Community Church Sermons
January 13, 2008
First
Sunday After the Epiphany
Matthew 3:13-17
Sandy and I live over in Toqua Coves, on a hill overlooking Clear Creek. Across the cove from us, the Old Vonore Road runs right down into the lake, disappearing under the waters that flooded the area when the gates on the Tellico Dam were closed and the Little Tennessee River became Tellico Lake.
Sometimes, on a warm summer Sunday, we’ll look out and see cars parked along the Old Vonore Road – right up to the edge of the water – and a group of people clothed in their brightly colored Sunday best. And we’ll hear their voices singing, “Shall we gather at the river…” And we will stop what we are doing and silently watch as a preacher dunks a new believer under the water, and the people on the shore, and the angels in heaven, rejoice.
Baptism.
The most powerful symbol we have of God claiming us in love, and of us committing our lives to God’s furure.
Long ago – in another time and another place – a man by the name of Jesus came to another river to be baptized. We re-tell the story every year on this Sunday, about how his cousin John was preaching out in the wilderness area of the Jordan River. And those who heard and believed the Good News of God’s love and God’s amazing plan for the future waded out into those chilly waters of the Jordan to be baptized. Jesus was among them, and the gospels tell us that when he came up out of the water, the heavens opened and the Holy Spirit descended upon him, and a voice from heaven came saying, “This is my son, with whom I am well-pleased.”
And that’s why WE gather at the river all these many centuries later. Now, the baptismal waters we receive are sometimes dispensed a little differently – perhaps through a pitcher, or scooped up from a font. Sometimes the waters fill a climate-controlled baptistery inside a church where the river is recreated before our very eyes and new believers are fully immersed. And sometimes people today are baptized outdoors, in places like Tellico Lake, or along the Old Vonore Road where the Little Tennessee once ran, or even in that same Jordan River where Jesus was baptized that day – and where Sandy and I were baptized when we traveled to the Holy Land years ago. I can tell you, that’s some COLD water in the River Jordan!
We Christians find the meaning of our faith when we gather with the saints at the river.
And yet the full meaning of our new life through baptism sometimes escapes us.
For one thing, the song “Shall We Gather at the River?” is not really a baptism song. The river mentioned there is not the Little Tennessee, not Tellico Lake, not even the Jordan River where it all began. The river in that great hymn is the river described in Revelation 22:
“Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit…And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations…”
Do you see the symbolism of the world made right – overflowing with life and healing? This is the river that represents that time in the future when all God’s children are safely home and no one is left out or taken advantage of – when death is destroyed and we are reunited with our loved ones – when the tears are wiped away from every eye – when children are safe and full of laughter – when the kingdoms of this world become the kingdom of our God and of his Christ, and there is peace on earth and good will to all.
This is the river of the beautiful new world God is creating for you and me, and for our children and grandchildren, and for our neighbors, both those nearby and those far away.
“Shall we gather at the river?” the song asks? Oh yes! Yes, we WANT the day of God’s kingdom to come!
Sometimes, though, we Christians lose sight of this future hope. Sometimes we Christians forget where we are going, and what we are working toward, and what our mission is all about. Perhaps it is because we get all wrapped up in the day-to-day concerns of our own lives and lose sight of the destination ahead. Perhaps it is because we are happy to have a faith that is only about us and not about those who come after us.
Or perhaps we lose sight of where we are going because we do not understand where we have been!
Do YOU know where you were when you received the waters of baptism?
John Dominic Crossan is quite right when he says that the most remarkable thing about Jesus’ baptism is not WHAT happened that day, but WHERE it happened. Now think about this! The most remarkable thing about YOUR baptism is not WHAT happened that day, but WHERE it happened. Let me explain:
Jesus was baptized in the JORDAN! You were baptized – in one form or another – in the JORDAN! All Christian baptism traces itself back to the headwaters of the JORDAN! And of all the rivers that are mentioned in the Bible, the JORDAN is the most significant.
The Jordan River is the river Joshua and the Israelites had to cross in order to reach the land God had promised them. The Jordan was the gateway to their God-promised future! And hundreds of years later, when their freedom in the Promised Land was taken away by the invading armies of Rome, the wilderness of the Jordan River became the rallying place for those who dared to mount an insurgency against Rome. The Jordan River was where revolutionaries gathered to plot the overthrow of Rome’s occupation and the inauguration of the kingdom of God. The wilderness of the Jordan was where people reenacted Joshua’s crossing of the Jordan River as a sign of their radical commitment to bringing about God’s new world.
And so they gathered at the RIVER – the same river their forbears had crossed to claim the land of promise – and they immersed themselves in the waters of that RIVER as a sign of their personal commitment to God’s new future. Being immersed in the waters of the JORDAN meant you had enlisted in the CAUSE OF GOD TO BRING ABOUT A BETTER WORLD!
And so Jesus came to be baptized by John…in the RIVER.
And that’s where WE were baptized too! No matter how young, no matter how old, you and I were gathered at the RIVER where courageous souls take upon themselves vows of commitment to God’s future. Do you have any idea what a dangerous and radical thing you took upon yourself when you were BAPTIZED?
A young girl once brought her baby to our church to be baptized. She was not married. Her family had rejected her when they found she was pregnant. She was all alone in the world to raise her little baby. She was not even a member of our church. I had never even met her until the day she called to ask if I would baptize the child she had named “Penny Candy.” She was just a kid herself!
So I asked her why – why did she want her baby baptized? And do you know how she answered?
She said, “I want my baby to have a better life than I’ve had, and I figure the best place to start is with God.”
That young woman was standing at the RIVER – the river where people make radical new commitments of their lives to building a better future for their children, for their neighbors, and for themselves.
What kind of world do YOU want for your kids and grandkids?
God’s vision is of building a world of peace, of wellness, of justice, of love, of brotherhood – a world where no one goes hungry, where no child is ever abused again, where no elderly person is ever discarded, where neighbors truly love each other, and where the lion and the lamb lay down together.
That’s the kind of beautiful world God wants for all his children. But that’s not the kind of world we have.
At the close of this past year, there were 12.5 MILLION children in the world suffering with AIDS. 420,000 of them were newly infected during the year. Every hour of every day, around 40 children die of AIDS.
More than one billion people in our world live in poverty, subsisting on less than $1 a day. It is estimated that 854 million people live with constant hunger. Every day, almost 16,000 children die of hunger-related causes. That’s one child every 5-seconds.
That young girl said she wanted a better life for her child. That’s what God wants, too – a future in which all God’s children – young and old – can have life overflowing with wholeness, peace and joy.
And so God calls us to gather at the RIVER – the beautiful, the beautiful RIVER – to gather with the saints at the RIVER – that flows from the heart of God.
And there, in the waters of baptism, to make a radical commitment to live and labor for the future we want our children and grandchildren to have.
Will you make that commitment today?
And if you WILL, what is the one thing you can do this week to get started building this better world?