Baptism of Our Lord

Rev. Dr. Seth Thomas

St James Presbyterian Church

Epiphany 2022 • Sermon • Submitted 2 years ago

Luke 3:15–22

Baptism

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Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

The New Revised Standard Version The Proclamation of John the Baptist

15 As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, 16 John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 17 His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

The New Revised Standard Version The Baptism of Jesus

21 Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, 22 and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

Golden Snitches and Flesh Memory

Any Harry Potter fans out there? I’m guessing a number of you have read the famous book series or watched some of the movies. Just this last month, the Harry Potter franchise celebrated the 20th anniversary of the movie premier of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. I remember going to see that movie at Christmastime during my Freshmen year of college.

My generation is steeped in Harry Potter, many folks a few years younger than me taking their first real adventures into reading through these novels.

Well, an important artifact of the Harry Potter stories is the Golden Snitch from the wizard game of Quidditch. In Harry Potter’s very first match for the Gryffindor Quidditch squad, he miraculously catches the Golden Snitch (a small, flying ball with wings) in his mouth to end the match!

We come to learn through the books that Golden Snitches are special magical items and they have “flesh memory.” The remember the touch of human flesh, a connection with the ones who capture them during the Quidditch match. (If you’re having trouble tracking with me, think about your favorite childhood ball. How even years later, tossing it around and holding it in your hands would wake up all kinds of memories — the touch had memory).

Anyway, we find that Harry must reconnect with this Golden Snitch in his final journeys, a remembrance that helps him defeat the evil Lord Voldemort.

Snitches have flesh memory. They remember touch. Like our ball, or like a familiar jacket or hat. Our bodies have connections with these objects and they come to life as we interact with and remember them.

Memory in our bodies

Over the last year or so, I’ve been doing some readings around the way the body holds memories and experiences trauma that resonates back through our life. A famous text in this vein is Bessel Van De Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score. This psychologist has studied the ways that our physical bodies hold pain and trauma, for instance stiffness or soreness that lingers from a car accident long after our visible wounds have healed. The body remembers.

We often think that memories are only housed in our minds, our thinking brains. But research is continuing to illuminate that our bodies, the physical stuff of us, are not so disconnected from our cognitive selves. Rather, our bodies hold memories and tell stories, connecting to our mental images of memory, but “fleshing” it out, as it were.

So when we come to remembering stories of baptism, we have to rely on more than our thinking memory. Our bodies hold the memories of this new life in Christ that we may not even cognitively be able to recall.

In the Reformed tradition, we baptize infants as well as adults. I was baptized when I was about 9 months old and so, I don’t remember my baptism. Asher, my son, similarly, was baptised at Cordata Presbyterian when he was still an infant and he does not have a working memory of that in his cognition. Or Aubrey Caruso, for instance. I remember holding her and baptizing her here at St. James, walking her up and down this aisle to welcome her into our family. She might know that we baptized her here, but I assume that memory is vague and moreso resides in her physical body than in a blurry visual memory.

This is why we are reminded to remember our baptism. Because we don’t always necessarily recall it mentally, we have to instead learn to remember it with our body, our touch, dipping our fingers in the water, practicing this for our body to experience.

Washing the outside vs. Cleansing and Restoring the Whole

I am struck as we look once again at the telling of Jesus’ baptism, at how stark a contrast John draws between what he is doing, a ritual cleansing, and what the one who will come after him will do. The language of a winnowing fork and unquenchable fires is so physical, so bodily, in a way very disruptive.

John is drawing a distinction — his work is ritually cleanse those who come to see him at the water. He is right in line with the tradition of the priests and prophets of old, who people come to to receive forgiveness and be washed clean, again and again.

This is an important process, but it is also only partial, something that must be renewed, at least in how it was practiced by the people of Israel up to this point. Our bodies become unclean, through certain foods or actions or being in the presence of illness or disease. Our flesh must be washed, sanctified again.

We then contrast this with the fire and fork of Jesus. Both are so much more visceral, physical, real, than a simple bath or wash.

Let’s go back and connect this with our bodies. Jesus, in his discourses with the religious leaders of the time, questioned whether they had clean outsides, but rotten or unclean hearts. Jesus’ baptism is about cleansing the whole person, inside and out, not just the external, but the whole being.

Let’s connect this with bodily memory, as well. A baptism in Jesus Christ is somatic, physical, connected to not just cleansing our actions, but washing through and purifying our whole being — memories, dreams, “heart”, spirit, soul, along with physical external and internal self. This is power, this is fire. This is winnowing to clear the ground for newness.

Process lead us to remembering belovedness

This may sound intense — and it is. The baptism we receive in Christ is meant to transform and renew our whole being. We become a new person, a renewed creation. Baptism in Christ is also tied to death and rebirth — we die as we enter and receive the water, we cease to be who we had so long held onto being — and we are reborn as we emerge, transformed and awakened into the life of God through the process.

Through this death, this rebirth — we find our belovedness. Hear again the words spoken at Jesus’ baptism: “you are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.”

God is naming Jesus anew in his belovedness as he receives his baptism.

So it is with us, that we are marked as beloved, a new beloved creation, as we emerge from the waters of baptism. Do you hear this — your baptism, your death and rebirth in Christ, is a sign and reminder that you and me and all of us are beloved. Deeply loved.

Remember your baptism

Let’s bring this on home and go back to the Golden Snitch with flesh memory.

The Snitch remembers Harry because they have a physical connection. They belong to one another, in a sense they are like the lover and the beloved — intimately knowing each other and bound to one another. It is because of this bond that Harry can use the powers of the Snitch to defeat evil.

Now, you may not cognitively remember your baptism. It may have been long, long ago. But that’s ok, because our bodies remember. Your body holds the memory of that moment, that time of death and rebirth.

And so it is our practice to encourage you to remember your baptism. We do not baptize people multiple times, but we do remind you to touch the water and mark our body and remember that you are beloved. We can do this every single day. As we wake, we find the restoring power of the water and the unquenchable fire that lights us up for a new day.

When I say “remember your baptism”, what I mean is find a way to awaken even just a glimmer of it in your body. Come up to the front after the service and touch the water and mark your forehead. Cross yourself to remember the power of the cross over your life. Hold your own hands close to your heart and remember you are beloved, like you are being held in the embrace of God. Your body remembers.

Today, we will ordain and install elders and deacons to the roles of church offices for our congregation. This, as well, is a marking, a remembering of baptismal vows. They will say vows that harken back to the ones spoken by or over them in their baptisms. We remember with them, reminding they are beloved, remembering their gifts and encouraging those gifts to take their rightful place in God’s people today.

We, followers of Christ, are marked with that loving baptism and therefore our bodies, our whole selves, also receive that beloved grace as we remember it.