A gentle little river baptism

Last semester, one of students asked if she could be baptized. And not just baptized, but baptized at The Rappahannock River. So we worked it out with Joe over at St. George's, she asked three of our House Moms to be her Godmothers, and we announced it in our campus ministry group chat. And suddenly, here there were, 25 people on the bank of the river in the first week of November for this baptism.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqmsCjU2JLA

And there was this moment-- if we had a big projector screen I'd show it to you-- but there was this moment right before the baptism where the 22 people who were not being baptized or doing the baptizing were standing on the bank of the river, looking down at this student, just all absolutely beaming with real love and affection and pride in their eyes, and in that moment I thought my heart would just burst. I think some hearts did burst, lots of tears all around, it was genuinely truly a beautiful moment.

It matters quite a lot I think that in Jesus' first public appearance as an adult, he arranges for himself a gentle little river baptism, too. This is not a moment where he wrests authority from John the Baptist, this is not a transition of power, he doesn't show up in a display of might, God doesn't part the skies with a threat: Take care of my guy or else, but the heavens opened and God peers down the riverbank, beaming quite a lot, and says "Man I love this guy, and I bet that you all will too."

Having read this passage over and over in order to preach it, you know, and having just celebrated Christmas, I just keep thinking about how this all-powerful all-knowing immortal God, who when faced with a broken world full of people who would not follow law or kings or prophets, who had every possible option at His disposal, chose to become a little baby, made himself subject to the whims and moods of this broken world, and came to model a new kind of behavior rather than to coerce one. God had every option at God's disposal and what God chose was incarnation,,, and baptism.

It is one of the tropes of the Gospel that at any point, if we think we know how the world works, Jesus comes in and says, actually, it's the opposite now. All of our imaginations about how power works, how violence works, how wealth works, how domination works, and how these things shape and govern our world and our lives together, in most occasions, Jesus surveys it all and says "not like that, not anymore,"

Where there could be displays of power, Jesus tends to choose powerlessness. Where there are displays of wealth, Jesus asks instead sacrifice and divestment, where there is the option for violence, Jesus quickly and uncomplicatedly condemns it. Whenever we think we know the way that world works, or how inevitably certains really must go down, Jesus comes in and says "I'm not playing by these rules anymore." It's representative of the shock that John feels in this moment where Jesus asks to be baptized by him too, as if to say "yeah I know I've got more authority than you, sure, but baptize me anyways"

It is the first signal -- this no you baptize me too -- of the reversals Jesus will offer through his whole ministry. Think about what else gets said in the Gospels and later:

the meek will inherit the earth

the last shall be first, and the first last

my power is made perfect in weakness.

turn the other cheek

do not forgive your brother or sister their sin seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.

if you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor

it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God

truly I say to you that this poor widow has put in more than all; for all these out of their abundance have put in offerings for God, but she out of her poverty put in all the livelihood that she had.

We see it again and again.

Jesus was quick to challenge the authority of religious leaders and quick to defend the faith of tax collectors and prostitutes. He denies the devils temptations to power and doesn't really even choose self-defense before Pilate or Herod. At every point where power or wealth or violence could move things forward for, Jesus chooses pretty much the opposite move, and how wild is that to hear and to grapple with in a world that is still so bound by the practices of violence, wealth, and power and that simply cannot imagine a way to function without them.

There was a church I was part of years and years ago that I remember had this kind of big blowout fight in a meeting, and the rector sort of stepped in like "okay everybody take a deep breath, this persons feelings were hurt by what you said, you can't yell in meetings, we need to apologize" and there was a kind of second blowup like "you with your christianity, that's just not the way the real world WORKS!" And everybody that heard that was kind of stunned, like, wow we can't believe they just said that."

It's true, Christianity -- and its repentance and gentleness and forgiveness -- is not the way the world works. But I guess that if you find yourself at church... there is either a small part of you or a large part of you that is naming that the way the "real" "world" "works" is not really working,

We seem still so bound by the ways of the world that Jesus came to condemn, and so much of our discourse feels like

"well if we can do just a little bit more Power, Violence, Wealth, a little more Domination, if we can just beat some of our plowshares back into swords,... then, .... we can clear all of this up." and everyday I turn on the news and I see the wages of that kind of life we continue to choose and see that it is really just not working, and it ties my stomach in knots to see the consequences of our making the same choice again and again.

The reason that I'm a Christian is because I am heartbroken by this world and it feels like one of the only things that can hold my brokenheartedness. I don't want to see anybody bombed, I don't want to see anybody shot, I don't want to see anybody starve and be starved, and I do not think that any amount of doing that can repair what is broken in our world. I'm a Christian because as ingrained as the ways of the world seem and feel, I read in these Gospels two thousand years of Jesus saying "we've been doing this all wrong haven't we, there must be another way. Don't you think there is another way?" Amen.