Sarah pours water from the pitcher into the baptismal bowl in the font.

“This is the water of baptism.

Lifting it up she says:

Out of this water we rise with new life,

Forgiven of sin and one in Christ,

Members of Christ’s body.”

Bringing it back down she says:

And yet this water is just ordinary water.

It came out of the tap in the kitchen.

Holding it out toward the congregation, she says:

But this water is holy.

I blessed it right here before you

in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Bringing it in toward her heart, she says:

And yet I am just an ordinary human.

No better or worse than anyone else.

Sarah places the bowl back in the font.

Like you, I am a sinner.

And like you, I am holy:

born in the image of God,

a beloved child, with whom God is well pleased.

This bowl is full of nothing but water.

And yet this bowl contains a mystery,

a mystery full of Spirit and fire.

It is a mystery we will never fully understand but a mystery we do get to participate in every time a baby is brought forward or a new believer chooses to be baptized. It is the mystery we encounter every time we read the story of Jesus’ baptism and any time we are given the opportunity to remember and renew our own…the mystery of God’s great love for us.

John’s Baptism, on the other hand, was not a mystery at all. His was a baptism of repentance, and I think we all get how that works. People went down to the river Jordan confessing their sins. They went under the water and prayed that God would wash them clean. They turned from their old ways in order to get ready to be part of whatever new thing God was ready to do through the coming messiah.

I think we all understand this kind of arrangement. It is remarkably straightforward. You repent so that God can forgive you. You change your ways so that God can use you. You believe so that God can save you.  You get your sinful, guilt ridden, sorry excuse for a life right before God so that God will be alright with you.

That’s John’s baptism. And please hear me when I say that there is absolutely a place for it in the context of our faith experience. Repentance is the logical starting point for most of us because none of us are perfect. We all sin. We all go astray. Repentance is necessary… for us. It’s something we humans need.

We need to repent because we can’t change until we admit that we need to change any more than we can experience forgiveness before we acknowledge that we need it.

“I baptize you with water for repentance,” said John, and thank goodness he did, because we all need to repent. It’s why we begin every worship service with a prayer of confession. We all mess up. We all need forgiveness. We all need to work at being better people, all of the time. There’s no mystery there.

“But one who is more powerful than I is coming after me,” said John and “he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”

It would seem that Jesus’ baptism is something altogether different from John’s and if I’m not mistaken (Sarah points to the bowl) it is Jesus’ baptism that we have been left to practice here in the church.

As far as I can tell, this baptism of spirit and fire is not a quid pro quo arrangement like John’s where you do your part to show your love for God and then God will do God’s part and show up to love you.

No, we’re so early in this gospel that when Jesus shows up to be baptized he hasn’t said or done anything to earn God’s love at all. And yet the moment he comes out of the water, the Spirit breaks through all bright and white and soft like a dove and declares that Jesus is God’s beloved child with whom God is well pleased.

I think it’s really interesting that Jesus himself never bothered to baptize anyone.

But then before he left us, he asked us to keep baptizing people in his name so we would all know that we are God’s beloved children… already. Jesus’ baptism doesn’t effect that. Jesus baptism simply reveals what is already true. It is a sign from heaven that the Holy Spirit is full of love for him and for us… even before we change our ways, even before we get baptized, even before we do one blessed thing.

I’ve been puzzling over this all week, but I think that’s the reason why Jesus chose to be baptized by John. After all, knowing what we know about him, it doesn’t make sense that Jesus would be baptized for the repentance of his sins - right? Even John is confused when he shows up. If anything, says, John, I should be baptized by you. But Jesus chose to be baptized so we could witness God’s love in action, a love that comes first, an unconditional love that burns for him and for us from the get go.

I’ve always wondered about this, but I now think Jesus’ own baptism is the baptism of Spirit and fire that John predicted. It just wasn’t exactly what John expected and I think even now, 2000 years later, it still takes us by surprise. After all, John had primed everyone to be ready, to repent, to get right with God before God’s chosen one shows up to root out the sinful with his winnowing fork and unquenchable fire.

The way John tells it, a baptism by spirit and fire sounds terrifying. There’s a real turn or burn element to his rhetoric.

But when Jesus shows up he seems to be taking his cues more from Isaiah than his cousin. Jesus doesn’t take over or call down fire from heaven on the wicked. He doesn’t “cry or lift up his voice.” He doesn’t yell or threaten or terrorize anyone.

He simply gets in line like everyone else, in solidarity with everyone else, perhaps to show us that true righteousness has nothing to do with self righteousness. It is not earned or  accomplished through anything we do. True righteousness is not about being perfect or better than anyone else, but about grounding ourselves in the humble awareness that God just loves us….all of us…no matter what…loves us whether we deserve it or not.

God loves us not because of who we are but because of who God is…our creator, our heavenly parent. God loves us because God is love.

It is a love so overwhelmingly undeserved that if we truly understood the gift we’d been given we couldn’t help but extend it to one another. That would be righteous, because if we truly loved everyone we’d be right in line with God - which is what righteousness means. But we don’t get it and because we don’t get it we have a lot of trouble extending it. And personally, I get it why it is so hard.

Unconditional love like that simply doesn’t make sense. It’s a beautiful mystery, yes, but it’s also a vexing paradox. This idea that somehow by the grace of God - a grace we are invited to encounter in this ritual of baptism - our humanity, our imperfection, our sinfulness …does not negate our belovedness.  It cannot. It will not. Not now. Not ever. Our sinfulness does not negate our belovedness. God just loves us no matter what and will keep loving us forever and always come what may.

That’s the gospel. Go baptize everyone, said Jesus, so that everyone will know they are loved by God already. That’s the good news. But let me just say, I understand if that idea doesn’t sound good at all to you right now. In fact, I understand if it makes you angry… why this might seem incomprehensible what with all the horrible things people are doing in our country and around the world.

We like the idea that our sin does not negate our belovedness, but the idea that their sinfulness does not negate theirs …may very well offend your sense of justice. I wouldn’t blame you for wanting someone a lot more like John the Baptist and lot less like Jesus to step into the fray we find ourselves in and winnow the hell out of some people right now.

But this is why good theology and a proper understanding of stories and rituals like this are so, so important. Because, you see, if the starting place of your theology, your Christology, your anthropology, is that people are awful, we all deserve God’s wrath, and God’s going to punish anyone who doesn’t believe in Jesus the way you believe in Jesus, or get baptized the way you were baptized, or go through whatever steps you think are important to get right with God…. well then, its a whole lot easier to demonize and dehumanize people you don’t want or like or agree with.

It makes it much easier to turn away from the bad things that are happening to those people if you think deep down, God’s just abandoning them to what we all deserve anyway.

However, if your theology, your Christology, your anthropology begins from a place of recognizing that everyone is God’s beloved child from birth, then its a whole lot easier to show up for each other, protect each other, and hold the other - no matter how other they might be -with compassion, because you know that even if they don’t belong to you, they still belong to God. Even if you don’t love them, God still does, so for God’s sake you won’t harm them but instead, do all that you can for them.

If our sinfulness does not negate our belovedness, then theirs doesn’t either. They are named and claimed by the same Spirit that we are, a Spirit on fire with love for us all.

So let me close with a word about this fire and why we should welcome it not just for them but for ourselves as well.

Again, fire sounds scary, but I believe this holy fire is present all throughout scripture, and it is not something we need fear. I believe it is the fire Moses saw in the bush that burned but was not consumed. I believe it is the fiery pillar that led the Israelites through the wilderness when they were faithful and even when they were not.

It is the fire John spoke of, a fire that burns the chaff of sin away in order to reveal the good kernel of wheat that lies at your core and mine.

It is a fire like the sun that shines on good and evil alike, just like Jesus said. Our sin, like the clouds, can block our experience of that love, but God’s love is still there for us, always there, burning away, just waiting to break through.

And it is a fire like the tongues that rested upon the disciples during Pentecost, a flame that enabled them to share the good news of God’s love with all.

This is a fire that burns for us, not against us. It is a fire meant to refine us and cleanse us, but not consume us. A fire with the power to connect us, not destroy us. But above all else, it is a gift of the Holy Spirit who loves us…loves us now and forever, and asks only that we share the good news of that love with one another in word and deed. A Spirit that asks us to go forth to love others because God loves us and God loves them. A beautiful mystery. A vexing paradox. A challenge wrapped in a promise.

Spirit and fire right here in a bowl of water.

A symbol of God’s extraordinary love for ordinary people like you and me

A sign on our heads and a seal upon our hearts

to remind us that we

are all God’s beloved children

now and forever.

That with you, no matter what, God is well pleased.

Amen? Amen

Friends, I want to invite you in to this mystery once again as we renew our baptism vows - vows you may have said in some form as an adult or vows that may have been spoken over you when you were just a child- and then you are all invited to come forward to be blessed.

If you have never been baptized, but want to follow Jesus and be baptized someday, you can still come forward. I pray that this water would be a sign to you on your journey and we can speak to one another soon.

If you are not a believer, you can still come forward and I pray that this water would be a sign to you that you are loved by God already, forever and always.

And if you have been baptized, listen closely now, that we might renew our vows together:

Friends, in the waters of Baptism, you were made new, born again in the spirit, forgiven of sin, saved from death, and given new life in Christ.  In the waters of baptism, you were named and claimed as beloved, a precious child of God, beautiful to behold. And so today, in honor of Christ’s baptism, I would ask: do you promise, by the grace of God, to live as a disciple of Jesus Christ, to follow in his way, to do justice, practice kindness, and walk humbly with God? If so please say: “We do.”

Then receive this gift freely.

This is the water of baptism….

Out of this water we rise with new life,

forgiven of sin and one in Christ,

members of Christ’s body.

You may come forward down either aisle, just like we do for communion, to be blessed by me or by Elliot.

God bless you…Name…beloved child of God.

Know that with you, God is well pleased.