BAPTISM OF OUR LORD
Prayer of the Day: Holy God, creator of light and giver of goodness, your voice moves over the waters. Immerse us in your grace, and transform us by your Spirit, that we may follow after your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
“In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.” Genesis 1:1-2.
“The voice of the Lord is over the waters;
the God of glory thunders,
the Lord, over mighty waters.
The voice of the Lord is powerful;
the voice of the Lord is full of majesty.” Psalm 29:3-4.
“And just as [Jesus] was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’” Mark 1:10-11.
One of the many benefits of living here on the Outer Cape is having immediate access to some of the most remarkable ocean beaches on the east coast. I am a beach lover, but not in the sunbathing sense. For me, a perfect beach day is cold, cloudy, windy and accented with mist or rain. I love the beach most on days everyone else avoids it. There is nothing to compare with walking miles on a stretch of ocean shore below dune cliffs on the one side and restless waters breathing silky foam on the other without meeting another human soul. The only sounds you hear are the crashing breakers and the cries of seagulls overhead. An hour’s walk on the beach is worth a week of therapy in my opinion.
The ocean is a parable of creative power. Just as one never steps into the same river twice, no one ever walks on the same beach twice. The wind and the waters are forever re-arranging the contours of the land, shifting the position of sandbars, which, in turn, influences the breaking of waves, formation of tide pools and the flow of rip currents.
The ocean spews up rocks, driftwood and shells creating colorful and unique mosaics never before seen and which, after the next high tide, will never be seen again. Waters, sometimes breaking with ferocious might upon the sand, sometimes lapping the shore with the gentle affection of a puppy, stretch far beyond the power of human sight and melt into the sky in one fine line defining the horizon. The ocean wields the mighty power to make and to unmake. It reminds anyone who gives it undivided attention for more than a moment how fragile, finite and momentary is one’s small existence.
The Hebrew Scriptures open with a lyrical tale about how the wind of God’s breath acting upon the waters brought all things into being. The Gospel of Mark announces the “beginning of the good news about Jesus” with an account of Jesus coming forth from the waters of the Jordan, the sky being rent apart, the Spirit of God descending upon Jesus and God declaring that this Jesus is God’s beloved Son. The wind and the waters are once again at work creating something new.
I am thankful for my proximity to the ocean. In its presence, I am reminded of what these biblical witnesses are trying to tell us. The power of water and wind is clearly dangerous and destructive. Yet they hold the secret of renewal, life and creation. Too often, I think we are prone to see only the destructive side of these elements. That is hardly surprising. Whether we get our news from radio, television, internet or social media, the focus is usually on hot winds fanning destructive wildfires over acres of forest and into the heart of towns and villages. There is plenty of news about hurricanes, tornados and floods. Gentle rains bringing lifegiving water to crops, oceans cradling millions of unseen species from blue whales to plankton, cold fall air triggering the advent of spectacular fall foliage seldom make headlines because, well, none of that is really news, is it?
By the same token, the life of a preacher from the backwoods neighborhood of a backwoods territory far away from the movers and shakers of history in Rome does not seem to register as newsworthy. But Mark’s gospel tells us that this is, in fact, where the real news is happening. While emperors, kings and dictators flaunt their exalted titles, armies march across the globe leaving trails of blood, destruction and suffering, nations rise, fret and strut their moment upon the stage and with their glorious capitals, monuments and flags fade into the mist of archeological ruins with tedious regularity, something really new and revolutionary is taking place. God is weaving God’s self into the fabric of creation, infusing God’s self into our very human DNA. Henceforth, Emmanuel. God is with us. To use a Lutheran term, God is “in, with and under” every transaction occurring in the universe from the movement of the tiniest subatomic particle to the rotation of galaxies. Good news is here. You just need to look past the headlines to find it.
In this Sunday’s New York Times, columnist Nicholas Kristof points out that the human race actually made some significant progress in 2023, despite the overall consensus of media, left and right, that it has been an abysmally terrible year. For example, the United Nations Population Division reports that the global infant mortality rate for this past year reached an all time low of 3.6 percent. Extreme poverty has likewise reached an all time low of 18 percent, meaning that one hundred thousand people are emerging from extreme poverty each day. Their lifestyles are hardly comparable to what we middle class Americans expect, but it is no small thing for persons formerly on the verge of starvation are now able to access clean water, adequate food, medicine and basic education for their children. Two of the most deadly diseases afflicting poorer communities have been all but eradicated, these being polio and Guinea worm disease. Advances have been made against sickle cell disease and vaccines are on the horizon for R.S.V. and malaria-both chief causes of death among infants and children. None of this makes headlines, but it is news just the same. For eyes to see and hears to hear, it is news that our compassionate God is laboring with the persistence of the ocean tides to birth a new creation in the midst of the old.
My purpose here is not to minimize the dangers we are confronting and that have manifested themselves in particularly graphic ways this last year. If the patterns of global warming and climate change continue unabated, if global leaders make a serious miscalculation in managing one of the world’s many conflicts such that a nuclear exchange takes place, if we are overtaken by another pandemic more severe than covid-19 in our present state of unpreparedness, all of the above advances could easily be erased. What cannot be erased is God’s persistent determination to be with us. Should our choices lead us to yet another dark age of ruin and barbarism, God will be there to pick up the pieces and begin again-and again and again. As the wind and the waves wipe away the foot prints we leave on the beach each day, replacing them with fresh sand, fresh mosaics and new sand formations, so God is at work in our world taking up the broken pieces left over from all of the poor decisions, selfish actions and destructive movements we spew out into the world and weaving them into something new and beautiful. God will continue doing so for as long as it takes.
As Luther’s Small Catechism reminds us, God’s kingdom comes without our prayers-or anything else we do or do not do. But why make things harder on God and ourselves than we have to? Why not work at looking past the fearful headlines to the news that matters? Why not align ourselves with those who, far from the cameras, the press conferences and the documentaries, are doing God’s work of caring for, healing and renewing creation? Why be dragged down by the undertow of fear and foreboding when you can ride the breath of God and be carried by the living waters? To be baptized into Christ is just that.
Here is a poem by Marjorie Meeker about the symbolic power of the Ocean. Proud and mighty though it may be, it can be seen in a small brook-for those with eyes to see and ears to hear. A fine parabolic image of the Incarnation!
Certainly Oceans
Certainly oceans, proud with their manifold
Rythms of rainy silver or sullen gold,
Hold fires celestial variously glowing,
All heaven in hues forever ebbing and flowing
With their praised prismatic tides: yet even a brook
Has a heart of sky, should any stop to look-
Should any stop to look, a brook may keep
Colors of time, of lovers’ tears, of sleep.
Source: Poetry, November, 1927. Marjorie Meeker was born in Bradford, England where her father was an American ambassador. She came with her family to the United States at the age of five, living alternatively in New York and Ohio throughout her childhood. She was awarded Poetry’s Young Writer’s Prize in 1924. Unfortunately, I have found nothing else on this remarkable poet. The above information was gleaned from Modern American Poetry, A Critical Anthology, by Louis Untermeyer (c. 1919 by Harcourt, Brace and Howe, Inc.).
Peter's Outer Cape Portico 