Trinity Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

[please click on one of the items above for more information]

============================================================

Sermons

January 2003 (click here to return to "January 2003 Sermons" page)

Baptism of the Lord (January 12, 2003)

“Chosen By God” Dr. Julie Adkins

Text: Mark 1:4-11

SERMON

This may be a bit of a stretch,

but try for just a moment to imagine yourself

as John the Baptist.

You can leave out the locusts and wild honey if you want,

but try to picture the rest of it.

At this point in your life,

you’re kind of a country preacher with a following.

You’re a little harsh, at times,

and kind of judgmental,

but very sincere.

It’s not an act.

You are really convinced that the world

and a lot of people in it

are going to hell in a handbasket,

and you’re determined to do everything in your power

to stop them in their downward mobility.

Anyway, here you are,

waist-deep in the muddy Jordan river,

baptizing people who have come confessing their sins.

And here comes Jesus – your cousin, remember?

What are you going to do?

You know he’s a prophet;

you know he’s greater than you, mightier than you;

you just told it to the whole crowd!

But here he is.

He’s coming down into the water.

He wants to be baptized.

What are you going to do?

Well, not all the gospels tell us this,

but Matthew is pretty clear that

you, John, are appalled at the suggestion.

You protest.

You tell Jesus it’s all backwards;

he ought to baptize you.

You try frantically to figure a way out of this.

But Jesus reassures you:

“It’s all right, John;

this is how it’s supposed to be for now.”

And so you dunk him in that dirty water

just like everybody else,

but when he comes up,

something quite different happens.

God’s Spirit comes down upon him,

looking like a dove,

and a voice says,

“You are me beloved Son;

I am well pleased with you.”

Well, good, at least God isn’t mad at you

for baptizing Jesus.

But it’s still all kind of mysterious.

What does all this mean?

And what’s going to come next?

Now of course,

if you’ve read the story,

you know what actually happened next.

Jesus went out into the wilderness,

and fasted 40 days and 40 nights,

all of which just goes to show that

even if you’re the son of God

it doesn’t mean your life is going to be easy!

Oh well.

And even baptism itself,

is no sure protection against temptation

and evil influences.

So maybe it’s good to be reminded

that the “high” of Jesus’ baptism

was followed by a “low” time

of isolation and testing.

Anyway, it is sort of unusual

that Jesus would choose to be baptized,

since he had no sin to repent of.

But if we spend too much time

worrying about how weird it is –

which a lot of theologians seem to enjoy doing –

If we do,

we may miss some important connections

that ought to be made.

Because even though Jesus is different from us in some respects,

and even though most of us Presbyterians

were probably sprinkled rather than dunked;

nevertheless, the similarities

are what’s really important.

For example, it’s easy to get hung up on

the sheer drama of this dove descending

and resting over Jesus’ head.

And we forget that God’s Holy Spirit

descended to each of us

at the time of our baptism.

We have been under the care and guidance of the Spirit

since that time.

Of course, we can choose to ignore that care and guidance . . .

And all of us do that

at some time or another!

But in our baptism, we are claimed by God

just as surely as Christ was, in his.

And even though we probably didn’t hear

a strong voice from above, saying

“this is my beloved, with whom I am well pleased” . . .

nevertheless, in baptism

we are recognized as a child of God

just as securely, if not as dramatically, as Jesus was.

We are God’s children.

We are chosen by God.

Now if we’re not careful,

that can sound arrogant, can’t it?!

As if to say, “We’re chosen by God . . .

too bad about the rest of you.”

That’s not the point at all!

Being chosen entails both privilege and responsibility.

In fact, there’s a marvelous phrase in our Book of Order

that I get reacquainted with every year

when I train new elders . . .

It says that one of the central beliefs of the Reformed faith is

“the election (=chosenness) of the people of God

for service as well as salvation.”

That’s something we can see in Jesus’ own life.

We often talk about how he came to save us,

and that’s true; he did do that,

but he didn’t talk about it all that much.

What he spent most of his time talking about, and doing,

was serving God and other people.

Likewise, our baptism places on us

both the privilege of salvation

and the responsibility of service.

Let’s look at each of those quickly.

First, when we talk about there being a connection

between baptism and salvation,

let’s be clear about one thing:

We do not mean that anyone unbaptized

is going straight to hell!

There are some faith traditions which believe that,

but we aren’t one of them!

To say that in baptism we are chosen by God

does not mean that someone who is not baptized

is automatically rejected by God!

Rather, when Martin Luther and John Calvin

and some of those other Reformers

talked about the relationship between baptism and salvation,

they meant it to be comforting.

When we are baptized, they said,

we are claimed by God.

And so we don’t need to go around worrying all the time

about whether or not we’re saved.

God is taking care of that.

That may seem a little foreign to us,

because most of us don’t spend a great deal of time and energy

worrying about the state of our soul and our salvation.

But I think there’s a message for us as well.

Because we have received God’s Holy Spirit,

we will be guided about the decisions we need to make,

and what we ought to believe,

and all that sort of thing.

We are not left on our own

to find our way in the dark

and somehow earn our way to salvation.

Because we are baptized,

we are assured that God has prepared us a place

and will lead us there.

All we have to do is follow.

You know, poor Martin Luther,

if he were alive today,

I’m certain he would be diagnosed a manic-depressive –

“bipolar disorder” is the technical term these days.

And someone would have given him a prescription for lithium,

and the Reformation would never have happened.

Well, perhaps I exaggerate.

Anyway, during his “down” times,

Luther found it surprisingly helpful

simply to remind himself, “You have been baptized.”

He knew then that no matter how bad things seemed to him,

he was still under God’s care,

and God would never let him go.

So that’s the first part of the equation.

Much like Jesus,

we are chosen to receive God’s blessing and salvation.

But we are also chosen for important work,

again, like Jesus.

We are to serve God

by serving God’s people, God’s world.

In passages of scripture like the 25^th chapter of Matthew,

Jesus makes it clear that

whenever we minister to the unfortunate of our world,

we have served him.

At the end of each gospel,

Jesus, in different words each time,

charges the disciples to go out

and tell his good news to the whole world.

And that’s part of our service too.

He talks about letting our light shine . . .

and about being peacemakers . . .

and giving away our coat to someone without one . . .

and all sorts of things.

In our baptism, we are chosen

for all these kinds of service.

And we are given, or will be given,

the gifts to do whichever task the Spirit needs us to do

at any given time.

Whenever God chooses us,

God empowers us.

We are baptized.

Those words comfort us, and challenge us.

We are baptized.

Let us seek to live each day

as the chosen people of God.

Amen.