Baptism of the Lord
January 13, 2019
Isaiah 43:1-7; Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
What does the phrase “high and dry” bring to mind? Good
things? Bad things? The origin of the phrase had to do with ships that were
beached. They had run aground and then the tide went out, leaving them high,
because they were up on land rather than down in the water, and dry, because
not only were they out of the water but they had been for a while and could
expect to stay there. In late December, after Christmas, of 2004 a 100 foot
high tsunami in the Indian Ocean hitting especially hard into Indonesia, Sri
Lanka, and Thailand . It was the 10th deadliest natural disaster in
recorded history.[1] I
was in Thailand the following August for training with the mission agency
before going to Nicaragua. One of the pieces of the training was learning how
the mission agency and other groups were responding in the aftermath of the
tsunami and we met survivors, heard miraculous stories, and saw the ruins. One
of the most amazing sights was of this ship two kilometers, or a little less than one mile, inland.
 |
| A picture of the picture I took of the beached ship, August 2005, Phuket province |
It washed
in with the tsunami, and there it was, high and dry, with no hope of getting
back to sea on its own. This is what ‘high and dry’ has evolved to mean today,
that you are stranded in a difficult situation and unable to do anything about
it.
The odd thing about ‘high and dry’ is that there are
times it’s a good thing. You want to be high and dry during a flood or hurricane
or tsunami. You don’t want to stay there forever, just until the water has
calmed down. It’s like Noah and his family and the animals on the ark. That was
a good time to be high and dry. When the waters went down, the ark was lodged
in the mountains. When the land was dry, Noah, his family, and the animals all
came out of the ark to go out into all the earth, down off the mountain. The
thing about the times when high and dry is good, is that those times don’t
last. They are temporary. And then it’s time to go back down to life, which is
messy and hard and complicated.
The passage we read from Isaiah 43 is one of my all-time
favorites, in my top three favorite Scriptures. But before we get there, I want
to look at Isaiah 42. In this section, Isaiah is speaking to God’s people in
exile. They were forced to leave their homes in Israel and go to Babylon, where
they have set up new homes and had children who don’t even remember Israel. Life
may not necessarily be good in Babylon, but it is stable. It is what they know.
The move to exile was a long time ago. The effects of the move, though, are
still being felt. Isaiah 42 says, “This is a people plundered and looted, all
of them trapped in pits or hidden away in prisons. They have become plunder,
with no one to rescue them; they have been made loot, with no one to say, ‘Send
them back.’”[2]
The exiled people were high and dry. There was no one to rescue them. They’ve
adjusted, made ‘high and dry’ into a new normal. Life is stable again.
And then listen to the very next chapter, “But now, this
is what the Lord says—he who created you, Jacob, he who formed you, Israel: ‘Do
not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through
the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you
will not be burned; the flames will not
set you ablaze. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior…
You are precious and honored in my sight… I love you… I am with you; I will
bring your children… and gather you… everyone who is called by my name, whom I
created for my glory, whom I formed and made.’”[3]
Do not be afraid. It is time to come home. I know you’ve been left high and
dry, but now. Now it is time to rebuild. Now it is time to
leave the stability of your life in Babylon and return to the rubble of your
old home, or your parents’ home, or your grandparents’ home. Now you are no
longer high and dry, without help. God has redeemed you. God has called you by
name. God will be with you through the waters and the rivers and the fire. Now
it is time to go down and get wet.
And this is where baptism comes in. We use water for
baptism. Whether a sprinkling or a full dunking, we baptize with water, water
which washes away the old high and dry. Water, which calls you out of your
temporary exile, which, in this case, gives you help, which you need not fear.
In our baptism we are named as God’s own, forever. In our baptism, we become
part of God’s family with a whole slew of brothers and sisters all around us. In
our baptism, we step into the river and get wet.
This year we read Luke’s account of Jesus’s baptism. In Luke’s
version, there’s no conversation between John the Baptist and Jesus. John doesn’t
try to talk Jesus out of it. Instead, Jesus’s baptism is tagged on at the end,
almost like an afterthought. When everyone was being baptized, Jesus was
baptized, too. Nothing special about it,
until the Holy Spirit comes out like a dove and descends on Jesus, with that
voice from heaven, “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”
And the next thing Luke does, before Jesus is sent out into the wilderness for
forty days, is to list off Jesus’s genealogy, from Joseph back to God. Matthew
does this at the very beginning of his Gospel; Mark and John don’t include it
at all. Luke puts it here, right after Jesus’s baptism. Jesus is baptized, the
voice from heaven speaks. And Luke says, “Now Jesus himself was about thirty
years old when he began his ministry. He was the son, so it was thought, of
Joseph, the son of Heli…” and so on, “…the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the
son of God.” You and I are God’s children, also. In baptism we are named and
marked as God’s sons and daughters, with whom he is well pleased. And then,
just like Jesus, we are sent on our way.
If you’re not high and dry, then you’re … down and wet,
down and dirty, in the trenches. You don’t stay on the sidelines or up in the
ivory tower. God doesn’t leave us high and dry but gets us wet in baptism and
calls us to work and get involved. It’s the work of making things right again,
of feeding the hungry and visiting the sick and clothing those who need clothes
and welcoming the stranger. It’s the work of bringing love and hope and joy and
peace to those people and places who desperately need to hear them, those who
feel high and dry, abandoned. It’s the work of invitation for those who are
tempted to stay in the stability of high and dry exile, yet whom God is calling
to come home and rebuild. Rebuilding out of rubble is messy work. It’s not
easy, as you figure out what can still be used and what needs discarding. You
have to figure out how to graft the new pieces in with the old. You have to
keep in mind what things looked like before while also keeping a vision of what
you want things to look like in the future, and the future is not going to look
like the past. When you bring in children and grandchildren who weren’t even
there before the exile, you have to trust that they will respect and honor the
generations who came before, even while adding their own touches.
God does not leave you high and dry. Even if you’ve
settled into it, it’s not a permanent state of being. I mean, can you imagine
if Noah and those animals had never left the ark? When the waters go down,
you’ve got to go down, too. Down to the river to pray. Down to the river to
work: to keep others from drowning, to remind others that they are not alone in
the river and it shall not overwhelm them. Down to the river for baptism,
joining God’s family, and today, re-membering that you’re part of God’s family.
God gets us wet in baptism and then out of our baptism, invites us to join his
work of making things right again.
A poem by Howard Thurman recently made the rounds on
social media among my clergy friends. It’s called “The Work of Christmas”:
When
the song of the angels is stilled,
When
the star in the sky is gone,
When
the kings and princes are home,
When
the shepherds are back with their flocks,
The
work of Christmas begins:
To
find the lost,
To
heal the broken,
To
feed the hungry,
To
release the prisoner,
To
rebuild the nations,
To
bring peace among the people,
To
make music in the heart.
This is what we are called to
do by virtue of our baptism. Baptized with water and then sent forth to find,
heal, feed, release, rebuild, bring peace, and make music. May it be so. Amen.
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