Baptized By Water

Jeremiah 2:11-13

John 1:24-34

A Sermon Preached by

The Rev. Mike Elliott

January 10, 2010

For all of you trivia buffs, let’s take a quick time out for a couple of questions to get the old blood flowing to your brains this morning….

1.  First, for you former or current English class nerds…  

     Can you name the poem and author of….

“Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.”

From “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

2. Any idea how old the expression “doesn’t hold water” is?     

    At least as early as 1600!

So, any idea what the topic of today’s sermon is?  If you said “water” you win the grand prize!!!!

Water is perhaps one of the most common images used in the Bible, which is not at all surprising for a desert people.  And water is used as a metaphor for many different things in Scripture.

From the waters of chaos and disorder in the creation story of Genesis to the waters of judgment in the time of Noah to the waters of refreshment in Psalm 23 to the water of Baptism in the Jordan River to Jesus the fountain of living water, water just keeps turning up in Scripture.  Water, water, everywhere…

Water is probably the most essential thing needed for life to live and flourish.  It is the way both physically and metaphorically that we clean ourselves and get a "clean start" in life.  Water is the giver, the nurturer and sometimes the destroyer of life.  Too little or too contaminated or too much at the wrong time can spell disaster for life.  So what is your favorite biblical image or story involving water?

One of my favorite images of water is found in the second chapter of Jeremiah…

“Has a nation ever changed its gods?  (Yet they are not gods at all.)

But my people have exchanged their Glory for worthless idols.

Be appalled at this, O heavens, and shudder with great horror," declares the LORD.

"My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.”

Remember my second trivia question this morning?  Well, that is exactly the sentiment that we find in these words from Jeremiah.

"It doesn't hold water!"  That’s the result of rejecting the living water that God offers God’s people and digging our own wells and trying to find our own source of water.  Living water.  Kind of like a leaky pot.  Or a poorly dug well.  Or a cracked cistern.  They just don't hold water.  Sure, on the outside they may look fine.  They look pretty darn good.  But when you put them to the test.  When you add water, then they just don't cut it.  They just can't hold good, clean, fresh water.  They just can't nourish and sustain life abundantly.

We don't usually think of the Bible as being a book of puns or jokes, but a lot of times it is.  And it can be pretty sarcastic too.  Take this morning's lesson from Jeremiah.  It's just packed full of little jokes and plays on words.

     "…for my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and dug out cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that can hold no water…"

God is making a joke here, a very funny and sarcastic joke at the same time.  What He's saying is this:  Can you believe it?  There's never been anything else like it before in the whole wide world.  My people have forsaken me and my dreams for them and chosen their own plans and their own ideas and their own ways.  And worst of all, their plans and ideas just plain old stink!  They don't hold any water. 

God's people had traded all God's hopes and dreams for them for something that didn't hold water.  A cracked cistern.  God's people had traded all of the good things, all of the blessings that God had given them for nothing.  Their lives, their inheritance, their children's future.  All of it traded for the inferior work of their own hands.   And none of it held water.  None of it at all.  No more inheritance.  No more living water.  No more relationship with their God.  Just “Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink!”  Instead of God's living water offered in grace and love, God's people chose to work for no water at all.  Trading the pure, clean, life giving water for a spiritual drought of their own making.

For the next so many years it will be lot’s more of the same.  Lot’s more of the same for God’s people…“Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink.”   No more living water, just nasty polluted dirty water from cracked cisterns.  Now fast forward about 500 years to John the Baptist.  John stands in the life giving and healing waters of the Jordan river baptizing God’s children with the waters of repentance.  Facing a long interrogation by the Pharisees as to who he is and by whose authority he is baptizing, John gives his testimony…

“Now some Pharisees who had been sent questioned him, "Why then do you baptize if you are not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?"  "I baptize with water," John replied, "but among you stands one you do not know. He is the one who comes after me, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie."  This all happened at Bethany on the other side of the Jordan, where John was baptizing.  The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, "Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! This is the one I meant when I said, 'A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.' I myself did not know him, but the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel."

Then John gave this testimony: "I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. I would not have known him, except that the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, 'The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is he who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.' I have seen and I testify that this is the Son of God."“

In those cooling, healing, refreshing life-giving waters of the Jordan the spring of living water came and dwelt among us.  No more cracked cisterns that don’t hold water for us.  No more thirst while there is living water, water everywhere.  In mercy and in grace, in forgiveness and with reconciliation, the Word of God became flesh and dwelt with God’s children.  The spring of living water revealed to us in the waters of his baptism.

This is THE ONE, this Jesus of Nazareth…  That is what John the Baptist is telling us.  This is the one that we have been waiting for our whole life long.  This is the one whose birth the angels heralded and the Magi traveled for days to pay homage to.  This is the one that the angel told Joseph to name Jesus because he would save his people from their sins.  This is the one who can and will end our spiritual drought.  This is the one who will be for us the living water.

This is the one, the one who stands before John and presents himself to be baptized.  So that he may be revealed to us so that there will be no doubt as to who he is or what he is going to be about.  The spring of living water that God’s children had been missing for so long has come, and has been made known to us in the waters of our own baptism.

Like the waters that Israelites passed through in their Exodus from slavery to freedom, in the living water of Christ, the water of our baptism, we receive what is offered only by letting go and wading into the water in faith and trust.

You, me, all of us were not baptized.  We are Baptized.  Baptized from death into life.  Baptized into forgiveness.  Baptized into healing.  Then, now and always.  Children of God.  Children of the Covenant.  Children born of water and the Spirit.  Children set free to drink from the spring of living waters.  Now and always.

As we step out into this new year of hope, let us remember and renew our own baptism even as we remember how Jesus was revealed to us in his baptism.  Will you join with me as we celebrate and renew our baptismal vows?