We're In Deep
This week’s sacred story comes from Luke 3:1-22 where John the Baptist takes a break from speaking up against tyrants who abuse their power to preach about the interwoven nature of baptism and repentance (as transformative/restorative action…not shame), Jesus is baptized with the masses, and it all culminates in a declaration of belovedness. Read the full text here.
“Baptism of Christ” by Greta Lasko
I admit that I am not entirely sure what to say to you all today. Weeks like this one when I have to prepare to say something about good news, I don’t even know where to start. In Lutheran ordinations we are commissioned to avoid offering illusory hope, shallow spiritual platitudes. I know my soul would not be satisfied with such simple or tidy tidings, so I will not disrespect you by feeding you sawdust words and trying to pass them off as enough.
I have no spin, I have only a story. It’s a story that holds so much truth, that it has endured across time and place for generations. This story has seen empires rise and fall and rise and fall and rise and fall…and still continues. It is a sacred story.
Today it is the story of someone living in the wilderness, because even the Herods and Pilates, kings and governors, of the world have a harder time controlling you there. The story of someone who spoke up when even the highest rulers abused their power and acted like the rules didn’t apply to them, especially toward women, like with Herodias. The story of someone who didn’t mince words, naming the truth of a brood of vipers when we saw one, even if they had just followed the crowd and especially if they had come in the name of religious righteousness.
Certainly all this can be twisted in convenient service to condemn those we find personally distasteful. Such a story could fuel a haughty heart and also dishearten branches that feel fruitless.
But this is also a story of someone pointing beyond themselves. John proclaims that the transformative work happening in him and through him and with the people is not because he’s so smart or noble or nice or even that he is particularly special, but because that’s just what this stuff means. This is what the Messiah, the Savior, brings. This is how salvation is seen. This is what the water immerses us in.
In baptism, the surface of the water is broken. The boundary of above and below is held open. Whether a sprinkle or a dunk, the smooth stillness is disrupted. As the holy current whips around, it serves to loosen the caked-on dust that stiffens our body and soul. The hardened crust that has gathered in our pores is softened and ultimately released.
John calls this repentance – naming the dirt, recognizing how it got on us, how rolling in the mud probably won’t help, and realizing that the water will mean rejecting this shroud.
Before saying anything of what the baptized believe, the Lutheran liturgy of baptism first asks what will be rejected. This comes in the form of questions and response given voice in public community.
Do you renounce the devil and all the forces that defy God? I renounce them.
Do you renounce the powers of this world that rebel against God? I renounce them.
Do you renounce the ways of sin that draw you from God? I renounce them.
We cannot cling to the dirt and the water at the same time. The steady stream both bids and enables us to let go of its attachment and to turn toward a world refreshed.
If we are to be people who walk in this holy water, let us name and reject the evil of individualism, the perversion of power that is nationalism, and the insidious sin of white supremacy. For these things directly contradict the blessedness of God and the image of God in our neighbors and in ourselves. Likewise, let us name and renounce the evil of convenient condemnation, the poison of isolation, and the sin of smug satisfaction. These false Gods perversely promise goodness, security, and blessedness but none can endure as the waters rise. We cannot defend or cling to them AND the promises of all-encompassing belovedness.
What, then, emerges from the depths?
As the droplets drip from their soaked hair and pools at their feet on the shore, the people look at their water-wrinkled fingertips, which still seem wholly ordinary and wonder….
Did it work? Can you see it on our skin? Am I surrounded by a divine force field?
Do we have crime-fighting super-powers now?
Well, no. But also, kinda, yes.
They ask John, what should we do? What does this mean? What happens now?
He doesn’t say join a Bible study or go to temple more often (not that those things hurt, obviously) but that’s not the fruit of repentance in baptism. He compels them to live a daily reality that reflects God’s belovedness through integrity, justice, and generosity.
Baptism is not closure, it’s an opening. This is not a moment, it’s the movement.
They describe the faithful distribution of possessions, the rejection of corruption, and a legal system that refuses to use violence for its own preservation. For Justo González, John’s call to obedience is about more than individual purity; it has to do “with justice and the well ordering of society.” But John reminds us that this way of life is expressed in the intentional actions within the life that is already right in front of you. Consistent through the Gospel of Luke, the halls of power are not where the real action takes place. The spiritual action happens in livestock pens, dusty towns, watering holes, and wilderness, and prison.
What should we do? What happens now? When presidents lie, incite destruction and violence, and attempt coups that threaten civil war? What should the baptized do when math assignments still need to be turned in and we still have to show up for our shift? When the car battery dies or the bill is overdue, and the office e-mail chain still goes round? When people are still getting sick but also getting vaccinated? What do we reach for with these water-wrinkled hands?
Jesus sits among this community of soggy hopefuls. Their baptism isn’t separate, but a part of the many. And once again, the world is disrupted as the threshold between above and below is held open. What emerges is like coming up for air. Holiness comes into bodily form, enfleshed in the regular rhythm of breathing in an out. A voice bigger and wider than ourselves, louder than any mob, more resolute than any desk, and more enduring than any denomination broadcasts this blessing: “You are my child, my Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Before healing or miracles or learning, there is a deep well of belovedness.
May divine belovedness flood your heart and find you swimming in community.
May its rushing release you from stuck places and move you with power and grace.
May this deep transformative love quench your being and quell your fear.
May it rain down to refresh and nourish your roots so that you may bear good fruit where you are planted.
Amen.