The Echoes of Baptism

• Death Cafe January 18th and March 22nd at 4pm. All are welcome to talk about death, life, and everyone in between.
• Afternoon MidWinter Tea February 15th.
• We are currently collecting (soup and other food items) for SOUPer Bowl Sunday to support the Orange Food Pantry. In a time when it can feel like we have nothing to give, sometimes a bowl of soup to someone in need is enough. Together, that small bowl becomes food to feed a family and food to feed a community.
• Council meets monthly after Church on the 2nd Sunday (that’s today); excluding July and August.
• Discussion Group & Confirmation Studies meets the last two Sundays of the month after Church.
• Enjoy the Recorded Reflection HERE

Love is the root and foundation of our faith and of our lives as human beings in community together on this earth.  It is the clear instruction from Jesus that we receive.  Love one another.  That’s it.  Very simple.  

Let’s go back to the beginning.  The very beginning where we are given charge to tend to this earth.  The garden.  The animals.  The soil.  The plants.  All livings things.  To tend.  That might just be another word for love.  

The clear instruction we receive over and over is to love.  Love is to tend to one another and this whole world and all that is in it.  That includes ourselves.  But it is not tending to ourselves in a selfish way, but that we tend to ourselves so that we might be better able to tend to others and this world.  We all know, quite well, that when we are unwell and tired and overwhelmed and busy and filled with all those feelings we are not at our best to tend to one another and this world. We are not at our best to love one another. 

Let’s go back to another beginning where we first meet John and Jesus together.  They are still in the womb and yet John abounds with Joy to be present with Jesus.  John is the one of the first who senses Jesus for who he is.  John is the one who will clear the way for Jesus.  He does this in the womb.  He does this in the wilds.  He does this in the waters.  

John is the Baptizer.  He wilds our faith.  He invites his followers, and us, to clear our hearts and minds for God. Using the very thing of cleansing and clarity: water. Simple water. Simply love.

His advice is very practical.  He doesn’t speak in parables.  He says very clearly, like a clear mountain spring perhaps, to share, don’t steal, don’t take more than is yours, and be content/satisfied.  

Jesus is also very clear, don’t get bogged down by rules and law, simply Love. Love one another. Love your enemies.  Love God.  Practice love.  If we are truly loving one another…the rest falls into place. 

Love I so many things (tenderness, forgiveness, mercy, feeding others, befriending others, clothing others, healing, listening, holding, not doing harm).  Love is uncomplicated.  We make it complicated, probably because there are instances we don’t want to offer love and yet we want to excuse ourselves for those times we don’t want to offer love (or tenderness or mercy—also love).  We’re human. 

Today we celebrate the baptism of Jesus.  This is the moment that the Holy Spirit of God comes down and says: This is my Beloved Son.  It is from this that we sometimes hear the Holy Trinity recited as: The Lover, The Beloved,  and Love Itself.  

This Baptism is a time of Remembering.  Remembering Jesus’s baptism and the echo of our own baptism.  Whether we have been baptized or will be baptized.  This remembering is like The Supper and Communion where there is a now and a then and a not yet.  There is a collapse of the barriers of time and space and place.  Time and space become irrelevant and it all becomes One. 

I just finished reading The Signature of All Things, a novel by Elizabeth Gilbert.  You might recognize her as the author of Eat, Pray, Love.  In this book she explores the idea of time.  There is human time which is so finite and fast.  There is moss time (yes, moss as in that wonderful greening stuff) which is incredibly slow and patient.  Then, there is Divine Time that is infinite and perhaps overlapping.  Unknowable and beyond time and space and place.  

I digress to give us something to chew on as we ponder time and remembering. These moments that echo back to the beginnings, the firsts, to our own small echos, and to what will come. The lineage of the infinite beginning and the infinite future.  

Jesus is The Beloved.  We are also the beloved children. Baptism is a moment of purest love.  The Lover, the Beloved, and Love Itself come together for a moment in a time beyond our understanding.  It’s here and now. It’s before. It’s not yet.  

Baptism is when we choose Love. Being beloved children is both a gift…and a responsibility.  It does not end that we are beloved children and therefore “done” or “saved” with no gift or work to offer back.  At the same time we are always loved because we are entangled in this web of lover, beloved, and love itself. 

We might fail and fall and make mistakes and we are still and always loved.  But, in return, we have work to do, prayers to pray, time to tend in community, and time to tend alone.  All of it with Grace.  

It is a gift of reciprocity, not as something bought and sold, not an exchange that you get the coins and I get the eggs and one or the other eventually runs out.  It is an overflowing cup.  A gift of reciprocity where all involved are nourished.  We are given a path and gift of growth and Grace.  It is Love.  

Our great works might be to live up to the faith Grace has in us to be beloveds.  

Baptism is an ongoing opportunity for transformation and change.  In our own beautiful baptisms there always seems to be a pause in time for those present to remember.  Remember.  The cleansing.  The washing.  The clarity.  The presence of deepest abiding Love.  A remembering of the baptism of Jesus and to reflect on what that means to us as beloveds. 

Baptism is also an anchor in the cycle of change we are bound up in.  The only constant in this human life is that there will be change.  Wanted, unwanted, and everything in between.  

Baptism anchors us in Love Itself. The unchanging. The constant of seemingly unmoving Divine Time.  In our cycle of change, Grace is always present. Love is always present.  Universal truths are always present.  And all unchanging in a wheel of living that is in constant flux and change.  Seasons.  Moon phasess.  Night and day.  Births and deaths.  Pain and happiness.  

We often resist these changes as if we should somehow be outside these obstacles and changes and cycles of life.  We resist in hopes of simple comfort and ease. But life is change.  We will hurt and suffer. Grace is not here to relieve us of the trials and struggles (let’s be honest, our Teacher of Love dies horribly in crucifixion)…how can we possibly believe that we will not also face our own life trials?  Perhaps our own aches and pains and griefs are another small echo of what was, what is, and what will be.  

And through it all…we are baptized to walk in faith.  We are baptized as beloveds.  We break bread with one another.  We walk together.  We struggle together.  We minister together.  We feast together.  We fast together.  We pray together. 

We are not alone.  

Baptism is the remembering and a reminder that we do not walk alone.  As Jesus is Beloved, we are also the beloveds.  We are held by the Lover, the Beloved, and Love Itself.  We are anchored and held in the gentle hands with and for one another and also in the great hands of Grace.  

Photo Credit: Nadin Sh