Beginnings (sermon on Baptism of the Lord Sunday, January 9, 2011)

Matthew 3:13-17

The first Sunday Kyle didn’t show up to church no one thought much about it. After a year of participating in classes, retreats, and mission work with the confirmation class, Kyle had been baptized and confirmed the week before. But then another week went by and Kyle and his family weren’t in church...then another week...then another. Worried that something was wrong, the pastor finally called Kyle’s house and spoke to his mother. “I just wanted to make sure everything was okay,” he said to her. “We’ve really missed having Kyle at church.”

His mother sounded genuinely surprised when she responded, “Oh, well, I guess I thought Kyle was all done. I mean, he was baptized and confirmed and everything. Doesn’t that mean he’s done?”

That’s when the pastor realized that somewhere along the way the confirmation teachers and mentors, the pastors, and the membership of the church itself had somehow failed to communicate a fundamental truth about baptism and confirmation: it’s not an end, it’s a beginning. (1)

If there is any lingering question in our minds whether that is really so, we need to look no further than Matthew’s account of Jesus’ baptism. So far, all that’s happened in Matthew’s gospel is that Jesus is born, visited by the magi, flees to Egypt, then returns to Nazareth. At this point, Matthew focuses his story on John the Baptist, who appears in the desert preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sin and predicting that one more powerful than he is coming.

And sure enough, Jesus does come, but he doesn’t exactly live up to John’s fiery predictions. Instead, he gets in line with all the sinners waiting to be baptized by John in the river Jordan. And when it’s his turn, he steps up to John for his dunking. “No way,” John says. “No. Way. I can’t baptize you -- I need you to baptize me.” But Jesus insists: this is the way it is supposed to happen. This is part of what it means for God to become human. Jesus needs to be baptized so that his ministry and mission can begin.

The original Toy Story movie is the story of the toys belonging to a boy named Andy. The opening of the movie clearly establishes that one toy, a floppy cowboy named Woody, is Andy’s favorite, most-beloved toy. But then, for his birthday, Andy receives a spaceman named Buzz Lightyear. Buzz is a toy with all the latest bells and whistles. Where Andy has a pull string on his back that causes him to say one of a few cowboy phrases in a staticy voice, Buzz has a digital voice box activated at the touch of a button. Where Andy has an empty holster where his toy gun used to be before it was lost, Buzz has a pulsating red “laser” on his arm. While Woody could only pretend to ride a toy horse, Buzz has wings that sprout out of his back, allowing him to “fly” around the room.

Woody, is of course, insanely jealous of Buzz, especially when the rest of Andy’s toys are in awe of him. Buzz quickly becomes the most popular toy in the room, not just among the other toys, but for Andy too, who replaces his cowboy-themed sheets and pajamas with Buzz Lightyear ones, and begins sleeping with Buzz in his bed while Woody is relegated to the toy box.

Then something happens that reveals to Woody just how far things have gone: Andy writes his name on the bottom of Buzz’s foot with permanent marker. Woody’s foot has the very same mark and Woody knows exactly what this means: Andy is claiming Buzz as his own, marking him, giving him a new identity. He’s not just one of a million other Buzz Lightyears; he is now Andy’s Buzz Lightyear.

In baptism, God writes God’s name on our hearts in the permanent marker of the Holy Spirit. But notice what happens in Jesus’ baptism. The heavens open, the dove comes down, and God speaks: “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” The problem is, we tend to read back into this event all that we know about the rest of Jesus’ journey -- his ministry and teachings, miracles and healings, the Last Supper and his betrayal, the cross and the empty tomb. But remember what has happened to Jesus so far in this story: he was born, he went to Egypt, he returned to Nazareth, he came to John to be baptized. That’s it. That’s all Jesus has done in his life. And yet listen to what God says: “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” God claims Jesus, God favors Jesus, God pours out his love on Jesus, not because he has proven himself more special than all the other sinners waiting in line, but before Jesus has done anything to earn or deserve God’s love and favor. Baptism marks the beginning of Jesus’ ministry and mission, not the end.

And so it is with us. God doesn’t write God’s name on our hearts in baptism because God looks at all the other toys in the toy box and decides we are the best; God does it because from the very beginning, we are God’s, beloved before we are even capable of earning or deserving God’s love. Baptism is not the result of something we have done; it is the beginning of a new phase in our journey with God. On this journey our circumstances will change, even our relationship with God and our understanding of what it means to follow Jesus will change. What stays the same is the truth we proclaim in baptism: we are God’s beloved.

For the next two Sundays we will have the distinct privilege of celebrating the sacrament of baptism, of setting two people on the path of discipleship where they are guided and claimed and loved by God. Next week we will have an infant baptism for Kellan and the week after we will have an adult baptism for Scott. These two celebrations will certainly have similarities -- both will involve water and vows -- but they will also have distinct differences.

Obviously, as a baby, Kellan will not be able to take vows for himself. Theologically speaking, we Presbyterians have no problem with this. The whole reason we baptize infants is not to extend to them some magical protection, but because we believe that God loves us and claims us before we have done anything to deserve it -- in fact before we are even capable of comprehending what God, the church, or baptism even is. In infant baptism, the parents take vows on behalf of the child, which means the parents take on a whole new responsibility -- they are no longer just responsible for making sure he eats, sleeps, dresses warmly, and learns his ABC’s; they now pledge to bring him up with the awareness that he is first and foremost God’s beloved child, even before he is theirs. Baptism marks the beginning of Kellan’s journey of faith and it is a beginning for which his parents take responsibility.

In Scott’s baptism, things are a little different. When an adult is baptized we refer to it as a “believer’s baptism,” since, unlike an infant, an adult chooses baptism as a public proclamation that Jesus Christ is his Lord and Savior and that he knows himself to be, first and foremost, God’s beloved child. We believe that God has been intimately involved in Scott’s life for years, but baptism still marks a turning point and a new beginning. What Kellan and Scott’s baptisms have in common is that they both set the baptized on a new beginning in the lifelong journey of faith.

The movie “Tender Mercies” tells the story of Mac Sledge, a one-time country-western singing star whose life dissolves into a fog of alcohol and shiftlessness. Divorced from his wife and estranged from his only daughter, Mac staggers through life until one night he collapses onto the porch of a small, lonely motel out in the middle of nowhere on the Texas prairie. The motel is run by Rosa Lee, a young widow who is raising her boy, Sonny, and trying to make ends meet. Even though Mac is a shipwreck of a human being, grizzled, drunk, and despairing, Rosa Lee takes him in, sets him to work for her, and through this, transformation comes to Mac’s life. He kicks his drinking habit, becomes a kind of father figure to young Sonny, ends up marrying Rosa Lee, and begins to attend the Baptist church in which Rosa Lee is a member of the choir.

In one scene, both Mac and Sonny are baptized one Sunday morning. After the pastor dunks him into the waters of baptism, Mac stands back up, blinking and drenched, water dripping down off his balding head and glistening on his grizzled beard. It’s a portrait of grace. But after the service, Sonny and Mac are sitting outside the motel and Sonny says, “Well, we done it. We got baptized.” “Yup, we sure did,” Mac replies. “You feel any different?” the boy asks. Mac laughs and says, “I can’t say I do, not really.” (2)

Baptism doesn’t suddenly turn us into holy people. As Tom Long puts it, “baptism is a call to set out on a moral adventure in the name of Christ, but all Christians travel this path of discipleship hobbling and stumbling.” (3) If we were baptized as infants, we probably don’t even remember it. But even for Kyle, the teenager who was baptized on the day of his confirmation, it is sometimes an event that feels more like an ending, a culmination of a special year in his faith journey rather than the sign that a new phase of this journey has begun. His life may not look or feel much different, but we know the truth: everything has changed. Kyle’s identity, his life, is no longer defined by being a son or brother or friend or football player; what matters most now is that he is God’s beloved, and nothing he has done or will do can change that. No matter how much Kyle might hobble and stumble on this new path, nothing can change the fundamental truth of his existence: he is God’s beloved. With him, God is well pleased.

What is true for Jesus, and for Kyle, and for Kellan and for Scott is also true for you. God is well pleased with you.

Not because you are good, or smart, or beautiful, which you very well may be. No, God loves you because you belong to God, who made you and claimed you, who has written God’s name on your heart, in indelible ink.

God is well pleased with you, right now, at this very moment.

These are the first words that Jesus hears from God before he beings his ministry, and surely this is no accident. If Jesus thought he had to earn God’s love, he would have found it impossible be intimate with God on his journey, and the same is true for us. The only way that we -- mortal, frail, and broken as we are -- can have an intimate relationship with the divine is if God first claims us, as we are, whether we are helpless infants, or full-fledged adults with whole lists of regrets and mistakes.

Over the next two weeks we have the wonderful opportunity to witness two of God’s beloved children embark on a new beginning, a new journey of faith. As we watch and take our vows to support them as fellow saints on the journey, may we also remember that no matter when or where or by whom we were baptized, we too have been claimed by God, named as God’s beloved, placed on this path. Sometimes we have strayed but just as we did nothing to earn the gift of baptism, there is nothing we -- or anyone else -- can do that can take that gift away. Amen.

Endnotes:
1. from Rodger Nishioka’s commentary in Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol. 1, WJK Press, 2010, pp. 236-240.
2. Thanks to Scott Hoezee for this illustration idea on the Center for Excellence in Preaching website, online here.