It makes up 70% of the planet, and 60% of your body.[1] Without it, life wouldn’t exist.

Water. Water means life. It’s hard to get two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen to stick together. It’s a miracle that water exists in the first place. Yet without water, there is no life.

Jesus is baptized in water. If it feels like we just talked about this, that’s because we did in Epiphany. Lent starts the story over. Jesus is baptized and then heads to the desert for 40 days. He’s baptized in water. And not the sanitized, safe to drink, Temple-approved water… It’s in a dirty river. I don’t know how you picture the Jordan River… I know I had a mental image in my mind. Then a friend came back from a trip to the Holy Land and showed me pictures of the Jordan. You could jump across it. In my hometown we would call it a crick or you might call it a creek. The Jordan Crick.

Jesus is baptized. Let that sink in. I was raised in a tradition that says baptism is a sacrament that removes original sin from a baby. Yet there was also the doctrine of Immaculate Conception that states that Mary was conceived without original sin. She was pure so she could have a Virgin birth for Jesus. Yet Jesus is still baptized. And Jesus is Jewish which doesn’t even have a doctrine of original sin. That’s a Christian thing that came in the 300s. So baptism is not about original sin.

It’s about purity. Baptism was a purity rite that the temple priests would use to cleanse themselves so they can enter the temple clean after spending time out with the unclean rabble. The temple had very distinct lines of what was clean and what was unclean. Who was in and who was out. What you could eat, what you couldn’t eat. Who was in charge, and who should be shunned.

John the Baptist knew this system because his dad was a temple priest. John was using this purity rite to subvert the system to say, “Your categories are the problem.” How can we sing “God has the whole world in God’s hand” and also declare parts of it unclean?

Listen. Theologian Rob Bell talks about our world and what we’re learning about particle and quantum physics. “So far scientists have identified over 150 different particles. So far.

Electrons, protons, neutrons, bosons, muons, gluons, up quarks and down quarks, the list goes on. The smaller we go, the farther in, the farther down, however you picture it the more we learn that the most basic elements that bond to form everything we know to be everything can be endlessly split and taken apart.”

Rob continues, “Everything is made of atoms, and atoms are made of particles, and particles are swirling bits of energy and possibility that never stop moving. A single electron can do 47,000 laps around a four-mile tunnel in a second. That fast. Some particles disappear at point A and then reappear at point B without traveling the distance in between.”[2]

What we’re learning is that all these things we’ve categorized, all the neat and clean boxes and assumptions that go with them break down… Turns out that everything that makes matter is, in the end; a relationship of energy.

I spoke of my first date with Kate on Ash Wednesday. There was an immediate connection. As soon as she stepped into the room, she was on my radar. This hasn’t happened all that much in my life. At seminary orientation, my radar pinged again but I didn’t know why. But my best buddy did. He saw this tall, young guy and immediately hated him. That tall guy was me. And that was our first conversation. It was honest. Brutal. Weird. And that’s how I met my best friend in seminary, the Rev. Steve Hummel who serves a UCC church in PA.

We connected immediately. Without traveling the distance between. That also happened when I first stepped inside a UCC church. I knew I was home. I’ve sat in on so many new members classes where this story was repeated. It’s a rare and wonderful thing.

Often religion helps us order the world. What’s safe. What’s moral. What’s to be believed and what can be shunned. If you’re looking for that style of religion though, you’re in the wrong place. Christianity, at least, as I understand it, shatters those categories.

When God comes to us in Jesus… a God we thought we knew and had all these neat categories for… the first thing God does in Christ is get baptized in a dirty river with all the unclean things. God immediately breaks categories. Baptism is inclusive. About being in relationship with God’s first testament of creation. Effectively saying, “All this was made for you! You are at home here. Think differently and believe it.”

For God so loved the world…. A love that the poet Maya Angelou wrote, “Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.”

The Holy Spirit moves in and among us all. The Beloved Community of God has come near, think differently about it and believe this good news!

There was a big bang. Particles formed from nowhere. They started coming together to form atoms. Atoms came together to form elements. And then, in ever increasing complexity it formed…. Stuff. Carbon. Hydrogen. Water. Rocks. Plasma. Stars. Planets. Dinosaurs. People. And 1970 Corvette Stingrays with 370 horsepower Base Engines. You know. Stuff.

And we have relationships with those things. There’s a set of books on my shelf that I rarely read. But they remind me of my grandma. They are also orange and black and remind me of Halloween. They feel like home. They’re just stuff. They serve no practical purpose. But the relationship is there. It’s a strange and unexpected thing.

Just like people we feel an immediate connection to. It feels like we knew them all our lives. Or when we go to places we’ve never been before that just feel like home.

Rob Bell points out, “If you ever had a friend say they joined a group because they wanted to feel like they are part of something bigger… Of course! It’s baked right in!”

Of course, we feel like that. We crave connection with each other and everything. We’re miserable without it. We can’t help but make things. We can never stop talking and singing about love.’ The whole thing is relationship. And what you do in relationship is you enter in.”[3]

When I baptize people, that’s what I feel I’m witnessing to. That we’re connected. We’re already one. We might have different categories. I’m an adult male pastor and this is a small, infant girl… but there’s already a connection. We’re both human. We’re both made of 60% water and minerals and elements, and atoms and particles. We’re born in radically different times and places and contexts and stories, yet there is something fundamental between us. Sometimes we need to wash away all the categories we think we have to find the connection. I need baptism to connect me to everything.

To wash away my categories and remind me of God’s love. It’s why I love infant baptism. Before they can do anything…. They are welcomed and claimed by a people. Parents and sponsors stand up and say, “Please accept us and love our child.” And a community echoes back, “Of course. You’re on our radar.”

You are loved. When we baptize, we’re saying that no matter who you are, where you are on the journey of life, you are beloved by God. You are at home here. No matter what you do. Who you become. What happens to you. Your joys and concerns. No matter how long you’re here in this world, you are a beloved Child of God. The church is to stand witness and call attention to this fact of our life together.

This is revolutionary. It’s a high view of humanity. It’s a ritual to say that all this… stuff.. this existence is connected. It’s all part of a grand story. God’s cosmic love story. Things like hate, division, violence, disease… all that stuff doesn’t have the last word. Love does. When we gather for funerals, even for those who led less-than stellar lives, we point to where love was. It’s my pastoral duty to be a bloodhound for Christ, sniff him out and point to him in each and every life.

Even if that life looks nothing like mine. Even if the values and categories we use were the exact opposite… we were made of the same stuff. Formed and born in the waters of the womb. Embraced by a community in baptism. Loved, as best we could. We were in relationship with all of this…everything.

Sometimes we might have experienced it. Where we felt bigger than our bodies. Connected to everything. When all the categories dropped in moments of beauty and awe and wonder.

Water is the symbol we use in baptism. To remind us that God our creator so loved the world… Came to us, and was baptized into a community to connect people. That’s good news. You’re not alone. You’re never alone. No label you use or that has been placed on you can separate you from the love of God in Jesus Christ.

Water is vital for life. Only 1% of water on this planet is drinkable. The process to get water out of our aquifers and to our tap is a complex one. Just to make it safe for us to drink has a lot of steps and takes about 15 minutes. Maybe the next step is to research clean drinking water initiatives. That we respond by talking water rights and justice. That’d be a way to be part of something bigger.

You can respond by reaching out. I implore you each week to send a card. Write an email. Remind folks that they are still on your radar. As Maya Angelou wrote, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Remind your folks of love. Send the signals. Ping their radar.

If you’re looking for more, then maybe research some groups who are working for inclusion. One group I know from my days back in Toledo is a group called Water for Ishmael. This group teaches English Classes around the dining room table to establish connection and community with recent immigrants. Nothing defeats fear like a face.

We have heard a lot of anti-immigrant rhetoric in our culture. Look. We’re all immigrants. We can’t say, “Okay, we’re here! No more please!” We are invited to be in relationship with the whole world. Every label. Every category. Every nation.

The Committee on Diversity headed up by Pam Miller does this work in our own community. Our library does a great job trying to educate us about other cultures. We recently were able to check out spices from Nigeria and make delicious jollof rice! Like nothing we’ve ever made. It was amazing. They’re doing it again in May![4]

Now I don’t want to paint the Temple and Priesthood as primitive tribal stuff. In its essence, it points to the way. God is no hobby. God is mysterious and should be approached with reverence and awe. And yet the institution lost the narrative of the meaning-packed system of symbols. So along comes a hairy dude with scratchy clothes and locust-breath saying, “IT’S WAY MORE CONNECTED THAN THAT! God is also in the grit and dirt and everyday experiences… Come join one another by getting dunked in the muddy water on a spiritual adventure…. Discovering all the quirks and quazars and divine connection this existence is built on.”

Thanks be to God.

 

Bibliography

Baptism as Inclusive Protest preached on 1/10/2021 https://www.uccmedina.org/sermons/baptism-as-inclusive-protest/

“Baptized into the Bioregion”, https://radicaldiscipleship.net/2015/01/12/baptized-into-the-bioregion/

^[1] For the science behind water, check out this video: https://youtu.be/UdPpxIjvu0I

^[2][2] Everything is Spiritual, pages 152-153

^[3][3] Everything is Spiritual, page 156-157.

^[4][4] Request the next spice kit here! http://mcdl.info/takenmake