The Baptism of Jesus

Summary

Last October while in Ireland we were walking down a road outside of Kinsale, County Cork on our way to see an old fortress.  As we passed a gate in a wall I noticed a sign sitting amongst flowers advertising ‘Wood Turner” with photos of wood bowls for sale.  The sign beckoned to us from the front gate.  We decided to go and look at the wares offered, and so entered the gate and were directed to follow the sidewalk around the house by further signs.

As we walked through the garden, the idyllic garden seen through the front gate quickly turned into a scene of semi-ordered chaos.  As we followed the path around the house, there was wood stacked haphazardly along the inside of the wall, and there were tree trunks scattered about the grass, which was littered with cut branches, piles of sawdust, and heaps of discarded chunks of wood.  Then when we found her door, we were admitted into a stairwell full of odds and ends pertaining to both the artist’s work and her life.  There was a sense of chaos about both the artist’s garden and home, a chaos that seemed to be the origin of the artist’s art.

It was the type of chaos that seems to be present in the homes and lives of many visual artists.  Her home was reminiscent of other workplaces, and studios that I have encountered which were the creative spaces of visual artists.

Upon making our way through the messy yard, and up a stairwell in her home, we entered into a room that was filled with beautiful wooden bowls and other wooden crafts.  Some bowls were small, light and seemed almost translucent by the way that the wood grain caught the light streaming through the window.  Other bowls were large and vast in their dimension, seeming to have been carved from the full extent of a tree’s trunk.  The artist’s creative skills were evident in the beauty of her art. I was enthralled!

The wonder of it was seemingly more powerful because one had passed through the chaos of the yard and home’s interior, before emerging into the room which held her brilliant creations.

I had not realized what impact this experience had on me until I read again, the first verses from Genesis that we heard as our first reading.

“…the earth was a formless void…Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light.”

Dr. Valerie Bridgeman writes, “God does not create from nothing, but rather from an untamed something that is formless and void…But God knows what to do with it. Creation is intentional and relational.”

I love that line of Dr. Bridgeman, “But God knows what to do with it.”

My father is a water-color artist.  He paints beautiful paintings.  There are times that I hope his DNA coursing through my being have passed his gift along, but whenever I sit down with paper before me, and paints at the ready, I can never get close.  It is just not there.

Like any talented artist God knows his medium, and simply knows how to make something, actually everything, out of the formless, and the void, and to make it wondrously.

From the mountains to the sea and the forests to the desert, from the sand to the snows and the heavens to the deeps when we look at the purity of God’s creation we stand in awe.  Yet, it is not simply the earth that we view with wonder, but the creatures upon the earth, and even more, us.  We too are part of the beauty of God’s creation, you and me. We are a result of God’s talents.

Thankfully though, this talent of God’s is not restricted simply to the creation of the earth, animals or humankind.

No, in today’s gospel reading from Mark, we catch a glimpse again of God’s talents for creating, with intention and in relation.

What am I getting at here?

I am trying to help us to look at baptism in a different way for a moment, to look at it as a new creation.  Just like God; Father, Son and Holy Spirit was present in the beginning, creating from the formless and the void, so, God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit are also present at the beginning in a new creation called baptism.

That day in the Jordan River something new happens.

Whereas John the Baptizer has been ritually cleansing people in the water as repentance for the forgiveness of sins, in Jesus’ baptism we see the reality of what baptism in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is all about, new life as a child of God.

Like in Genesis where God creates something new from the formless and void, in baptism God creates something new, a child of God, from a life of sin that in the end would be formless and void.

The great Christian writer C.S. Lewis gives his main characters in, “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” the designation, “sons of Adam and daughters of Eve.”

This designation is very apropos for us, reminding us that prior to our baptisms into Christ we were children of the Fall living in the reality of original sin, thus being either a son of Adam or a daughter of Eve.  I point this out in order for us to contrast this reality with what it means to then, in Christ become a new creation.

At this point let’s remember what Dr. Valerie Bridgeman wrote, “God does not create from nothing, but rather from an untamed something that is formless and void…But God knows what to do with it. [For God,] Creation is intentional and relational.”

What I want us to know, what I want us to remember every day is this, God knows what he wants to do with us…he wants to create us anew, to give us new life because he is gracious and merciful and he loves us!

This is the very reason that we have just celebrated Christmas isn’t it?

We have just spent weeks preparing for, and then twelve days celebrating the birth of the Christ child because we know and understand in our very being the importance of Jesus’ coming into the world.  Jesus came into the world to die in our place, that we might be transformed, that we might be created anew as children of God.

You see it does not matter who we are, what our lives might look like, or even what we have done with our lives, in Jesus Christ God creates something new.

Though your heart may seem formless and void because of your sin, Jesus knows just what to do with it. Jesus fills your heart with his love, creating life, life in the midst of death.

So now, remember, that even though your life may at times feel like a garden, or a yard full of stacks of branches, and cut trunks of trees laying amidst the flowers, and though it may contain piles of sawdust and bits of sawn wood scattered amongst the green plants and bushes, the Lord sees all that he needs to create beauty and love, in your heart, he sees you.

You are the apple of the Lord’s eye, you are the desire of the Lord’s heart, the Lord loves you. Jesus came to earth so that you might know his love by becoming a child of God, created anew in baptism.

As Jesus heard these words spoken to him as he came up out of the River Jordan, you too need to listen to these words, a paraphrase of these words, and hear them as if they are spoken to you:

“You are my child, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”

So live, live in faith, in the reality that God loves you. Let God’s love seep through your life, each day. You don’t need to seek his love, it’s already there. So then, live it out, share it by the way that you think about others and the world. Show God’s love in the way that you speak to others. Give God’s love by the way you act, not selfishly, but with Jesus’ words in mind, “Love one another, as I have loved you.”

Live, as God’s creation, live as a child of God. Amen.

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