Mark 1:4-11
January 7, 2024
I’ve always loved the
spiritual, Wade in the Water. You know the one that goes, “Wade in the
water. Wade in the water, children. Wade in the water. God’s gonna trouble the
water.” This wasn’t something that I grew up singing in church, but it feels
like a song I’ve always known. It was the Fisk Jubilee Singers who brought this
and other spirituals to a larger audience in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s,
but the history of this spiritual goes back much further than that. It would
have originated during slavery and was probably passed down orally long before
it was set to paper.
It's also believed that it
was a coded song, possibly used by Harriet Tubman to send messages to enslaved
people seeking to escape to freedom. Coded songs were a powerful way to share
information. Some songs would give escape routes, places on the Underground
Railroad that would lead enslaved humans from this country to freedom in
Canada. Other songs would offer encouragement for the journey. Wading
in water prevented bloodhounds from tracking someone’s scent or leaving
footprints for slave patrols to follow.
I may not have grown up
singing this, but a dear friend of mine grew up in a Black church. She told me
once that in her childhood congregation, Wade in the Water, was sung
every time someone was baptized. I was excited to hear that, because whenever
we come to the time in our church year when celebrate the baptism of Christ, I
always think about this spiritual. No matter which gospel account of
Jesus’ baptism we are reading, I find myself singing these beautiful words
about wading in the water without even realizing it. But there’s one phrase in
it that I’ve always wondered about. What does it mean to sing,
“God’s gonna trouble the
water?”
I’ll be honest, I don’t like
the thought of troubled waters, even if God is the one doing the troubling, and
even if there’s a bridge over those troubled waters to reference another
popular song. It’s just that I’ve seen the destruction that floods can do to
towns and cities as I’m sure you have too. And it’s not just the terrible winds
from hurricanes that cause so much damage – although they do – it’s also the
flooding that occurs after the rains from the storms as well. No, troubled
waters aren’t really my cup of tea.
But the song says that God’s
gonna trouble
the waters. Does that mean that God’s going to whip up a flood or cause a tidal
wave? Does it mean that God is doing something dangerous on the
waters? For enslaved people, so desperate to escape to freedom, did it
represent their hope that God would produce a miracle like Moses and the
Israelites crossing the parted Red Sea on dry land? Or did it mean that
God was protecting them, troubling the waters, stirring them up so that
detection would be even harder? Is that the kind of troubled waters the song
refers to?
Maybe this phrase isn’t
talking so much about destruction as it is about something new. Something
different. In our passage from Genesis when a wind from God swept over the
waters, life happened. God troubled those waters in that formlessness and
void, that chaos and creation was conceived.
So what happens when God
troubles the waters of baptism? We have it in our gospel text today that
John appeared out of the wilderness baptizing people from all over the Judean
countryside in the river Jordan. Baptisms were nothing new when John came
along. Different forms of baptism, essentially ritual cleansing, had been
taking place for some time. But there was something about John. There was
something about him that drew people to him. Maybe it was his strangeness, his
peculiar style of dress and diet. Maybe there was something charismatic about
him, about his preaching and teaching, that we cannot fully perceive through
the written word alone. It might have been all of this and more, but something
about John drew people to him. People came out in droves to be baptized by him.
The people were clearly hungry for a new word from God, for something new, for
someone new. I think John must have recognized their hunger. But he made sure
they understood that it wasn’t him they were seeking. He was only the messenger.
He was only the one who pointed the way to the One who was to come. The One who
was to come was the One they really longed for, the One they had been waiting
for. This One would not just baptize with water as John did. This One would
baptize with the Holy Spirit.
And that brings us to the
crux of this passage. Jesus of Nazareth comes to John and is baptized by
him. And as Jesus comes out of the water, he sees the heavens torn apart
and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. He hears a voice saying,
“You are my Son, the
Beloved, with you I am well pleased.”
Whenever the story of Jesus’
baptism is read, questions about why he was baptized in the first place arise.
If baptism is about cleansing from sin, then certainly Jesus didn’t require
that. Was he setting an example for those who would follow him and for the Church
that would expand around the globe in his name? Was it to prove his
identity? Did he do it for some other unknown reason? I’m not sure
that we can truly know the fullness of Jesus’ reasons.
But what we do know is that
Mark’s telling of Jesus’ baptism is different from the other gospel writers. Mark
makes it clear that Jesus is the only one who can see the disruption in the sky
that his baptism caused. Jesus is the only one to see the dove descending and
hear the mighty voice from heaven. No one else present there witnesses this
dramatic scene. And I’m sure it was dramatic indeed. The Greek verb
that is used to describe the heavens being torn apart is the same verb that’s
used to describe how the curtain of the temple was ripped in two on the moment
of Jesus’ death on the cross.
It seems that with Jesus’
baptism God not only troubled the waters, but the heavens as well.
Something about God
troubling the waters makes things happen. Something changes when God
troubles the waters. I don’t want to presume that Jesus was changed when God
troubled the heavens above Jesus and the waters in which Jesus waded. Jesus was
who he was and is who he is. But things, life, became very different from
that point on. A tremendous shift in action takes place in that moment. From
that point on the world was different. When Jesus waded into those waters,
the ushering in of the Kingdom was set in motion.
When God troubles the
waters, things change. Things happen. The waters and all who enter them are
changed.
For many years one of the
souvenirs that I kept from my trip to the Middle East was a plastic bottle of
water from the Jordan River. I still don’t know how I managed to get it from
there back to the States and through several moves around the country without
it leaking or just generally exploding. I even used some of the water for one
of the first baptisms I ever did. Let me make it clear that I used it after I
boiled it like crazy. There was no way I was putting it near an infant’s little
head without sterilizing it.
But a few years ago, maybe
before we moved back to Tennessee, I got rid of it. The bottle was in rough shape,
and I suspect the water in it was a science experiment by that point. I love
the memories I have of that trip and collecting that water. But what I really
remember from that trip to the Jordan was the president of our seminary,
Hartley Hall, fussing at all of us for collecting the water in the first place.
I can still hear him saying,
“Don’t do it! It’s just water. It won’t heal you. It’s not magic.”
He fussed at us like this
while we were still by the Jordan. He fussed at us when we got back on the bus.
It’s just water. It’s not magic. I’m glad he liked me because once we were on
our way to our next stop one of my friends ratted me out to him.
“Amy wasn’t just collecting
water. She was using it to make crosses on people’s foreheads.”
And I was. It seemed like
the right thing to do at that moment. But Hartley was right. It was just
water. What’s the difference between water from the Jordan River and the
water we would use for a baptism? Except for some microorganisms and
pollution, absolutely nothing. It’s not the water or the topographical source
of the water that makes it different. It’s God troubling the water that
makes the change.
So when we wade into the
waters of baptism, whether we do it literally or figuratively, as babies, as
children, as young and old adults, we are wading into troubled
waters. Waters that have been changed by the power of the Holy
Spirit. God troubles the waters of our baptisms. And we are swept
into the tide of God’s great and remarkable love, grace, mercy, and justice. We
are empowered by the spirit to follow in the footsteps of the One who saw the
heavens open and the dove descending and heard the voice proclaiming. You
are my son, the Beloved. With you I am well pleased. So, let’s wade
into the water. Let’s wade into the water trusting that God troubles the
waters, stirring them up and stirring us well – stirring us into service and
justice and faithfulness, stirring us to bear witness to a voice heard from
heaven and the good news that through the beloved Son, the kingdom of God is in
our midst.
Let all of God’s children
say, “Alleluia.”
Amen.
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