The Sacrament of Belonging; Jesus' Baptism
The Sacrament of Belonging – January 12, 2025
The Baptism of the Lord arrives abruptly each year following the Christmas season. In our liturgical journey we leap forward from the stories about the birth of Jesus, to his appearance in the temple at the age of twelve, and then to his baptism in the River Jordan as a thirty-year-old adult. Significantly, this story is present in all four gospels and marks the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry. Each evangelist tells the story in a particular way. Luke’s version doesn’t show the baptism itself, but points to the heavens opening and Jesus’ identity as the Beloved Son of God being revealed.
Do you know your purpose in life? Do you have a clear idea of why God made you, and what you are supposed to do with your one precious life?
Jesus did. He understood that his primary purpose was to bring us humans into right relationship with God. That was the whole reason he came into the world, not to condemn the world but to save it. To accomplish that, he had to become one of us. Emanuel: God with us.
Luke tells us that the people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might possibly be the Messiah. John answered them all, “I baptize you with water. But one who is more powerful than I will come, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” And with many other words John exhorted the people and proclaimed the good news to them.
When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too. And as he was praying, heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”
The first thing Luke wants us to know is that John the Baptist isn’t Jesus. That may seem like a no-brainer to us, but at the time these events took place, people weren’t so sure. People were thinking that maybe he was the Messiah. But John makes the distinction between what he is doing and what the Messiah will accomplish. Essentially. he is saying “I can get you wet, but the Messiah will do so much more than that.”
John’s emphasis is on action: what the Messiah will do. The One who is coming will breathe Holy Spirit into you and burn away all the chaff.
Jesus is not only immersed in water: he is immersed in the light of God’s presence, and the breath of the Holy Spirit. His baptism is not only for the forgiveness of sins, like all those other people coming to be baptized by John. Jesus is baptized into his mission, the mission the Father has given him: to redeem the world, to be restored to the image of God. And God is pleased with him. “This is my son, whom I love, and with whom I am well pleased.”
This feast invites us to reflect on our own baptism and the call to live as beloved children of God, sharing his love and light. If you were baptised as an older child or adult you may remember your own baptism? I was baptised when I was four days old so I certainly don’t, but I remember the baptism of our son with great joy, and many of you will recall the joy of Ennis’s baptism last year. Baptism is an occasion of great joy because it is above all, the sacrament of belonging: belonging to God and to one another. It is the sacrament that both embraces us and sends us to be God’s love and light in the world. In the Anglican tradition, it is one of the two primary sacraments, the other being the Eucharist.
I don’t think baptism is ever a one and done kind of thing. I see and experience it as an ongoing process. Baptism doesn’t happen only in the church or only at the font. The waters of baptism are everywhere.
Our marriage and relationships, our parenting, our friendships are all baptismal waters. Our work and vocation are baptismal waters. Our passions, dreams, and creativity are waters of baptism. Our concerns and work for justice and human dignity are baptismal waters. Our pain, brokenness, sorrows, and losses are baptismal waters.
We are always going through the waters of baptism, even, and maybe especially, when it’s an experience we don’t want to experience or a circumstance we don’t want to face. Baptism is ultimately the process of separating our life’s wheat from our life’s chaff, growing and becoming more fully and authentically ourselves. It happens through our connection to Jesus whom John describes as “the one who is more powerful.”
So here are my baptismal questions:
- Is your life growing, expanding, and engaging ever-larger things? If so, in what ways, and if not, where are you stuck, fearful, or avoiding life?
- Are you incarnating and living the fullest possibility of who you can become or is there an unlived life waiting and wanting to enter the world through you?
- Are you discovering and trusting yourself to be God’s beloved daughter or son with whom God is well pleased?
- Are you showing up to and taking responsibility for your life or are you living a fugitive’s life on the run?
- Whose voice are you listening to?
- Are you less at odds with yourself today? Or are you still trying to serve, avoid, or fix your past?
- In what ways are you connected to the infinite, something larger and beyond yourself, and in what ways are you disconnected from the infinite?
These questions are really just ways of looking at the wheat and chaff in each of our lives. The winnowing fork is as much a part of baptism as is the font. It’s not as if some people are wheat and others are chaff. No, we all have both in our lives. I have wheat in my life and I have chaff in my life, and I assume you do too.
The separation of wheat and chaff is not a judgment between good and bad. It’s the distinction and discernment between what feeds, nourishes, and grows life and what does not. Wheat is edible and digestible, chaff is not. Wheat nourishes and feeds life, chaff does not.
But here’s the thing; the wheat needs the chaff, until it doesn’t. The chaff is not inherently bad or wrong. It serves a purpose. It’s the outer husk or casing that protects the wheat. Without the chaff the wheat could not survive but at some point, the chaff no longer serves a purpose. Instead, it restricts the wheat and gets in the way.
Haven’t you experienced that in your life? Haven’t there been things – patterns, habits, behaviors, attitudes, that at one time in your life served, protected, or nurtured your life but now they only diminish or constrict your life? They don’t offer you anything. They don’t work like they used to.
What would it be like to entrust your life to the winnowing fork of Jesus? What is the wheat of your life that needs to be gathered? And what is the chaff of your life that needs to burned? When we allow ourselves to become fully immersed in God’s mission to make right what is wrong, to heal what is hurt, to save what is headed for destruction, we can know God’s pleasure just as surely as Jesus did there on the banks of the Jordan river. When we commit ourselves completely to following Jesus, not only in baptism, but in every aspect of living, we can experience the full depth of God’s love for us.
Almighty and loving Father, we want to dive in, but we aren’t sure how deep the water is. We want to submerge ourselves in your life-giving floods, but we are afraid of drowning, Lord. Help us to know the peace that comes with trusting in you. Give us the courage to dive into your promises and help us submit our wills to your will. Remind us that we are your own. Fill us with the life-giving breath of your Holy Spirit. Let your fire burn in our hearts, we pray in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.
It is my great joy now to sprinkle you with water to remind you of your baptism and as I do this, remember that you belong to the family of God and that you are sent into the world to participate in the mission of Jesus. In the words of the writer Brennan Manning: “Define yourself radically as one beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is an illusion”