Passing through the waters (Isaiah 43.1-7)
Passing through the waters (Isaiah 43.1-7; Luke 3.15-17, 21-22)
Eastminster United Presbyterian Church, Baptism of the Lord C (January 13, 2019)
Tom James
I cross two bridges to get here—one of them pretty small—low and level—and the other quite large and very high. The small one takes me from the island where I live over part of the Detroit River to the mainland, and the other crosses the Maumee River on Interstate 280. I hardly notice crossing the small one. It makes some people nervous (each lane is narrow), but I actually enjoy driving on it. There are nice views of the river, which is always changing. The second one, the big suspension bridge on 280, such a massive project that, when it was built, a number of workers lost their lives, has taken some getting used to. It’s not the water below that bothers me—it’s how far below it is. I’m not a big fan of heights. But still, with both bridges, I’m mindful that there is cold flowing water beneath me, and I know that it wouldn’t be much fun to plunge into it. Crossing bridges can help you sustain a pretty healthy respect for nature and its powers.
The ancient Hebrews were not a sea-faring people and had a lot of rather negative feelings about seas and even lakes. We see this in many places in the Bible, where seas are seen as a deep and dangerous threat to human existence. The flood story is an obvious example. But what may not be obvious to us is that the flood story was not just an isolated weather catastrophe, but is instead a sort of sequel to a much older tale. The flood story itself hearkens back to the opening verses of the book of Genesis. When God created the earth, just about the first thing that God needed to do in order to create a habitat for human beings was to separate the dry land from the waters. Now, the waters weren’t just understood to be on the same approximate horizontal plane with us. They were seen to be beside us, if you will, but also below us and even above us. Genesis gives us a very much land-loving picture of a fragile stretch of human habitation, threatened on all sides by raging waves that are pictured as a frightening and hostile force of chaos. That’s what had to be tamed in order for there to be a creation at all.
Some of us have seen the power of waves up close, but, even if we haven’t, we have seen pictures or footage or heard stories about what they can do. Just this past week a lighthouse on the Wisconsin side of Lake Michigan was completely wiped out by a huge wave and high winds. Did you see the footage? One moment it was standing tall, and the next minute it was just gone. In the flood, God’s creative act of separating the dry land from the threatening waters is reversed. You could say that a force of de-creation—a force of destruction that had lurked in the vicinity of humankind since the very beginning—was unleashed.
It’s interesting, though, that the very identity of these land-loving people, Israel, was made as they passed through threatening waters. When Israel was enslaved, when they were forced to serve an imperial master and had no safe place of worship and no land to call their own—God heard their cries and delivered them from Pharaoh. How did God deliver them, though? By opening the sea for them—by creating a stretch of dry land for them—by separating human life from the chaos and disorder that threatens it from all sides once again, and telling them to march bravely forward. There seems to be a pattern here. Apparently, this is what God does. Apparently, this is who God is.
This Sunday is designated “Baptism of the Lord” on our church calendar. Still very near the beginning of the church year, we celebrate a series of beginnings for Jesus: his birth, his epiphany or manifestation to the nations as they were represented the wise men, his (perhaps, first) trip to Jerusalem as a twelve-year-old, and, now, his baptism. Jesus undergoes baptism at the beginning of his ministry as it is recorded in the gospels. He passes through the waters, making the same journey, symbolically speaking, that the Israelites made when they passed through the raging chaos of the sea as they escaped Egypt. The next three years are prefigured in this ritual because his journeys through Galilee and then back to Jerusalem will take him through dangerous territory. He will confront chaos in the form of demon possessed people, and people with devastating illnesses, and, for himself, chaos in the form of suspicion and persecution, and trial before Pilate, and death.
Who knew baptism meant so much! We often if it as a sort of blessing we bestow on people—most often children. Baptisms are times for joy. And innocence. And, yet, for Jesus and also for us, his disciples, baptism points to a life of passing through the waters, facing threats on all sides, making our way on a narrow strip of dry land with crashing waves barely held back by the hand of grace. Baptism, in other words, points to real life, with all its uncertainties and dangers.
In our Old Testament reading for this morning, the prophet Isaiah probably has in mind the story of the people of Israel making their way across dry ground, passing through the sea, as they escaped from Egypt as he writes that his readers will pass through the waters unharmed. He is writing to Jews in exile to give them hope that God has not forgotten them and that the chaos that seems to envelop their lives will not destroy them. Commentator Paul Hanson notes that there is another reference these verses, too. Making people pass through water was also an ancient way of putting people on trial to prove their innocence or guilt. Passing through the water was not only dangerous–it was a way of being exposed, proven guilty if they failed the test. And, of course, they failed the test by drowning—so, with the judgment came the penalty as well.
Much later, when Jesus teaches his disciples to pray, I wonder if it wasn’t something like that that he has in mind when he prays, “save us from the time of trial.” When we repeat the prayer now, we use the words “deliver us from evil,” but the literal translation from the gospel asks God to deliver us through a time of trial—perhaps, keep us from being drowned. The evil that we dread is not just any old thing, but a very specific evil—the evil of being put to the test and failing. And, so, “save us from the time of trial” doesn’t mean keep us from ever having to face adversities, or keep us from having to confront and struggle with the chaos that continues to this day to threaten our lives. Rather, it means, helps us to endure the chaos. It means, give us the strength not to buckle or break under the pressure. Show us the strip of dry land where the water can’t isn’t too deep to cross. Enable us to keep standing, even in the face of a huge wave.
The implicit message is, only God can do that. Ordinarily, things topple and disappear, like the lighthouse amid the fury of Lake Michigan waves and wind. Ordinarily, enslaved people don’t get liberated by simply marching away—and certainly not be marching through a sea. Ordinarily, people in exile at the hands of an expanding empire don’t get to go back, rebuild, and create a great world religion. Ordinarily, a man who gets executed as a criminal doesn’t leave a tomb empty. Ordinarily, the barely literate followers of such a person don’t build a movement that outlasts an empire and changes the world. Our history as the people of God, from ancient Israel to contemporary east Toledo, is a story of defying what is ordinary. Ordinarily, there is no liberation but only fresh cycles of bondage, no resurrection but only a slow or fast decline toward death. But, “ordinarily” is not the end of the matter, because God is the creator, and, as long as God remains the creator, creation, and re-creation, continues to happen, and the forces of chaos cannot prevail.
The verses that we read from Isaiah have what some scholars call an “envelope” structure. A theme unites the beginning and the end—the theme of God as creator is repeated in both places, and a theme also unites the section right after the beginning and the section right before the end—God redeems in history. The structure is like an envelope or like a shell in that it holds something very important in its middle, and that is the message that explains everything. Israel had been through a lot with God. It had had moments of ecstatic joy, long stretches of blinding forgetfulness, and times filled with a heavy sense of judgment. But the heart of Israel’s experience is suggested in verse four. God says, “You are precious in my sight and honored, and I love you.”
Ultimately, that’s the message that carries us through the waters—whether they be waters of chaos and threat or waters of trial. We are precious in God’s sight. We are honored. And God loves us. The heart of the gospel is the heart of our story.
On Baptism of the Lord Sunday, it is customary to remember our baptism. For many of us, there is no way to actually remember the experience of being baptized. So what we remember is that we have indeed passed through the waters many times—that God has led us through and will lead us through. We remember our baptism by trusting that we pass through because God has said that we, despite our flaws, despite our lack of faith, despite any of the hindrances which lay before us or behind us, are precious and honored, and loved. We pass through, we are able to stand, because God has reached out to us in our weakness, and that makes all the difference. In the name of God, our creator and redeemer, the who honors us, and loves us. Amen.
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