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.
No comments:
Post a Comment