David Orendorff · Matthew 3:13-17

My beloved friend Jerry sent me this piece of wise humor from one of the Sufi mystics:

One Friday Hodja stood up in the pulpit in the mosque to preach a sermon. “O ye believers, do you know what I am going to talk about today?”

“We have no idea,” they answered him.

“Well, if you have no idea at all, then what’s the use of my talking to you?” With that remark he descended from the pulpit and went home.

The next Friday he returned to the mosque and once again stood up in the pulpit and asked the congregation, “O ye true believers, do you know what I am going to talk about today?”

“Yes,” they answered.

“Well, if you already know, then what’s the use of my telling you?” And he again descended from the pulpit and went home.

Again the following Friday, he entered the mosque, mounted the pulpit, and asked the same question “O ye true believers, do you know what I am going to talk to you about today?”

The congregation had prepared their answer in advance: “Some of us do, and some of us don’t.”

“In that case,” Hodja said, “let those who know tell those who don’t.” And he went home again.

Jerry adds, “Hey.. it works for me!”

Preaching is a strange thing because I am telling most folks what they already know. Take this week for instance. The scripture about Jesus’ baptism has been read on this first Sunday after the visit of the Magi for several hundred years. Year in, year out, on this same Sunday, we remember the baptism of our Lord. Most of us have been around long enough to only half listen. I have preached on Jesus’ baptism more than 20 times. I know what I am going to say and most of you know what I am going to say so why don’t we go home?

But though it has been preached for 2000 years, I will preach the good news of Jesus’ baptism yet one more time. I preach not to say something new, but to remind us how our lives have been touched, baptized and transformed by God. And I preach to hold a vision of promise before those who may have nothing to remember for no one told them the story, or they didn’t hear when it was told. To remember the baptism of Jesus and to remember our own baptism is to see again that God in Spirit descends upon us and offers us new life; a life of faith, hope and love.

Baptism can be scary because it carries the threat of death; it is the ritual of dying and rising with Christ. My friend Dave is now a United Methodist pastor but once upon a time he was a Baptist pastor. Many Baptists have at the front of their sanctuary a Baptismal font that is a pool large enough for three or four people to stand in and fully immerse the one to be baptized. Often it has a front panel of glass so everyone can see what’s happening. The Baptismal font where Dave was serving had a glass front and was just comfortably sized for
three.

Dave is rather small, maybe 5’6″, 135#. The woman he was baptizing was no taller but maybe twice as large. The Deacon who was assisting was a post rail 6 feet.

Well, it turned out the baptizee was afraid of water. And when Dave went to lay her back and fully immerse her, she panicked. She grabbed him around the neck, drew his face into her rather ample bosom and hung on. Her feet went into the air and Dave was pulled under. She began to climb him and in his panic Dave began to climb her.

Somehow their legs intertwined with the long legs of the deacon and swept him under them. From the congregations view point it looked like the agitate cycle of a front loading washer.

The choir director, the nearest person on dry land, had a theological choice to make, should he save the pastor, the deacon or the baptizee? Knowing the stories of Jesus well he shoved the deacon aside, the pastor down and saved the lost sheep. As Dave tells it, he was the last sinner out of the pool, sputtering something about for the love of God, and Jesus Christ, and holy something or rather.

Baptism threatens us with death for if we are to answer the call to follow Jesus then we must be ready to be plunged into deep waters, to be changed and to have parts of our lives, maybe parts we would hold tight, die. But whatever death comes to us, God’s promise is that new life, life that it is ever more gracious, more just, more compassionate and joyful, will always follow.

As for me, the new life in Christ is the only life worth living. As I look back over my 59 years I see a pattern of dying to live. Every major decision of my life has felt like something of me had to die, but there was always some greater life calling. Baptism threatens us with death while at the same time offering us life.

At 19, when I gave my life to God through Christ, I lived in a slum apartment. Like the woman in the baptismal font, I was afraid of the Christian water and for some time thrashed about. I knew that if I was to follow Jesus I would eventually have to stop using and selling drugs. This scared me because various drugs were my inner joy and formed the basis of my friendships.

But I saw in Jesus the love of God and a life I wanted; a life for which I would sacrifice my life. In the way of Jesus I saw meaning and purpose not only for me, but for the whole of the world. And so in spite of my fear of death, I took the plunge and prayed for Jesus to save me, prayed for assistance in being obedient to God as I then understood God. It has been the single most important decision of my life; a decision I have remade almost daily for 40 years. And it has made all the difference in my joy.

When I asked Vickie to marry me it was an unpremeditated impulse. When she said yes I was very afraid. I enjoyed being single both for its freedom and its lack of responsibility. I stewed and fretted, prayed and worried. I thrashed about in this cleansing and dying water and when my head finally came up I saw the spirit descend upon me like a dove, laughing at me, speaking of the promises and richness of spending my life with Vickie. The life I had lost was nothing compared with the life I had gained. God promised me in Vickie more love and grace, both in receiving and giving, than any life I could ever have alone. And God has kept that promise.

Graduating from college, going to seminary and graduate school was not a big or threatening decision. I knew school and I did well in it. I continued school for 10 years beyond high school because I love learning. But when Vickie and I decided to have children things got scary, very scary.

If we were to have children I would have to get a full time job in the real world. I could no longer depend on Vickie’s helping with the income. This scared the bejeezers out of me. I didn’t know what job to get and I was afraid I would fail as a bread winner.

Added to this fear was the fear of being a parent. I didn’t know how to be a parent or what kind of parent I might be. I was very aware of several character defects that I didn’t want my children to suffer. And the added responsibility of one and then two small lives dependent upon my putting a roof over their heads, bread on the table and love in their hearts was overwhelmingly filled with fear. This time I thought I might really die. But the promise of love in a small baby’s life, not so much the love I could get, but the love I could give, drove me to choose a full time job and risk loving in new ways.

But what job would it be. I really had no choice. I was only trained to do one thing, be a pastor. And so I became a pastor because I needed a job. By God’s grace, being a pastor was also the fulfillment of my adolescent vision of sharing God’s love as I knew it. So in spite of my fear, we got pregnant, I quit school and became the pastor of three very small churches in the most rural part of Montana.

Again in the dying of baptism there was a better life and a new and deeper joy. I love being a pastor. I cannot imagine doing anything else. And I especially love being a parent. Hard as it is, it has more joy per ounce than any other part of life.

I tell you all of this not because I think my life is terribly interesting, but because I believe my life is fairly common. And what God has done for me, God has done and will do for every life.

I love the way Robert Frost talks about the choices, large and small, we are called to make in our lives in his well known poem the Road not taken:1 Robert Frost, Selected Poems of Robert Frost, (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., New York, 1966), 71

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
to where it bent in the undergrowth.
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

I suggest each of you do a bit of life review sometime this week. Make a list of the big and scary decisions of your life. Look back and see if at the major intersections, the places where the decisions “made all the difference,” you don’t see the baptism of God; if you don’t see that when you thought you would surely die, lost in the woods, you took the less traveled way of Jesus and God lifted you from the deep waters and gave you new life; sent the Holy Spirit upon you and pronounced, “This is my beloved child with whom I am well pleased.”

I am convinced that if we continually consider the times of our baptism with an open mind and heart we will discover that God has been with us every step of the way. I am convinced that remembering the many baptisms of our past, we will take confident hope in today and the days to come. God has always been with us as “a very present help in the time of trouble,” and God will continue to be with us in all our days to come. And in the end, at the final baptism and death of this life, God will lead each of us home to be with our beloved family forever. Remember and do not forget that you are God’s beloved child and with you God is well pleased.

Shalom and Amen.

[1] Robert Frost, Selected Poems of Robert Frost, (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., New York, 1966), 71