Scripture ~ Mark 1: 4-11; Acts 19: 1-7

Sermon ~ Time and a River

Preacher ~ George Thompson
 

A British novelist named Osbert Sitwell wrote a fanciful story entitled, The Man Who Lost Himself.  The young hero of this novel was a private investigator who trailed a person all the way to Paris. His pursuit led to the discovery that the investigated man was probably staying at  a certain hotel in the city. The youthful investigator did not want to provoke suspicion, so he went to the hotel clerk and asked if he himself was registered there. While the clerk examined the register, the investigator planned to glance over the page and find the room number of the evasive man whom he was seeking.

So, this thorough private investigator started to carry out his plan. But suddenly he received the shock of his life. When he offered his own name, the clerk looked up and replied, “Yes, he has been waiting for you. He is in room 40. I will have you shown up.” At this point Sitwell’s story becomes bazaar indeed, resembling an episode from the twilight zone.  The perplexed investigator is taken to the designated room by the bell boy. There he meets a man who looks remarkably like himself, only older. About age forty.1/

Insert yourself into this story, as indeed the novelist invites us to do.  Insert the room number that complies with your age ten years from now, or later.  There is a person out there in the future waiting for each of us to meet. What will be the identity of that person in ten years? Twenty years? Will you like the person you will become in that rendezvous at a designated room? The person whom you and I shall meet in that room is being defined by the pattern of our life in the present moment.

An essential doctrine of the church is that our lives are best defined by the sacraments of our Lord. Thus, we began the New Year by celebrating Holy Communion last Sunday. Each year,  on the Sunday after the Epiphany (January 6), Christians around the world return to the story of Jesus’ baptism. This event indeed defined the mission and purpose of the prophet from Nazareth. The one who was without sin came to the historic river whose banks marked entrance into the land of promise. Here he took the plunge into waters of cleansing. Mark’s laconic style relates the simple story. “In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.”2/  He was immersed into the waters of ritual cleansing. He who needed no ritual of purification did not pull rank on us. He came into the world in order to suffer our pain and to die our death in order that we may experience a cleansing from our sins and a deliverance from the finality of our death. In the moment of his baptism in the river Jordan, God gave his imprimatur of approval. “And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’”3/

Throughout the history of the church, baptism has been the defining moment for every Christian. Through baptism, we take our identity with this Jesus. We are named through this sacrament. We are set aside to become the person God has called us to be. In the early years of the church, even before Mark’s gospel had been composed, the apostle Paul journeyed to Ephesus and met persons who had been baptized in a baptism of repentance. These were devotees to the martyred cousin of Jesus, John the Baptist of the Jordanian wilderness. But Paul required of them an authentic baptism into Christ — the one who has conquered sin and death. By this baptism, one receives the holy spirit. The believer become a member of a new covenant community. Our life is not our own when we receive this sacrament of initiation. We belong to God and are accountable to the community of grace brought into being by Jesus when he empowered the twelve apostles. An early church letter contains a baptismal hymn used by the faithful that affirms the significance of each believer’s baptism. “Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”4/

We are all defined by what occurred long ago at a timeless river named the Jordan.  In art and literature, the depiction of a river suggests the movement of time. The river’s flow suggests our pilgrimage of life. The people of Israel passed through the waters of the Jordan in order to inherit their future. The people who are followers of Jesus pass through the waters of his baptism in order to receive new life and to pass into the future where we are met by the grace of God.

Yet baptism, the initiating sacrament of the church, is not a symbol branded into our skin like some spiritual tattoo. In the early church, thanks to the insistence of Paul, baptism took the place of circumcision as the sign of one’s faith identity. If the First Century believer witnessed to his or her baptism, that confession sentenced the person to a life of social ostracism. Sometimes a witness to one’s baptism invited a sentence of death by imperial command.

At Columbine High School in Colorado, the witness of baptism became a death sentence to at least one teenager. In this post-Christian era, baptism sets us apart. Once we were no people. Now we are God’s people — “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation.”5/

As we enter a new millennium, it is essential that we claim our identity, announcing that our place in time is defined by our rendezvous at the river. In a culture of despair, we are a people of resurrection hope. In an environment of moral chaos, we pursue the righteousness of Christ through his grace. In an era of cynicism, we are a people of profound joy. We proclaim the good news that death has been destroyed by the one whose baptism sent him to the cross.

Years ago a young adult father and his family attended intermittently the small church I served in Union County. The congregation was a loving community of less than fifty members. James was a respectful seeker. He wanted to know more about Christ.

One fateful evening he was traveling with several of his friends to an athletic event. He was seated in the back of the car. The auto reeled out of control at a high speed. When I joined his family at a Charlotte hospital, he was not expected to life. I was cautioned by the nurse not to tell him that two of his friends had not survived the crash. Day after day he remained alive by virtue of a life support system in the intensive care unit. Slowly his vital signs improved. Nearly his whole body was rapped in plaster casts and gauze. “God has allowed me to live in order to fulfill some purpose,” he gratefully confessed.

Several months later, he slowly  made his way down our church’s aisle. His left arm was elevated by the awkward form of a rigid cast. He drug a heavy leg that supported a plaster brace. At the altar on that day, he responded to the questions of faith that identified him with a new life in Jesus. I had to reach up high in order to place water upon his head, for he could not kneel. For years after I left that community he phoned me upon an important anniversary and spoke of his baptism with gratitude.

We who are followers of Christ are encouraged today to claim the significance of our identity through baptism. This sacrament is unrepeatable. One cannot be rebaptized. But it is essential that we remember with gratitude the occasion of our baptism. We are encouraged to renew that covenant today.

Martin Luther used to say that “the old Adam is a mighty good swimmer” who does not easily drown in the waters of baptism. In this sacrament, our sin is forgiven, but not removed. We need constant renewal through acts of sanctification. In times of deep despondency, Luther actually threw inkwells in rage. He then would place his hand in a bowl of water, touch his forehead and repeat the words, Baptismatus sum — “I am baptized.”6/

The early church theologian Tertullian wisely taught that “Christians are made, not born.”7/  The worship we experience each week here at Providence United Methodist Church is a means by which we grow spiritually in our identity as baptized Christians. Thus, today I invite you to come to the communion rail for an act of remembrance. Bill Jeffries and I will meet you here. We shall place drops of water upon your forehead with the words, “Remember your baptism and be thankful.” You may then kneel at the communion rail for prayer or return to your pew. This is not a baptism. If you have not been baptized and wish to receive the sacrament, let this be known today by expressing your request to one of the pastors.

You may come now in this act of baptismal remembrance and renewal.

Footnotes:

1. Halford Luccock, Unfinished Business  (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1956), p. 15.

2. Mark 1:9 NRSV

3. Mark 1: 11 NRSV

4. I Peter 2: 10 NRSV

5. I Peter 2:9 NRSV

6. Will Willimon, Worship As Pastoral Care  (Nashville, Tennessee: Abingdon Press, 1980), p. 160.

7. Ibid. , 147.