Mark 1:4-11
Acts 19:1-7                                                                                         

Rev. Rick Haverly
January 8, 2006

The New and Improved Model

     As we come to celebrate the baptism of Jesus it is both strange and fitting to celebrate it so soon after just celebrating his birth.  It may seem normal to us because we often baptize babies soon after their birth.  But in marking Jesus’ birth and his baptism just two weeks apart we may forget that he was actually about 30 years old when he was baptized.  So it is odd to keep them so close together. On the other hand, we know very little of Jesus’ early life and in the Gospels Matthew, Luke and John the baptism is reported soon after the birth.  And in the Gospel of Mark for today’s reading, there is no birth story and he begins the story of Jesus’ life with the baptism.

     What remains clear from all 4 of the biographies of Jesus is that his baptism is a prominent turning point in his life. Prior to his baptism we know almost nothing.  Following his baptism, the action really begins.  All of his public teaching, work, miracles, death and resurrection occur in the 3 short years after he is baptized at age thirty.  The baptism is the transition point in his life that begins his mission.  And the baptism of Jesus is reported in vivid descriptions that stick with us.  We remember this character, John the Baptist.

He is described so strangely, living out in the wild almost like a wild man himself.  He is baptizing people in the Jordan River and calling them to repent.  He challenges people to ask for forgiveness of their sins and to turn their lives around and live in God’s ways.  In the midst of this challenge Jesus enters the scene and comes to be baptized.  It seems strange to us, especially with John’s words in other gospels that Jesus would come to be baptized.  He has no need of it.  He doesn’t need to ask for forgiveness because he is the one without sin.  But Jesus insists and is baptized.

     What is striking then about Jesus’ baptism is the appearance of God’s spirit descending on him like a dove and the voice that calls out from heaven marking him as God’s Son who pleases God.  All those images make this event memorable for us.  The crazy John the Baptist, the descending dove and the proclaiming voice.  And it is the event that begins Jesus’ ministry.  Jesus also commissions his disciples to baptize people as their entrance into the faith, and most of us have been baptized as part of our faith journey.

     Today, however, I would like to focus on this strange event that occurs with Paul and the disciples he finds in Ephesus.  They were converted apparently by Apollos.  When Paul starts to question them he makes what to me is a rather startling distinction between the baptism of John and the baptism of Jesus.  And to me it is more startling because I think we in the church often see them as the one and the same thing and if we are really pushed on it, I think we identify more with the baptism of John.  We emphasize this notion of cleansing.

     Are you like me, thinking mostly what goes on at baptism is the asking for and granting of the forgiveness of sins that cleans us and allows us to have a new beginning?  But really that is the Baptism of John.  And we should know that because of our practice of infant baptism.  I mean why a baby should need to confess its sins and start over?  The baby is just starting out to begin with.

     But Paul and the early church and even John the Baptist make the distinction that to receive the baptism of Jesus is to be baptized with water and the Spirit.

The distinction for both Jesus at his baptism and us at our baptism is that we receive the Holy Spirit.  And that is what changes for these disciples in Ephesus when Paul baptizes them in the name of Jesus.  They immediately receive the Holy Spirit and start speaking in tongues and prophesying.  Like Jesus who was changed at his baptism and began his ministry, these disciples are changed and transformed and begin their ministry.  Baptism is not just a cleansing and a starting over.  It is a transformation that brings new power.  The event that began the church after Jesus’ death when the disciples were locked in a room afraid received the Spirit and then broke out into public to speak in tongues and to proclaim Jesus is the same transforming event that happens to each of us at our baptism.

     By thinking that we are just receiving John’s baptism, we forget that we are baptized by water and the Spirit.  And our thinking diminishes the power of our baptism.  In baptism we are transformed and given new power to be disciples of Jesus.  We are no longer ordinary.  We are not just starting over.  We are made differently and empowered by that Spirit to accomplish incredible things.  Like Superman, we have new power because we belong to a different world.

Superman becomes our metaphor today for discipleship

     So when we think of baptism, let’s not think of being made pure and having to keep ourselves pure each day.  Let us think about being empowered and living each day t use that power to God’s service.