John said, “I baptize you with water, … but one who is more powerful than I is coming who will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with Fire.”
Isaiah’s words include these, “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you. When you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not hurt you, for I am the Lord your God, your Savior.”
Fire and water—elemental forces needed for life, symbols of the power of the divine.
Let’s start with fire. At bible study last Monday, I was surprised to learn that it was the fire in our texts today that really grabbed people’s attention. Fire is frightening. Burning the chaff with unquenchable fire is a pretty vivid image, it reminds us of fire and brimstone images of hell. It conjures up Los Angelos burning. Many of you from the Rockies or the Pacific Northwest have seen the destructive power of fire up close.
So, let’s put that fear to rest. Winnowing or threshing wheat involved separating the husk from the grain so that it could be used. The chaff was the waste product, the unusable portion. It’s not like some of us are the grain and some of us are chaff. To understand the metaphor, we need to see that we are the whole thing. We all have some useless aspects, some chaff, in us. When those parts are stripped away, we become more valuable, more usable, purified by fire.
On of the movements of Handle’s Messiah draws on Malachi 3:2, comparing God to a refiner’s fire and fullers’ soap: “But who can endure the day of His coming? And who can stand when He appears? For He is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap. He will sit as a smelter and purifier of silver, and He will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver”.
After the sermon we’re going to sing one of my favorite songs, How Firm a Foundation. The fourth verse goes like this: “When through fire-y trials your pathway shall lie, my grace all sufficient shall be your supply. The flames will not hurt you for I have designed, your soul to make pure and your gold to refine.”
About 35 years ago I heard a woman preach on this idea of the refining fire of God. She handed out little slips of paper to us and invited us to imagine written on that paper were all the hurt places in us, the sins that continued to burden us, the broken relationships that plague us, the lies we’ve believed about ourselves. She held a little paper herself and told us a message about her lack of worth that she had internalized since childhood that she wanted to be free from. She took the paper toward the lit candle on the altar and touched the paper to the flame. It flashed and was gone. It was so dramatic—the secret was something called flash paper that she got at a magic store. Even after I learned the trick it has stayed with me as an image of that purifying fire of the Holy Spirit as something that could refine and strengthen us like gold or silver. Fire, like most powerful forces, can be destructive—but some things, like waste, should be destroyed.
What do you carry that is not useful? What are your worthless by-products? Is it anger over an injustice, or a grudge held and nursed like a sore tooth, is it an inflated ego that serves as a wall between you and others, or an addiction. Maybe it’s self-centeredness or a lack of self-esteem. If you pause to look at yourself with brutal honesty you will know your own answer, what you would have cleansed from you.
This morning, we prayed a prayer of confession and heard the words of forgiveness. The keys to that ritual action are honesty and the trust that forgiveness is real, that we can begin again, cleansed of sin.
Ok, let’s move on to water. How many of you washed before you came today? Even if you didn’t shower this morning, you washed your hands and face. What about a drink of water? I daresay we’ve all consumed water this day. We cannot live without it. It’s wonderful that one of our central rituals contains such an essential element.
Two years ago Steve and I went to Israel. One day the tour bus took us through Galilee including a stop at the Jordan river. It was lush and green and also quite commercialized with every imaginable trinket and souvenir possible. One of the women on our bus had made arrangements to be baptized. She purchased her baptismal kit, went into the changing area and donned her white gown over her swimsuit and got in line. There were several big groups there, from various backgrounds with their own pastor or priest. She joined the line for single non-affiliated candidates. We watched from the upper terrace. Then we made our way to the water ourselves and remembered our baptism there in the Jordan River. (show photos)
Wherever it happens, baptism unites us. Here in this community of faith we come from all different denominational backgrounds, traditions and locations. Most of you have primary membership in a congregation in the USA or Canada. Some of you were baptized as infants, some as teens or adults. There may be some of you here today who have never been baptized—if that’s the case I’d love to talk with you. Our various doctrines could divide us but the scriptures about Baptism point to the unifying aspect of baptism. No matter the age, the setting, or the method—the waters of baptism claim us, hold us, call us to live in God’s love, to love others with God’s love, to know that we are loved with an immeasurable grace.
Jesus went to the Jordan river where John was baptizing. In Judaism, baptism is a ritual of cleansing and purification called tevilah that usually involves immersing oneself in a pool of water called a mikveh. The practice is a sign of repentance and a desire to start fresh with God. Ritual cleansing in a mikveh represented a change in status, restoring the person to a state of purity and making it possible to fully participate in the community. It continues to be used after childbirth or menstruation and at other times. Since the 6th Cent BCE it was also used to mark the conversion of a person from another faith or no faith to Judaism. Although Jewish practices allowed for baptism in cisterns or fountains, the Jordan River was a common setting.
At our Monday bible study this past week we were talking about baptism’s roots in Jewish practices and the use of a mikveh when Art and Cynthia started chuckling. You see, they have a mikveh in their house. Their house must have been built by a Jewish family. Here’s a photo of it. (show photo)
The early Christian church adopted a Jewish practice as their initiation rite into the community of faith. Paul says in 1 Cor 12: 13 “for we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.” We could add, whether Baptists or Lutherans, Evangelicals or Progressives… we are one body in Christ. And in Galatians 3: 27 Paul wrote, “for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves in Christ.” It is traditional to wear white for baptism, symbolizing the cleansing of our sins and emphasizing that we put on Christ. In Ephesians 4: 4-6 Paul reiterates again, “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all in all.”
Baptism is God’s embrace, welcoming us into the fellowship of the church. We are united with Christ in baptism into the life, death and resurrection of our Lord.
John the Baptist may have been one of the members of the community of the Essenes, an ascetic group of Jews from that time period who practiced a strict adherence to Jewish law. They had a special concern for purity, and a belief in the imminent coming of Messiah. John’s baptism for forgiveness and repentance may have been an adaptation of the Jewish patterns of ritual cleansing. John was doing something new that day when Jesus and the other people were baptized.
Luke tells us that the heaven was opened and God spoke directly to Jesus. It’s a moving and dramatic scene – Jesus emerging from the waters of baptism as the Spirit alights upon him. What power and symbolism there is in that scene, an Epiphany—a shining revelation of God’s presence encountering Jesus – and, through Jesus, all of us. God removes all that separates us from God and meets us where we are.
This is the mystery and the power that Baptism offers– that God comes to meet us where we are and as we are, with water and the word that we might know that we, too, are beloved children of God and that God is well pleased also with us.
We don’t all have a built in mikveh, but we can practice the awareness of God’s cleansing forgiveness in our lives just the same. This week, as you swim, or wash the dishes, or drink your first glass of water each day, or as you bathe or wash your hands, even as you gaze at the waves or the sunset over the ocean, I invite you to make the sign of the cross on your foreheads in memory of God’s claim on you.
I’ve made little signs for you to post on your mirror over your bathroom sink with these words. “Lord, as I use this water to cleanse myself, I remember my baptism. Wash me by your grace. Fill me with your Spirit. Renew my soul. I pray that I might live as your child today, and honor you in all that I do.”
The Holy Spirit and Fire, and the water of baptism speak to us in vivid images and physical signs of the cleaning power of forgiveness. May we trust the renewing, purifying power of God to claim us and free us to follow Christ. Amen.