Cat Goodrich
Faith Presbyterian Church, Baltimore
January 12, 2025
Through the Waters
Isaiah 43:1-7, Luke 3:15-18, 21-22
There is a cassette tape somewhere at my parents’ house, black with a white sticker label, that holds a recording of my baptism. I think probably the whole service at First Presbyterian Church of Shreveport, with John Rogers preaching, and proclaiming me baptized. It’s an interesting relic, since I don’t by any means remember it – I was a baby when it happened, the water has long since dried. Do any of you remember your baptisms? I have a friend who grew up Southern Baptist, she said she got baptized several times, every time she got anxious about her salvation, she’d be baptized again- just to make sure it ”took.” A kid in the last church I served grew up in a different denomination. He remembers his baptism because he tripped and slipped going into the baptismal tank, arms flailing, and splashed water all over the minister.
Do you remember your own? The words that spoken, the water splashed, the eyes wide with wonder. In baptism, you are named and claimed as a child of God. Beloved, and precious to God. You are claimed and welcomed as part of the community of faith.
When we baptize someone, we make a covenant with them. The community promises to support and teach the person as they grow in faith. Parents promise to help the child learn and to encourage the faith of their children. And here at Faith, the children promise to share the stories of Jesus with the baptized person, and to be a friend to them. Mostly, we promise to accompany each other in this life of faith – to be community together.
Reading this story this morning, I have to wonder if Jesus remembered his own baptism from time to time… The first step into the water, mud swirling around his toes. Was it cold that day, wind blowing the grass on the riverbank, making him hesitate before he made his way into the water, or was it hot and sunny, the water a blessed relief? Was he jostled as he walked among the people crowded there, a mad rush for the river, or did they calmly walk single file, taking turns? Could he swim? Was he scared?
However he felt before, he surely remembered the words that came after: the dove descending, the words of love echoing in the sky. The feeling of power that settled on his shoulders like a cloak. He had to have thought of them when he first saw James and John mending their nets, and invited them to join him in ministry, to come and see. Don’t you think Jesus remembered God’s claim on his life when he spoke with Zacchaeus, offering forgiveness; when he stood at the tomb of his friend Lazarus, tears in his eyes, and called him to come out? Here at the beginning, God is telling us who Jesus is, so we can understand the ministry that comes later.
For the early church, baptism was the primary act of initiation into the community – and it still is one of two sacraments central to our faith. Water has for centuries been a means of grace for this Christian ritual – a potent symbol of renewal, of washing clean; one life ending, the beginning of something new.
It makes sense, because water is the stuff of life. Picture images of people hauling water – in places where water is hard to come by, women balancing jugs on their heads and hips. Children struggling to carry water in heavy bottles, barefoot on dirt roads. If you do not have running water, fetching water is a primary daily task, done first thing in the darkness before dawn, or in the evening as dusk falls. In the Forum this Advent, we read a poem by Xochitl Julisa Bermejo that brought to mind images of gallon jugs of water left in the desert on migrant trails, adorned with sharpie-drawn pictures of the Virgen of Guadeloupe, so people would know the water was safe to drink. Water in the desert is the difference between life and death. Water is necessary – think of all the reasons why you turned on a tap this morning, for eating, drinking, washing up.
And I cannot think about water as a potent symbol and means of life this morning without seeing the images of people in LA, where wildfires fanned by the fierce Santa Ana winds have given rise to apocalyptic conditions there. Whole neighborhoods reduced to ash and cinders. I’ve seen people hauling garbage cans of water to their neighbor’s homes, spraying roofs with garden hoses, splashing what they can from swimming pools to try to fight the flames, and put out hot spots. The destruction is impossible to comprehend, homes, churches, businesses burned, hundreds of thousands of people displaced – the whole region traumatized by vicarious loss, despair hovering like smoke, saturating everything.
A colleague of mine who is pastor of Culver City Presbyterian Church wrote that her primary feeling is one of helplessness. How do you get the wind to stop blowing? How does anyone get rain to fall?
In light of these impossible questions, I can’t help but wonder: How did you hear the passage we read from Isaiah this morning? They are words of reassurance for people who were also feeling overwhelming helplessness. But were they reassuring to you? Familiar, certainly. Through the voice of the prophet, God promises the Israelites: When you pass through the water, I will be with you; when you walk through the fire you will not be burned… Because you are precious in my sight, and honored, and loved. Isaiah is writing to people in exile, who have been enslaved by their conquerors. To be redeemed in this context is to be bought out of slavery, and liberated.
At first pass, these words are comforting, to be sure, but can we believe them? As one member of the bible study asked this week – something along the lines of, how can we believe this in a world where the Holocaust happened? How can these promises be anything but empty? As fires smolder and sparks fly and whole neighborhoods are reduced to rubble; as volunteer fire brigades seek to save neighboring homes with buckets of water; as the death toll rises and more and more people are displaced… we are challenged to remember that God never promised Christ safety. Instead, God promised to be with him – and by the power of the Spirit, is with us, too. With this lens, then, we can see God at work in the midst of devastation. In the thousands of people who have poured in to help. In the firefighters from Mexico and Canada who have flown in to serve. And in every helping hand extended to each family and individual who is facing the impossible task of finding a way to rebuild their lives in the wake of the fire. Think of how difficult this year has been for Chandra and Ellsworth; how painful the path back home for Leanora and her family. Multiplied by how many?
God is present not in the firewalls or flames but in every bucket carried by a neighbor, in every glass of water offered and received.
And so in the days ahead, remember your baptism, and trust that you are not alone. God sees and loves you. Through the power of community, God cares for us. As you come forward for communion, if you wish, touch the water. Feel and be reminded of God’s presence with you, which persists despite flame or flood or despair. Thanks be to God!