Water and Spirit
January 10, 2010
January 10, 2010
Rev. Susan E. Gilbert Zencka
Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church
Texts: Isaiah 43:1-7; Luke 3:15-22
Perhaps you’ve heard the old story about the minister who had a problem with squirrels in the church. And so she consulted with her colleagues, and tried all their suggestions: she set traps, called in animal control, took her dog to church with her for a while, and still the squirrels stayed in church. Finally, at a clergy lunch, someone asked her about the squirrels, and she was glad to report that they were gone. “How did you do it?” her colleagues asked. “Oh it was simple,” she replied. “We just baptized them, confirmed them, and we haven’t seen them since.”
Baptism is about beginnings – in the early church, the baptismal font was near the entrance of the church, as a symbolic reminder that baptism is our formal entrance into the life of the church. Of course, baptism isn’t always the actual beginning – someone might be baptized after years of attending church. And when it is the beginning, it is often in infancy, and not remembered as a person begins to consciously build a relationship with the church. Nonetheless, baptism IS a beginning, and an important one. It is important enough, that when young people come to a point of formalizing their membership with the church in which they are raised, it is done through “confirmation” – confirming the promises that were made at their baptism. And as such, it is a new beginning – not, as it is sometimes understood, a graduation or ending. It is the beginning of being part of the church in an adult way – not a decision that you have all the answers – it is really coming to a point of deciding that the church is the right place to come with questions. So baptism, or confirmation, is a beginning….
Today’s Gospel story is really the beginning story of the ministry of Jesus – while not all the Gospels describe the birth of Jesus, and those that do describe it differently, all four Gospels share this story, of the baptism of Jesus. While the Gospel accounts are not identical, they are compatible, and that tells us that this was a very important event in shaping the early church’s understanding of Jesus. And it offers a few things that can help shape our understanding as well.
First of all, it’s a reminder that baptism is both about the individual and about the community – Jesus wasn’t baptized all by himself; there was a crowd of people present. And in our understanding of baptism, it is both about our relationship with God AND our relationship with the community of the church. It is why the Presbyterian Church no longer does private baptisms. Baptism is a reminder that our relationship with God cannot be separated from our relationship with other people. In fact, the very next passage in Luke is a passage explaining the genealogy of Jesus – the people in his family. He is connected to God, and he is connected to other people…and so are we.
Second, it is a reminder that baptism is about who we already are, and about who we are called to become. When Jesus was baptized, the heavens opened, and the voice of God was heard to say, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” God didn’t say, “Someday you WILL be my Son” – but “You ARE my son….” And yet, his baptism was right before his ministry began – and so it was also about who he was becoming. And so too with us – baptism is about who we already are: children of God and part of the community of the church. All of us are already children of God – in the first passage we read today, the one from Isaiah, God says to us all: you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you. God didn’t say: if you do all the right things, I will love you. God said, you are precious in my sight and honored and I love you. Jesus isn’t the only one who is Beloved by God – all of us are. Whether we are boys or girls, students or retired, teachers or doctors, presidents or kings, butchers or bakers or candlestick makers – the most important dimension of who we are is that we are children of God, just as we are, and that shapes all of those other ways that we are who we are.
And baptism is also about who we are becoming – people who grow, develop our gifts, and serve God through our activity in the church. In fact, in our church, and most Protestant churches, there are two sacraments: baptism and communion. Sacraments are understood in a way as sacred moments – times when we understand that God is interacting with us in a special way. Baptism is a sacrament…but ordination isn’t. It is baptism that calls us into ministry – and we are all called into ministry. Ordination simply organizes us – it puts us into order in our ministry – it defines certain kinds of ministry (being elders, or deacons, or ministers), but all of us are called to serve God in the world.
And that brings me to a third point, perhaps the most important one today, and the insight that has come most recently for me. Baptism is about heaven and about earth, spirit and stuff, or matter. In baptism, we not only celebrate our connections to God, and to the people of God, but to the very stuff of the earth – we are baptized with water, and so we remember that our life in God is also our life in the earth. Spiritual life is not separate from earthly life, but is a dimension of our earthly life. Jesus consistently in his ministry pointed us back to earth – the whole of the Bible has much more to say about earth than about heaven. Actually, it says very little about life after death, and what it says is not clear. And when it does talk about heaven, the Bible isn’t talking about a destination for us after life, but a spiritual realm, or it also means skies. For example in this morning’s reading when it says that as Jesus was praying, “…the heaven was opened, and 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." In this context, heaven may describe the skies, or the spiritual realm. But the Bible, in its entirety, is connected to our life on the earth and interwoven with the earth itself. The language of the Bible is all about trees, and water, and wind, and earth. The word for man, adam, is connected to the word for earth, adamah – just as our word human is connected to humus, another word for soil. We have become so accustomed, in recent centuries, to separating ourselves from the elements, and settling into the surroundings that are made by humans, that we don’t always notice how much attention in the Bible is to the earth and the stuff of the earth.
And our two sacraments – baptism and communion – are integrally tied to the earth. You can’t have a baptism without water, and you can’t have communion without grain and fruit. God loves this world that God has made, and God breathes through it. The Spirit of God flows through all the world, connecting us to all that is. We have, as Christians, for too long created a false, non-Biblical separation between us and this world, as if life-in-God were a refuge from the world – on the contrary, God calls us into active engagement with the world, even though loving the world may break our hearts, as God’s heart is often broken. So as we grow in God, we will also grow in compassion – passion with – in suffering with God for the world.
If we can learn in our hearts, at our very core, that God not only binds us to God and to each other, but to the earth – then we may begin to develop a faith that is integrated with the earth in the way that God’s own self is.
And so, after the stories of Christmas comes this story of the baptism of Jesus…to being called the Beloved as he begins his work. And it should lead us, the community of the baptized, both into understanding ourselves as the beloved children of God, and to committing ourselves to the work of God. There is a poem by Howard Thurman called “The Work of Christmas,” let me share it with you:
When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among brothers,
To make music in the heart.
And so our Christmas work begins, too. Amen.
Rev. Susan E. Gilbert Zencka
Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church
Texts: Isaiah 43:1-7; Luke 3:15-22
Perhaps you’ve heard the old story about the minister who had a problem with squirrels in the church. And so she consulted with her colleagues, and tried all their suggestions: she set traps, called in animal control, took her dog to church with her for a while, and still the squirrels stayed in church. Finally, at a clergy lunch, someone asked her about the squirrels, and she was glad to report that they were gone. “How did you do it?” her colleagues asked. “Oh it was simple,” she replied. “We just baptized them, confirmed them, and we haven’t seen them since.”
Baptism is about beginnings – in the early church, the baptismal font was near the entrance of the church, as a symbolic reminder that baptism is our formal entrance into the life of the church. Of course, baptism isn’t always the actual beginning – someone might be baptized after years of attending church. And when it is the beginning, it is often in infancy, and not remembered as a person begins to consciously build a relationship with the church. Nonetheless, baptism IS a beginning, and an important one. It is important enough, that when young people come to a point of formalizing their membership with the church in which they are raised, it is done through “confirmation” – confirming the promises that were made at their baptism. And as such, it is a new beginning – not, as it is sometimes understood, a graduation or ending. It is the beginning of being part of the church in an adult way – not a decision that you have all the answers – it is really coming to a point of deciding that the church is the right place to come with questions. So baptism, or confirmation, is a beginning….
Today’s Gospel story is really the beginning story of the ministry of Jesus – while not all the Gospels describe the birth of Jesus, and those that do describe it differently, all four Gospels share this story, of the baptism of Jesus. While the Gospel accounts are not identical, they are compatible, and that tells us that this was a very important event in shaping the early church’s understanding of Jesus. And it offers a few things that can help shape our understanding as well.
First of all, it’s a reminder that baptism is both about the individual and about the community – Jesus wasn’t baptized all by himself; there was a crowd of people present. And in our understanding of baptism, it is both about our relationship with God AND our relationship with the community of the church. It is why the Presbyterian Church no longer does private baptisms. Baptism is a reminder that our relationship with God cannot be separated from our relationship with other people. In fact, the very next passage in Luke is a passage explaining the genealogy of Jesus – the people in his family. He is connected to God, and he is connected to other people…and so are we.
Second, it is a reminder that baptism is about who we already are, and about who we are called to become. When Jesus was baptized, the heavens opened, and the voice of God was heard to say, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” God didn’t say, “Someday you WILL be my Son” – but “You ARE my son….” And yet, his baptism was right before his ministry began – and so it was also about who he was becoming. And so too with us – baptism is about who we already are: children of God and part of the community of the church. All of us are already children of God – in the first passage we read today, the one from Isaiah, God says to us all: you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you. God didn’t say: if you do all the right things, I will love you. God said, you are precious in my sight and honored and I love you. Jesus isn’t the only one who is Beloved by God – all of us are. Whether we are boys or girls, students or retired, teachers or doctors, presidents or kings, butchers or bakers or candlestick makers – the most important dimension of who we are is that we are children of God, just as we are, and that shapes all of those other ways that we are who we are.
And baptism is also about who we are becoming – people who grow, develop our gifts, and serve God through our activity in the church. In fact, in our church, and most Protestant churches, there are two sacraments: baptism and communion. Sacraments are understood in a way as sacred moments – times when we understand that God is interacting with us in a special way. Baptism is a sacrament…but ordination isn’t. It is baptism that calls us into ministry – and we are all called into ministry. Ordination simply organizes us – it puts us into order in our ministry – it defines certain kinds of ministry (being elders, or deacons, or ministers), but all of us are called to serve God in the world.
And that brings me to a third point, perhaps the most important one today, and the insight that has come most recently for me. Baptism is about heaven and about earth, spirit and stuff, or matter. In baptism, we not only celebrate our connections to God, and to the people of God, but to the very stuff of the earth – we are baptized with water, and so we remember that our life in God is also our life in the earth. Spiritual life is not separate from earthly life, but is a dimension of our earthly life. Jesus consistently in his ministry pointed us back to earth – the whole of the Bible has much more to say about earth than about heaven. Actually, it says very little about life after death, and what it says is not clear. And when it does talk about heaven, the Bible isn’t talking about a destination for us after life, but a spiritual realm, or it also means skies. For example in this morning’s reading when it says that as Jesus was praying, “…the heaven was opened, and 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." In this context, heaven may describe the skies, or the spiritual realm. But the Bible, in its entirety, is connected to our life on the earth and interwoven with the earth itself. The language of the Bible is all about trees, and water, and wind, and earth. The word for man, adam, is connected to the word for earth, adamah – just as our word human is connected to humus, another word for soil. We have become so accustomed, in recent centuries, to separating ourselves from the elements, and settling into the surroundings that are made by humans, that we don’t always notice how much attention in the Bible is to the earth and the stuff of the earth.
And our two sacraments – baptism and communion – are integrally tied to the earth. You can’t have a baptism without water, and you can’t have communion without grain and fruit. God loves this world that God has made, and God breathes through it. The Spirit of God flows through all the world, connecting us to all that is. We have, as Christians, for too long created a false, non-Biblical separation between us and this world, as if life-in-God were a refuge from the world – on the contrary, God calls us into active engagement with the world, even though loving the world may break our hearts, as God’s heart is often broken. So as we grow in God, we will also grow in compassion – passion with – in suffering with God for the world.
If we can learn in our hearts, at our very core, that God not only binds us to God and to each other, but to the earth – then we may begin to develop a faith that is integrated with the earth in the way that God’s own self is.
And so, after the stories of Christmas comes this story of the baptism of Jesus…to being called the Beloved as he begins his work. And it should lead us, the community of the baptized, both into understanding ourselves as the beloved children of God, and to committing ourselves to the work of God. There is a poem by Howard Thurman called “The Work of Christmas,” let me share it with you:
When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among brothers,
To make music in the heart.
And so our Christmas work begins, too. Amen.