First Reading:
15As the people were filled with expectation, and all
were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might
be the Messiah, 16John answered all of them by
saying, I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful
than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his
sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and
fire. 17His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his
threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the
chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.
21Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus
also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was
opened, 22and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in
bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from
heaven, You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am
well pleased.
Second Reading:
But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who
formed you, O Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have
called you by name, you are mine. 2When you pass through
the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall
not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be
burned, and the flame shall not consume you. 3For I am
the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. I give
Egypt as your ransom, Ethiopia and Seba in exchange for
you. 4Because you are precious in my sight, and honored,
and I love you, I give people in return for you, nations in
exchange for your life. 5Do not fear, for I am with you;
I will bring your offspring from the east, and from the west I will
gather you; 6I will say to the north, Give them
up,
and to the south, Do not withhold; bring my sons from
far away and my daughters from the end of the earth
— 7everyone who is called by my name, whom I
created for my glory, whom I formed and made.
Today's gospel text is Luke's account of the baptism of Jesus… and in a few minutes I'm going to highlight what I noticed as I read and prayed with the text over the course of the last couple of weeks, but before I launch into all of that I want to give you a chance to remember and to share a little bit about a baptism that was meaningful for you… if you remember your own, feel free to use that… if you don't, you can remember your child's baptism or anyone else's so long as there's something that caught your attention or something that held meaning for you. So, I'm going to stop talking and invite you to remember a baptism… after a few moments I'll give you a little bit of time to share with one or two people who are sitting around you, but we'll get to that in a minute… for now, invite God to go with you as you remember a significant baptism.
Sharing the stories may work better if you aren't sharing with your spouse or a member of your immediate family… invitation to share…
As you're ready, draw your attention back to the large group.
Baptisms can be memorable events. There are all sorts of things that
are beautiful in the way we celebrate baptisms… and there are a
few things that can go wrong… but it's almost always nice to
relive the stories… which I guess is why the first thing that
stood out to me in Luke's account of the baptism is that he doesn't
actually tell the story of the baptism… at least not in the way
we usually think of baptism. We just got done telling each about
meaningful baptisms and I would venture a guess that within the room
we talked about things like what the baby wore, how she talked the
whole time or how he slept the whole time… we talked about who
came to visit or what the pastor said… maybe even what it felt
like to be submerged with somebody's hands guiding you… but we
don't get any of that detail in Luke. The only thing Luke tells us is
that the baptism happened. He said, When all the people had been
baptized and Jesus had also been baptized
… but the part of
the story he really wanted us to hear is what happened next because
that's where the real action was. While he was praying, the spirit
descended on him in bodily form like a dove and a voice came from
heaven: You are my Son, the beloved, with you I am well pleased.
Apparently Luke was much more interested in what the Holy Spirit was
doing than what John the Baptist was doing in the baptism of
Jesus…
The next thing I noticed about the baptism story is that Luke holds the spirit in high esteem. Even in John's words when he's telling the people about the baptism that will come, we get a picture of the activity of the spirit. John used a metaphor of the winnowing fork separating the wheat from the chaff. And frankly, the traditional interpretation of that story is a little bit troublesome to me… because the traditional interpretation says that John's talking about judgment: either you are wheat to be gathered into the granary or you are chaff to be burned… and I don't think that's what this passage is trying to say… you see, John preached a baptism of repentance, and repentance is about changing or turning in order to follow the way of the Lord. Wheat and chaff are both part of the same plan…The difference is that one is useful and the other isn't. When John speaks of wheat, he's referring to the seed of the grain. It's the part that gets ground up and made into flour to make bread. It's why people plant and harvest… it's the good stuff. On the other hand, chaff is a relatively hard, scaly husk that surrounds the seed. It's not edible by humans and if it's not separated out from the wheat, it gets in the way of making food. Now, wheat is denser than chaff and less susceptible to being blown by the wind.
So the way this works is that the wheat and chaff get tossed in the
air, the wind catches the chaff and separates it from the
wheat… the useful part, the wheat, falls straight down to be
gathered into the granary, the chaff which ultimately would have
gotten in the way of what the wheat is there for, blows a few feet
away falls to the ground to be gathered up and disposed of. The
process John describes is about separating what is fruitful, from that
which is not fruitful. When it's applied to people it's not about
separating some people as grain
and some people as chaff
but it's about separating what is fruitful in our lives from what is
not fruitful in our lives… And the way I read it, it's a
metaphor for the Holy Spirit at work in the life of the believer. The
active agent in the separation is the wind. Everything gets tossed up
and it's the wind that pulls away what isn't fruitful. Of course, the
word for wind in Greek is the same word for Spirit… So there
are two ways Luke tells us about the activity of the Holy Spirit in
relationship to baptism: the first is with the metaphor of winnowing
he described what baptism by the spirit would look like for believers:
the stuff that gets in the way of our purpose gets separated out as
the Holy Spirit works in us. The second was the words of assurance
that were spoken to Jesus.
Perhaps the clearest thing that was going on with the voice from the
heavens is that it declared an identity…You are my Son, the
beloved. With you I am well pleased.
From this point forward,
Jesus knew that his identity was rooted in God's love. So no matter
which way the wind blew and no matter the troubles and the trials he
had to face, he could always hold on to the assurance that not one
moment of what would happen would happen without God's knowledge and
God's presence. That assurance became the ground of his ministry.
And ministry is the second thing that came out of baptism by the
spirit. Up until this point in the gospel, the whole story has been
designed to help the readers and the hearers understand where Jesus
was coming from… everything had to do with the relationship
between Jesus and his parents and God, but at this point, his ministry
begins… from temptation in the desert to rejection in his
hometown to the miracles and the teachings, to the triumphal
entry… even good Friday, the resurrection and his appearances
to the disciples, from this point forward the story is about how he
interacts with the rest of the world. It's about his ministry, and
every bit of his ministry flows from the identity that he's assured of
when he's baptized by the spirit… you are beloved.
Earlier, as we remembered the baptisms that were meaningful for us, it's hard to imagine that any of them looked like the story of Jesus' baptism but then, like I said, Luke was much more interested in what happened later…
Just as Jesus' baptism drove him toward ministry, remembering our baptism drives us toward ministry also… Of course, I'm not exactly talking about the act of being baptized… I would guess that most of us can't remember when we were baptized. But remembering the significance of our baptism is a different story altogether. We can do that.
In our tradition, we say that baptism is a sign and a seal of God's grace and that by baptism we are welcomed into the family of the faithful. We say that the waters of baptism mark us as claimed by God, and that they symbolize our unification with Christ in his ministry, his death and his resurrection.
When we remember our baptism, we claim the same assurance that Jesus did. No matter the troubles we face and trials we have to deal with, there is not one thing that will happen in our lives without God's knowledge or without God's presence. As our reading from Isaiah says… Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. 2 When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.
When we remember our baptism, we can be confident to let the spirit work in us as John describes… please, God, take away that which isn't fruitful… get rid of the stuff that's in me that stands in the way of what I'm here for… my purpose, your calling…
And finally, when we remember our baptism, we are free to reach out to care for others… not out of obligation but because we recognize the grace that's been given to us. We're free to minister… not because we have to, but because we want to. We're free to love… not because we should, but because we know what it's like to be loved.
Remembering the significance of our baptism is claiming an identity… it's the identity of being part of the family of the faithful… being one of many Sisters and brothers who have said yes… I recognize that I'm loved… and yes, I want to share that love with others.
Gracious God, help us to remember our baptism and to live that identity. Amen.
The foregoing sermon was given by Rev. Dan Holland at the United Parish of Bowie on January 17, 2010.
© 2010 Daniel Holland
