Isaiah 43:1-7
Psalm 29
Acts 8:14-17
Luke 3:15-17, 22-23
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts
be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
I want to share our prayer for
illumination one more time, “God, your voice moves over the waters, immerse us
in your grace, mark us with your image, and raise us to live our baptismal vows
empowered by the Holy Spirit and the example of Christ our Lord in whose name
we pray.”[1] I
do love that prayer. It’s not original; at least I didn’t write it. It comes
from a book of prayers I often use. This Baptism of the Lord Sunday, this
prayer strikes a chord with me, “Raise us to live our baptismal vows”.
Just a couple of Sundays ago we
celebrated Mathieu and Chelsi’s baptism. In the service I used the baptismal
texts from the Book of Common Worship.[2] These
liturgies and prayers were written by the Theology and Worship Ministry Unit
for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the Cumberland Presbyterian Church.
It’s a long name, but it’s a long book.
Some people, many people write
their own texts for these celebrations, but I usually don’t. I freestyle in the
prayers for the people, but on the whole I use these prepared texts because
they carry years of study and history. They carry the thoughts and prayers of
Presbyterians stretched across space and time and I find that beneficial,
especially when it comes to celebrating the sacraments.
Our text from Luke this morning
comes in two distinct sections, the confession of the Baptist and the presence
of the Trinity.
What’s glorious about the first
section is the joy of the people. They expect the savior. Not knowing he’s
already 30 years old, they expect the savior any day to come and save them.
They’re looking hard. They look hard because life is hard. When life is hard the
people need a savior.
The Israelites were oppressed. They
lived in fear every day. They needed a savior to take them from toil and
suffering to the land of milk and honey. They praised the Lord. They praised
the one who is, the great I AM. Still, they needed a savior, the promised
savior. So when they found someone who ruffled the feathers of the people in
charge, they wanted to know if he was the one.
To quote the Rolling Stones, John
says, “It ain’t me babe.” John knows the savior is coming and he knows he’s not
the savior. Knowing who we are is still important for all of us to know today.
In the baptismal vows of small children and infants we ask parents:
Relying on God’s grace,
do you promise to live the
Christian faith,
and to teach that faith to your
child?
Then to the congregation we ask:
Do you, as members of the church of Jesus Christ
promise to guide and nurture these
communicants
by word and deed,
with love and prayer,
encouraging them to know and follow
Christ
and to be faithful members of his
church?
Answering the question asked of John the baptizer, we also answer
“are you the Messiah?” with a simple “no.” We are the people who come to the
Messiah. We come to receive the waters of our baptism. We come to remember the
waters of our own baptism.
We come relying on God’s grace to
live and teach our children. We come as members of the church of Jesus Christ
This is who we are, we are
recipients. We are the ones who are blessed. Any blessings we have and share
come from God alone; it doesn’t come from our doing. Blessings though come with
commitment. Another part of the liturgy goes like this:
As God embraces you within the
covenant, I ask you
to reject sin,
to profess your faith in Christ
Jesus,
and to confess the faith of the
church,
the faith in which we baptize.
Notice the order of these statements, it’s important. Yes, I
ask those being baptized to reject sin, profess faith in Christ, and confess
the faith of the church—the faith in which we baptize. As I ask, the only
authority I have comes from God. As God embraces us within the covenant of
Baptism, only this covenant makes rejection, profession, and confession
possible.
There is a greater beauty in the
blessing over the water. We have made our intentions. We have made our
promises. We have made our renunciations. We, we, we; but in the blessing over
the water we are reminded not of who we are today, but who we have been since
the beginning. Our liturgy reads:
In the beginning of time,
your Spirit moved over the watery
chaos,
calling forth order and life.
In the time of Noah,
you destroyed evil by the waters of
the flood,
giving righteousness a new
beginning.
You led Israel
out of slavery,
through the waters of the sea,
into the freedom of the promised
land.
In the waters of Jordan
Jesus was baptized by John
and anointed with your Spirit.
By the baptism of his own death and
resurrection,
Christ set us free from sin and
death,
and opened the way to eternal life.
We thank you, O God, for the water
of baptism.
In it we are buried with Christ in
his death.
From it we are raised to share in
his resurrection,
Through it we are reborn by the
power of the Holy Spirit.
Friends, this is who we were, who we are, and who we will always
be. We are called to remember this as we remember our baptism. We are called to
remember who calls us, who blesses us, and who has shared this blessing with us
since before the beginning.
As for the second half of our
reading, this carries a blessing all its own. This is the first presence of the
Trinity in Luke’s gospel. In this setting, Jesus stands in the Jordan while
the Spirit descends bodily like a dove and the voice of God speaks.
Luke’s gospel adds a blessing not
found in other Baptism of the Lord readings. In our reading from Mark[3] last
year, only Jesus can see the Spirit and hear the Father. It’s the same way in
Matthew’s gospel,[4] not so
in Luke. Luke says the Spirit descended bodily. Luke shares the voice of God
with the crowd. Unlike these other gospels, in Luke’s it seems that everyone in
the crowd witnessed the Trinitarian appearance.
This is joyous; the first part of
our reading tells us to know who we are. This part tells us who God is in
person and in voice. Again, from the Book of Common Worship:
Obeying the word of our Lord Jesus,
and confident of his promises,
we baptize those whom God has
called.
In baptism God claims us,
and seals us to show that we belong
to God.
God frees us from sin and death,
uniting us with Jesus Christ in his
death and resurrection.
By water and the Holy Spirit,
we are made members of the church,
the body of Christ,
and joined to Christ’s ministry of
love, peace, and justice.
Continuing from the Thanksgiving over the Water:
We give you thanks, Eternal God,
for you nourish and sustain all
living things
by the gift of water.
Send your Spirit to move over this
water
that it may be a fountain of
deliverance and rebirth.
Wash away the sin of all who are
cleansed by it.
Raise them to new life,
and graft them to the body of
Christ.
Pour out your Holy Spirit upon
them,
that they may have power to do your
will,
and continue forever in the risen
life of Christ.
To you, Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit, one God,
be all praise, honor, and glory,
now and forever.
In the waters of our baptism, we are nourished and sustained.
In the waters of our baptism we share the sacrament Jesus shared. In the waters
of our baptism we receive a blessing which Christ received. We pray “Come holy
Spirit” so that these simple waters may be a fountain of deliverance and
rebirth. In the waters of our baptism we give praise, honor, and glory to the
one God in three persons now and forever.
It is in the name, in the power of
the Triune God that I say, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the
Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
So today, through rich images and
remembering the waters, the day we celebrate Jesus the Christ’s participation
in a sacrament he did not institute or even need, we celebrate that before we
can choose Christ, Christ chooses us. Today we celebrate grace freely given. We
celebrate entering new life through the covenant God has established. We
celebrate entering new life through the covenant only God can establish.
God raises us above all we can be
on our own and lifts us to the life that was intended. In embracing that
covenant we live by the words of the liturgy, “We choose whom we will serve, by
turning from evil and turning to Jesus Christ.”
When I use the word liturgy, most
people think of the words and the prayers spoken during worship. Most consider
liturgy just the words that span across the worship service bridging the
prayers to the hymns to the sermon. If this is all we use the liturgy for, that’s
all it is. But liturgy is so much more.
Liturgy is a Latin word meaning
“work of the people.” Liturgy is work, it is something we do—not something we
say. Liturgy is one of the ways we are raised into our baptismal vows. In those
vows we pray,
O Lord, uphold your child by your
Holy Spirit.
Give your child the spirit of
wisdom and understanding,
the spirit of counsel and might,
the spirit of knowledge and the
fear of the Lord,
the spirit of joy in your presence,
both now and forever.
This is how we begin to live into our baptismal vows,
through the gifts we have been given, the spirit of counsel and might, the
spirit of knowledge and fear and joy in the presence of the Lord. This is how
we are upheld so that we may live our baptismal vows. This is how God raises us
so that we can live our baptismal vows. This is our choice—whether or not to
live our vows or not; and if we so choose, how to live into them. According to
the Book of Common Worship, this is how we must choose to live our vows:
With joy and thanksgiving
we welcome you into Christ’s church
to share with us in his ministry,
for we are all one in Christ.
On this Sunday, we remember this wonderful celebration of
the Baptism of the Lord. We pray that we may be raised up to live our baptismal
vows. Today we also remember the vows we took at the baptism of Mathieu and
Chelsi. We don’t do this so we can earn salvation. We don’t participate in this
sacrament for its magical properties, because there are none. We choose to do
this because we choose to share life, the life the Triune God shares with us,
as we first see in this moment, in this act.
We remember, we share, and we live
our baptismal vows because God—Father, Son and Spirit—God chose us before we
could chose God. For this we pray “God, raise us to live our baptismal vows
empowered by the Holy Spirit and the example of Christ our Lord in whose name
we pray.”
[1] “Revised
Common Lectionary Prayers,” Consultation of Common Texts, editors. Minneapolis : Fortress
Press, 2002, page 55.
[2] Book of
Common Worship Texts from: The Theology and Worship Ministry Unit for the
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A. )
and the Cumberland
Presbyterian Church, “Book of Common Worship.” Louisville , KY
[3] Mark
1:4-11
[4] Matthew
3:13-17
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