January 9, 2004

Matthew 3: 13-17

Water Works

Elizabeth Macaulay

Two weeks ago, while the world was digesting the celebration of Christmas, a wall of water some 15 feet tall swept over villages and swept away vacationers and swept over the world.

People who woke up thinking they knew what the day would bring were tumbled about by the chaos unleashed by an earthquake.

Many hundreds of thousands lost their lives – one third of them children.

And the world, well, we too were tumbled about by the power of chaos. Because there was not a one of us who saw pictures, read news accounts, or heard of the trauma of the earth shaking without knowing that we too – we too are sweepable. We too are bobbing about in the sea of our lives so often blithely ignoring the forces at work that are perpetually unleashed in our lives.

Our lives may not be changed drastically by the earth quaking. We may not awaken one morning to go about our business only to be swept out to sea.

But we are, each one of us, sure to be swept into profound changes in our lives and we never know; there are no warning systems that can make us invulnerable to the swirl of life that can come crashing upon us in waves or in seemingly immeasurable increments.

We are a part of life in this God blessed creation. We are a part of life. Life that swirls and roars and sweeps us away. Life that trickles and dances. We are a part of it all. The pain, the ache, the joy and the wonder. As followers of Jesus, we know our kinship with chaos.

We know, because to begin his public ministry, Jesus stepped into chaos and claimed his presence in it.

The Jordon River was no small creek. It was dirty and swirling and was used by the masses for all manner of things. And, the Jordon River was used by John to baptize all sorts of people.

In choosing to be baptized by John in the Jordon, Jesus was claiming solidarity with life as lived by human folk.

And, in choosing to be baptized by John Jesus turns power assumptions upside down.

Matthew is so clear that the hierarchy of power was being tested when Jesus approached John to be baptized. John knew it. Jesus knew it. Both knew that for Jesus to submit to John’s baptism – John who called himself unfit to tie the thong of Jesus’ sandal. To submit to the reversal of roles enacted through baptism was to upend the oughtness of power protocol.

And yet it is such an essential part of being a follower of Jesus. We are called to release the notions of power ought ness taught to us by our culture and instead submit one to the other as servants. As fellow baptizers. As community called to have the grace to allow ministry to unfold even in the midst of the pain and chaos of life – maybe even especially amidst the pain and chaos of life.

So what does it mean? What does it mean that we who follow Jesus claim as sign of our calling the gift of baptismal promise made through water? What does it mean that we who follow Jesus embrace the knowing that life is chaotic and swirling and often messy?

Consider what it meant to Jesus. Upon his baptism. After his willingness to get wet, to wade into life in solidarity with humanity. Upon being baptized, the heavens opened and Jesus and all of those gathered heard the voice of God: this is my beloved. With him I am well pleased.

This voice of God rings out so that the whole of creation knows its truth. This is no private sort of epiphany whispered. This is an assurance carried through the very voice of God:

That though there be pain and swirl and forces so huge and sweeping that they can carry what we know of life away, the promise of God remains:

This. This one. This one is my beloved.

This is the promise of our baptism.

Two years ago when I was at Annual Conference I had reason to remember these words of God claiming in the midst of the too-much swirl of life.

I was at the service of ordination. Ordination is consistently one of the most moving worship experiences for me. It is a community event at which the Holy Spirit is the host. In the Methodist tradition, ordination takes place at Annual Conference, our yearly time of community gathering. This is so because we know ourselves to be called, not to any particular church, but to the movement of God in the parish of our world.

At ordination, we celebrate that call and the community of fellow believers who hold us as we seek to live it with integrity and grace.

All clergy are asked to robe and process for the worship service. The rainbow of people we are as UM clergy is a powerful and beautiful thing. The network of ministry relationships we represent is enough to make me hit my knees in awe.

So there I was. Robed and processed and seated in the midst of this emotional stew. And the stew was much more poignant, because it was the first Annual Conference I attended in which I was present as a woman divorced. The wounds of the devastation of my marriage had no protective covering. I was raw.

We sing during ordination a song that makes me cry always, raw wounds or not: Maybe the hymn works that way for you: “Here I Am, Lord”. The song sings of our ministry call and our response and the wonderings of whom it is God will send and really, is it I, Lord, who is called to this thing called ministry?

The song sang piercingly to my heart on that night because I was struggling so with the hugeness of my grief following divorce and the hugeness of my fear of my upcoming move to Richfield and the hugeness of my smallness in saying “yes” to life, let alone my call to ordained ministry.

I wept through that hymn from a place so very deep inside of me.

I was embarrassed, of course. Knowing that my neighbors could not miss the power of the struggle I was engaged in.

I wanted to acknowledge my tears so that we wouldn’t put energy into pretending that I wasn’t struggling.

So I turned to my neighbor Ruth Ann Ramstad and said

“I don’t know if I will ever be done crying.”

And she looked me in the eye and she said to me with great compassion and with the power of a heaven born voice:

“Remember your baptism.”

And with those words I was no longer alone, swept away by a wave of grief and fear and pain.

With those words I was standing in the Jordan. With the messiness of my life swirling around me. With the grief of unfoldings I had never imagined would be mine.

With those words I was standing in the midst of a community of believers I call my own, aware that I needed to open my soul to the promise of God spoken at my baptism:

That I, wretched and flawed and bumbling and earnest and graced. That I too am claimed as beloved of God.

I expect that many of us here this morning have felt life come roaring in on us in a way that feels death dealing.

At such time, may we be blessed to be reminded that we are baptized in the messy real of life.

And Jesus; Jesus stands with us, beloveds.

Amen