Musings on the Baptism of Our Lord

“You’re All Wet”

I vigorously argued for a certain position.  A friend disagrees.  In exasperation the friend shouts:  “Kenn, you’re all wet!”  I don’t know if he just got tired of my persistence or had no good come back.  Be that as it may – I was all wet!

Baptism is a ‘You’re All Wet” experience.  It can happen as infants or as an adult in later life.  Lutherans tend to be stingy with the water and either sprinkle or pour.  Baptists get the whole person immersed and find that to be very significant.  Either way God promises to be present in the act of Holy Baptism.

By water and the Word we are made members of the Church, which is the body of Christ.  According to God we are all wet.  We are all wet when it comes to making it on our own.  To do life ‘my way’ is to do a life toward death.  Yet God christens our lives with the Christ in spite of ourselves. 

Notice I said, ‘Christens!’  The word ‘Christ’ is in christens!  Holy Baptism yokes us to the Christ.  How often we encourage one another to be ‘Christ-like.’  In other words – to imitate Jesus.  Remember the expression:  What Would Jesus Do? And the bracelets with WWJD on them?  Too many preachers have preached moral sermons commending congregations to be like Jesus and to imitate his example.

That is not what Holy Baptism or the Christian faith is about:  We do not imitate the Savior’s life; we participate in it.  Baptism yokes us to Christ.  The image comes from first century Palestine where two oxen are yoked side by side.  Bound together the oxen would pull carts or plows.  The yoke was used to bind two animals together.

Holy Baptism is such a yoking.  We are all wet if we think we can walk through life alone or apart from Christ.  We are all wet if we believe in an ‘I did it my way’ kind of life.  Baptism yokes us to Christ and so we walk through all of life in union with him.

Craig Barnes, Professor of Leadership and Ministry at Pittsburg Theological Seminary writes:

“To be yoked to Christ is to walk through all of life in union with him.  Along the way the Holy Spirit binds believers deeper and deeper into the life of Christ until they begin to live his life.  Even when he takes them places they would rather not go…”  [page 58 – The Pastor as Minor Poet]

So God’s people do not imitate the life of Christ, but through the power of Holy Baptism we participate in the Savior’s life – a life outlined by the prophet Isaiah:

Thus says God, the Lord, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people upon it and spirit to those who walk in it: I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness, I have taken you by the hand and kept you; I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness. I am the Lord, that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to idols. See, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare; before they spring forth, I tell you of them.

We are all wet.  God takes us out of the waters of baptism and yokes to the Christ.  In grace we participate in that life.  As the Spirit binds us deeper and deeper into the Christ we begin to live his life.

Rev. Kenneth R. Storck