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“Getting Wet”

Sermon by Dr. Greg Knox Jones
on Matthew 3:13-17
given January 13, 2008

A friend was driving down Pennsylvania Avenue when the car in the next lane suddenly swerved in front of him nearly hitting the front of his car. If he hadn’t jammed on the brakes and jerked his steering wheel, they would have collided. The close call ignited his temper, so he sat on his horn and flashed his headlights repeatedly. He wasn’t convinced that the other driver even realized what had happened, so he stepped on the gas and flew up beside the car at the next stop light. Hitting the button to lower his car window, he started to yell, “You idiot!” But before he could get the window all the way down, the woman who was driving the other car was saying, “I’m so sorry!” And it was about that time, he realized he sits in the pew behind her at church. Was he ever embarrassed!

All of us have found ourselves in awkward situations where there is no graceful exit.

In my sophomore year in college, we were playing the University of Colorado. It was the first conference football game of the season and I was feeling full of myself. My head was swelling with the thought that I was only a sophomore, but here I was traveling with the varsity football team and playing in front of over 50,000 fans. I was on the kickoff team and as the game opened, we kicked off to them. Cliff Branch, the top returner in the nation fielded the kick, but before reeling off too many yards, we tackled him. I came jogging off the field toward the sidelines with my head in the clouds thinking I was really something. And when I was about ten yards from the sidelines, with no one anywhere near me, I suddenly tripped and fell flat on my face. Have you ever seen anyone try to crawl underneath Astro turf?

Perhaps you have been in that classic awkward situation where you have congratulated someone on being pregnant, and she managed a limp smile and said those dreaded words: “I’m not.”

We can’t make it through life without an occasional uneasy moment, but some are surprised to discover there are places in Scripture where we encounter awkward situations. Today is one of them. John the Baptist is preaching a baptism of repentance in which he is calling on people to turn their lives around. And the people in the nearby villages are stomping out to the Jordan River in droves to have John cleanse them of their sins. John can barely believe the overwhelming response. He’s baptizing one after another, and the line of people seems endless. He dunks one under, brings him up, and then moves to the next. Plunges the next one under, brings her up and then moves to the next. About the time he has a nice rhythm going, grabbing one after another, he suddenly freezes. Standing face-to-face with him, is Jesus.

“I-I-I need to be baptized by you,” John finally stammers out. “You-you-you don’t need to be baptized.”

Jesus makes some vague response whose meaning is not clear, but assures John that he needs to proceed. Jesus is baptized and when he comes up from the water, the heavens are opened and he sees God’s Spirit descend on him. A voice says, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

Not only was this an awkward encounter for John the Baptist, but it was embarrassing for the early church, and it has been troublesome for theologians ever since. If Jesus was without sin, why on earth would he need to be baptized?

We sense the unease in the early church when we compare the different gospels.

According to Mark, the earliest gospel, John the Baptist appears to have no compunction about baptizing Jesus. Jesus makes the request, John complies and that’s that. Nothing is said about it being a ticklish situation.

However, when we turn to the Gospel of Matthew, written a decade or two later than Mark, the hesitation of John the Baptist shows up in the story. John acknowledges that baptizing Jesus seems inappropriate.

Then, if we turn to the Gospel of John, written even later, the gospel writer is so uncomfortable with the notion that Jesus would be baptized, that he glosses over the event and never states that Jesus was actually down in the water with John, and shifts the focus to God’s Spirit descending on him.

The record seems to indicate, that as time goes on, and the early church begins to cement its ideas about Jesus, the church grows more and more uncomfortable with the notion that Jesus needed to be baptized.

I’m sure you realize that if Jesus would have had an entourage of public relations people like some of today’s presidential hopefuls, this embarrassing situation never would have occurred. There is no way they would have allowed Jesus to step down into the water with all those sinners. His handlers would have insisted that he perch himself on the highest point on the bank and then given him a bullhorn so that he could shout words of encouragement to those wading into the river. After letting him say a few inspiring words, they would have repositioned Jesus in an ideal location on the shore where he could stretch out his hand to assist people as they stepped back up on land.1

However, Jesus did not seem to worry about the impression it would make if he was shoulder-to-shoulder with sinners. The self-righteous religious leaders of his time thought it was a scandal that he would dine with tax collectors and prostitutes, but Jesus said his mission was to the lost and those who had gotten off course, to the people with confused priorities and those who had become callous toward people in need. And, as it turns out, it includes all of us.

Writer Garry Wills tells of the time when his young son awoke in the middle of the night crying. The little boy had experienced a frightening dream. As Wills was comforting him, he asked about his nightmare. The little boy said that a nun at his school had told the children that they would end up in hell if they sinned. Choking back tears, the little boy asked his father:

“Am I going to hell?” Wills writes, “There is not an ounce of heroism in my nature, but I instantly announced what any parent would: ‘All I can say, son, is that if you’re going there, I’m going with you.’”

That’s why Jesus did not hesitate to get wet with all the rest of us. He refused to stand off at a safe distance, regardless of the consequences.

When we are baptized, it is a visual reminder that God is with us no matter who we are or where we are. It is a ritual of the church in which we declare that each one of us is a son or daughter of God and there is nothing that can sever God’s love for us.

Although it was not necessary for Jesus to get wet – that is, to be forgiven for sin – it is essential for us. Baptism is an important visual action that reminds us that God forgives us. As water cleans our bodies, God scrubs us clean of our sin.

Admittedly, sin is not a popular subject these days. Many feel that talk of sin is depressing. They remind us that all of us have enough ongoing struggles without being reminded that we are far from perfect. However, the Christian faith believes that it is for our own good to stare truth head on. And when we take an honest look, we see that all of us have a propensity to sin. Even the best among us do things that are wrong, as well as fail to do things we should do. The water of baptism reminds us that God washes away the sin that is inseparable from the human condition.

However, we should never make the mistake of thinking that the act of baptism is the precise moment when we are forgiven. If that were the case, all of us would need to have a baptismal font at home, one at the office and one in the back seat of the car, because we would be using it constantly. Instead, the act of baptism is a one-time event that serves as a visual reminder that God is a forgiving God who continuously forgives us so that we are constantly being afforded a new opportunity to make a clean start.

Baptism reminds us that in every moment of our existence, we can be open to opportunities to do the right thing. God works with our broken promises and our shattered dreams to create new possibilities for us. Enticing new opportunities are constantly emerging, but it takes eyes of faith to spot them.

One day a woman took her six year-old daughter shopping with her, and when they finished and were ready to leave, it was pouring outside. The mother and daughter found themselves standing with about 20 other shoppers under an awning, just outside the store. Everyone was waiting for the rain to let up so they could walk to their cars.

After standing there for a couple of minutes, the little girl squeezed her mother’s hand and said, “Mom, let’s run through the rain.”
“What?” Mom said, “I don’t think so.”

A few moments later the little girl spoke up again: “Come on, Mom, let’s run through the rain.”

Her mother replied, “No, let’s not. We’d get soaked.”
And the little girl said, “That’s not what you said this morning.”

“This morning?” Mom replied, “When did I say we could run through the rain and not get wet?”

“Don’t you remember?” the little girl said. “When you were talking to Daddy about his cancer, you said, ‘If God can get us through this, God can get us through anything!’”

Everyone in that crowd stopped dead silent; all you could hear was the rain. Mom thought for a moment about how to reply. She could laugh it off or explain that’s not what she meant. But this Mother took a different tact. “Honey, you are absolutely right,” she said, “Let’s run through the rain. If God lets us get wet, well maybe we just needed washing.”

The two of them took off. The other shoppers watched them, smiling and laughing as they darted past the cars and splashing their way through the puddles. When they finally hopped into their car, they were drenched. But then a few of the others who had been waiting for the rain to stop, took off for their cars, screaming and laughing all the way. I guess they needed washing, too. 2
There are times when all of us could use a little washing, so that we can make a clean start and embark on a new adventure with God.

NOTES

1. Barbara Brown Taylor, “The River of Life,” in Home By Another Way (Boston: Cowley Publications, 1999), p.34.
   
2. King Duncan, “A New Beginning,” on sermons.com website.

    

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