Rev. Nick Cheek
Isaiash 43: 1-7 and Matthew 3: 1-6, 13-17
Maybe you’ve seen the movie, “O Brother Where Art Thou.” It is a playful retelling of Homer’s Odyssey set in the Deep South during the Great Depression. The movie opens with a charming convict, Everett (played by George Clooney), who escapes from prison, dragging along the two other men he is chained to, Delmar and Pete. Everett convinces Delmar and Pete that he has hidden a million dollars after robbing an armored car and promises to split it with them. Their journey is reminiscent of a Monty Python movie, with ridiculous twists and turns as they do their best to avoid a Sheriff hot on their trail. [Pause]
One of their turns leads them deep into the woods. While in the woods, conversing about their next step, they hear a magnificent chorus of voices rising around them. To their amazement, they see a procession of white-robed congregants walking down to the lake, singing, “When I went down to the river to pray, studying about that good ol’ way.”
Everett, Delmar, and Pete hypnotically follow the group to the river. There, they watch as more and more people receive baptism. Delmar, overcome by the wonder and beauty of it all, spontaneously runs into the water, cutting off everyone else in line. The pastor doesn’t skip a beat, dipping him backward into the water. Coming up out of the river, Delmar exclaims his joy to Everett and Pete, “Well, that’s it, boys, I been redeemed! The preacher warshed away all my sins and transgressions. It’s the straight-and-narrow from here on out, and heaven everlasting’s my reward! That Piggly Wiggly I robbed is now in the past. I’m a new man.” Pete then immediately questions Delmar, “Delmar, I thought you said you were innocent of that robbery.” Caught off guard, Delmar says, “Well, I was lyin’, and I’m proud to say that sin’s been warshed away too! Neither God nor man’s got nothin’ on me now! Come on in, boys, the water’s fine!”
Baptism can have that effect on people. The water IS fine. More than fine. That’s precisely why, when we open the scriptures this morning, we find a scene similar to Delmar’s. We find John the Baptist waist-deep in the Jordan, surrounded by a crowd of people. The passage says they came from all over the whole Judean countryside and all over Jerusalem to hear John’s message, which means they were from all walks of life: religious leaders, executives, business owners, blue-collar workers, teachers, the poor, and the rich. They came looking for something, looking for a new beginning, for refreshment, for healing, looking for a hope, a new way, and they found it. They found it in the good news of Jesus Christ. They found it in the sign and symbol of Baptism.
Every year on this Sunday, we remember this sacrament. Baptism is a visible sign of an invisible grace. Baptism is important to our faith journey, for it communicates who we believe God to be. Baptism is centered on God’s steadfast love, which means baptism is less about our love for God or our choice and more about God’s. Through Baptism, God looks at all of us and says, “Listen, you are my beloved. I claim you as mine. You are my child. And there is nothing you can do or say about it.” In the Presbyterian tradition, baptism is not primarily about what we accomplish but about what God has already accomplished for us. Presbyterian theology teaches that baptism “enacts and seals what the Word proclaims: God’s redeeming grace offered to all people,” and that through baptism God claims us as beloved children and members of Christ’s body. And friends, this act from God happens before anything else. Before a word is on our tongue, before our first cry, before our first steps, before our first joys and our first heartbreaks, before all of that, we are called the beloved. That is the claim and sign of baptism. Therefore, and thankfully, baptism is not primarily about all the good we can accomplish, or about all our right beliefs about God, or even about our own commitment to God. In baptism, God does not first evaluate us with a holy checklist to see if we qualify. God also doesn’t wait to see who we will become or judge us on our work, our failures, our doubts, or our mess-ups. There is only one prerequisite for baptism, and it rests in God’s love. God acts first, loves first, and speaks first into our lives: “This one is mine.” God says, “This is my child always, forever, no matter what.”
This truth about God’s love in baptism is hard for us to understand, to believe, and to accept. We’re not used to it. We don’t encounter it as much as we should in the world around us. When someone cuts us off in traffic, we don’t initially think of them as God’s beloved. When we witness people asserting their power in damaging ways, by hurting, oppressing, and perpetuating fear and violence on others, do we call them the beloved? Even if we were to look at our own selves in the mirror, think about our lives, our behaviors, our actions, would we write “Beloved” over our heads on the mirror? We have been trained by culture and also the church to constantly measure ourselves and others to standards that none of us can meet. If we were to be completely honest, we all experience some feelings of not performing well enough, of not doing enough, achieving enough, loving enough, or even being enough. [short pause] Friends, I study God’s word for a living. My job is to communicate God’s steadfast love and grace to you regularly, and I struggle to believe I am God’s beloved at times. I, too, struggle with the thought that I could do more and be more.
Nadia Bolz-Weber, the pastor of the House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver, tells the story of a retreat she once attended at a Catholic monastery. She arrived tired, worn down, and carrying the quiet pressure that so many of us carry. When she arrived, she was paired with a spiritual director, a tiny, soft-spoken nun named Sister Eileen. Nadia assumed the week would unfold the way retreats often do: a list of spiritual disciplines, prayers to practice, scripture to read, things to do in order to draw closer to God. She was ready to work. Instead, when the retreat began, Sister Eileen simply looked at her and said, “Nadia, I don’t think you should do anything while you’re here. I just want you to walk the grounds and live in the knowledge that God loves you totally apart from anything you do or don’t do.” [short pause] Nadia admits that her first reaction was resistance. She thought to herself, “That sounds awful.” And then she tried it. She let go, she slowed down, cleared her mind, and allowed God to love her as she was. The experience brought her to tears.
Nadia reflects on why that moment was so painful. She writes, “For some reason, there was something painful for me about the idea of being loved completely apart from what I do or do not do. It’s perhaps all we really want in life, and yet the prospect of it stung. I’m not even sure why. Maybe because it highlighted how much being loved apart from what we do or don’t do is so rarely something we ever encounter.”
The timing and order of our story this morning is telling. Jesus enters the Jordan and is baptized by John before his first miracle, before his first teaching, before he heals, or preaches, or forgives. The affirmation of his identity as the beloved occurs before it all. I often wonder if perhaps even Jesus needed to hear that, even he needed to be reminded, just like us, who we are and who we belong to. Because it is that reminder, church, it is that truth which fuels our faith: the reminder that we are loved fully and unconditionally, no matter what.
Hear the good news, church. God first loved us, loved you, loved me, and not just the perfect you, the productive you, or the put-together you, not only the confident you, the physically fit you, or the Instagram you. God first loved just little ol’ normal youThe incomplete you, the socially awkward you, the uncertain you, the you that second-guesses and overthinks, the irritable you, the worn-down and overwhelmed you. The you that struggles and feels stuck, the you that carries more than you can handle, the you that worries about today and tomorrow, the you that has regrets, the you that wishes you could take things back and fix your mistakes, the you that can feel lonely, or tired, or lost, or afraid, the you no one knows, the you keep hidden. The you that keeps you up at night. God first loved that you, too.
There is an anonymous quote I’ve heard that I love about baptism that I LOVE: “Baptism does not mark the moment we finally get our lives together; it marks the moment our lives are re-described by grace.” In the waters of baptism, we find the foundation of our ministry, that we love because God first loved us. And baptism gently calls us, you and me, to live from that love. It is a love that shows up, stays present, and remains active, not because it is earned, but because it has already been given. Therefore, Baptism calls us, you and me, if at all possible, and with God’s help, to love others with that same kind of love. [Pause]
Remember that wild and curious Delmar, running into the river, running towards the love of God. When the pastor dipped him in the water, I hope Delmar was reminded that the love he was running towards had already run to him. Maybe today, you need to be reminded of it also.
Come on in, boys and girls, the water is fine!
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.