Wading into the River Matt 3:13-17
1/10/21
It’s the second Sunday of January.
And I’ve been thinking about what I would normally preach about on the second Sunday in January every year.
In normal times, I’ve just returned from India.
Two days after Christmas, I and a bunch of folks from this church would have boarded a plane at JFK late in the evening,
and flown all night and all day,
to Hyderabad, India, where we would have embarked on 10 days of visiting our work there –
We would have hung out with the children we care for the in the slums. We would have fed the hungry. And so much more.
And on the Sunday after I returned, I would be standing in this pulpit telling you all the stories.
I’ve missed being there this year – and they have so missed us.
I got a text message on Dec. 29th from our friend TL Reddy.
“I should be at the airport right now to fetch you,” it said. On New Year’s Eve, I heard from my friend Manohar:
Tomorrow we go to Jamalapuram for New Year’s Day worship, he wrote, and we miss you a lot.
I always preached there.
So on this second Sunday in January I’ve been thinking about my time in India over the years, and memories have been flooding my mind.
We had been at that remote village all day for New Year’s Day worship, which is a big thing there.
And as worship wound down, the pastor said to me “we have some baptisms for you to do now.”
Well, I was thrilled.
I love doing baptisms there – they are profoundly moving,
because we are baptizing adults who are making a courageous choice to embrace a new faith.
And I’d done enough baptisms over there to know what the drill was –
there’s a little bathtub – slash- wading pool at the back of the church where we baptize,
dunk the baptizee right into the water. So I headed toward the pool.
But the pastor said, no, these baptisms are not here, we have to drive.
And so we drove. And drove and drove. To the banks of a river, a big rushing river.
Now, I’m not always the sharpest tool in the shed. Took me a minute to get it.
The baptisms are in the river? I said. Everyone looked at me.
Right. I said. Got it. It’s just that I’ve never baptized someone in a river. Which everyone seemed astonished by.
I thought Americans do this often, said the pastor.
I’ve seen it in a movie, I said, thinking of O Brother, Where Art Thou with George Clooney.
So we went down to the river –
And I kicked off my sandals,
and in we went – me, my pastor friend,
and the two women who had been waiting for us there.
The waters rushed around us, keeping my footing was a little tricky, and I did wonder what all was in this river, what critters and such. And when the moment came,
I took the women to be baptized in my arms, one by one, and lowered them into the water –
well, lowered both of us into the water, really – as the waters rushed around us.
Waters of God’s grace.
It was like nothing I’d ever felt before.
Today in the Christian church, around the world,
is the day that – by tradition - the Baptism of Jesus is remembered.
And I don’t know exactly what John the Baptist felt as he baptized Jesus in the Jordan River
but I am quite sure that for him, too, it was like nothing he’d ever felt before. Here’s what had been going on.
John had been out on the banks of the Jordan River for days, weeks maybe, preaching and preaching.
And what he was preaching to people was that something incredible was about to happen,
that God was about to do something amazing in this world… and he was telling people that they had to get ready.
And so he was calling people down to the river to be baptized, to wash away whatever guilt and wrong and hurt clung to them.
And the people came, boy did they come,
by the hundreds, streaming down to the riverside, wading into the waters to be baptized.
And then one day, a pilgrim shows up who’s traveled a long way, all the way from Nazareth in the north.
And he joins the line of those who are wading out into the river, who are wading out into that river of human regret and hope. He wades out to John the Baptist,
bows his head and waits to be lowered into the water.
But instead John backs away from him, shaking his head. The story says that John cries out
“No! I’m not doing this. You should be baptizing me. My God, you should be baptizing me.”
And Jesus – because that’s who it is – Jesus says, “no, it’s all right. It is right.”
So John, overwhelmed, lowers Jesus into the water,
This story moves me every time I read and re-read it. Because this story says everything about Jesus.
It’s the first story about Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel that isn’t about mangers and stars and angels and wise men.
This is the first glimpse of the grown-up Jesus.
And what’s the first thing the grown-up Jesus does? He wades into the water with everyone else.
Into that river of hurt and grief and mistakes, he wades right in. Into that river with tax-collectors and fishermen,
soldiers and carpenters, he wades right in.
With women and men longing for hope and healing,
Jesus wades in, wades in with them, wades in to be with them. Jesus jumps in with both feet, literally,
into that river of human fragility because that is who he is.
God with us, Emmanuel, God with us. Where we are, he is.
Back on Christmas Eve,
I talked about where Jesus has been present in this past year, where he has been with us.
And he said that he’s been at hospital bedsides, holding the hands of the hurting and the dying when their families could not be there.
I said that he has been with each of us in our darkest moments of anxiety or sorrow.
I said it because I believe it,
and because God has shown it to be so.
From the moment Jesus waded into the water alongside all humanity, his life proclaimed: God is with you everywhere.
This life that we live, this life of blessing and heartache and hope and hurt, this is the life that Jesus has waded right into with us.
That’s what this baptism story tells us. That’s what it tells us.
But it tells us something else, too. It tells us that if we want to be where Christ is, we have to wade right in too. We have to wade right in wherever people are hurting and hoping, wherever people are yearning, longing, needing.
We don’t stand on the riverside watching – Jesus didn’t. We wade right in.
Because it is when we are willing to do that, when we are willing to be utterly a part of our sisters’ and brothers’ lives in this world, then we are most connected to the God who is utterly a part of humanity.
Which means just not holding back, not ever holding back. Whenever there is a way to stand alongside someone in their hurt or in their hope, that’s where we need to be.
You pick up the paper and there is a story that moves you, and you don’t turn the page, instead you figure out what to do … that’s wading in.
Something moves you to tears, and you don’t shut that feeling down,
you let it move you, and you let it change you –that’s wading into the river. Jesus didn’t stand on the riverbank and just watch.
Neither do we.
He went into the river with everyone else, he went into the river with us. So then do we.
Strengthened always by his presence, lifted always by his love, we enter into each other’s lives as he did.
