“Attending a Baptism”

Matthew 3: 13 – 17

Makemie Presbyterian ChurchJanuary 9, 2011

          Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

        Our text for today invites us to attend a baptism. I do not have to tell this group how important baptism is. In the Gospel of Matthew, from which our text comes, the story begins with baptism,

        John baptizing in the river Jordan, and ends with baptism. The final words of Jesus at the end of Matthew are, “Go into all the world and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. And, lo, I will be with you always to the end of the age.” 

As important as baptism is, I do not have any instructions for you on how you are to behave during one, probably because every significant occasion tends to create its own atmosphere and itself modifies the behavior of people in appropriate ways. If you attend a funeral, say, even though it may be the first funeral you have ever attended, you need no instruction. Beforehand, people are standing around talking about everything under the sun.

“Did you have any pipes that burst this winter?”

“Yeah, yeah. My kitchen floor was all wet and everything.”

 “Did your husband go out fishing?”

“Yeah, yeah, didn’t get anything, never does, but he still thinks he’s the big fisherman.”

“Been awfully wet. Did it kill the rest of your corn? Did you have to replant?”

“Well, I have about two messes in the refrigerator but…”

And then everything stops when the widow comes in – this woman who now has to face life without her husband – and the children, who overnight have to grow up and help their mother without a father. You don’t need instructions on how to behave. The occasion modifies and sweetens your disposition appropriate to the occasion.

The same thing is true at a wedding. Before the wedding begins, people are laughing and talking, exchanging bad jokes and stale talk and this and that. What are they discussing? Shaving cream all over the windshield and tying tin cans to the bumper and all that kind of stuff. But then the bride comes down the aisle and the nervous groom looks up the aisle hoping he will not faint, trying to keep his eye on her, and then they fold themselves together before the minister and the words begin. “Will you in sickness and in health, poverty and wealth, forsaking everybody else keep yourself only unto her as long as you both shall live?” You do not need instructions. The occasion modifies the behavior.

It is the same way with a baptism. I know before a baptism that some of us are kind of silly, laughing and talking and doing this and that. It is nervousness, really, but then when the minister says, “I baptize you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,” anyone who is not hushed into the sacredness of that moment is shallow.

So I have no instructions on how to behave as we attend a baptism. Not for the baptism of Carson Chandler Bulgin II or for the baptism of our scripture lesson this morning where the baptism we attend is that of Jesus of Nazareth. That is a bit surprising; because of all people the one who should be exempt from baptism is Jesus. Why should he not stand high on the bank and watch the others?  (Do you remember my preaching on this subject when Riley Laurence Myers was baptized? On August 5, 2001.) Why should he not let all the others come for baptism, those who need a second chance, those who messed it up, those who have waded out so deep into trouble that going across and going back is all the same? Let the people who have drifted so far from mothers’ prayers and father’s instruction that no body can help them, let them come. Let the people whose lives are just a tangle of bad relationships, who have messed everything up and out of ambition and greed think they are going everywhere when they are actually just circling the parking lot going nowhere, the people who are rich in things and poor in soul, let them come. But Jesus? Why is Jesus here? That is what John says: “Jesus, you should baptize me. I should not be baptizing you.”

And Jesus replies, “Leave it alone, John. It is appropriate to do God’s will. Let’s do it.”

So Jesus presents himself for baptism. He is thirty years old. Why is he coming now? We can speculate. In Israel anyone entering public life did so at age thirty. Maybe that’s reason enough. I do not know. Maybe in the synagogue listening to the rabbi read the scripture while others are dozing off, something strikes him and says, “That’s it – now!” Maybe in the afternoons after work in the carpenter shop, Jesus goes for long walks and communes with God and there is this stirring within him. Maybe he remembers something he saw when he was a teenager south of Nazareth. The Romans came in and gathered up some of the men in town and strung them up on poles just to warn the people that they did not want any trouble, and there is this burning desire for justice and fairness. Maybe that is it. I do not know. Maybe it was his mother’s prayers. Or maybe he still remembers when he was twelve years old in the temple saying, “I have to be in my Father’s house.”

Why now? That’s a good question. I do not have the answer, but it is a good question. It is a good question if somebody sixty years old comes. Why now? It is a good question is someone twelve years old comes, stays after church, wants to say something, awkwardly stands on one foot and then the other, and finally asks, “Uh, can I be baptized?”

“You want to be baptized?”

“I want to be baptized.”

“Have you thought about this very long?”

“Ever since I was little.”

“Well, how old are you now?”

“Twelve.”

“And you’ve been thinking of this since you were little?”

“Yes.”

“Have you talked to your folks about it?”

“Well, I mentioned it to my mother. I don’t talk to Dad much about this sort of thing.”

“Well, what did your mother say?”

“She said to talk to you.”

“Okay, let’s talk about it. Why do you want to be baptized, why now, why you, now?”

“I don’t know.”

And we don’t. We don’t know the stirring of the Spirit of God. John says you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes; you hear the sound of it and you say, “Whew!” The wind. You did not see the wind. There is a tree standing straight and tall and proud, and then you see that tree go over, bending and touching its top to the ground, and you say, “What in the world?” It is the wind. You did not see the wind, but you saw the tree bend. And I saw a person proud and independent and arrogant, bent. What did that? The Spirit of God.

All I know is this: One day Jesus folded his carpenter’s apron, having shaken the shavings from it, put it on the bench, left the shop, and went to the house and told his mother and brothers and sisters goodbye. He made his way through the grain fields of Ezdralon, down through the dark valley of the gap of Jezreel, and presented himself to John for baptism. This was Gods’ will.

On that occasion, we learned a great deal about Jesus. A voice said, “This is my son.” No question about it. This is my son. What does that mean? The line is a quotation from Psalm 2. It was spoken on the occasion of the crowning of the king of Israel, and now it is quoted at Jesus’ baptism. He is now king. What does it mean that he is God’s Son? Does he go around in a chariot with silk cushions and wear a crown and say kingly things and elevate himself above the common folk, saying, “Don’t touch me – I am the Son of God. I am the king and I say kingly things and make pronouncements. Now I am going to the palace and have a nap and a banquet?”

The last part of the quotation – “My son, my beloved, in whom my soul takes pleasure” – do you know what that is? It is a phrase from Isaiah 42. It is a line from the description of the suffering servant of God, the one who gives his life. It means touching, loving, going, doing, caring for people. Here is my Son, the servant. And so it was. Still wet from his baptism, Jesus left the Jordan and went about God’s business. Every crying person, every brokenhearted person, every hungry person, every diseased person, every alienated person, every suffering person was his business. I am the king? I am the Son of God? Oh, no, no, no. What this means is, God’s business is my business. And what is God’s business? To serve the needs of every human being. He is a servant. Did you know that? Well, of course you knew. He actually knelt down and washed people’s feet. The Son of God washed feet.

Luther said, “Remember your baptism.” How can people do that? In Luther’s church, most of the baptisms were of infants. They were brought by their mothers and fathers and they were baptized. So how could they remember their baptisms? Luther knew that when they became twelve and thirteen they would be confirmed in the church and they would claim their baptisms. “Yes,” they would say, “I accept my baptism. I remember my baptism.” So Luther wanted to know, “Do you remember your baptism?” Why did Luther say that? To make you feel guilty? “Aha! You’ve strayed from your baptism.” No, no. Every one of us strays from our baptism, forgets our baptism, denies our baptism. Every one of us. Show we a bird who can say, “I look like my song.” None of us can do that. But what Luther had in mind was this: Remember your baptism by claiming yourself to be a child of God and by going about God’s business – serving other people.

In central Texas in the high country near were Geronimo led his bands of Apaches and terrified the pioneers and settlers is a town named after the German immigrants that settled it, the town of Fredericksburg. There are four churches there: A Lutheran, A Methodist, A Catholic and a Baptist. The Presbyterian Church is way out of town about ten miles. Each church had its share of the population, and on Wednesday nights and Sundays, each church had a small collection of young people. The attendance rose and fell according to the weather and whether it was time to harvest the crops or time to round up the cattle.

The best and most consistence attendance in town, however was at the little café where all the pickup trucks were parked and all the men were inside discussing the weather and the cattle and the wheat and the bugs and the hail and the wind and whether we were going to have a crop, while their wives and sons and daughters were in one of those churches. The churches had good attendance and poor attendance, but that café had consistently good attendance. Better attendance than some of the churches. Men were always there.

Once in a while they would lose a member there at the café because his wife finally got to him, or maybe his kids did. So you would see him go off sheepishly to one of the churches. But the men at the café still felt that they were the biggest and strongest group in town, and so they met on Wednesdays and Sundays and every other day to discuss the weather and such. They were not bad men. Indeed, they were good men, family men, hardworking men. The patron saint of the group at the café was Frank. Frank was seventy-seven years old when I met him. He was a good man, a strong man, pioneer, a rancher, a farmer, and a cattleman. He had been born in a sod house, and he had prospered. He had his credentials, and all the men there at the café considered him their patron saint. “Ha ha,” they said, “Old Frank will never go to church.” 

One day I met Frank on the street, and he knew I was a preacher. It has never been my custom to accost people in the name of Jesus, so I just shook his hand and visited with Frank. Then he took the offensive. He said, “I work hard and I take care of my family and I mind my own business.” He said that as far as he was concerned, everything else is fluff. He was telling me, “Leave me alone; I’m not a prospect.”

So I did not bother Frank. That is why I was surprised, indeed the church where I was a visiting seminary student preacher, was surprised and the whole town was surprised and the men at the café church were absolutely bumfuzzled, when old Frank, presented himself before me one Sunday morning asking for baptism. I had to get Louie Donaldson one of my professors to come out with me to baptism Frank, I wasn’t ordained yet. But some in the community said that Frank must be sick, and said he must be scared to meet his maker. Some said, “He’s got heart trouble, going up to be baptized. I never thought old Frank would do that, but I guess when you get scared…” There was all kind of stories. But this is the way Frank told it to me. We were talking the day after his baptism and I said, “Frank, do you remember that little saying you used to give me so much? “I work hard, I take care of my family, and I mind my own business?”

He said, “Yeah, I remember. I said that a lot.”

“Do you still say that?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“Then what’s the difference?”

He said, “I didn’t know what my business was.”

Frank discovered what his business was. It was to serve human need. So Frank was baptized. Professor Donaldson said in the presence of those who were gathered, “Upon your confession of faith in Jesus Christ and in obedience to his command, I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

Do you remember that? Do you remember that?