Baptism Properly StoodUnder

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 

And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart

and the Spirit descending like a dove on him.

(Mark 1:9-10)

 

 

A sermon by Siegfried S. Johnson on Baptism of the Lord Sunday, January 13, 2008

Volume 2 Number 28

First United Methodist Church, 605 West 6^th, Mountain Home, Arkansas 72653

 

My title on this Baptism of the Lord Sunday is Baptism Properly StoodUnder, the third word being, admittedly, a bit odd in a dyslexic sort of way.  StoodUnder?  Since baptism is a theologically loaded subject, a source of disagreement throughout church history, perhaps we might better expect the title, Baptism Properly UnderStood.  When it comes to baptism, several weighty doctrinal questions emerge, and pastors are often called to address these questions.  Why do Methodists baptize infants while other denominations baptize only those who are old enough to make a profession of faith?  Why do Methodists prefer to sprinkle, while recognizing pouring and immersion as proper modes of baptism, while for others immersion is the only scriptural mode of baptism?  Why do we baptize in the name of the Trinity -- Father, Son and Holy Spirit -- while some fundamentalist congregations insist on baptizing in the name of Jesus only?  

 

Interesting stuff, to be sure.  But not this morning.  Not this sermon.  Today we will consider, not Baptism Properly UnderStood, but Baptism Properly StoodUnder.  I take you this morning, not into a question-laden arena in order to engage is some sweaty theological sparring, but rather into the mystery of baptism which calls, not so much for being UnderStood, as being StoodUnder. 

 

Let’s begin with Mark’s riveting account of Jesus’ baptism.  Mark fixes our gaze not only upon the Jordan River but also upward, to the heavens.  “Just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him.”  In his baptism Jesus StoodUnder a very active heaven, a heaven, it would seem, which participated in his baptism.

 

For Jesus, the crucial element of baptism seems not so much that it be Properly UnderStood, as it was to be Properly StoodUnder.  There is mystery here, mystery best approached by symbol and ritual rather than by systematic reasonings.  If our discussions of baptism are given to disputation of dogma in order to prove our position right and others wrong, we miss an opportunity to hear God speak through the mystery of the sacrament.  A debate-oriented approach to baptism, emphasizing our Knowing, runs the risk of missing the blessing of participating in the Unknown and ultimately mysterious.  Enchanted by our own UnderStanding, we miss the opportunity of transcendence which comes through StandingUnder.

 

In the opening words of Genesis the earth itself experiences a baptism of Water and Spirit.  The earth, “without form and void,” a No-Thing, is passive, awaiting a spark of life.  This unformed earth StoodUnder the Ruach Elohim (the Spirit of God), which “moved upon the face of the waters,” bringing order out of chaos, bring Some-thing out of No-thing. 

 

Have you ever brought Some-thing out of No-thing?  Sure you have.  Bringing Something out of Nothing is nothing less than the artistic endeavor, whether one works with wood or words.  To envision what is not there and to build it, whether building a sermon or a sanctuary, requires a moment of creativity, of imagination, of inspiration.  Yes, it helps to have a proper UnderStanding of our task, to be sure.  Yet, our project is invested with a grander worth if we begin with the inspiration of a dreaming moment.  To dream is to be on the periphery on God likeness, to be what God created us to be. 

 

Martin Heidegger wrote of this creative impulse, “We never come to thoughts. They come to us.” Anyone who has ever felt inspired, who has ever had to ask, “Where did I come up with that?” knows what Heidegger meant.  When we say, “a thought came to me,” are we not alluding to this mystery of inspiration?  It may be while in the shower or cooking or listening to music or driving. It’s as if the thought invades our day, granting to us an unexpected ray of light causing us, even if just for a moment, to StandUnder a mysteriously benevolent heaven.  We know that these embers of hot creativity have come, not so much from a natural development of our UnderStanding, but rather that they descend and refresh us as serendipitous surprise, giving us the sense that we are StandingUnder an active heaven, opened to allow its outpouring.

 

Artists seek and revel in this inspiration, this in-breathing at the fragile moment of creative impulse.  For the artist this creative impulse is a rush, a brush against genuine transcendence, and they learn over time how best to place their soul into a receiving posture, to StandUnder so as to allow the inspiration freedom to invade.  Artist Paul Klee wrote of this moment of inspiration, “Everything vanishes around me, and works are born as if out of the void . . . my hand has become the obedient instrument of a remote will . . . from the uncertain a Something shines, not from here, not from me, but from God.” 

 

Those words struck a chord with me, having experienced it many times in what is, for a pastor, perhaps our most artistic endeavor, the composing of sermons.  Many times I’ve left the church on Friday with Sunday’s message a sloppy, chaotic mess of raw material.  Untamed.  Unformed.  A cold, unappetizing stew of undeveloped ideas.  But at some point, “From the uncertain a Something shines, not from here, not from me, but from God.”

 

In your walk with God, can you recall a StandUnder experience when “from the uncertain a Something shines?”  Perhaps, seemingly out of nowhere in the midst of trying to UnderStand a problem with which you were struggling, you experienced a moment when you seem to StandUnder a benevolent heaven.  You see, suddenly, clearly.  You may feel a sense of peace, a softness of Presence which you understand intuitively is yours by grace, a grace free, unsought, unexpected.  The Unknown becomes, if just for a moment, Known

 

These moments, of course, pass.  Still, we can never entirely forget these awakenings, however brief.  They whisper to us as a still small voice, reminding us that more, much more, awaits us still.  We are left to wonder what larger reality do they reveal, what greater destiny of eternal life does God have in store for his children, those things which “no eye has yet seen, nor ear heard, nor yet a human heart conceived what God has prepared for those who love him?” 

 

The question then becomes, how do we convey to others such experiences of God’s Presence?  Or, should we even make the attempt?  Necessarily, the transition from experience to expression erodes the immediacy and the intimacy of the moment of revelation.  Have you ever tried to tell someone else about a dream of yours that moved you?  Words seem a poor vehicle to convey such movements upon the soul, despite our most sincere labor to fashion experience into words.  My soul may sing with a new revelation, only to sound insipid and monotone when reduced to expression as in a sermon, a mere assemblage of words.  In movement from experience to expression what we gain in structure and order and clarity we lose in immediacy and genuineness and power.  That’s why outlined formulations of religious doctrine are in perpetual danger of giving primacy to UnderStanding, while losing the awe and the wonder of StandingUnder.  

 

For this reason, soul-illuminating insights are generally not discovered in discussion of doctrines seeking proper UnderStanding, but rather are found when we engage in worship and wonder, leading to a certain radical amazement and depth of awe, of sensitivity to the mystery, a momentary awareness of the ineffable.  This StandingUnder is where great things happen to the soul, where arise the great insights of religion, philosophy, and art.  It is in our awareness of these creative impulses that we realize we live at the edge of mystery, such mystery that transcends our UnderStanding.

In speaking of sermon preparation, I alluded to the moment when raw materials are brought into relation with each other.  In Genesis all the elements of the primordial soup were there, a swirling chaos untamed and unformed.  The Ruach Elohim tamed the void to bring things into proper relation to each other.  And this is precisely what happens at the baptismal font, for baptism always aligns us in proper relation to the other parts of the body.  “For in one spirit we were all baptized into one body.”  This is what the Spirit of God does in baptism, moving over the raw materials of individualism to bring us into proper relationship within the body of Christ.  So when I say, Remember Your Baptism, I hope you will remember and rejoice that you are called forth into the Wholeness of the ChristBody.  You are only a part of this ChristBody, but within each part is the essence of the whole, so that without your response, the church universal, the ChristBody, is somehow diminished.

 

Sources and notes:

The title of this sermon, “Baptism Properly StoodUnder,” was inspired by P. L. Travers an essay, “The Interviewer,” in PARABOLA, (Volume 13, Number 1, Spring 1988, The Creative Response.)  Travers wrote, “The Unknown — our beautiful Anglo-Saxon word, intimate, reverberant, profound, not so much to be understood but stood under while it rains upon us  — that is something I could well live with and, indeed, have revered, cherished, and tried to serve for many a year and day.”

 

The afore-mentioned issue of PARABOLA, focusing on The Creative Response, was a major inspiration for this sermon.  In addition to Travers’ piece, especially helpful were the essays: “Combing Coyote’s Hair,” by Anne Twitty; “Proportion and the Living World,” by Rachel Fletcher; “Mark Rothko: They Are Not Pictures,” by Roger Lipsey; “The Transmission of Content: An Interview with Paul Reynard;” and “The Artist as Yogi, The Yogi as Artist,” by William K. Mahony.

 

James Redfield and Michael Murphy, God and the Evolving Universe (The Next Step in Personal Evolution), Penguin Putnam, New York, 2002.

 

Fritz A. Rothschild, Between God and Man (An Interpretation of Judaism from the Writings of Abraham J. Heschel), Free Press, New York, 1959.

 

“Schooling our Intelligence,” an essay by Thomas Moore in PARABOLA, Volume 22, Number 1 (Spring 1997, Ways of Knowing).