Out of the Water - Jan 8, 2006

Baptism of the Lord

For those of us hoping to extend this season of good tidings and cheer just one more day, Mark's Gospel has a disappointing surprise for us. We find Jesus, not in a manger suckling at his mother's breast, nestled in soft bands of cloth, warm from the breath of the cows and sheep nearby, but standing waist deep in the muck of the Jordan, where so many of his ancestors - our too - had stood.

He had come there to be baptized by John. Now, John was a peculiar character in this story, someone we don't expect to be the first character we encounter in a Gospel. If you and I encountered someone who looked and acted like Mark's description of John on the street, we would surely cross to the other side. We might quietly admonish our children, "Don't stare, honey, it's impolite." And we might even consider calling the authorities if his calls for repentance were too loud or disturbing.

But many had come to John for the baptism he offered, and so did Jesus. And so our very first encounter of Jesus in this story is of him with John, coming up out of the water.

I never took swimming lessons as a child. My mother attempted to send me to some, but I was much too frightened and gave up after the first lesson. There was some overwhelming sense of the loss of control that water represented to me; it was a loss of control that I could not tolerate. My mother did not force me to learn. Because of my stubbornness I was doomed to a childhood of staying by the wall, holding on to the ladder, or merely dangling my feet in the water off the dock while other children splashed and swam and played "Marco Polo".

When it came time for me to be baptized (at the "age of accountability" that was the tradition in the faith community in which I was raised) I was terrified to find out that I would be baptized by immersion in the baptismal tank at church. Even worse, I would need to be fully immersed into the water not once, not twice, but three times.

When the day came, I climbed down the steps into three feet of very cold water, and my only words to the pastor were "Please don't let me drown." I had my breath taken from me three times that morning, and when I immerged from the water on the final dip, my only thought was not of the new beginning of my Christian life, or of having my sins washed away, or of the church, or of God really. It was that I had survived giving up the tiniest bit of control.

I could remember being under water and feeling that loss of control just once before - while my family and I were on vacation in Canada one summer when I must have been about five years old. I still to this day can remember that weightless feeling, and if I close my eyes can see the swirling colors as sunlight danced in the stony lake bottom. The water, you see, wasn't very deep, but just enough for a small child to be submerged, and just deep enough that, according to family legend, my mother jumped off the pier, clothes, shoes and all to come get me. I'm told that I was only under momentarily - someone had seen me slip into the water. I remember sitting on the pier after being pulled out, my legs dangling over the end, coughing and sputtering as the water worked its way out of my lungs.

So you may ask me, if I have such vivid memories of being under water as a child, why was I so stubborn? Why didn't I go ahead and learn how to swim? Good question. My answer to that is that I guess it was easier for me to focus on the fear of losing control than to focus on how sweet it was to feel myself being pulled out of the water, and the relief of feeling my lungs swell up with air again. I wonder sometimes if that isn't a mark of our humanity - that we focus on the fear and not on the rescue.

We live in a world that is increasingly hostile to faith and faithful living. Now, understand, I'm not talking about some supposed "war on Christmas". I found that whole debate just kind of silly. The greeting I receive (or don't receive) from an overworked, underpaid store clerk while I am out buying things that I don't really need, but feel compelled to purchase to "get in the Christmas spirit" really does not reflect what is happening in the world and how the world sees and interprets the Incarnation.

I'm talking about what happens after Dec 26, and before the first of November. I'm talking about how the word receives and interprets faith and faithful living when there is nothing to be gained from it, no profit to be had. Why is it that there is no "war on Lent", or "war on Easter", or "war on Pentecost" declared?

The truth is, we struggle. Living faithfully, living into the Incarnation, and our baptism, and our confirmation, and our various ordinations sometimes feels rather like that underwater feeling of loss of control, of being pulled under something that is bigger that us. The world, with all it's indifference to the true meaning of any holy season is that water chaos that we hear about in Genesis, and the waters of that muddy river where we find Jesus at the very beginning of Mark's gospel.

The Hebrew phrase that we translate into "formless void" is pronounced "tohu we bohu". My Hebrew professor in seminary says that the closest English translation is "chaos schmaos", and that the entirety of Christian theology can be summed up in that one phrase. That out of a chaotic, watery nothingness, God created a world. That into that world, because there was nothing too wonderful for God to do, God sent a savior who came into that created world in the form of a helpless and dependent infant. That into the waters of the Jordan, that Incarnational God would return, to be submerged and re-appear, to show us that we too, could survive the act of submission and submerging.

When we leave this church building, with its relative safety, where faith and faithful acts are commonplace, and we return to the chaos of that outside world, it is a little like we are dipping ourselves back into the muddy waters again and again. It might help us to remember that even though the world is a complex and chaotic place, it was chaos - formless and void - that God started with in the first place. It was a complicated, politically charged world that God sent the Son into. But that to God, it is chaos-schmaos, for there is nothing too void for God's creative touch, nothing too complicated for God to accomplish, nothing too beautiful for God to do for us.

It was a very un-Christ like thing Jesus had done that day, really. That the Savior for the world, Immanuel, God With Us, the Word Incarnate should come to John and submit to being submerged in the Jordan, that for those few seconds he should give up control and let the waters close over him, seems in some way unnecessary. He could have chosen another way. He didn't have to do it.

And yet, because he did, we have yet another mark of commonality with him. As he came up from the water to hear himself proclaimed aloud as God's own Beloved, so too are we.

When I finally did learn to swim it was liberating. The fear of loss of control eventually gave way to the sensation of being supported by something greater than myself, the knowledge that the water would not behave unpredictably, the satisfaction of knowing that the water and I could work in harmony, and at long last the feeling of safety in letting go.

May it be so for us in the Christian life. May this commemoration of the beginning of Jesus' ministry bring for us a fresh beginning in our own walk of devotion to the Triune God. May we feel supported, confident, harmonious and free to rely upon God as God's own beloved child each day.