St. John’s United Church of Christ

January 13, 2008

A Sermon by the Rev. John Krueger

Up From the Water                                         Matthew 3:13-17

The unwelcomed news on Wednesday morning was that the two sump pumps in the basement of the church were not working.  What had been 6 inches of water Tuesday evening was 12 inches of water by Wednesday morning and so a plumber was soon on the way. 

Water is a precious commodity, if it is not in your basement.  Water, so plentiful to most of us that we take it for granted, will likely become scarce in the not too distant future, and the controversy we now have over oil and its importance to our world economies will soon be replaced by the need for usable, safe water.  Now all of that seems a bit of a stretch when you need to call a plumber to get it out of the basement.

Each year, on this Sunday following Epiphany, the suggested Gospel lesson in the lectionary is based on the baptism of Jesus.  John the Baptizer has gained a reputation for being this fiery preacher, talking about repentance and getting right with God.  As a mark of this new intention to follow God’s ways, he baptized people in the waters of the Jordan River.

John must have been a charismatic character for we are told that crowds of people came to be baptized.  Among this crowd is Jesus of Nazareth, the one we know to be God’s Messiah.  Jesus joins the line of people going down into the water, with John doing the honors as he baptizes them.   

He recognizes Jesus, no big surprise since in Luke’s Gospel we find that the two are related.  John at first resists baptizing Jesus, believing that Jesus is not one of those who needs to have sins washed away and a new life begun.  But Jesus insists, is baptized, and then he will enter the wilderness to contemplate the ministry of reconciliation that is before him.

For us, baptism is an official naming ritual, and when it is offered to children it is a time of promises to raise the child as a Christian.  As such, it is a once-in-a-lifetime occasion.  For John the Baptist, it was a ritual of purification and new life, and you can imagine it as something that could be received more than once.

As Matthew tells the story, this is the occasion that signifies the beginning of the public ministry of Jesus.  This is when Jesus receives the divine assurance that his life’s mission has God’s blessings.  Jesus will gather a group of disciples, travel about the country, meeting people where they are and sharing Good News of a good God who loves them.

Only once in my ministry have I been asked to baptize a person by immersion since our usual mode is infant baptism with just a little bit of water.  I felt very awkward and self-conscious, and luckily the young person who requested this baptism survived the ordeal.

I rather like the image of immersion, of being below the water, a place where if you were there too long you would die, being in a place of threat and possible danger, and then coming up from the water to the new life and new hope of one’s baptism.  I like the image of leaving the old behind, having the water drip away as we anticipate the newness of the New Day.  I like the image of awakening to God’s new possibilities that now become opportunities to live as a new person.

For almost two years, before beginning my minister here, I was the Interim Minister at the First United Church of Bloomington.  That congregation, located on the east edge of the IU campus, is the merged congregation of an American Baptist church and a United Church of Christ congregation.  As such, it incorporates an interesting blending of traditions.  From its Baptist roots it retains a weekly altar call, or an alter call of a sort.

In the bulletin each Sunday there was an invitation for anyone who was willing to come forward during the last hymn to meet with the pastor, either to join the church or to make a profession of faith.  Each week we paid attention to see if that would be the time when someone’s heart had been moved, someone’s spirit awakened, and that person would come forward.

It strikes me that in our more traditional and orderly congregations we do not have an opportunity to recognize a new spiritual awakening within one of us.  There is no chance to celebrate someone’s faith journey taking a new and exciting turn.  We don’t expect that someone has had some experience of faith, some encounter with the living God and as a result is ready to come Up From the Water.

Something was stirring in the life of this Jesus that prompted him to decide that was the day, that was the right time to launch his public ministry.  He submitted to the public baptism by John the Baptist and as he came Up From the Water he received the affirmation of God on his calling.

How would we recognize a new turning in our lives, a time when we had decided to embark on a new direction, a new way of living our lives, and we too would come Up From the Water to embrace this new understanding of our lives?  We don’t seem to have a mechanism to do this, liturgically.  We don’t have a way to invite people to think about this, to anticipate its happening.  There is nothing in the bulletin that says we think this could happen or we think this should happen.  There is no suggestion that this may be the very day to open your life to the movement of the Spirit.

Sounds sort of scary, doesn’t it?  What if someone would come forward, come Up From the Water, so to speak, and declare that God is doing something new and wonderful, and, yes, I would like to confirm this in the midst of this faith community?  It sounds a bit chaotic and unprogrammed.  Would we need to drop a few verses from the last hymn to accommodate this new event and still finish the service within the expected 60 minutes?

What I am advocating for here is the possibility, even the expectation, that God is not finished with you yet.  Every day we have on this earth is another opportunity to understand a bit more about God’s ways among us.  Every event of your daily life, even the routine days, can carry the potential to learn something more about yourself, about the neighbor, about God.  If we took this seriously this would alert us to surprises, unexpected happenings, and even a hint of the miraculous.

When we come Up From the Water, the symbolic water of our baptisms, we could rub our eyes to see more clearly, shake our heads to clear our ears to hear more fully, and sense something new is happening around us.  The water from your baptism has dried off long ago but the event can be as fresh as the morning sun.

What did you promise on that day when you were welcomed into God’s family?  What promises were made on your behalf, by parents or godparents or sponsors, that you have affirmed as well?  What brave statements were made, to live as a child of God, to follow the teachings of Jesus, to be a faithful member of the Church of Jesus Christ, to pray for peace and work for justice?

That’s what you signed up for when you were baptized, to come Up From the Water of baptism into the new life in Christ.  That was the time when you promised to be a faithful member of a community of people who are embarked on the same faith adventure, to follow in that long column of Christians, from Paul and Peter and John, to this time and place.  We promised to live life fully, hopefully, and joyfully, thanks be to God.