baptismal ID

Baptismal ID 011214

If someone asks for my ID, I either feel flattered, if it’s a grocery clerk and I’m buying cough medicine or beer….or I feel worried, if it’s a police officer!

My ID apart from drivers license used to say I was a resident alien…which I rather like…..now it says permanent resident, which is silly, nothing is permanent!

But who are we, really?  under the faces and facades and masks we wear what’s our real identity,?  Who am I?   If you have blank ID tags like these on the screen, what would you engrave?   Look at Linked In, online, or Facebook and you’ll see what people THINK their identity is:  name, job title, things they do well (or in the case of FB what they had for breakfast! Our culture tends to believe you are what you do.  But our faith says, no.  You do what you are; our identity comes first.

We live in a culture that promises success and acceptance if only we are…..skinny enough, rich enough, strong enough, popular enough, beautiful enough, and so on.  Never before have so many people been willing to offer us an identity, usually linked to a product being sold.   And all of us fall for it, because we crave a sense of identity, belonging and purpose.

Which brings us to this ancient story of Jesus’ baptism. 

By the time Matthew is writing his gospel, it is clear that the young movement of Christianity is struggling a bit with baptism, especially why Jesus had to be baptized.  Only Matthew has this odd little conversation between Jesus and John.

The first time Jesus speaks in Matthew, he says he needs to be  baptized. How odd.  Yet it’s a forecast of things to come.  He’s turning stuff upside down: first by identifying with the ordinary people (which some great Messiah kind of person should hardly have to do) = and also by equalizing the re3latiosnhip between him and John, who’s an old school hierarchical thinking man.

In fact it will become a characteristic of the whole Jesus movement then and now, that all human  expectations are redefined.  He’s hardly a messianic figure, this Jesus.  He’s born in poverty, maybe illegitimate, defenseless and vulnerable, persecuted, with no political or financial means…pretty much like everybody else in his class.  Nobody special….until this moment…until he humbles himself into baptism.

(BTW I may change this after I’ve finished reading “Zealot”!)

These people, and Jesus, stand in the wilderness, like their ancestors with Moses, and symbolically cross the Jordan river like they did, into a new life…out of the wilderness, thru the water, into a new ID as a named claimed love source of pleasure to God.

You know, we’ve badly softened baptism into a welcoming ritual for babies. A little touch of water on the forehead, a little sweet moment.   But it’s so much more.   My own baptism was a dramatic act of immersion in water….. It’s an act that signifies our separating ourselves from sin, the old life, the wilderness, and moving through the water to a new life, a new id

We should splash audaciously!

Jesus doesn’t set himself apart; he aligns himself with the rest of us.  He knows, as we do, that we can’t do it alone.  I’m betting he is none too certain of his own call, the meaning of his life, or his purpose.  I think he may not have much of an identity yet, but he is actively involved in the community and with God.  Like all of us, I am sure he grew into his identity, and it was first clearly named and claimed in his baptism.   In Matthew’s version, like Luke’s, he is blessed, named, claimed and appreciated.  He is given a core identity.

That’s still what happens in baptism today, and again at confirmation:  we say:  the HS work within you, so that you may live as a  faithful disciple. Identity.

That is our baptismal ID—named claimed loved source of pleasure for God…..so are we?

Every baptism gives us the chance again and again to come out of the wilderness of our old ways, wade through the waters immersed with the Spirit, and come up renewed and refreshed and ready for our mission and purpose….a new id: (from a website this week) the children of God tell the truth in a world that lies,                                                                                                                             Give in a world that takes,                                                                                                  love in a world that lusts                                                                                        make peace in a world that fights,                                                                      serve in a world that wants to be served,                                                              pray in a world that  waits to be entertained,                                                                           and take chances in a world that  worships safety.                                        The baptized are citizens of an eccentric community where financial success is not the goal, security is not the highest  good, and self giving is a daily event.  (ministry matters, the first step)

When we go out of here into that new ID, the wilderness may look the same, but we are different.  We are named and claimed and loved sources of pleasure for God.

The message of baptism is that God has said we are good enough, that we are beloved just as we are, and that God takes pleasure in us and has great hopes for us.  (opportunity to come forward during postlude to touch the waters….etc)

Let’s not disappoint God, or falsify our Identity.

Amen.