Immersed in Living

Genesis 1:1-5, Mark 1: 4-11

Lord, bring us to our Jordan
Of newly opened eyes,
Through love, immersed in living,
As You were once baptized.

(Brian Wren, Lord when you came to Jordan)

As Alison, June, Sophia and Vincent emerge/d from the waters of baptism this morning what do we want them to see? And as we who have been baptised remember our baptism today, what do we see God doing in the world around us?

We see that the waters of our baptism flow into our whole lives.

Today is a special day. Sunday, 6^th November, will stay in the memories of these four people (it may be written on flyleaf of their Bible) just as many of us recall the day of our baptisms. As Thorwald said so beautifully a few weeks ago when “grace becomes an event for us…we must celebrate!”

But we know, from reading their statements and sharing their lives, that grace has been active in their lives for a long time. Today we celebrate the past – their conversion and sharing in the Spirit’s life; the present – the formative power of the Spirit in their lives; and the future - their ongoing journey as God’s sons and daughters. This baptismal event encompasses all of their lives. As Martin Luther, in the 16th century Reformation said, “All of life is baptism.”

Mark’s Gospel makes a strong correlation between Jesus’ life and Jesus’ baptism. Unlike Matthew and Luke, Mark starts his story with Jesus’ baptism. There is no nativity narrative. At the beginning of Mark, there is baptism. It is the beginning of Jesus’ story and it flows into the whole of Jesus’ life.

This is also the story of our baptisms. They happen at a specific time and place, but all of life is baptism. We are always being submerged in darkness and chaos, the stuff of life that causes despair, but we are always being reborn into new life. All of life is baptism. God is always creating new possibilities out of the stuff that seems like a dead end. All of life is baptism means that every encounter that feels like death leads to a movement of the Holy Spirit, the overflow of Jesus’ baptismal waters, an outpouring of new life.

We see the Holy Spirit constantly creating in our lives.

At the first celebration of new things – we read in Genesis – “the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.” Over this formless void, this chaos, this darkness – so terrifying to ancient people and to us who view the brokenness of our world – the Spirit of God hovers, sweeps, broods over us like a mother over her children.

The Spirit of God is constantly creating – constantly bringing light out of darkness – constantly birthing life from death. Genesis 1 isn’t a chronological account of a moment in history, about primordial beginnings. Genesis 1 is the story of you and me. Your life is a formless void, our world is darkness, but God breathes his Spirit into all of it and makes something unimaginable possible. As Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4:6: “For it is the God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness, “who has shone in our hearts…”

As Jesus “was coming up out of the water”, Mark tells us, “he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit of God descending like a dove on him.” How he could he not? How could the Spirit of God not be there – at that moment of life-affirming grace and baptism – sweeping over the face of the waters?

The year I was accredited for ministry by the Baptist Union of NSW and ACT, I had the privilege of speaking for my group of accreditands, and I read this quote from Elizabeth O’Connor:

In every person is the creation story. Since the first day of our beginning, the Spirit has brooded over the formless, dark void of our lives, calling us into existence through our gifts until they are developed. And that same Spirit gives us the responsibility of investing them with God/him in the continuing creation of the world…A primary purpose of church is to help us discover our gifts, and in the face of our fears, to hold us accountable for them so we can enter into the joy of creating.

Today as we remember our baptism we see the waters of baptism flow into our whole lives , we sense the wings of the Spirit sweeping over all creation, and we know – as we are immersed in God’s life - we are immersed in relationship.

It is wonderful to see the announcement of Peter and Lucy’s wedding in the bulletin… I was thinking that if Peter were to turn up here – on his own – asking to be married (or Lucy) – what a nonsense that would be!

The same is true of baptism. We don’t do it alone, but we are baptised into the church. Paul writes in 1 Cor 12:13: “For in the one Spirit we were all baptised into one body – Jews or Greeks, slaves or free…” Church, as Elizabeth O’Connor says, helps us discover our gifts and holds us accountable for them; for it is Church – the Body of Christ – that needs our gifts to be healthy and effective.

Jesus came to be baptised, to identify with us, and as he came up out of the water the heavens [were] torn apart, the Spirit descended like a dove, and a voice came from heaven saying, “You are my Son, the beloved, with you I am well pleased.”

There is no longer any separation of heaven and earth, in Jesus’ baptism into our world and our lives the heavens are torn apart, God has come to be with us; and each of us hears – at the risk of sounding blasphemous - God saying to us: “You are my son. You are my daughter, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
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I am indebted to a blog/sermon from Isaac, a Mennonite pastor in preparing this message. Check out his blog here: http://www.rustyparts.com/wp/2009/01/12/fully-alive-a-sermon-on-baptism/