There was a bumper sticker that someone had on their office
door: “Faith = Risk.” Does that evoke fear, excitement or disinterest for you? If
you ever try to do anything significant, anything that helps others, anything
that can change the world, you step into troubled waters. Stepping into the
water is always a risk. I remember my first experience of learning to swim
which was extremely traumatic. Being taken into a river in New Zealand and left
on log where the water around me was over my head. I was left there to make my
own way back to the river bank and theoretically to gain confidence in water
and swim. I was there in fear for a number of hours before finally overcoming
that fear. What a risk but although still somewhat fearful I can now go into
the water.
We depend on water, yet from earliest times humans have that
known water is dangerous, unpredictable. Storms and tsunamis cause the sea to
break its bounds, rain causes rivers to rise and desert gullies to rage with
flash floods. Even a wading pool is deep enough to drown in. In the beginning,
God wades into the water. Creation happens when God steps into the disorder of
the universe and begins to weave it into patterns of life, of justice, of love.
In the Gospel of Mark, the good news begins when Jesus steps into the water.
The same is true of us. The good news begins when the water of Jesus washes
over us, setting us free and setting us forth on a mission—albeit a risky one.
We hear two things in this story of Jesus’ baptism. First,
he did not drown in the water. But it set him forth on a journey into the chaos
of the human heart, with sufferings he could not have imagined on that first
day. Second, was that an amazing word comes when Jesus steps into the water:
“Beloved.” Weigh the risk of ministry against the reward. Wading into the water
of life in Christ = risk. Yet, it leads to the experience of God’s love, and
the joy that comes when you hear that word, “Beloved,” and then share it with
the world.
It can be said that Love tore the heavens open and spoke. If
Jesus didn’t comprehend the fullness of his being before that moment, with the
help of John the Baptist at the Jordan River, his eyes were opened and he now
understood. As Gregory of Nyssa says, all these things are a figure of
ourselves. The Voice tears open the heavens to declare us Beloved. Long ago,
the unborn infant John recognised Jesus, the baby John leaps for joy as the two
mothers, Elizabeth and Mary, recognise one another, filled with the Holy
Spirit.
The water of birth prefigures the Jordan River water and
rebirth. Now the two men face each other, their destinies before them. The
Spirit descends upon them and “The Lord’s voice is over the waters.” They
recognise each other— the bridegroom and the bridegroom’s friend— together, at
the start of this last, self-sacrificial era of their lives. Or, perhaps, as
before, they recognise and dedicate themselves to something entirely new. They
meet again over the waters of new birth. To touch this water is to say yes to
the movement of the Holy Spirit— to new life, to new birth. It is to say yes to
the Something Unseen waiting for you and to recognise that something, that is
strangely familiar, but absolutely new.
“Christ is bathed in light; let us also be bathed in light.
Christ is baptised; let us also go down with him, and rise with him.”
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