Larry Lenow

FUMC

1-13-08

Baptism of the Lord

 

 

 

“You Had to Be There”

Text: Matthew 3:13-17

 

 

“And when Jesus was baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him.”  Matt. 3:16

 

You just had to be there.  To be candid it was one of the… weirdest spiritual moments in my life.  I’ll try to explain it to you, but you just had to be there.  As most of you know, last October Amy and I led a group on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.  And I’ve promised myself that I won’t talk incessantly about it to those who were able to go, but today is an exception that I hope will have some value.  One of the places that we visited was the Yardonet Baptismal site.  Yardonet is on the Jordan River, where Jesus was baptized by John as we just read in Matthew’s gospel.  There’s nothing historic about Yardonet, it’s not supposed to be where Jesus was baptized.  We don’t know where that is, but it is on the very river, and it is a site developed for Christian pilgrims to come to remember and celebrate the gift of the sacrament of holy baptism.  Prior to traveling over I had seen the site on the travel company’s DVD it depicted a person stepping into the river and her pastor crossing her on the forehead in a celebration of baptism renewal.  It was serene, holy, peaceful.  I was very much looking forward to it.

 

We were traveling around the country on a bus of 32 people. Now, I will tell you, it’s important to the story, that our group an interesting group of people.  A bout half of us were Methodists from Virginia, Utah and Georgia.  We had a couple of Episcopalians with us, but John  and Charles Wesley being Church of England priests, we all decide that they were high church Methodists. Amy and I were joined by another Methodist pastor, Bob Kaylor.  Bob was my age, my height, my build, and he has a beard.  More importantly, we have the same personality issues.  Bob and I became co-conspirators.

Now the other half of the bus were Baptists.  Y’all know that Methodists come in all different stripes.  I can show you Untied Methodist Churches where the people look nothing like you, act nothing like you and think nothing like you.  Methodists come in all different stripes.  So do Baptists.  We work very closely with our friends at the Baptist Church down the street all the time.  This group was nothing like the Baptists down the street.  Now they were great people.  We became good friends.  We enjoyed traveling with them, we really did.  You understand?  But at every site we marveled at how diverse the Body of Christ really is.

 

So as we traveled to Yardonet, Hannah, our guide explained that when we arrived the Baptists would have an opportunity to be baptized and the Methodists can remember and reaffirm our baptisms.

 

We arrived.  We got off the bus.  I looked up and the words came out of my mouth, “Oh, dear God.”  I wasn’t taking the Lord’s name in vain, it was a heartfelt prayer.  Amy stood beside me and said, “Ah, Baptisms-R-Us.”  It was like a Baptism theme park.  Baptists to the left to the changing rooms to put on white robes.  Methodists to the right down to the river.  The River setting was lovely; the Jordan was about the size of the Rappahannock at City Docks.  Yardonet is a nice site built of stone.  It sort of resembles the stand at Maury Field.  In amphitheater style it descends down into the water, but instead of one continuous seating section it was divided into about ten smaller sections so different groups could be doing their thing simultaneously.  Clearly sectioned off, but right next to each other.  There was a Food Court.  And you couldn’t get out of the place without going through the gift shop.  And there were people.  There had to be at least a thousand people there. People from all over the world.  A cacophony of languages and cultures. It was crowded, we were shoulder to shoulder moving through the crowd.  Hannah, our Jewish guide led us to our reserved section and promptly started evicting squatters.    As we took off our shoes and socks and rolled up our pants legs I noticed that next us a large group from Africa had finished their service and were frolicking in the water, splashing each other and playing. We gave some space to some folks from South Asia.  A fellow had been baptized and was overcome with emotion, slain in the Spirit perhaps, but we invited them to sit as he was swooning.  So he was sitting right there.  Our Baptists friends were rebaptized, without fanfare or ceremony or prayer for that matter, just immersion in the name of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit.  Rick, the Baptist minister said, “Now, I’m going to Baptize myself.”  And he fell backwards into the water.  Then it was our turn. 

 

Noise. Crowds. Snacks. Souvenirs. Chaos. Rebaptisms.  Self baptisms.  How do I keep getting myself into these situations?  I took my little service book, and Bob and I stepped into the River.  As we were stepping down, Carla, one of our Episcopalians said, “Don’t you imagine it was a lot like this when John baptized Jesus?” Huh.  We faced our little group of twenty or so Methodists, our wet Baptist friends sitting right beside them, I opened the book and said, ‘The Lord be with you.”  The people responded.  Suddenly, things got very quiet.  Maybe not, maybe it just seemed that way.  But there was a great centering, a great focus.  In our midst, no longer was there chaos.  Suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending… I continued, “Brothers and sisters in Christ:  Through the Sacrament of Holy Baptism, believers and their households are initiated into Christ’s holy Church.  We are incorporated into God’s mighty acts of salvation and given new birth through water and the Spirit.  All this is God’s gift, offered to us without price.  Through the reaffirmation of our faith, we renew the covenant declared at our baptism, acknowledge what God is doing for us, and affirm our commitment to Christ’s holy church.

 

The liturgy had taken over.  The words that were familiar, the service I’ve participated in many times before, it took over.  We were part of something bigger than ourselves.  Something that transcends ourselves. We were a part of it. But we were not in charge of it. No, rather we were claimed by it.  This baptism had a hold on us. Its part of what makes us who we are, and this ritual snapped us right back into the awareness of that.  We continued on, our little group stood.  We renounced the forces of wickedness and evil powers in this world.  We claimed the freedom that God gives us.  We confessed Jesus Christ as our Savior.  I was a bit taken aback.  Is this the same ritual we use?  When did these words become so powerful, when did they become so sweeping, so radical, so extreme?  Then, then we proclaimed our faith.  Do you believe in God the Father?  I believe in God the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth. Now I knew the power of these words, The Apostles’ Creed, the original words of which date back to the first century, the old Roman Creed.  Yes, I know it unites Christians of all ages, all around the world.  I know that.  What I didn’t know.  Well, that of which I was reminded was how deep those words and the truths they proclaim are embedded in my soul and in the souls of the faces I was looking at.  And in the souls of the faces I am looking at.  Bob gave thanksgiving over the water.  And the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit descending.  And one by one the folks came down.  We had to help them; it was slippery.  And one by one we signed them with the sign of the cross, with the sign of life, with the sign of power, with the sign of hope, with the sign of rebirth.  They remembered their baptisms.  They remembered that they were claimed by God.  They remembered that they belong to God.  They remembered that it’s personal, that God loves them.  We signed them with the waters of baptism on their foreheads, but seeing looks on faces and tears in eyes I dare to believe we signed their hearts. We concluded and suddenly I could looked at my brothers and sisters from Africa and saw their unbridled joy, I saw the brother from South Asia and marveled at the depth of the experience he just had.  And as we Methodists and Baptists and Episcopalians hugged in the Spirit and gift we all share together.  The heavens were opened to us and we saw the Spirit descending.

 

I guess you just had to be there.  But I will tell you this:  God has claimed you.  God loves you.  God continues to transform you.  Do not underestimate the power of your baptism.