Watermark - January 11, 2009

By the Rev. Hiedi Worthen Gamble, Mission Advocate, Presbytery of the Pacific.

Audio version available HERE.

It is a gift to be here today with you, thank you for welcoming me to your pulpit. Since I work here at Covenant in the presbytery offices I feel connected to you all throughout the week and get to say a quick hello to many of you. I am the Mission Advocate for Hunger, Poverty & Peacemaking and I have been on staff for over four years. We have a lot going on at the Presbytery of the Pacific; I have been co-coordinating a New Orleans trip in February, and will be coordinating a Big Sunday volunteer weekend and Habitat Youth Event in the spring. I’m also promoting and practicing the Presbyterian Hunger Program’s monthly weekend fast for 2009, in response to the Global Hunger Crisis, as well as promoting fair trade products and a Palm Sunday eco-justice project. And soon we will begin planning for another trip to Nicaragua, and have been so blessed to work with Leslie Evans and Lee Gardner. I am happy to share with you all that is going on, so please talk with me after church if you have any questions, and if you have an idea or a project you would like to see implemented presbytery-wide, let us know and we’ll do what we can to make it happen!

Today we remember the baptism of Jesus, and for those of you here today who have been baptized, I would like to begin by taking a poll: how many of you can remember or recall the moment you were baptized? Would anyone be willing to share that memory?

I will confess that I don’t remember my own baptism, but there is a family story about my baptism. My father is a Presbyterian pastor as well, and he tells the story that out of all of his almost-40 years of ministry, the only time he baptized infants who were screaming at the top of their lungs was the time when he baptized me and my two sisters. At the ripe old age of 10 months I knew I absolutely did NOT want to be baptized. But baptized I was—an unforgettable moment in the life of that little church, no doubt.

For our first call out of seminary, my husband Jason and I served as co-pastors in Alaska, on St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea, which was a mere 40 miles from the far NW corner of Sibera. There we had the great privilege of meeting with a leader of a Christian house church in Siberia. The church in Siberia among the Inuit is still very new, and when we met with her, she described how they did adult baptisms: and yes indeed, to my wide-eyed amazement, they baptized in the cold, frigid waters of an Arctic stream, during the summer months when the ice melted long enough for water to flow. Now that’s a baptism no one would forget!

One would be hard pressed to forget a baptism in a Christian church in third century Rome as well. Early Christian baptisms were often life-altering experiences. In the early centuries of the church, when you came to be presented for baptism after a time of preparation, study, and fasting, you were sent down into the catacombs without clothing, and were asked to renounce evil and death. Then you were asked if you believed in Jesus Christ. Upon confessing your faith, you were immersed in the murky dark waters of the catacombs three times, after which you would emerge and receive new white clothing from a deacon. Once you were clothed you would then walk up into the light and be fully embraced by the community of believers, receiving the kiss of peace.

We know that the confession of faith that happened at baptism for early Christians was very clearly about entering into a new reality, a new way of life. After being baptized in the early centuries as a Christian you had truly been risen from death to life with Christ, had been washed clean, marked as Christ’s own. You were reborn, not from a mother’s womb but from the womb of the Spirit, from God. You were spiritually rebirthed, you were born again. You had become a son or a daughter of God, a follower of Jesus, a new creation.

Whether you recall the moment of your baptism or not, my word to you this day, on the day we celebrate Jesus’ baptism, is to remember your baptism—remember who you are and whose you are. Like watermarks, or imprints put into valuable paper while still wet in order to identify them, so too are our baptisms; a mark of the Holy Spirit through water that, though not visible to us at times, remains imprinted in us throughout our lives.

John’s baptisms in the river Jordan were baptisms of repentance that had a specific, concrete act of justice for each person who was baptized: for the one with two coats, it was to share with someone who had no coat; for the one with food, it was to share with those who had none; for the tax collector, it was to collect taxes justly; for the soldier, it was to rob no one, and cease violence and accusing people falsely. It was a baptism of conversion into a more righteous and just way of living that has an undeniable economic ethic to it; the rich were called to share so that the poor had enough. In the gospel of Luke, after Jesus was baptized he went into the desert where he was tempted by the devil to claim all authority and power for himself and power over the kingdoms of the world. Jesus refuses, and instead goes to the Temple where he claims his baptism from John in the Jordan, saying: “the Spirit of the Lord is upon me because God has anointed me to preach good news to the poor, release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, and to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” Jesus’ baptism was his initiation—his ordination--into his ministry of compassion, healing, grace and good news for the poor.

This too is the meaning of our baptisms. At our baptisms we too are baptized into the life of Christ and into his ministry. Our initiation into the Christian faith through our baptisms marks us as God’s beloved children, bathes us in the endless grace of God, and sends us out. Our baptisms claim the powerful love of God in Christ that we are radically loved and forgiven, and that in response to this grace, we are called to love and serve the world. We are engrafted into Christ—we put on Christ--and then participate in his ministry of good news that the hungry are fed, the lame walk, the blind see, the rich share, the outcasts are loved. We are baptized into Christ’s way—into his death, as Paul says in Romans—so that we will more and more fully come alive in him. So on this day, remember your baptism.

Imagine with me for a moment what the words of repentance John the Baptist would call us to today: Do you have enough food to eat in this economy? Then give to the LAX food pantry. Do you have a home in this time of skyrocketing foreclosure rates? Then build a home for Habitat, or pray about how you can use your home for others. Do you have extra coats in your closet? Give them to goodwill, or hand it out in person to someone on the streets. Do you have a job that provides for you and your family during this time when unemployment is at its highest percentage since 1945? Then offer assistance to those who are unemployed and march with the hotel workers at the LAX Hilton who are trying to secure a liveable wage. Remember who you are and whose you are: remember your baptism.

And what if you have experienced the hardship of job loss, or a foreclosure, or you have had to start going to food banks to put dinner on the table for your children? Then remember your baptism; remember you are forever sealed in God’s grace and God will not abandon you.
(up to the font) Whenever you see water, think of it as God’s reminder to you that you are loved beyond measure. When you do the dishes, take a shower, drink a cup of water, gaze upon the magnificence of the ocean, remember your baptism; remember who you are and whose you are. Remember that you are loved.

This summer my family and I traveled to Niagara Falls, Canada, to visit family and see the amazing falls. I have young children who aren’t much for spending long moments reflecting on the grandeur of those waters, so theological reflection for me was at a minimum. We did get on the infamous Maids of the Mist boat ride under the falls however, where we went to the base of the falls and got drenched by them, and I just imagined myself for a moment receiving a pounding of grace-filled baptismal waters by a God who loves me. Wow.

Our baptisms are a precious gift—a gift to celebrate, to share, to remember, to live into. We are a new creation, a people who have the watermark of Christ in our lives, a people bathed in grace and sent out in love to serve others. This day, may we remember our baptisms, and be thankful. Alleluia. Amen.