Acts 19:1-7; Mark 1:4-11; January 14, 2024; Baptism of our Lord Sunday
The following quote is from Martin Luther King Jr.’s letter from Birmingham jail:
“I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.”
Wow. People don’t really write or talk like that anymore, do they? No, now they just use annoying slang like “slay” or “sus” or “vibing” or whatever. Which clearly proves the point that while I appear young, I am yet squarely middle-aged, and increasingly out-of-touch with what’s new and in style.
And yet, what’s new and in style doesn’t suggest that it is better. For sometimes what is new is more regressive than it is progressive. Like, I would argue that the new mindset of “flexing for what’s best for me” rather than considering how me, myself, and I effects the community, is not at all better and much, much worse for all.
King’s dream of an “inescapable network of mutuality,” and his notion of what “affects one directly affects all indirectly” seems lost and incompatible with our modern society.
And so, while MLK indeed wanted something new for his people, for America, for the world, what he also really wanted was progress. Progress that would lead to better individuals, better churchgoers, better neighbors, better communities, and a more just and equitable nation that would make for a better world society.
And though I think we have progressed, some, there is still much more work to do. Especially in these days of apparent regression.
I’ve often wondered how I would have responded if I lived back then in King’s time. How about you? I mean, I hope that I would have marched with him. Sat in with him. Even gone to jail with him in solidarity. But as I look at my comfortable life now, what with Seth going to cooking classes, and zip-lining along ceilings on weekends, and experiencing all the luxuries that come from a life of comfortable leisure, I am not sure that I would have taken the risk to do those things, with him, with King, for I don’t really take that many risks now. And that’s being honest. How about you?
And that’s also precisely what his Birmingham letter is all about…encouraging, if not admonishing, moderate, comfortable Christians like me, like us, to do more with our time. To have our lives back up our words, such that our prayers become living and changing realities rather than convenient and safe meditations.
It’s also in part what our text from Acts today is about. Not relying on a baptism that only serves yourself, but being baptized into a name that would continue to serve others.
Now, that’s not to say, my friends, that John’s baptism was wrong. It had its place. And it served and still serves a worthy purpose. This idea of cleansing yourself from sin so to repent and start again — that’s great. But as Paul tells the people, it is yet not complete. For a baptism which truly receives the Spirit pushes one beyond their notion of self, even outward into the wilderness, where new languages are learned, and new tongues are spoke.
Now, that’s not to suggest either that we should all renounce being Presbyterian today and become Pentecostal, breaking out in tongues of indecipherable rumblings; but, it does suggest that we ought to remember our own baptism, and the prayer and the charge to the congregation that came with it — that we should learn to speak in new ways such that our own comforts would not be put in front of the needs of an infant child, or in front of the needs and instruction and betterment of all.
In our text from Mark this morning, John says his baptism would soon be obsolete, for something new and better and more complete was coming after him. And in Mark 1, verse 10, we learn that a Spirit came from Heaven, and like a dove it rested on Jesus identifying him as this new Christ.
But, why a dove? Anyone know? Well, in Genesis 8, Noah releases a dove to find land after the world-wide flood has subsided, and thus it served as a symbol of hope for a new creation. Moreover, in Greco-Roman culture, when the gospels were written, the presence of birds around an individual was believed to signal that something new was about to happen that would shape and foretell the future to come.
In our case then, the dove rested on Jesus, because Jesus’ baptism was not about himself and his timeline exclusively, but about the whole world and a new creation to come, and that the rest of time would forever be altered by it.
Just the same then, baptism should push us outward into the wildernesses of the world so to better it. So to improve it. So to alter it by helping to make it more peaceful, more just, and more equitable; more forgiving and less waring; more loving and less hating. Doing so, not for us, for me, myself, and I, but for the interrelatedness of everyone, the inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny.
So let us be bold today, my friends, and say as baptized believers, that we are ready to truly follow him, not just in sanitized words and prayers, but in real actions, stepping outside of our safety nets, our lukewarm habits and moderate traditions, into something new and something daring. Even, a new language and tongue, which considers not ourselves before others, but places others first before ourselves. So that through moments of selfless sacrifice and service, Christ could be made known to all, and all the world made better for it.
Amen.
