Baptism of Christ B2024
Mark 1:4-11
The gospels of Matthew and Luke both include Christmas stories, tales of Joseph and Mary, angels and shepherds. The gospel of John tells the most ancient of Christmas stories: In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. In Matthew, Luke, and John, by the time Jesus calls disciples and proclaims the kingdom of God and heals lepers, his credentials are established. His status as God’s son, heir of the throne of David, and Lamb of God is clear before Jesus preaches his first sermon. But Mark’s gospel lacks a Christmas story. Mark simply opens: The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the son of God and then plunges into today’s story about John the Baptist. In Mark’s gospel, Jesus shows up out of nowhere, is baptized, receives the Holy Spirit, and presumably God, the voice from heaven, declares: You are my Son, the beloved. With you, I am well pleased. That’s it. God declares Jesus God’s Son, and that’s it before Jesus is ushered into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit, before he’s tempted, before he proclaims the good news of God, before he calls disciples, before he spends the next year healing and teaching and feeding and befriending and forgiving. It’s Jesus’ baptism that leads him into ministry. It’s Jesus’ baptism where he learns his identity.
Do you remember your baptism? I don’t. Perhaps like many of you, I was an infant on my baptism day, only 3 weeks old. My father, the pastor, baptized me while my mom and my two godfathers stood with him at the baptismal font. My parents kept the white cloth used to wipe the water from my head and put it in my baby book. They snapped photos and glued the baptismal certificate to the page. I heard my baptism happened, once. Per the photos, one of my godfathers held me in his arms, and I suspect my dad made the sign of the cross on my forehead, saying: Sarah Lee, child of God, you have been sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever. I bet you the congregation sang “Children of the Heavenly Father” that day. But I don’t actually know. I was there, but I don’t know if it happened that way or not. All I know is that on that day, God proclaimed me a beloved child of God.
You see, at least according to Martin Luther, baptism is not about us measuring up or knowing or doing anything—at all. God is the one who acts in baptism, the One who forgives sin, the One who claims us as God’s own child, the One who gifts us a community, the church, the One who sets us free from the power of sin and death and evil. All of this is done for us, not by us. Though adults are most welcome to be baptized, as Lutherans, we usually baptize infants. Because baptizing infants makes Luther’s point that those baptized do nothing at all, can do nothing at all to be worthy of God’s promises. Baptism is, instead, the work of God, not the work of the one baptized. Yes, parents and sponsors and congregations make promises too, to pray for and support the child in a life of faith, but these promises are dwarfed by God’s promises. Which means even though we did nothing, friends, we still received the gifts of baptism.
In the year I have spent with the Esperanza community, I have noticed your incredible generosity toward the work of God. I have noticed your quite striking intelligence and talent. I have noticed your dedication to this community. I have also noticed a trend toward perfectionism, of course, not everyone but as a general trend. I’m not throwing shade here. Takes one to know one. Speaking from experience, perfectionism leads us to care more about how things look than about how things are. Perfectionists wish to appear perfect—which leads us to work really hard at most things, which means we tend to be successful, which means we generally hit upon excellence in striving for perfection. But there are some serious downsides—and these may be true for us even if we aren’t necessarily perfectionists. We tend to avoid doing things that we’re not good at because not being good at something makes us uncomfortable. We might not be able to accept our mistakes or acknowledge our mistakes in relationship with others. We might try to win every conversation as if it were an argument because we can’t tolerate being wrong. We might struggle to accept when others make choices we wouldn’t make. These dynamics can lead to broken relationships.
At the heart of this drive toward perfection is, often, not being sure that we’re enough—just as we are. On this baptism of Christ Sunday, God declares Jesus God’s own Son with whom God is well pleased. And in every baptism since then, God has claimed the baptized as God’s own beloved children with whom God is well pleased. Not because of what we did or how we measured up. But just because we are.
Many of us in this room are parents, but even if you’re not… imagine holding an infant in your arms, perhaps your own child. Imagine their tiny hands and fingernails, their perfectly smooth skin, their sweet smile. Imagine your care for that child, your abundant love for them, no matter how many times they wake in the night, no matter how colicky they are, no matter their needs. Remember this child can do nothing without you, is entirely dependent upon you, is wholly shaped by your care for them. When we look at this child, we are well pleased with them. An understatement, really, “well pleased.” We love this child more than we ever thought possible. That’s God’s relationship with us. We are God’s beloved children with whom God is well pleased. Right now. The way we are.
And because we are loved by God, we can give up our striving to be loved, our striving to be enough. Today, the good new of God for us couldn’t be simpler, and it is this: God loves you. Thanks be to God! Amen.