Going Down Into the Dirty Water

 Sermon preached at Church of the Redeemer, Addison, on the First Sunday after Epiphany, celebrating the Baptism of Jesus:  Isaiah 43:1-7, Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

There is one little detail in Luke’s telling of the story of Jesus’ Baptism that makes a huge difference to understanding not only Jesus’ mission, but our own.  Luke writes,

Now when all the people were baptized . . .

Full stop.  Artistic representations of Jesus’ baptism almost always have John and Jesus alone in the water. What was going on was between the two of them.  Matthew even has John arguing with Jesus that this baptism should be the other way around.

Luke paints a different picture.  Jesus is there with the crowds.  If there was a line of people waiting for their turn, Jesus was among them.  Jesus in line.  Not seeking anything special, just what everyone else was getting.

Now, you may say, yes, but it seems to indicate he was last in line.  And you’re right that is implied, but I don’t think it changes my image. If anything it enhances it.  The River must have been quite churned up by the time Jesus got in the water.  So my image is that he went down into the dirty water with everybody else.

Down in the dirty water with everyone else.  Luke’s Jesus, right from the beginning, is in complete solidarity with us. And, as a last way of emphasizing this, it is implied that everyone with ears to hear could here the voice announcing God’s beloved.  In Matthew and Mark only Jesus hears the voice.

Down in the dirty water and a voice that speaks to anyone who can hear.

In many ways this is how I have come to understand and try to practice priesthood.

All my thirty-five ordained years, like most clergy, I have been asked, “How did you know you were being called?”  I’ve never had a great story of an epiphany. Something like, “I was in a special place and I heard a special voice.”  No, my answer has always been, “I just did.”  I know, very unsatisfying.

After 35 years I don’t consider it to be an important question anymore if it ever was.  The important question for me is what am I called to do with this extraordinary gift I’ve been given?

And the answer is not to be anything special.  The answer is to, like Jesus, go down into the dirty water like everyone else and listen with everyone else for the voice of acceptance, the voice of grace, the voice of love.

If I can do or say something to facilitate your stepping into that water and listening for that voice, well, that’s what I try to do. It’s why clergy are given authority to say particular words—of acceptance, of forgiveness, of offering, and of blessing.  If you want to call the ability to do those things a ”power,” well, that’s fine.  But any power given to me is all grace.

Don’t get me wrong. I love being a priest. As bad at it as I am sometimes, it is such an extraordinary gift and has become to me something like breathing.  It has been a different gift at different times in my life.  Right now it is a gift to be here with you, and also with my staff and the animals at the Shelter. I’m no less a priest there than I am here, except there I more or less keep that thought to myself.

And it’s a bit more than that. I love to be a priest of the God of mercy and grace and love.  And to be the one who gets to remind you over and over again just how loved you are—despite all the trouble life brings.

And even in that I am nothing special, because you—even you—are called in word and deed to proclaim the good news of God in Christ, the good news being said by the prophet Isaiah this morning:

Because you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you…do not fear, for I am with you..you who are called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.

That’s not some perfect person God is talking to.  It’s you and I, down in the dirty water, the voice we need to hear.