“River of God”

Scripture Lesson: Mark 1:1-14

Sermon Transcript for January 11, 2009

By Pastor Bob Coleman

When you plan things, you have a sequence you believe works better. After giving it some further thought, that’s why I wanted to have this baptism earlier. It was going to follow the message. But it fits in this way. There is a Scripture that we find in Psalms 46 that speaks of the theme for today. In the fourth verse it says: “There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells.” This river is a reference to God’s graciousness and love. It’s a reference to, also, the river Jordan. Not necessarily the time it was written. But today we remember the baptism of Jesus, the Christ. He was born as a child just like we are. He was raised as a child just like we are. And when it came time for His personal and public ministry to start, he received baptism from John, the Baptist, and it was in the river.

I want to read the passage now that is a basis for the Scripture for today. From the Gospel of Mark, Chapter 1, Verses 4-11. The setting is that John, the Baptist, is called to bring people to repentance in the nation of Israel. As he does so, one of the actions is, as Jenothy pointed out, the use of water to be an outside cleansing symbolizing the spiritual cleansing inside. We believe that Jesus came to this baptism not for the need of that spiritual cleansing, but for the proclamation that we hear at the end of the story. “So John came baptizing in the desert region and preaching the baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him confessing their sins and they were baptized by him in the Jordan River. John wore clothing made of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist. He ate locust and wild honey. And this was his message: ‘After me will come one more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and tie. I baptize you with water; he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.’ At that time Jesus came from Nazareth and Galilee, was baptized by John in the Jordan. And as Jesus was coming up out of the water, He saw heaven being torn open and the spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son in whom I love, with you I am well pleased.’”

That statement was the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. Not that He was not loved before, but it was a public declaration. It was a day for him to remember just as Cassidy’s baptism will be a day for her to remember as she grows up and her parents share the good news. It will be one that they will remember. Not everyday is necessarily a memorable day. Have you ever heard TGIF?—Thank God It’s Friday! I had a Dr. Kolecheiv who was a physics professor at Indiana Central College when I attended there. And every Friday, Dr. Kolecheiv, a Siberian Russian, smoking his pipe, chewing on the end of it, would say at the end of physic’s class, “Tanks Gott its Friday! I go do a little fishing, you do a little physics. I see you on Monday.”

Of course, we know there is a restaurant called TGIF. The idea is that Friday is that “Aaagh”, the end of the week. Well if your work week starts on Friday it doesn’t carry the same feeling, does it? How many of you claim TGIM—Thank God It’s Monday? If your work week ends, maybe yes. But we have other special days—your birthday, your marriage, graduation, birth of a first child, any child, a grandchild. All of these are days that we hold in high regard. We hold them up as well as we should our own baptism. Those here this morning, some of you may not be yet baptized so you have yet that day to experience. Or if you were baptized as a child, like Cassidy, hopefully as you were raised your family, loved ones, the church, shared with you the meaning of your baptism. Why that special day—the importance of it.

I’ve heard Christians use the phrase, “Well, I was baptized.” And name the date, the place, or even necessarily who or particularly if it was in a river where you had to break the ice. Have you ever said, those of you who are currently married, “I was married”? If you make that phrase, and you are currently married, you may not be married for long. We do not phrase it in that way. You don’t say, “I was married” when you are. You don’t say, “I was the son of my parents”, “I was the daughter of my parents”. You say, “I am”! It’s a statement of ongoing existence. So we should not say, “I was baptized”, we should say, “I am baptized”. For it is not just the event of the day. It is the beginning of that day that goes forward. Your baptism isn’t an hour or a time. It is a recognition. It isn’t Jesus being cleansed from His sin. It is that God is saying to Him and to all who will hear, “This is my beloved child with whom I am well pleased”.

Paul said in Romans, Chapter 6, Verses 3-5, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized in to his death? If we have been united with him in death like His, we will certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His.” Now the death means that we die to ourselves. Baptism is a recognition, as Pastor Jenothy said, of the sins that we have and that we are forgiven for those sins. Baptism enables us to die to those sins and to rise with Jesus as a child of God.

That’s why it is very important for those of us as Christians who recognize infant baptism that it be completed in our confirmation when we accept for ourselves those vows that Tara and Rob received for Cassidy. That someday she will stand before the church and say, “I accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.” And then the baptism is a public reaffirmation in her life that God indeed loves her. And then she is a forgiven child of God. Through baptism we are identified as children loved by God and lovable as the Lord would see us, chosen by the Lord to be God’s people in this world.

Henry Allen, a Catholic priest of Dutch ancestry, no longer with us now but he wrote these words, “The truth—even though I can not feel it right now, the truth is that I am the chosen child of God, precious in God’s eyes, called the beloved from all eternity and held safe in an everlasting embrace.” What more security and peace can you have to know that you are not only loved at this moment but for all time in all places no matter what happens to you? Be careful though that you believe baptism will bring a lifetime of bliss. Jesus was driven into the wilderness for forty days to be tempted by Satan right after His baptism. Life may not be sweet after that, but the experience of knowing that God loves us helps even the most painful and sour episodes of life to be lived through and lived beyond.

Being baptized is remembering who we are, remembering who you and I are in our own individual situations. There is a story that is attributed to the first President George Bush when he was visiting a nursing home. It was one of those public experiences that all leaders go through. He was walking down the hallway where, of course, secret service was before and after him. But one old gentleman, a resident of the community, was walking toward him in the opposite direction on one of those walkers. A couple of you have those here this morning. The man’s head was down and he was walking forward, didn’t seem to pay attention to the commotion of the President and secret service. But President Bush, being caring individual, reached over and gently touched his hand and said, “Sir, do you know who I am?” The old man held on with kind of a blank stare, looked up, looked at President Bush, sort of a glean came to his eye and he said, “Well, no, I don’t know who you are but if you check with the nurses, they can tell you who you are.”

That’s what God is doing for us—telling us who we are. The most powerful message that anybody can receive is one that they are loved and they are loved by the one who has created them—Great God Almighty. Do you know who you are? In your baptism have you fully grasped the depth and meaning of your baptism? You are a person baptized in Jesus, the Christ, and you need to hear God’s voice say to you, maybe if never before you’ve heard it, “You are my child. I love you dearly.”

Like birth, baptism means life. When we are born, we are born for the existence upon this earth—our physical birth. But our spiritual birth goes well beyond. Our life, we are born once. Our baptism, we are baptized once. But our life moves on and so does our baptism. Through our baptism we are identified as the children of God who are both loved and capable of loving, chosen by God to be his people in this world so that we might be led into service. Through our baptism we might be led to generosity./ Through our baptism led to live in hope. Through our baptism we are to believe because that’s where our meaning comes from. To understand our baptism is to mentally and in our heart to believe and to feel that love that God gives to us and then to live daily our baptism. It’s true; we need to remind ourselves quite regularly, if not even daily, that we are baptized in God’s love.

Many people today are being controlled by fear and anxiety. And, indeed, there is plenty of that to go around to cause fear and anxiety. Some Christians are living in a controlled fear and anxiety. But they have to be reminded of the basic message. That fear is not the part of life that we are to hold on to; the love of God is what we hold on to that helps us to overcome that fear, to live through it. Our baptism is like a shield against fear, a shield of protection. Not protecting us from hurt—that’s a part of life. But baptism protects us from falling in to a pit of despair. And even if we might fall into it on a short-term basis, baptism helps us to come out of it because we remember who we are.

You see printed in the bulletin this morning a statement from Pastor Nancy Blevins, a statement of her faith in God. We trust that in her case the story has turned out to complete remission for the tumor that she just found out a year ago. The joy of that is beyond what I can experience because it is her joy, but I can share it. But it’s living through her baptism, to trust that even if you fall in to a pit, God will, through baptism, help you to find a way out.

Will this be a tough year? Yes it will. For some, more than you can expect or experience at the moment. And fear may, for the moment, grab you. But for the long term, it is our baptism that helps us remember who we are. In I John, Chapter 4, the writer says, “In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the Day of Judgment. Because in this world we are like Him, there is no fear in love. But perfect love drives our fear because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.”

The most freeing part of baptism is that God is not here to punish you but here to love you. God’s proclamation is helping us to hear life with new ears, to see it with new eyes, to hear it with a new heart. This last weekend we were gone away from here to have some time with Joyce’s family. And I tell this story because when the event happened it was beautiful in its own setting but it had more meaning the more I thought about it preparing for this morning. Joyce’s brother, Rich Frankhouser and his family, we shared together in a Bed and Breakfast over by Plainfield. You don’t have to go to exotic places to find a nice spot; they are here in Indiana. The evening of our first night together some of us stepped out on the deck. And we heard a sound that was new for some of us. It was the freezing of what. Have you ever heard that? It was a cracking sound. And I guess if the temperature drops rapidly, it can even make a sound like a rifle shot. But this was just a little sound across the water as it was freezing. If you don’t know the physics, Dr. Kolecheiv would love me for doing this, but when water freezes it actually expands for a moment. That’s why it will break open a jar. Well, it was expanding at that moment and causing that cracking.

The next morning we went out and we heard a different sound in the ice as we threw rocks across it. You can skip a rock a long distance on ice if you aren’t aware of that. It broke all of our records. So that was the second time. And then the next morning, it got warmer and the ice was melting. We stood down on a floating dock. And jumping up and down created waves, and the waves hit the edge of the ice. And the ice was so thin that it was breaking as the waves would hit it. It was like a fine glass being broken. A tinkling sound different from the other two. My brother-in-law, at the conclusion said, “In all my time--and he lives in Iowa and has gone to Minnesota in the wintertime and North Dakota and Canada and lived in Langdon, North Dakota for a couple of years so he’s heard plenty of experiences and been in plenty of experiences with freezing water and ice—I’ve never known ice to have so many different sounds, so many beautiful sounds.

Our baptism is like that ice. By the way, we called them ice frogs. When we heard that sound the first night, we said, “You have frogs in the summer, here in Indiana we have ice frogs in the winter.” But out baptism is like hearing that for the first time and recognizing that it has been there all along. God’s words of, “I love you. You are my beloved child”, are like hearing for the first time a special, beautiful song that God sings to us.

So this morning, we want to share with you an opportunity, not with ice, but with water. Because water is the symbol that is used; it’s important in the act of baptism. In a moment we are going to invite you to come forward like we do in communion. Which, if you are guests and friends for the first time, then you’ll come down the center aisle and you see the two bowls. Pastor Andy and I will stand here, not to do this for you, but for you to come and reach in to the water that’s in each of the bowels. And there is a little stone in there. I want to show you what it is like. You are welcome to take that stone and take it with you as a reminder of your baptism. As you reach in, you can’t help but to get some water on your fingers. So you might take the stone and make the sign of the cross on your forehead. It’s important for you to remember who you are. But you may want to turn to the person next to you to take that stone and make the sign of the cross on their forehead because it is important for you to help them remember who they are. That’s the gift that God gives us in our baptism. So as you come forward, you may want to also think, “There’s a person in my life, they need to be reminded of their baptism.” So there are plenty of stones; you may take another if you wish. Take a moment, pass by, accept the stone, do the sign of the cross using the water to feel the water again. Maybe you wish to pray. Go back around and be seated in your pew. Music will be played as we come forward.

And then we are going to conclude the service with a song called, “The River of God”. Maybe you’ve not heard it before, but it’s one that sets your feet to dancing which is one of the words and they are printed for you on the insert. So we want to invite you to feel the sense of the music, the experience of the touching of the water, taking a gift of the stone with you to carry in your pocket, in your purse, to give as a gift to somebody else, whatever it takes for you to relive that moment and to live it anew. Not that you “were” baptized, but that you “are” baptized and that you hear God’s words say to you, God’s own loving voice, “You are my child. I love you dearly.”