January 8, 2006 First Sunday of Epiphany - The Baptism of the Lord Water Marks Isaiah 43:1-7 Mark 1:4-11 And a voice came from heaven, You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased. Mark 1:11 There is a scene in The Fellowship of the Rings, the first in J.R.R. Tolkien s Lord of the Rings Trilogy. The Fellowship is asleep in the forest; Galadriel, the elf-queen appears. She bids Frodo to follow her. She descends to a glade and fills a silver pitcher with water from a stream. Standing before an ornate stand with a shallow silver basin on it, she pours it into a mirror-like basin. She invites Frodo to look into the water. He s uncertain. He asks what he will see; she assures him that the water will show: The things that were, things that are... She empties the pitcher and steps back, And some things that are yet to be. And so it is with the waters of baptism. Mark tells the story of Jesus baptism as the prelude, or a foretaste, of his story of Jesus. Have you ever noticed that in Mark there are no birth stories? No shepherds, no angels, no star or stable, not a word about Mary and Joseph. Mark's story of Jesus begins at the water s edge. Listen: In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, [saying] You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.
For millennia scholars have labored over the question of why the perfect Son of God, One without sin, would need to be baptized. Simply put -- it is a matter of identification. In Jesus God became what we are in order to redeem what we are. By coming to be baptized by John, Jesus identified himself fully and completely as a member of the human family. Here he takes the first step toward the salvation of the world. His baptism identifies him in another way as well. Something radical happened at Jesus baptism, something that wasn t a part of John s regular ritual. Did you hear it? When Jesus was baptized, As he was coming up out of the water, the sky split apart and the Holy Spirit came down on him like a dove. And he heard a voice saying You are my son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased. At his baptism Jesus saw the things that were, things that are, and the things that are to be. For Mark, everything that will come after this will reveal how Jesus is God s beloved Son. Ever since that day believers have been following Jesus into the waters of baptism the waters of remembrance and celebration of who he is and who we are because of him. God s coming to us in Jesus reveals once and for all the depth of God s love for us and for the world for every son or daughter of God on this whirling plant. Baptism is our watermark. You know what a watermark looks like on a piece of paper. You have to look carefully to see it. When you look carefully at the paper I am holding, you can see that it has a cross on it. When you lift it up to the light you can see that the creator of it imprinted a mark that will be there forever. Baptism is like that. In baptism we hold a person up to the light and we say,
This is God s child, the beloved with whom God is well pleased. The mother of one of my friends died recently. There is no experience in life that makes you feel more like an orphan than losing you mom. In the receiving line after the memorial service, a woman told my friend that she remembered his baptism. Actually, my friend was baptized on the same day, at the same service as her son. The two boys grew up together in the youth groups, in the choirs. They don't remember being told that they were baptized together side by side in their parent's arms. The lady told my friend, whose name is David, some details about that day. The details were not particularly pious. She said that she and his mother laughed nervously about whose baby would be fussy, who would spit up on the pastor or try to grab his glasses. She reminded David of the year the boys served as acolytes side by side on Christmas Eve and the night the youth director caught them TPing the girl s cabin on a retreat. "It seems like yesterday, she sighed. It was more like 30 years ago. I hope that my friend will to keep in touch with that lady. She recalls his baptism, she remembers his water mark. He is God s beloved son. As God s beloved we are related, through the mark of our baptism, to believers everywhere -- in Japan and Chili and Kenya and Sri Lanka. We are connected by the mark of our baptism to coal mining families in West Virginia. We stand beside our brothers and sisters in Israel in the illness of their leader. Together we are the Beloved of God. Long ago, the word of God word came to God s people in exile through Isaiah, the prophet, saying: You are the beloved of God. Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you [for] You are precious in my sight, and honored and I love you. There is no sin that is grave enough, no way mistake critical enough, no disappointment deep enough to remove the watermark from us, that Neither death, nor life,... neither things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation,
can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. 1 We are eternally, magnificently loved. Why is that so hard to accept? Henri Nouwen, the wonderful Catholic writer, had a friend named Fred Bratman who was not a believer. Nouwen tried to write to his friend to explain what it meant to him to live for God in a secular world. He found it very hard to explain until finally, he hit on the word, Beloved. To be a Christian is to be outrageously and endlessly loved. Nouwen told his friend about first learning the word as he read in the bible about Jesus baptism. All I want to say to you to you, Fred, is You are Beloved, and I hope that you can hear those words spoken to you with all the tenderness and force that love can hold. My only desire is to make these words reverberate in every corner of your being You are the Beloved... The greatest gift my friendship can give to you is your Belovedness. I can give that gift only insofar as I have claimed it for myself... There is that voice, the voice that speaks from above and from within that whispers softly or declares loudly, You are my Beloved, on you my favor rests. 2 Henri Nouwen acknowledges what we all know, that the still, small voice of love is not as easy to hear in a world filled with voices that shout: You are no good unless you achieve this notoriety You are ugly unless you buy this product or undergo this surgery You are worthless unless you own this thing, You are nobody unless you can demonstrate the opposite. 3 Our Savior says otherwise. Each and every one of us, whether or not we are baptized, to each and every child of earth, God declares: You are my beloved daughter, my beloved son, with you I am well pleased.
Let me be clear about something: God s love for Jesus did not begin as the result of his baptism. Jesus was always the beloved Son of God. The bible says that He was in the beginning with God. 4 God didn t begin to love Jesus when he was baptized. That love has existed forever. And whether you are baptized or not, you have always have been and always will be a cherished children of God. Baptism does not change God s attitude toward you or cause God to love you more. Just as it was for Jesus, our baptism is our public acceptance of what has been true all along that God loves and accepts us. Baptism is claiming and rejoicing in and saying Yes! to the God who has always said Yes to us. Baptism acknowledges what was, and is, and will be God s unconditional and costly love for the world. A few years ago, in a New York City synagogue, a thirteen-year-old boy became bar mitzvah, that rite of passage that recognizes the coming to adulthood in the Jewish faith. The boy s father offered a special blessing for his son. He said, Son, whatever will happen to you in your life, whether you are a success or not, whether you become important or not, whether you are healthy or not, Always remember how much your mother and I love you. 5 That is the kind of love that comes straight from God. It has a no-strings-attached. It is unconditional. It is how, even before you were born, God could say: You are my beloved daughter, my cherished son. With you I am well pleased. Jesus baptism is not just an event that happened 2000 years ago. It is more than that; it is the story of an eternal truth, an everlasting good for you and me. The story of your baptism is not just the story of something that happened 10 or 20 or 45 or 70 years ago; it is an eternal truth that lies at the foundation of the world. In a moment I m going to ask you to stand and reaffirm the promises made at your baptism. Whether you remember making those promises or somebody made them for you really doesn t matter. God s love is the same.
I m going to ask those of you who are not baptized to stand alongside us, in support and affirmation. Someday soon I hope that you will make the decision to place your whole life in the hands of the God who knows you completely, and loves you absolutely. I hope that you will decide and be baptized in Jesus name. As you go from here today out into a world filled with deadlines, tests and expectations of superlative achievement, remember that God is already well pleased with you. In the difficult and demanding world we live in, the good news of the gospel is the truth of what was and is and always will be. You are supremely and magnificently loved. You are beloved sons or daughters of God. Susan F. DeWyngaert, D.Min. First Presbyterian Church Sarasota, Florida -------------------------------------- 1. Romans 8: 38-39. 2. Henri J. M. Nouwen, Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World, (New York: Crossroad, 2002) 30-32. 3. Ibid. 4. John 1.2. 5. Nouwen, 67-68.