“Come On In, the Water Is Fine.”

Mark 1:4-11; Acts 19:1-7

January 8^th and 11^th, 2004

St. Paul United Methodist Church

Rev. John A. Fleming

Sitting on one of the shelves that line one of the walls in my study, a few hundred feet from here is a hymnal of mine. There, on the top shelf, almost out of reach, nestled among some outdated commentaries and some books that I rarely reach for, is an old hymnal of mine. It was given to me now almost ten years ago by Susie’s aunt Lucille and Uncle Tom on the occasion of my graduation from seminary at Southern Methodist University. On the front of it, stamped in gold are the letters that make up my name, John Andrew Fleming. I do not use the hymnal anymore. Three years ago I offered it a retirement package and my hymnal was more than happy to take me up on the offer. It’s gold letters are now faded and the hymnal’s spine is broken from the dozens of times that I flipped and folded it in ways that it was not meant to be flipped and folded. Even though I have a newer hymnal to take it’s place, still, I am not about to throw the old one away. You see, there are too many memories inside of it for me to do that. Written in the top right hand corner of the pages where the hymns are, are the dates when we sung particular songs in the places where I have pastored. In the place where the wedding ritual lives, there are names written in pencil, in the margin, of the weddings that I had the chance to be a part of, just past the place where the funeral ritual is. Sometimes I point that out to couples that I am about to marry. The bride usually gives me a strange look and a smirk often appears on the groom’s face. On page forty two, in the middle of the baptismal covenants, is the one that we use when we baptize babies. In this old and retired hymnal of mine, the words of the ritual are smeared because of a little, three year old boy whose name is Blake Johnson. Blake’s baptism was not the first one that I did, but it was among the early ones. His mother was a former Baptist who married a good Methodist and for two or so years, the couple had been talking about whether to baptize Blake as an infant or to let him make the decision when he was older. Blake’s father had more influence and so we scheduled Blake’s baptism, when he was two years old. Just in case you are wondering, Blake had no interest in being baptized. He was all boy, if you know what I mean, and could hardly sit still. You might say that he was a squirmer. It was probably a mistake to reach for Blake and hold him next to my hip for his baptism. But, again, this was one of the early baptisms that I did. I have learned since then. So there he was. I had my arm around him and he was squirming. Just then I reached for the water in the baptismal font. I pulled up a handful of water and placed my hand on his head. He squirmed at the right time. Some of the water ended up on his head, but most of it ended up on this hymnal of mine. There are water spots and smeared words on page forty-two. Every once and a while, I open up the hymnal and I think about Blake.

I did not have my hymnal with me the day that I baptized Noah Sebastian Harris. I did not think that I needed it, so I did not take it to Children’s Hospital the day of his baptism. Noah’s father, Bobby, had been a member of the church that I served before I came here. He married a good Catholic girl and converted to Catholicism, but the rest of his family, his mother, his aunt, his sister and her family were all in my church, so I went to see him. His young life was off to a hard start. Only two chambers of his heart had formed and so he was struggling to live. On this particular day, a dangerous procedure was necessary. The test had to be done, but there was a chance that it could end his life. I was there when the time came for the procedure to happen. Bobby and Sarah wanted Noah to be baptized before the procedure, just in case he did not survive it. The priest had been called, but had not arrived yet and so I stood in. The three of us walked back to the neonatal intensive care unit. We went to where Noah was. A young nurse handed me a bottle of sterilized water and said a few words about Jesus’ baptism. Then I pulled back the plastic cover that was blanketing Noah, put a little bit of that water in my hand, put my hand on him, and said, “I baptize you, Noah, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” I kept my hand on his head for what seemed like forever. He looked up at me, with his big, brown eyes, but there was very little squirming.

There was another baptism that I had the chance to be a part of when I was at that same church. My hymnal was there that day, too, but it was not open. My part in this baptism was to take this child from her mother, hold her in my arms, reach into the water, and place my hands on her head. I did not need the words for this baptism. I knew them by heart. I also knew this child. She had kept me up some nights. She had caused me to get up at strange hours because she was hungry or because her days and nights were mixed up. I had done my equal share of changing her diapers and rocking her to sleep. I am sure, by now, you know who this little girl was. Sweet little Annie Grace, baptized on her mother’s birthday back in 2001. All of the baptisms that I have been a part of are important, but Annie Grace’s means the most to me. It is not everyday that a father baptizes his own child.

Today is the Baptism of the Lord Sunday. This Sunday comes around on the second Sunday of every year and the lessons suggested for it all point to the baptism of Jesus. All four gospel writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, tell of this baptism, though they do it in differing ways. Matthew has cousin John protesting about the baptism, saying that the roles should be reversed. Most likely he was speaking for the people who wondered why Jesus would need to be baptized at all. Luke’s version of the baptism does not tell us where it happened, though we assume that it was in the Jordan. Luke does not tell us who did the baptism. I learned this, this week. By the time the baptism happens in Luke’s version, John is in prison. Luke, you see, focuses less on the baptism and more on what happens immediately after it. Luke has Jesus praying when the Spirit came upon him and God’s voice boomed, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

This year I want us to use Mark’s version. Like Luke, I saw something in Mark that I have not seen before. Mark tells us that all of the people in the Judean countryside and from Jerusalem went out to the wilderness, to where John was. They went out to the chilly waters of the Jordan and were baptized. There, standing in line with everyone else, is Jesus. All of the gathered people were there to hear this dynamic preacher and to be baptized. They came to the water because of the things that they had done, the mistakes that they had made. They wanted John to bury their old lives and their old sins and their old ways under the water and then to raise them back up again new and clean. He raised them up to a better life, a more dedicated life, a new life. It must have been a neat ceremony. The symbolism is wonderful. A lot of times, when you see baptisms like this, those who are baptized either wear a white robe to the service or are given one to wear right after the ceremony as a way of saying that this is an old life taken off or a new life being put on. And there, standing in line with everyone else, is the one who is without sin, with no real need for a new life, Jesus the Christ. He is baptized anyway. Mark does not have the objection that Matthew has. Mark simply has Jesus coming. John baptizes him by pushing Jesus back into the waters of the Jordan and then pulling him back up again. Then it happened. So far we have witnessed the first part of his baptism. Do not miss the second part of it. Mark tells us that the heavens were opened, literally, ripped apart, torn apart, and shattered. Mark says that something like a dove, because you really cannot describe it, came down and surrounded Jesus. While the heavens were open, the booming voice of God says, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Mark and Luke have the words, “You are my Son...” as if Jesus was the only one who heard the words. Matthew lets everyone else in on it when he says, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with whom I am well pleased.” The booming voice of acceptance, yes. The baptism with water, of course, but the baptism of the Holy Spirit, too. That part of it makes the baptism complete.

Fast forward a few pages in the Bible and you can read about what happened in Ephesus during one of Paul’s visits there. Paul arrived in the city and came across twelve disciples. He asked them, “When you became believers, did you receive the Holy Spirit?” He must have slapped his forehead in disgust when he heard what they had to say. They said, “No, we didn’t even know that there is a Holy Spirit.” So Paul countered, “Then into what were you baptized?” They answered, “Into John’s baptism.” It is not recorded, but Paul must have said, “That’s a problem. John baptized only for the repentance of sins.” What is recorded is that Paul laid his hands on these twelve and baptized them. And, well, he must have given them a double dose of the Spirit, because the book of Acts tells us that the twelve went away prophesying and speaking in tongues.

Sometimes I think that we are like those twelve in Ephesus. Sometimes we say, “I did not even know that there is a Holy Spirit. The Spirit seems strange to us, but from the very beginning these two baptisms have gone hand in hand. Being baptized means that there is a covenant, an agreement, between us and God. The agreement says that no matter what we do or who we become, we can return to God. That is the first half of the promise. The second half is the giving of the Spirit and the promise that we will never be alone. Could it be that we believe that we live just with John’s baptism today and the need for repentance? Do we think that baptism or remembering our baptism helps us with the things that we have done and the mistakes that we have made? I hear that a lot.

I can still remember the afternoon that a young mother called me. She was a single mom trying to raise her two unruly boys. She called to warn me. She said this, “Preacher, my boys are driving me crazy. They’re tearing up the house. I am at my wit’s end. I just warned them that if they don’t shape up, that I am going to send them down there to the church to talk to you.” I said, “What am I supposed to do with them?” She said, “I want you to put the fear of God in them!” She believed that one of my jobs, one of the church’s jobs is to scare people into acting right. Later that same week, a member of a Sunday School class came up to me and said, “John, your sermons are good and are full of grace. Our class love them.” I knew something was coming. He said, “Some Sunday could you tell us how bad we are? You know, preach a hell, fire, and damnation sermon?” I never did that. It is hard for me to do that.

One of the hardest things that the church has to do is to convince people that they are not as bad as they think that they are. Sometimes it is hard to convince people that the Christian faith is good news and not bad news. For me faith is more about grace than it is about judgment. Faith is not so much about what we must do in order to be acceptable to God as it is about what God has already done for us. That is why we baptize babies; we do it because we believe that even before the child is born, God is doing something wonderful for him. But sometimes it is hard to convince people that what God wants more than anything else is for us to have abundant lives. The covenant promise is always there. God says, “I will be with you. I will take care of you. I will never leave you.” That is what baptism is all about!

Let me tell you what I think. I think that we know about the baptism of forgiveness. I think that we forget about the baptism of the Spirit, giving us the courage and the chance to do great things for God. I think that we forget about the promise that God will be with us always, no matter what. I may have shared this with you before, if I have, please forgive me. In one of the episodes of the West Wing, Leo tells another cast member this story. He told that a man was walking along one day and fell into a hole. The man was not able to get out of the hole; it was too deep. He was stuck there. A banker happened upon that road and threw a dollar bill down into the hole and said, “I hope this helps.” A few minutes later a preacher came by and saw the man down in the hole and threw a prayer down in the hole and said, “I hope this helps.” Finally, the man’s friend came by, saw his friend in the hole, and jumped to be near him. His friend asked, “Are you crazy? Why did you jump down here? We cannot get out of this hole. Why didn’t you throw down a bill or a prayer like the other two. Listen to what he said, “Because I have been in this hole before. I know the way out.”

If you’ve been baptized, refresh yourselves and remind yourselves of it this morning by coming and taking a small, blue, stone. Let the sign of the cross be put on your forehead, if you desire. Know that you are forgiven. But do not forget about the other baptism, the one that give you an abundant life. Let us pray.