Mark 1:4-11
January 8, 2006
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
Last week, we rang in the New Year with a series of wind-swept heavy rainstorms that flooded homes and businesses in many communities in the North Bay. Businesses in towns like San Anselmo and Napa were covered with muddy waters that surged over sandbags. Many low lying communities were flooded when the water crested over the river banks and levees broke. The job of cleaning up the mud is the first dirty job in the New Year.
From our living room window, we can see down below that there was a mudslide that closed the road for three days. The road was blocked with large earth movers scooping up and dumping dirt and mud into dump trucks to take to landfills. You can still see the remnant of brown mud staining the street from the slide.
If we continue to get more heavy rainstorms while the ground is already saturated with water, meteorologists say that there will be more mudslides and dirty water seeping into our homes and stores before Spring comes.
“Sprayonmud”
Although none of us want to deal with dirty mud, there is a new product in the market if you want mud on your SUV. Evidently, with the recent high price of gasoline and the low gas mileage one gets driving a huge SUV, many SUV owners have felt the need to explain themselves to energy-saving environmentalists. When only 5% of SUVs are ever taken off-road which means you’re more likely to see a Range Rover at Starbucks, for example, than anywhere near a mountain lake, SUV owners are feeling like outcasts in California. So some entrepreneur in England is now selling “Sprayonmud.”
For a mere $14.50, you can get a quart-size bottle of actual mud (English mud) to spray on your SUV in order to make it look as though you’ve just come back from a wild ride in the wilderness when you were actually hiking through the aisles of Costco. Inside each plastic container is real dirt mixed with water and a “secret ingredient” which helps the mud stick to the vehicle’s body.
Fake Sprayonmud can justify your driving a SUV. In the past week, all SUV drivers needed to do were to drive to Marin County. You would not need to fake the fact that no mud has ever dirtied your SUV. But is there a way to fake ourselves in believing that we have been baptized in the muddy waters with Christ?
Jesus’ Muddy Water
When Jesus bursts on the scene in first-century Israel, he was in his thirties. Last week, we read about the time when Mary and Joseph presented the eight-day old baby Jesus at the temple. Simeon and Anna were able to see the Messiah after waiting for many years. Today we see that one of Jesus’ first actions was to mark his life and ministry with some real mud.
He traveled off-road, all the way out into the Judean wilderness, to see his cousin John, the rugged individualist. Like other Israelite prophets, John lived a solitary life in the outdoors with a message so compelling that people were willing to get their feet dirty to find him.
Standing in the notoriously muddy water of the Jordan River, John offered a “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” First-century Jews were used to ceremonial washings, but the only one that involved immersion was for those converting to Judaism. But John called everyone, even ethnic Jews, to be baptized with muddy water for forgiveness and salvation. This was the mud and muck of human sin being washed away and replaced with a real mark of repentance and confession. John’s baptism was, in a real sense, a great equalizer, declaring that rich and poor, Jew and non-Jew, righteous and sinners to all turn toward God.
But the interesting paradox that we see is John is calling his disciples to be “washed, or cleansed in the dirty waters of the Jordan. You don’t wash dishes in dirty water. We don’t wash clothes in dirty water. We don’t wash our SUVs in dirty water. But from this passage, John is baptizing Jesus and his disciples in dirty, muddy water.
The followers of Jesus are called to come to where Jesus is—standing in dirty water of the muddy Jordan. When we walk with Jesus, we start in the muddy Jordan and we end up dying on the cross that Jesus himself will invite us to embrace.
When Jesus came to the edge of the water, John recognized that he was “the one” who “is more powerful than I…I am unworthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals.” If anyone needed to skip this particular mud bath, it was Jesus. In Matthew’s version of this incident, John didn’t think that Jesus needed to come into the Jordan River at all—“I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” (3:14). Yet, Jesus willingly steps down into the brown water to take on the same muddy path as his people.
When we are baptized, we go on that same path as Jesus did. Jesus’ baptism is a prototype for those of us who would follow him. If we want to follow Jesus, we must also follow him into the muddy waters.
New Year’s Resolutions
January is genesis of the New Year. It is marked by people resolving to live new lives according to new habits. There is a kind of confession that begins the New Year because resolutions are a way of admitting that we have not been the kind of people we want to be. We confess that we are not as slender, cheerful, thankful, or productive as we would like to be. We admit to our humanness and commit to doing better.
These are signs of people wanting to do their best to turn their lives around. But when the weeks speed by and the ordinary life is resumed, old habits tend to reassert themselves. Come next January, the same resolutions are often made anew with plenty of hope, but no greater chance for success.
When it comes to following Jesus in baptism, do we have the resolve to succeed? The baptism of John was similar to people making New Year’s resolutions. When John preached about repentance, people know that they have come up short to God’s expectations of them. They came to the muddy waters of the Jordan River to turn from their sins and back to the worship and service of God. But John knew that there was a tentative quality to his work. He proclaimed that the one who came after him would baptize with something greater than water. Jesus would baptize people with the Spirit of God.
The Spirit of God is something far more powerful than human resolve. It was this Spirit that first moved over the waters of creation and brought form out of chaos in the birthing of the universe. When Jesus rose from the muddy river, this Spirit descended “upon him like a dove.”
For us today, both John’s message of repentance and the empowering work of the Holy Spirit are needed. Sin is a powerful magnet that draws us ever toward it. Human resolve is weak and at least annually in need of renewal. Truthfully, repentance is more likely a daily need instead of an annual resolution. But our resolve to turn around will not do it alone. Something greater is needed—the power of the Holy Spirit. Though baptized by John with water, they were in need of the kind of empowerment that came through Jesus himself, baptism of the Holy Spirit. This is the gift of God that makes spiritual repentance something more than a resolution.
As God asks us to turn from our sin, God provides the means for us to become new creatures capable of spiritual resolve. This gift comes to us through baptism.
A French proverb goes like this: “Years of repentance are necessary in order to blot out a sin in the eyes of men, but one tear of repentance suffices with God.” When we seek forgiveness from God and truly possess a penitent heart, God is ready to forgive us everyday.
Meaning of Baptism
Jesus found favor in God when he was baptized by John. The Holy Spirit descending on him like a dove and a voice from heaven—God himself said to Jesus. “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
For us, baptism is a sign of God’s favor as well; but it is a favor that is unmerited. We know that we can’t fake out God like trying to put fake mud on our SUVs and be something else that we are not, so we “come clean” through repentance and confession and simply receive the love of God who created us and sees us as being “very good.”
When Jesus was baptized, he was being anointed as the Messiah, the promised One who would save Israel and the whole world. For Jesus, baptism is preparation for ministry. And that is true for us as well.
Baptism is a sign that we pledge allegiance to a different kingdom—the kingdom of God. And that allegiance is worked out in our service to others. Baptism labels us, sets us apart as different from the world’s idea of power. In the Roman world, the descent of a bird was a crucial omen for the life of a great leader, and this bird was almost always an eagle, the symbol of Roman legions and military might. But the bird that appears out of the heavens is a peaceful dove instead of the military eagle. The kingdom of God, for which Jesus is the sole leader, comes as a peaceful and sacrificial dove instead of a Roman eagle.
Our baptism into Christ calls us to be different, peculiar and passionate people who are sent out to follow Jesus in changing the world. In other words, we’re called to “go” into the world and get muddy dirty serving others. There is no room for pretending or keeping to our side of town or ocean. Our baptism is a commission and a call to go out into the wilds of a hurting world.
Later this week, the eight of us will participate on your behalf in the Thailand Mission Discovery trip. If we are baptized with Christ, we must also get muddy dirty in the world to serve others. Our mission is to learn about how God is transforming the lives of Thai people, Karens and Lahus as well as other hill tribes in Northern Thailand. We’ll be asked to share our Christian testimonies, lead Christian songs and possibly even teach some games. It can get pretty muddy in the hills of Northern Thailand! We pray that when we return, we would become the change agents to enable our church to be more mission-minded than we are today.
In preparation for our trip to Thailand, we learned that it’s impolite to touch the top of children’s heads. We’ll try to remember that when we are there. But that reminds me of a story of the great reformer Martin Luther that tells of times when he was tempted that he often would put his hand on his head to remind himself that he was baptized—that he was different, that he could resist temptation because of his connection with Christ.
Being Muddy with Christ
Jesus, God in the flesh, lived and moved in the world but was not “of” the world. He was tempted like us, human like us, but recognized that his kingdom was beyond the human realm. Jesus didn’t merely call people to get straightened up so that they could fly off to heaven when they died. The real good news that he preached is that God’s kingdom, in the person of Jesus, had broken in—a new reality was coming to the forefront. Jesus saw heaven not as being far away but rather quite close at hand, active, working, engaging, breaking into human history.
What we do now matters—to be agents of the in-breaking kingdom where we are today, be it on an urban street in San Francisco Chinatown or a jungle back road in Chiang Mai, Thailand. We can experience the promises and purposes of God in our present lives. Our baptism invites us to live in that new reality, seeing eternity not “out there” somewhere but seeing God at work here and now.
Living as baptized followers of Christ is something we can’t fake. No amount of spray on mud or religiosity can hide who we really are. As Jesus waded into the muddy water, he set the example for us.
If the Son of Man is willing to get dirty changing the world, we who follow need to do the same. It is not the cute little baby in Matthew and Luke that we look to for salvation, but to the grown man in Mark, standing in the muddy waters of the Jordan. Baptism is more than an important milestone in a person’s life; it marks the beginning of our life in the Holy Spirit, our entrance into the Kingdom of God—to change the world.
Let us pray.
God of love, today we want to identify with Jesus as he followed your will for him to be baptized. Pour upon us the gifts of grace too. Lead us to bathe in this life-giving water each day. Help us to turn from sin, receive your forgiveness, and use the gifts of the Spirit to sanctify our lives and to serve you in the muddy waters of the world with joy and fulfillment. Baptized in his name, we pray in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.