Last week, NPR announced that long time foreign news correspondent, Mike Shuster was moving on after more than three decades of service for National Public Radio. In an interview that aired on “Talk of the Nation,” on January 3re Shuster recounted some highlights of his career. He said:
I was in Berlin the day before the wall came down because there was an expectation, this was November 9, 1989, there was an expectation that something important was going to happen in East Berlin and East Germany.
What that was going to be was not clear, and the leaders of the Communist Party of East Germany at the time met all day long, and reporters from all over the world were hanging out waiting to hear what they had to say, what they were going to do. And there was a press conference at 6 p.m. in East Berlin, and the leader of the local Communist Party, the Berlin Communist Party, came out to be the spokesman.
And he droned on and on and on for an hour, essentially saying nothing. And then came the end of the hour, and he basically said, well, that’s the end of the press conference. And there was absolutely no news. And there was a great deal of frustration on the part of the foreign press there.
And one Italian reporter stood up from the back and simply yelled in English: What about the wall? Or words to that effect, anyway. What about the wall? And the spokesman essentially said: Oh, haven’t you heard? The wall is open.
And this was the first that the East German authorities had actually made the decision to allow their people to go through the wall, and it was just – it was just astounding. And I was listening through headphones to a translator, and as those words were spoken in English, the hairs stood up on the back of my neck, and I realized that this was – one way or another, this was going to be the most extraordinary story in my lifetime.[1]
Like Shuster, we cherish the memories of when we have the privilege to bear witness to the dawn of something new in our world or in our lives. Through television screens many of us got to watch crowds dismantling the Berlin Wall more than 20 years ago – as we have witnessed paradigm-shifting events in our world like Armstrong’s first steps on the moon or the Twin Towers crumbling like a house of cards.
Landmark moments color the tapestry of our own lives: as we watch our children take their first steps, or lace our arms in theirs as they take their first steps down the aisle on the day, years later, that commit their life to one who they love. Or we release from our lives bad habits or addictions that have held us back from being the people God has called us to be. In truth, it is often hindsight that brings us the most complete awareness that we have seen or experienced something new. From the optimal vantage point of this perspective, we are able to acknowledge how, in large or small ways, our lives have changes.
Our Gospel lesson for this morning tells the story of our God who is up to something new. The first two chapters of Luke’s Gospel, that we have heard through the Advent and Christmas season, drive this point home. Luke introduces us to Jesus through his cousin John setting up for us a sort of narrative game of leap-frog, with one character continually jumping ahead of the other. But in this dance, the one who jumps ahead – the one who comes first – does so only to call attention to the one who is yet to come. The whole birth narrative of John – from his father’s angelic visitation through his naming – points to the birth of the Christ child. John continually calls attention to the Messiah – as an infant in his mother’s womb, and as a man with wild hair and camel-skin clothes calling for a baptism of repentance by the riverside. Luke makes it quite clear that John’s importance is simply to turn all eyes and hearts to the arrival of his younger cousin, Jesus.
And so today’s journey takes us to the riverside. There we find John teaching and preaching and baptizing, calling those who immerse themselves in the Jordan to repent from their sins and profess their desire to sin no more. He tells people to give away what they have to those in need. He tells them to be content with what they have and to not chase after worldly gain at the expense of others. And just when people start to think that he might be the Christ, he quickly points to the one who is yet to come, whose sandals he is unfit to tie.
Yet in just a few short verses, Luke takes us quickly from the scene of a riverside commanded by John and his ministry, to a baptism where John’s name isn’t even mentioned in the text (in fact, in the verses mission from our Lectionary passage for today, Luke sticks John in jail). In an editorial move that paves the way for Jesus alone to take center stage, we read that Jesus entered the waters of his own volition – and then the heavens opened, the Spirit like a dove descended, and God’s voice was heard declaring that Jesus was God’s son, the beloved, in whom God was well pleased.
But what stands out in this text as much as John’s absence is the presence of the crowds. The passage tells us that when all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too. Jesus walks into the waters with all the other people, immersing himself in the river with the sinful, broken crowds, that he, too might be baptized by their side. He does not set himself apart. He does not ask for special treatment. In fact, in a public way he aligns himself with those who seek forgiveness, who have come themselves to be healed.
Now, I’ll be honest – Jesus’ baptism makes some people uncomfortable. They ask: If Jesus was really free from sin, why did he step into a baptism for the forgiveness of sin? They think that it was inappropriate for Jesus to humble himself to this extent, to be baptized by a subordinate, to be identified with sinners. Barbara Brown Taylor dares to suggest what others have often wished they could name: “How much more appropriate it would have been if he had walked up to John and said, ‘Thank you for all your preparations, my friend. I will take over now.'”[2]
But we are left for a Messiah who heads for the waters with the rest of the people, assuming their baptism as his own, because Jesus just wouldn’t have it any other way.
What some see as a problem, I see as good news, for in this act of Jesus’ baptism God is announcing the start of something new. This act, in fact, orients us to the entire salvific message of God’s love for us Jesus Christ. At the waters, Jesus announces the good news of the incarnation: that God’s love for us is so great that God has taken on flesh, entering with us into the complexities of humanity – sin and brokenness and all. From there – this place that both acknowledges the hold of sin and the power of God’s love for us, comes the announcement of the promise of salvation, the pronouncement of God’s love and the anointing of the Holy Spirit – all that any of us really need. One commentator says:
Jesus was born from as well as into a world of systemic sin, and his baptism is a signal that he understood the full implications of the incarnation. He was not merely identifying with or showing solidarity with the human world; he was fully acknowledging its tragic structure. There are no innocent, no perfect, no unambiguous, no controllable, indeed no sinless, choices in this world. All choices must be made within a context of a system that precedes and impinges upon them.[3]
Jesus then enters into the fullness of human sin to release us from its hold – demonstrating the fullness of God’s love for us and the depths of Christ’s salvation. Jesus’ baptism is all about God’s new initiative for us – that the one has come who is greater than the prophets, but with a ministry that is grounded in humility, solidarity, and unconditional, sacrificial love. Jesus enters the water of sinners – with sinners – and in doing so enters into our sin.
And in Jesus’ baptism we remember our own – with waters sprinkled over our heads as an infant or an adult. We remember that in our baptism we celebrate the forgiveness of sins, a turning toward God as part of a community of faith, a celebration that we are a transformed, new creation. And we celebrate that in his baptism Jesus joined us in our sin, conquering its hold on our lives, we then give thanks that in our baptism we join him in his death and resurrection. In the waters of baptism God is up to something new. Jesus’ baptism points us to the hope that we have in our own baptism – a sacrament that is a sign and seal of God’s new initiative for us and within us. In Jesus’ baptism and our own, the power of the Holy Spirit is at work taking the fragments of who we are, even that within us which is broken, and builds a path forward, calling us out of the muck and mire that holds us back and leads us on to new life.
Jesus’ baptism points us toward the hope that we have in Christ: that sin and death, that the pains of our past or the struggles of our present will not claim us, define us, or hold us back; but that in Christ we are continually finding freedom, acceptance and new life.
We need this truth. We need this salvation. The reality of our experience is that no matter how long our to-do lists or how great our own initiative, there are some hurdles that we simply cannot overcome on our own. Regardless of how generous we are, systemic greed has a hold on our lives in ways outside of our control. As we see politicians navigating negotiations that consider special interests as well as human need we know that our tax dollars will back their decisions whether we like it or not. We continually feel the pull of our own desires – when we rush to the front of a Black Friday line, or when we trample someone in an argument drowning out their voice with our own, carelessly selecting words with no regard for their impact on another but with every regard for how strong they make us feel. We indulge in our cravings and rationalize our addiction to electronics or refined sugar or gossiping. We feel weighed down by the perceptions that others have of us – by the definitions by which we’ve been labeled, by the fears that name us and claim us, by the stories of our past and by our hopes for who we would like to be. Along with those crowds by the river side, we are in deep.
But the good news is that Jesus is in deep, right there with us. And his hold on us pulls us from the currents of our sin into the waters of salvation where we might know redemption, not because we have earned it, but because Christ offers it to us, free of charge. Christ knows the power of sin and that the wages of sin are death, and so he jumps in with us knowing that it’s harder to save someone from the shore.
In Christ’s baptism – and in ours – God has started something new. God has shown us that Jesus has come to free us from systematic and personal sin – that which we have done and that which has been done to us – so that we might know new and abundant life. Then, God invites us to assume a new identity. Through Christ, we are called beloved, assured of God’s pleasure with us – and in taking on this new identity as one of the chosen heirs of the kingdom of God. We are God’s children, deeply, graciously, and wholly loved.
So step in alongside Jesus. Hear his call from the center of the Jordan. Splash along beside him that you might feel the dove breeze by your cheek and you might hear God call your name with delight. And if the water feels too deep, or the mud under your feet starts pulling you down, just grab on to Jesus’ arm – for he will not let you go.
AMEN
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[1] http://www.wbur.org/npr/168549284/an-eyewitness-to-history-nprs-mike-shuster-moves-on
[2] Taylore, Barbara Brown. Mixed Blessings. “Sacramental Mud” p 54.
[3] Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary – Feasting on the Word – Year C, Volume 1: Advent through Transfiguration.