Sermon for the Baptism of Our Lord Jesus Christ

Solemn Mass, January 10, 2010

by the Reverend Stephen Gerth

Year C: Isaiah 42:1-9; Psalm 89:20-29; Acts 10:34-38;Luke 3:15-16, 21-22

When I was a young child we attended Trinity Baptist Church in Norfolk, Virginia, the congregation in which my mother had been a member all of her life. The interior of that church was arranged like most protestant American churches since the late nineteenth century. At the front of the chancel, in the center, was a pulpit. Behind it were chairs for the ministers. Behind and above them were the choir pews. And, typical for a Baptist church, above the choir, was an immersion font for baptism. Unless someone was actually in it, because of the sight lines, one would not know it was there. Above it was the only religious art in the church, a stained glass window showing the baptism of Jesus by John.

That stained glass window still probably shapes what comes to mind when I think about Baptism. And it probably had something to do with how I experienced baptism at age 10. I believed in Jesus. Along with some other ten year-olds and some teenagers, I said so in front of the whole congregation. A few weeks later, baptism was celebrated on a Sunday night. I can still remember going under the warm water three times. I remember I felt I was new. I was baptized. The next time there was communion, I received with everyone else. Pretty standard Christian stuff as it turns out.

I remember being surprised when I got to seminary and learned that baptism was not so simple. The question of Jesus’ baptism is one of the first great conundrums for Matthew, Luke and John – but not Mark: Why was Jesus baptized? Mark describes it in a very straightforward way. No dialogue; Jesus is just baptized.[1] Matthew describes it in more detail as Mark, and includes a dialogue of apology between John and Jesus.[2] Luke remarks simply that Jesus was baptized, and in that sentence implies, but does not mention John the Baptist.[3]

In John’s gospel, there is no mention of Jesus being baptized at all. He is the one, John says, who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.[4] In one passage Jesus is baptizing.[5]  In another, Jesus is baptizing and making more disciples than John; in another, an early editor of the text makes clear that Jesus himself was not doing the baptizing, only Jesus’ own disciples.[6] Why all the confusion?

It’s really important to remember that the gospels are not biography but living theology. Perhaps this is one way to describe the mistake human beings made over and over again when they first encountered Jesus. Is not this the carpenter’s son? Are not his brothers and sisters here with us?[7]

Jesus was not just man, but the God-Man who enters history and changes all. It took time for the emerging Christian community to understand what God was doing among them and for them.

Jesus didn’t leave behind a Prayer Book. He left the Holy Spirit. And the Spirit has driven men and women to water, to bread, to wine, to faith in the risen life of the Crucified.

Many of you know that Wednesday night just after the sermon began, Leroy Sharer who was serving at the altar, suffered a cardiac arrest. He is doing very well and we expect he will be home in a couple of days. We can’t know why, and I’m not sure there is an explanation, for the combination of events and the presence of certain people in the congregation and the response of Emergency Medical personnel that meant that Leroy would not die, but live.

Only a few of us could be genuinely helpful. Most of us sat, knelt, waited. I stood around trying not to let all of my emotions show.

Leroy was breathing and clearly stabilized by the time he left the church. We continued with Mass, with the Nicene Creed. And had the outcome been different, I can’t say for sure, but I think we would have done the same thing. I did not go back to the pulpit. The sermon was already preached by our waiting and our trusting in the provenance of the Lord.

For the record, the sermon that I had written and was preaching is online. But no written sermon fulfills its purpose apart from the Eucharist. I do believe the purpose of a sermon is to say something about how the gospel is lived out. Wednesday this congregation was a living sermon, living theology.

Today we gather to baptize Shan Agish. In ways we and he cannot understand, the Holy Spirit has brought him, driven him, to faith in Jesus Christ. The water, the oil, bread, the wine, the light, the garment may begin to find their meaning for him, for us and for all people, in words. But it is only in our real lives that they live.

Today we proclaim and renew our faith that God is our Father, we are his children, and that even death cannot separate us from his living, eternal love.

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.