Wade in the Water -- Baptism of the Lord

Matthew 3:13-17

January 8, 2023

 

            “Wade in the water. God’s gonna trouble the water.”

            I can’t explain why, but when I was contemplating this passage from Matthew and where it might lead me in a sermon, the words, “Wade in the water. God’s gonna trouble the water,” kept coming into my mind. I had no idea what those lyrics would have to do with this text other than Jesus and John were in the waters of the Jordan River for baptism and water is a predominant part of our baptismal ritual, but I decided to go with my instinct and trust that God would work through it all somehow, so “Wade in the Water” it is.

            Wade in the Water is a spiritual, born out of the days of slavery in our country. In the early 1900’s the Fisk Jubilee Singers kept this spiritual and others in the publics’ conscious by performing it in Tennessee and around the world. It is believed, although it cannot be proven with certainty, that Wade in the Water was also a coded song. The code within the lyrics were connected to the Underground Railroad. Supposedly when an enslaved person seeking freedom through escape on the Underground Railroad heard these lyrics, they knew to keep to the water. Traveling through water left no scent and no footprints that could be followed by dogs or humans.

            And the lyric, “God’s gonna trouble the water,” is scriptural as well. I had to do a deep search to find these words. It felt like I knew the reference, but I also could not think of where it was or where it is referred to. It turns out that it is only referenced through a footnote in the later translations of the Bible, including the New Revised Standard Version which we read. It is in John’s gospel, chapter 5, and the story of Jesus healing the sick man by the pools of Bethzatha or Bethsaida as some may know it. The man is waiting to go into the pool for healing, but he needs to be physical placed in the pool. He cannot go into the water on his own strength. He tells Jesus that he has been waiting for that to happen, but before he can finally make it into the waters, someone goes in ahead of him.

            In the story Jesus tells the man to stand up, take his mat, and walk. The man does what Jesus tells him to do, and then the story moves on. But the part of this story that we do not hear, but is only footnoted, is that it was believed that this pool could heal because there were periods of time when it would become stirred up, troubled, apparently for no visible reason. It was believed that an angel of the Lord went down to the pool at certain times and troubled the water. Whoever stepped into the pool when it was troubled would receive a healing.

            God’s gonna trouble the water, so travel in the water, hide in the water, be healed from the sin of slavery through escape to freedom because God’s gonna trouble the water.

            While I love this history and making this unexpected connection to the gospel of John – a connection I had not considered before – I still wondered what this might have to do with our passage from Matthew’s gospel, with Jesus being baptized by John.

            Does it beg the questions that some people wrestle with when it comes to Jesus’ baptism as to why he was baptized in the first place? If baptism is connected to salvation, did Jesus require or need it? Or, even though Jesus had no need for baptism concerning salvation or the forgiveness of sins, was he baptized as a way to model for others what must be done for salvation?

While these questions can open the way for interesting discussion, I’m not sure that either really get to the heart of what drove Jesus to stand with the crowd and be baptized by John that day. Let’s remember that Jesus was not undergoing a Christian baptism. It wasn’t Christian in the way that we think of and perform baptism. Ritual washing for spiritual cleanliness had gone on long before John or Jesus came onto the scene. But John imbuing baptism with an understanding of repentance and forgiveness was different. Perhaps that is at the heart of why people flocked to him for baptism? They recognized a deep longing within themselves for repentance, and John’s message spoke to them in a way they had not experienced before.

But why was Jesus there? If Jesus did not require baptism for the same reason that others did, why did he come that day? Out text makes it clear that John understood that Jesus did not need baptism.

“I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?”

            Jesus responds to John’s protests that doing so would fulfill all righteousness. And so it seems to many biblical scholars that Jesus being baptized was an inauguration, an anointing of his ministry. This was confirmed when he comes out of the water. Jesus looks to the heavens and sees them opened up to him and the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. Jesus hears the voice of God from the heavens proclaiming,

            “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

            Jesus’ ministry was anointed at this moment. But were the waters troubled?

            We have no way of knowing what the waters of the Jordan were like that day. Were they full and rushing? Were they calm and still? Was the water full from rain, as the waters around here are? Or was the Jordan not much more than a creek because rain had not fallen in a long time? Did John standing in those waters, no matter how high or low they were, have the same effect as an angel, stirring them up, preparing them to be waters of healing and balm?

            We don’t know. But what we do know is that in his ministry, Jesus was going to trouble  waters – if not literally than figuratively. Jesus was going to stir things up through his preaching and his healing and his exorcisms. Jesus was going to trouble the waters of the religious elite. Jesus was going to stir up the people who followed him to both great loyalty and betrayal. Jesus would stir the waters of faith that had become stagnant. He would remind anyone who would listen that the law given by God was not to punish or exclude but to open the way to life with God and with one another.

            It seems to me that when Jesus waded into the water that day, the waters were indeed troubled. Jesus’ ministry was anointed. His identity as the Son of God was clear. His time in the wilderness would solidify that identity, but the claim and the call on him was unveiled at that moment in the Jordan.

            In a few minutes we will reaffirm the vows made at our own baptisms. We do this not just because this is a good Sunday for it with Jesus’ baptism in our texts, but because if Jesus’ ministry was anointed in his baptism so was ours. Whether we can remember our baptisms or not, whether we were baptized as infants or as believers, our being claimed by God as his children, our call into the ministry of all believers, the priesthood of all believers, was anointed in our baptisms just as Jesus’ was.

            When we baptize infants we confess that God’s grace and mercy and call is present in our lives whether we know it or not. When we are baptized as believers, we acknowledge that we have felt that grace and now respond to its power. Either way, the grace of God is everywhere, in every moment of our baptism. To remember our baptism each week, to see the water poured into the font, is to proclaim that the grace of God abounds and that the Spirit of God moves where it will.

            Our baptism is not just a one-time event, it is the beginning of our call. It is the sign and symbol of God’s claim, call, and love, just as it was for Jesus that day with John in the Jordan. Maybe today, we are also being reminded that God troubles the water and that we are called to do the same.

            How will we trouble the water? How will we stir things up? What new ministries will be inaugurated? What visions and dreams will be made real? How will God trouble the water, and how are we being called to do the same? In our worship we remember our baptism. How will we trouble the water? 

            Wade in the water. Wade in the water, children. Wade in the water. God’s gonna trouble the water.

             Let all of God’s children say, “Alleluia.”

            Amen.

Empire -- Epiphany

Matthew 2:1-23

January 1, 2023

 

            The easiest course of action for today would have been to preach the Epiphany portion of Matthew’s gospel, meaning that I would have begun in Chapter 2, verse 1 and ended at verse 12. That was my original idea. I was only going to focus on those first twelve verses, talk about the magi, and how the coming of Jesus was the revealing of God’s light into the world.

            But Epiphany isn’t actually today. It is this Friday, January 6. Today is the first Sunday after Christmas Day or the first Sunday within Christmastide, and the portion of Matthew’s gospel selected for today was Chapter 2, verses 13 onward. These verses pick up the story after the Magi are warned in a dream about the evil intentions of Herod and they return to their home by an alternate route. These verses tell the story of how Joseph is also warned in a dream – again – to flee. Take your family, your wife, your baby boy and go to Egypt. Herod is about to search for this child and if he finds him, he will destroy him.

            Joseph, like the magi, heeds the angel’s warning. He, Mary, and Jesus run for their lives to Egypt, and they stay there until an angel tells Joseph in another dream that Herod has died. It is safe to return to Israel once more. But when Joseph heard that Herod’s son, Archelaus, was ruling in his father’s place, he was afraid to return to Bethlehem. Apparently Archelaus was as bad as, if not worse, than his dad. Once again, Joseph is warned in a dream; he must take his young family to Galilee. In Galilee, Joseph and Mary and Jesus made a home for themselves in a town called Nazareth.

            These are the highlight of this last part of the story. And I thought long and hard about focusing primarily on the coming of the magi and sticking with just the highlights of the last part of the story. But if you only skim through the highlights, you leave out the tragedy of the story. Herod did seek out Jesus to destroy him. Perhaps if the magi had done what he asked them to do, it would have only been Jesus who was destroyed. But because the magi slipped away, Herod resorted to an even greater evil. Rather than just try to destroy one little boy, he would kill all little boys born within approximately the same time frame. And a massacre ensues.

            “A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.”

            I struggled with whether to include this. Just stick with Epiphany, Amy. Let’s just have a happy New Year, Amy. 2022 was hard in so many ways, let’s not start 2023 by talking about tragedies and massacres, Amy. Let’s just bathe in the light of Epiphany. Epiphany, when God’s coming into the world as a child was revealed to the larger world, when the Light of God shone for all the world to see. Through Epiphany, the good news was not reserved only for Bethlehem or Judah or Israel, but for all of God’s creation.

            In these verses we see the providence and protection of God at work as Jesus is saved again and again. But what about those other little boys? What about their mothers and fathers? Did they not count? Did God not want to protect them as well? Or did God very much want to protect them, but what the coming of the Light reveals is how deeply the darkness is embedded in the world? What the coming of the Light of God reveals is that darkness does not want the Light. The darkness shrinks from the Light and all it reveals. It will do everything it can to resist the coming of the Light.

            From the very beginning of Jesus being born into the world, there has been resistance. The powers and principalities have obstinately refused to let go of their hold on the world. Not to be cute, but if ever there was an example of the empire striking back, it is in this story. And I’m not referring only to the Roman Empire, to which Herod was both a proponent and a stooge. I’m referring to empire in the larger sense.

            An empire is a political realm. And certainly the Roman Empire was a political realm. Yet these verses also point to the empire of power. Herod was determined to hold onto power, so much so, that massacre of the innocent and most vulnerable was seen as a viable option. Having the blood of babies on his hands was clearly no big deal. Herod used the power that he wielded, the power of military force, the power of brutality, the power of wealth and cruelty to protect his reign. He used his power to protect his power. He ruled an empire of power, and he was going to sustain that power through whatever means necessary.

            But something else that Epiphany reveals is that Jesus, God in Jesus, wields a different kind of power. This is not the power of military prowess. This is not the power of wealth or influence. The power that God in Jesus holds is a radically different power. It is the power of Love. The power of Love. These words are said so often that they almost sound trite, cliché.

            However, we have the vantage point that the gift of the coming of the Light truly reveals. We can chart the entire course of Jesus’ life on earth. We know the rest of the story. We know how Jesus used his power of Love to overcome, to persuade, and to confront empire. We know just how far Jesus was willing to go with his power. He didn’t overthrow the empire of power by using deadly force. He overthrew the empire of power by giving his own life. The empire struck back by crucifying him on a criminal’s cross.

            But the empire of power could not and ultimately cannot defeat the power of Love. But that doesn’t mean that it won’t keep trying. That massacre of innocent children by Herod was not the first of its kind nor, terribly, was it the last. Innocent lives are still lost through starvation and neglect, through violence of war and the violence of poverty, through abuse, through apathy and through willful ignorance.

            There is a powerful painting of the massacre of the innocents by a 19^th century artist named Léon Cogniet. In this painting, a young mother is holding her baby boy behind a crumbling wall. In the background you see chaos. Another woman holding her child is running from a Roman soldier. But this woman, the main subject of the painting, is hiding. She is holding her child tightly, her hands over his mouth to keep him from making any sound that will give them away. But what is so striking about the painting is where her gaze is focused. She is not looking at her child. She is not looking toward the chaos on the other side of the wall. She is looking directly at the artist. She is looking directly at us. And in her eyes, there is terror, yes, but even more there is accusation. It is as though she is telling us that we have allowed this to happen.

            How is that possible? We were not there when Herod gave those deadly, terrible orders. We were not part of the plan to massacre innocents. But if the Light of God coming into the world revealed the empire of power for what it truly is, then have we helped to defeat that empire or have we contributed to its ongoing reign? Have we truly looked at, acknowledged, admitted the devastation that the empire of power wreaks, or have we turned and looked the other way?

            Please believe me, I don’t want to stand in this pulpit like some prophet of doom. I want us to have a Happy New Year, a fulfilling New Year. But I also want, long for, and hope and pray for a peaceful New Year. But I know that if peace is something that I want, if peace is something that I yearn for, then I must look into this mother’s eyes and see how the empire of power still seeks to rule and reign. The coming of the Light into the world, the revelation of Epiphany to all of God’s children means that we can see, really and truly see, the good that the Light reveals and the darkness that still seeks to resist and fight back.

            We are given the gift of sight today and every day. We are given the gift of opportunity to fight back against the empire of power with the power of Love – the Love that Jesus embodied in his life, his ministry, his healing, his teaching, his death, and his resurrection. May we all work toward the day when the only empire in existence is the one built on that kind of Love, on God’s Love. May that be the power we seek.

            Let all of God’s children say, “Amen.”

            Amen.