It is proper for us.

John the Baptist promised fire—remember what he was preaching in the wilderness?  “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”[1]  He tells people that the one coming after him will baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire.  John is looking for a flamethrower, and what he gets is Jesus. 

Is John surprised by Jesus?  Was Jesus not what he expected?  Jesus didn’t show up with any of the fire that John had promised!  Jesus simply shows up, demonstrating the humble side of leadership—obedience to God, submitting to God by BEING baptized, setting an example or a standard or an expectation for others to follow, because Jesus arrives WITH the people. 

Baptism is not a solitary spiritual experience: Jesus doesn’t go to John the Baptist in secret, at a time when Jesus could really luxuriate in the spiritual moment of baptism by being alone and immersed in the supposed safety of seclusion or privacy.  Baptism can absolutely be personally significant, but baptism isn’t about being alone.  We do baptism in community, within the assembly of believers. 

It’s also significant that Jesus did not baptize himself; if that were possible, perhaps he might have done it.  But no, he goes to John, surprising John into the stumbling words, ‘What?!  I need to be baptized by YOU, and do YOU come to ME?’  John is still looking for an “other,” a savior who is separate and who will come in and make everything right with the world. 

John uses the language of “you” and “me,” but Jesus introduces the language of US.  Baptism in Jesus means there is no longer an isolated “me,” caught up in my own sinfulness and shame and needing assurance that I’m right with God, who is entirely separate.  It’s no longer about me wanting to feel a little better about myself or possibly better than anybody else as though God could love me just a little more than everyone else. 

Jesus enters into baptism because he says “it is proper for US,” because God has entered into the human family; God is now part of our family. God has jumped into the swimming pool, into the baptismal water. God has joined the crowd right alongside the rest of us nobodies in our ordinariness.  And it’s not a backroom deal or a secret revealed only to the enlightened—Jesus’s baptism is a public declaration and a community action. 

God has gotten up in our human business not to surveil us more closely nor make a list of who’s naughty or nice but out of love for creation.  This love is the righteousness to be fulfilled—righteousness means all things working together as they should. 

We need other people; we’re not in this baptismal water alone.  We need each other so we can recognize where Jesus is showing up among us, alongside us in the waters of baptism.  We need each other’s encouragement and stories of faith, even our declarations of honesty when we are terrified or when we don’t fully understand what’s going on.  Baptism unites us as one human family where Jesus is our brother, our sibling.  And the baptism of fire and the Holy Spirit that Jesus brings is a fire of righteousness that brings cleansing mercy. 

In baptism, we are given the Holy Spirit, who makes us ready and makes us acceptable before God.  Because of baptism, you ARE ready; you don’t have to prepare extra, like cleaning the house before the housecleaner arrives or brushing your teeth extra good before going to the dentist or rinsing off the dishes before putting them in the dishwasher.  The Holy Spirit makes us righteous and ready for the kingdom of heaven. 

How else—besides the work of the Holy Spirit—can one explain the change in Peter such as we’ve seen in the second lesson today?  Here’s Peter, the same guy who—you remember—prepared for Jesus’s arrest by arming himself and promising to fight and die for the cause of defending Jesus, but instead shrinks back and denies even knowing Jesus.  How much has he changed, that now he can march into the home of a Roman centurion, a soldier working for the empire, and deliver an entire testimony explaining what God is up to in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus? 

There’s always more going on than just what you can see.  The Holy Spirit was working in Peter, and the Holy Spirit is working in you, too, readying you for the call that only you can fulfill.  You are sent to bring hope to someone out there, in some particular way, and you’re not alone in the work because, as Jesus said, it is proper for us—we are together in this. 

The call to us is as Isaiah describes the servant: a light to the nations, which sounds important and special until you recall that light does its most important work not alongside other lights but only when shining into very dark places.  And we are seeing in our world some very dark places that disturb us, like the death of Renee Good in Minneapolis this week, killed by someone working with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE. 

ICE has been striking terror into communities and families of immigrants for many months, which was never okay, but we’re more disturbed now that ICE has killed a neighbor who was simply existing in peace.  ICE and the systems that support it would be glad to keep the rest of us scared and silent, but all over this country there have been people showing up in protest, people lighting candles and holding vigils, people surrounding ICE vehicles and alerting neighbors by blowing whistles and honking car horns, people refusing to stay silent or look away. 

This is what it means to shine a light of justice and expose the cruelty of ICE’s actions.  And continuing with Isaiah’s prophecy, the faithful servant will open the eyes of the blind and bring OUT the prisoners from the dungeon and FROM the prison those who sit in darkness. 

God arrives to free the people imprisoned in detention centers, the people who are taken away and separated from their families and communities, and the people who are deported to distant lands. AND God also arrives to free the people like the ICE agents themselves, imprisoned by their own ideology, which rots away their own humanity.  While we pray for the vulnerable people in communities terrorized by ICE, we also pray for all those individual agents who represent ICE, and we pray that they would repent.  

ICE agents may show up in masks, but they cannot hide their identity before God.  These are human individuals, made in God’s image, and God can still pick each one out of a crowd and call each one to repentance.  We pray for repentance from evil and violence, and we pray for people’s safety and for abundance of life.  Come, Lord Jesus! 

We pray for people who are broken because we can’t be fully healed until everyone is healed.  It is proper for us because Jesus created this “us,” united with each other and united with God.  It’s so much more than our sinfulness would ever earn for us.  God’s grace is so much more than we deserve. 

May our prayers and our actions be pleasing in God’s sight, and may we also hear God’s voice calling us beloved. 

Amen. 

Pastor Cheryl

[1] Matthew 3:2