Water and Spirit
Rev. Mark Schaefer
Kay Spiritual Life Center
January 12, 2003
Genesis 1:1-5, Mark 1:4-11
I. INTRODUCTION
I am a recovering band geek. It’s been 16 years since I last played the trombone.
In the sixth grade I started on the trombone. It was a habit I thought I had quit until the end of my freshman year of high school when our band director suggested that the band could use some more low brass. I let it slip that I had played trombone in middle school and the next thing I knew, I was recruited to play the bass trombone. She gave me an old bass trombone with an F-attachment that made it much easier for me to hit the low notes. Now, there was one thing wrong with this trombone: it had some kind of schmutz on the mouthpiece.\
Well, I didn’t like the look of that so I tried wiping it off. It didn’t come off. I tried soaking it. It didn’t come off. I put it in the dishwasher. I scrubbed it. I tried everything. Nothing. It wouldn’t come clean. So I went into my band director and showed her the mouthpiece and explained my problem. She looked at me and said, “If all that didn’t clean that spot off, what are the chances it’s going to come off on your lips?”
She had a point. There are some stains that just aren’t going to come off. No matter how much water you use.
II. THE TEXT–BAPTISM AND CLEANSING
There are some spiritual stains that we think are like that, too. Stains we feel will never come off.
I got thinking about cleaning because today is the commemoration of the Baptism of the Lord. And the lections we read today are about Jesus’ baptism.
A. Baptism and Mikvah
Now, we like to think that baptism was something that Christians invented, but in reality, it is an ancient Jewish practice of ritual immersion. Ritual immersion was required for all kinds of things, after child birth, after contact with a dead person, after certain diseases, and so on. Immersion in a ritual bath, or a mikvah, was required. It still is and many Jewish brides will to this day go to the mikvah before a wedding.
What John the Baptist’s innovation was that he used the mikvah–a ritual familiar to his Jewish contemporaries–as a method of calling for repentance and of delivering the same. Here was a bath that was used for ritual purity and he was using it for spiritual purity.
That’s an important distinction. Ritual purity has nothing to do with immorality. We hear stories in the New Testament about Jesus coming into contact with ritually impure people, and we often attribute some kind of moral status to that. I have even heard sermons in which such people were described as “outside the grace of God.” Or if we don’t attribute some kind of moral status to it, then we assume that those silly Jews of the First Century did. But ritual purity had nothing to do with morality and everything to do with a proper sense of holiness in engaging in certain acts of worship. The only thing being ritually impure prevented you from doing was worshiping in the Temple. And since the Temple was in Jerusalem and you maybe went there once a year, it wasn’t such a big deal. Besides, ritual impurity could be fixed pretty easily with a bath in the mikvah.
B. Cleansing from Sin
But John was using it for something else, he was using it for purity of spirit. A way to symbolically wash away one’s sins and repent. And we carry much the same idea in the way we practice baptism. The language of our baptismal rite makes this clear:
“Pour out you Holy Spirit, be bless this gift of water and those who receive it,
to wash away their sin, and clothe them in righteousness, throughout their lives…”
From ritual impurity to spiritual purity. A rebirth, fresh and spotless. A clean slate.
C. Embarrassment for the Evangelists
There’s something of a problem with that, though, isn’t there? Especially when it comes to the New Testament lesson for today. For today, in the first chapter of the Gospel of Mark, we read of Jesus’ baptism. Jesus’. Hear again some of those words:
In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.
There’s no qualification. Jesus comes from Nazareth and was baptized. But if John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance, why was Jesus getting baptized? Well, we’re not the first people to notice this. This was noticed by the author of the Gospel of Matthew. And a few extra verses appear in Matthew’s account:
John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now, for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. (Matt. 3:14-15)
The Gospel of John omits any account of Jesus’ baptism, describing an encounter with John, but not the act of the baptism itself.
There may have been discomfort in the early church (as there is today) with the idea of Jesus needing to be baptized. For if a baptism is a ritual way of cleansing from sin, then why is Jesus being baptized. Is Mark saying that Jesus was in need of repentance? That Jesus was a sinner? Or is Mark saying something else about baptism?
III. NEW CREATION
Let’s take a look at that passage from Mark again and unpack it a little:
In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
Where else have we seen heavens torn apart, water, and spirit? This is one of those times that English gets in the way and it’s helpful to remember that the Bible was not written in English. Does it help to know that in both Hebrew and Greek the word for spirit is the same word as the word for wind? Listen again to the verses we heard in the Old Testament lesson, slightly modified:
In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.”
Mark isn’t talking about cleansing at all. When he tells the story of Jesus’ baptism, he is reminding us of the Creation. And therefore, Jesus’ baptism is the sign of the New Creation, that God is working in Jesus Christ. In Jesus Christ God begins new creative activity. Not simply cleaning the old thing, but creating a new one.
Mark is telling us from the very beginning of his gospel, 16 chapters before the Empty Tomb, that God is working a New Creation in Jesus Christ. It is this new creation that has the power to cancel out our sin. This New Creation so radically transforms our lives that our sins, even those stains that we think will never come out–and if you’re like me, you have plenty–even those blotches are overcome by the power of God’s New Creation.
A. Our Baptisms
Our baptisms are not something we do. They are something God does in us through Jesus Christ. To be baptized is to be born again. Created anew. They are not simply the magical washing away of all that has gone on before like a tub of OxyClean or Kaboom or some other infomercial cleaner. They are about the beginning of a new creation in us.
So our baptism begins the process of our rebirth and growth in Christian love. John Wesley had a whole Way of Salvation that he had worked out, in which baptism was the very beginning of a life in Christian discipleship. It was the first step, after which one embarked on a process in which the Spirit empowered the Christian to grow in discipline, charity, piety, and devotion.
IV. NEW BEGINNINGS
I wish I could say that that growth proceeds unabated. I wish I could stand here and tell you that once you’re a Christian everything is fine. Once you’ve been reborn, you never screw up. You never make mistakes. I could say that, but then I’d either be a liar or this would be a congregation in which there was not a single Christian. We do make mistakes. We do screw up.
But new beginnings abound. The beginning of a new semester is one such opportunity to start over. To wipe the slate clean.
Maybe you didn’t study hard enough last semester. Maybe you drank too much. (These two often come hand in hand). Maybe you had a fight with a friend. Maybe you hurt someone. Maybe you betrayed a confidence. Maybe you sat in your room and never saw anything of the great City about you.
You have an opportunity to start over. Another chance to do things right. God gives us these new opportunities all the time. In the same way that a sudden wind comes along blows the clouds away and creates a new day, so too can the Spirit of God blow through us and create something new within us.
Often these new opportunities are as close to us as the nearest breath, inhaling fresh wind and filling our spirits
V. CONCLUSION
God is working a new creation in us in Christ Jesus. A new creation by water and Spirit. And even those stains on our soul, those blotches on our hearts, can be overcome by the power of God’s Spirit: a spirit that creates and breathes life into us all.
