Tap Water and Holy Spirit

In the Presbyterian church, there are two Sacraments, two practices in which Jesus participated and commanded his disciples to repeat – Baptism and Communion. When Jesus was about 30 years old, his cousin John was out in the wilderness by the Jordan River. It had been about 1000 years since the Israelites had crossed over the Jordan into the promised land after escaping from Egypt and wandering in the wilderness for 40 years. NT Scholar Stanley Saunders writes about the Israelites’ understanding of the symbolism of the wilderness and once again entering the waters of the Jordan River as a reminder of God intentionally and purposefully leading the Israelites to wander after their escape from Egypt. “In the wilderness, it is possible to see the rest of the world more clearly, and perhaps even turn in a new direction.”

Now in the wilderness, John is calling Israel to repent and turn to prepare the way, for the kingdom of God has come near. Presbyterian preacher Tom Long points out that the repentance John calls for means much more than confessing that you have done some things wrong and asking God to forgive you. It “means,” he writes, “coming to the recognition that one has been basing one’s life on a lie, on a flawed view of what is true and of lasting value.” Repentance results in a changed world view – changed to God’s world view.

In Christianity in America today, we tend to focus on the love of God revealed in the life, teaching, death, and resurrection of Jesus. It is right that Jesus came to show and teach us God’s love, but God’s love is not the love of an indulgent, spoiling parent. God’s love is the love that comforts and heals all, and so requires justice. It is the love that accomplishes joy for all, and so requires absolute allegiance.

When we come to the font for a baptism, we pour in tap water. We pray over it and remember the Spirit of God brooding over the waters at creation, the dove returning to the ark with a freshly plucked olive leaf after the flood, the parting of the Red Sea and the crossing of the Jordan River. We remember that we need water to live, that water washes us and refreshes us, and that we die to our earthly wills and desires and are born to live according to God’s will.

It is a holy moment, a thin place where we can almost feel God’s presence. Every year, 12 days after Christmas, the church calendar begins a new season, the season of Epiphany, of Christ’s identity being revealed by a travelling star, by doves and voices and the sky opening, miracles and healings, by the appearance of Moses and Elijah on a mountaintop as he was transfigured. A season of thin places, where the boundary between earth and eternal becomes so thin we catch glimpses of God. Episcopal writer Debi Thomas says that during the season of Epiphany we remember the times that “God parts the curtain, and we catch glimpses of his love, majesty, and power. Epiphany calls us to look beneath and beyond the ordinary surfaces of our lives, and discover the extraordinary. To look deeply at Jesus, and see God.”

But, for most of us, the story of Jesus’s baptism seems a bit like a made-for-TV drama. John is there with the crowds, ordinary people, ordinary day. Jesus appears. John recognizes him as greater and defers. “Who am I, to baptize you? It should be the other way around.” Jesus insists John baptize him. With perfect timing, the sky opens and a white dove descends, straight down, not like any bird ever flies. I can just picture the rays of light beaming through the clouds. If I were a director, I would want some ethereal music playing in the background to add to the multi-sensory engagement of this moment. And then, a booming, deep bass voice to declare as the dove reaches Jesus and Jesus’ white robes begin to radiate light, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well-pleased.”

Is that how it happened? And if it did, how do we explain it? Did the clouds part or the sky really tear apart? Did a dove descend or is that poetry? Did the crowd hear God’s voice, or only Jesus? Was it audible? We are scientific people – we want to know what happened and how, if we are going to believe something happened. Why don’t things like this happen now? Do we believe it actually happened this way, or do we doubt, or try not to really think about it too hard, or try to explain it somehow?

Our reasons for questioning are different, but it was hard to believe the account of Jesus’s baptism the day it happened, too. “Christian historian John Dominic Crossan, [asserts] that Jesus’s baptism story was an “acute embarrassment” for the early Church, too, but for reasons very different from our modern ones. What scandalized the Gospel writers was not the miraculous, but the ordinary. Doves and voices? All well and good — but the Messiah placing himself under the tutelage of a rabble-rouser like John? God’s incarnate Son receiving a baptism of repentance? Perfect, untouchable Jesus? What was he doing in that murky water, aligning himself with the great unwashed? And why did God the Father choose that sordid moment to part the clouds and call his Son beloved?” (Debi Thomas)

This is the miracle of the Baptism of our Lord. It’s not the tearing of the sky and the doves and the voice from heaven. It’s not the water from the Jordan River or from the tap. In that moment, on earth, the Triune God was present: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. In that moment, God the Son fully took on our human state. Though he was sinless, Jesus yielded to receive what all humanity needs, the ultimate of thin places, for God to be incarnate, fully human. In baptism, Jesus unites with us – sinners – to fulfill all righteousness; humanity will be forgiven, saved, and made righteous through him.

In Baptism, we come to that same thin place. Tap water becomes the channel of the Holy Spirit. We don’t and can’t fully understand it. God doesn’t dominate our thoughts and experiences in ways that take away our opportunity to have faith. We have to choose to believe. God shows up in our lives, and we are free to explain it away – coincidence. God shows up in our lives, and we are free to ignore it – insignificant. God shows up in our lives, claims us as God’s own in the tap waters of baptism, and we are free to reject the Holy Spirit. Or, we can pay attention to the still, small voice, wonder at the bird lighting along our path, notice the bright rays breaking through the clouds, remember Jesus’s baptism and ours, and welcome the thin places, where the Holy Spirit hovers, where the boundary between earth and eternal becomes so thin we catch glimpses of God.