Father
and make a witness by their Spirit
that sweeps across humanity
as a thresher gathers grain,
bringing the harvest into the barn,
but burning the chaff with fire.
And so we may know that Jesus is that chosen one,
Luke invites us into the private conversation
that God the Father has with his Son
in the fellowship of their Spirit:
You are my Son, the Beloved;
with you I am well pleased. (Luke 3:22b, NRSV)
And that marks the line between
before and after in Jesus’ life.
In fact, the very next verse says,
Jesus was about thirty years old
when he began his work. (Luke 3:23a, NRSV)
Baptism marks the line running through our lives too,
the divider between the times before and after.
Before our Baptism we do have life,
but we are “in bondage to sin.”
But when God makes us his children in our Baptism,
we are reborn and initiated into his family.
That’s why our liturgy of Holy Baptism
tells us at its beginning:
We are born children of a fallen humanity;
in the waters of Baptism we are reborn
children of God and inheritors of eternal life. (Lutheran Book of Worship, p. 121)
Our Lord blesses us with this new life;
he gathers us together in the Church
to live as one with him and one another
in a divinely human community.
We can say the words about this gift,
but it’s hard to express
what has really happened to us
through our initiation into the Church,
the body of Christ here on earth.
This is not the marching band
or the scout troop
or the sports team
or the country club
or any other self-selected, self-defining group
that guards its gates,
defending them with secret knowledge
and unwritten rules
and even actions that hug the line
or cross over it into hazing.
God’s Church is not like any of that.
And we don’t have any special privilege or status
that comes from being ones
whose baptismal waters have long dried upon our heads.
Each of us still struggles daily
with our personal and private chains of bondage,
the sins we think and feel and act that shackle us,
the ties that bind us tightly,
but not like those blessed ones we honor in the hymn.
And so, this is why we are called to be different.
We do not seek to keep people out of the Church,
or to exclude them, or to welcome them on our own terms.
Instead, we invite all people
to come, to see, to hear about Jesus Christ,
the one who was washed like us,
the one who lived and died like you and me.
But most of all,
we want to share with all people
the great Good News
that Jesus, born of Mary,
raised by Joseph,
baptized by John,
condemned by Pontius Pilate,
flogged, spit upon, belittled,
abandoned by all but a handful,
left for dead upon hill,
buried in a tomb,
is now raised from death,
and lives no more to die.
And in his name,
we are washed with healing water,
we are blessed with the Holy Spirit,
and we are purified with the cleansing fire.
And in the end,
when we have died and been gathered
into the arms of the God who gave us life,
then he will look upon us our upturned and tear-stained faces
full of regret and remorse,
and see in us,
not our sin, our bondage, our broken lives,
but instead the face of his beloved Son
radiant with love and obedience..
Then our heavenly Father will smile
and say to each of us,
You are my child, beloved for my Son’s sake;
with you I am well pleased. Amen.