Baptism of desire

Matthew 3: 13-17
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
January 12, 2020

We are beloved of God 

We are beloved of God 

Spirit of God, Holy Spirit in us, 

Love of all loves, you softly say…

What does it mean to you to sing those words? What does it mean for you to be beloved? For everyone in this room to be beloved? For every human being to be beloved?



Do feelings of unworthiness ever enter in? Put another way, what are the relationships in our lives and in our life together that need repair, that require belovedness to be restored? Do we ever think of others as being unworthy of belovedness because of who they are or what they’ve done? Can we imagine ourselves dying to our old lives and claiming a new one? Can we imagine redemption is possible even for those we would consider corrupt and degenerate?

This is where I got stuck last night, trying to write about belovedness and baptism and what it means to be a servant of God, to embody love in our lives. And then I thought of the 18 year old boy who spray-painted “Deus vult” or “God wills it” on the Planned Parenthood clinic over on E. Delaware Avenue, along with symbols for Mary and Jesus, mother and child, and I wondered whether he had been baptized. Had someone prayed over him, blessed the water that would wash over his skin, held him as an infant or supported his body as a youth, and said the words “I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit"—and I would’ve added—"Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer, the Mother of us all”? Even if he was not baptized, had anyone ever looked him in the eyes, called him ‘beloved’, and said they were well-pleased with him? I want to believe that at some point, someone did.



It is for this righteousness that I believe Jesus came to John to be baptized: to abide in the place of belovedness for those who could not see it in themselves; to persist in the place of belovedness for those whom others deemed unworthy.



John was offering a baptism of repentance in the Jordan river rather than in Jerusalem, but this wasn’t the baptism appropriated by the Church. There is no “in the name of the Father and of the…YOU…and the Holy Spirit” language. (Think how awkward that would be.)

Usually if someone required a mikvah, a ritual cleansing required as part of getting right with God for many reasons under Jewish law, it was performed by a priest in the temple for a fee. Jesus’ cousin John is offering a mikvah of repentance for free, for anyone, especially for those who may not be welcome, like tax collectors, sex workers, and other people on the margins. But John doesn’t understand why Jesus would want or need a baptism of repentance. The way John sees it, why does Jesus need to get right with God? What does Jesus have to repent for? The Greek word for repent means to think differently: to change our mind, our heart, our life. Jesus is the one who would be helping people to think differently about God, about their lives, about the world they lived in. Jesus doesn’t need to turn away from sin, think differently about his life, and follow God’s ways; he’s already there and prepared to lead others to turn their path.

The way Jesus sees it, it is to fulfill all righteousness—justice and mercy and belovedness for all, not just for some. This is the beginning of his public ministry, of his vocation as a rabbi, and a mikvah bath would’ve been part of his ordination. By having John baptize him in the Jordan, on the border, at the margins with God’s marginal people, Jesus was aligning himself not with the establishment, not with the religious authorities but with those whom he would be spending most of his time: the poor, the sick, outsiders, sinners, tax collectors, drunkards, sex workers—those of God’s people who needed justice and mercy the most; those who had deep need of God’s belovedness.



In the Catholic tradition there is something called the baptism of desire. It is when a person who has no knowledge of the gospel of Jesus Christ or of the Church but who seeks God with their whole heart and tries to do God’s will as their conscience serves them. I think of it as someone who recognizes the belovedness of others and serves the world that way and in turn realizes their own belovedness, reflected to them in the behavior of others.

However it happens, whether we’re baptized as babies or at an age when we can make a decision, whether it’s a baptism by the fires of life or a baptism of desire, it is God’s desire that we know that we too are beloved of God and that we live that way. A 20th century Catholic theologian by the name of Hans Urs von Balthasar wrote, “The Church does not dispense the sacrament of baptism in order to acquire for [itself] an increase in membership but in order to consecrate a human being to God and to communicate to that person the divine gift of birth from God.”



That’s how God desires we behave toward each other, how we live with each other, especially those with whom it is the most difficult to live and to love. That’s why we have Church—a community made of saints and sinners but all beloved by God and working on loving each other as much as God loves us. We work on it here, with grace and forgiveness, so we can take that gift out into the world and offer it to others, especially those who can’t recognize their own belovedness. This is how we repair the world: one life, one love at a time.



Amen.





Benediction



“The world is now too dangerous for anything but truth
and too beautiful for anything but love.” – William Sloane Coffin, Jr.

May the eyes of your heart be so blessed you see God in everyone.
Your ears, so you may hear the cries of the poor and the poor in spirit.
May your hands be so blessed
that everything you touch is a sacrament.
Your lips, so that you speak the truth to power and to those who are powerless.
May you be blessed to move quickly to those who need you.
And may your heart be so opened,
so set on fire, that your love,
your love, changes everything.



—Adapted from the Burning Man Blessing