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January 11, 2009, Memorial UCC
Mark 1: 4-11

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you, O God, who sent your word to live among us. Amen.

I love the images of water that run through the Bible.  They vary in their power and intensity, they carry with them a rainbow of meanings, but they are so essential to the stories that shape our faith.

As we began our service today, we heard the very first Biblical reference to water. Darkness was on the face of the deep, God’s spirit was hovering on the face of the water and God broke through the darkness with light.  God was present and light came into the world.

We know the story of Noah and the raging waters of a flood, of baby Moses being rescued from a basket floating in a river, of water crashing down on Pharaoh’s army, of the shepherd leading us beside still waters to restore our soul.

In today’s story, Jesus wades into the Jordan River. In another story, he will walk on the troubled waters of the Sea of Galilee.  He will turn water into wine. When he dies, water will pour from his side. And as we get to the end of the very last book in the Bible, we read about a vision of the river of life, “bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God,” with the tree of life along the side of the river and the leaves on the tree being for the healing of the nations.

All these stories are not unlike the way water infuses every phase of our existence. 
We lived in the waters of life during those months we grew in our mothers’ wombs. 
We emerged with a gush of water.
We needed fluid to live.
We still need water – lots of it – to survive.
When we fail to care for the waters of this planet, we imperil our lives and the lives of others.

Water can be destructive, as we witness over and over in hurricanes and tsunamis and floods. It can be healing, as we enter a whirlpool to ease the tension in our muscles.  And it can ease our thirst, bring strength back to our voice.

This is all familiar territory, of course.  But those images of water are central to our story today. And they are central to our sacrament of baptism, as we will see once again in a few minutes. 

When Jesus walked into the waters of the Jordan River, when John baptized him, when Jesus walked back up out of that water, those moments helped define who he was. 

This morning when Heather and Lea gather around the font our children have filled with water, when the water splashes across their heads, when they are baptized, these waters will help define who they are, just as for those of us who are Christians, the waters of baptism helped give definition to our lives.

Mark does not begin his Gospel with the story of Jesus’ birth. In Matthew’s Gospel and Luke’s Gospel, the writers tell the story of the birth as a way of describing how God came among us in the form of Jesus.  Mark starts with Jesus as an adult and the first thing that happens is that he goes to John to be baptized.

The real power of the story, the part that really ought to get our attention, is what happens when Jesus comes back up out of the water. He has gone into the water and emerged, as if to get back in touch with the time in the creation story when the spirit of God hovered over the water.  He has gone into the water and emerged as if being born all over again. 

When he comes out, Mark describes the heavens being torn apart. Now that’s a startling image.  The element that separates humanity from divinity is suddenly ripped open, just as Mark describes the curtain of the temple being torn in two as Jesus dies, opening the Holy of Holies to all.

And then there is that dove. It’s the way Mark describes the Spirit of God hovering over the waters once again, proclaiming that Jesus is God’s beloved one. 

Mark has defined who Jesus is – God among us, the one who breaks through the barriers separating humanity from divinity.

How, then, do we define ourselves?
 
Over the centuries, Christians have given a lot of different meanings to baptism, and they all help us understands different dimensions of our relationship to God and to the community around us.

Here, we tend to focus on baptism as the sacrament that gives definition to our lives.
We are welcomed into the Christian community.
We are reassured that we, too are God’s beloved ones.

And so with this vast community around us and with the assurance of God’s love within us – we sometimes call that grace – we have the resources we need to set about changing our lives and in the process, changing the world.

I’m thrilled that we have this opportunity today to baptize a child and an adult into the Christian community and then to welcome Heather and Steve as members into this very specific community of Christ’s followers.  It’s not only a special moment for them, but it’s a moment when we can think back on what baptism means to each of us, about what it means to us to be part of a community.

Baptism was a defining moment for us, but it also was a moment of beginning. We continue to define ourselves each day along the way.

After Jesus was baptized, he defined himself first by going out into the wilderness and facing temptations to focus just on himself instead of on his mission. When he went back to his home town, he entered its synagogue and defined his mission of proclaiming God’s good news.  And then he went about doing just that.

When we were baptized, when we joined this congregation, we also set about living out the God’s good news in the way we care for one another and the world around us.   Let us remember that now as we welcome a new family into our midst.