Why Did They Do It?

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

March 18, 2012

The Fourth Sunday in Lent

Reaffirmation of the Baptismal Covenant

Why Did They Do It?

Mark 1:4-5

“John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness

proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

And people from the whole Judean countryside

and all the people of Jerusalem

were going out to him,

and were baptized by him in the river Jordan,

confessing their sins.”

Why did they come?

Why did people flock to the waters of the Jordan,

slog through the silt and the mud along the bank,

and then walk into the arms of a man whose expression,

whose words all seemed to scream “madness”?

Why would they let him plunge them under the water,

and then just as quickly yank them up

and push them away,

back to the riverbank,

back to their lives as shepherds, soldiers,

carpenters, stonemasons, tax collectors.

It’s not hard to picture them:

the newly baptized making their soggy way back to town,

dripping with doubt, as well as water,

not sure about what they had just done,

not understanding.

Those who passed them,

who were on the way out to the river,

out to John,

looking at them closely

looking to see if those drenched men and women

had been somehow transformed,

changed by their immersion

changed by John

changed in a way that would be obvious to the eye.

Where in Scripture had this ever been done,

this baptizing?

Had Moses baptized?

Had David baptized?

Had Elijah or Jeremiah or Isaiah

called anyone to the banks of the Jordan,

to the shores of the Sea of Chinnereth,

or even to the beaches of Joppa on the Great Sea

to be baptized?

Where did this practice come from?

Who first thought of it and did it?

What did it symbolize?

What was the point?

God had provided his children with various signs

of the covenant over the centuries:

The rainbow that arced over Noah,

his family and all living creatures

as the flood waters receded.

Circumcision from Abraham’s time.

And then, following the exile to Babylon,

what seemed like the final sign of the covenant,

when God seemed to put aside

both the heavenly sign and

the physical mark,

as he said through the prophet Jeremiah,

this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel:

… I will put my law within them,

and I will write it on their hearts;

and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

^…I will forgive their iniquity,

and remember their sin no more.  

(Jeremiah 31:29 )

“I will forgive their iniquity

and remember their sin no more.”

This was God’s promise;

This was God’s covenant.

So why was John shouting out “Repent!”

Why was John, “proclaiming a baptism of repentance

for the forgiveness of sins”

(Mark 1:4)

if God had forgiven his children,

if God had promised so long ago

to remember their sin no more?

They may not have understood,

yet the people flocked to John,

“people from the whole Judean countryside,

and all the people of Jerusalem”

coming by the scores, the hundreds,

something drawing them,

capturing their hearts and minds.

Perhaps it was because the people thought John was Elijah

and had come, as Malachi had prophesied,

to proclaim that the kingdom of God was at hand.

(Matthew 3:2 and Malachi 4:5)

But even if John was not Elijah

there was something so compelling about this new act,

this baptism that they came from every corner of Judea.

There was something wonderful, uplifting,

freeing in repenting as John demanded of those he baptized,

of confessing one’s sins

before being plunged under the water.

The mysterious Sibylline oracles

written before the birth of Jesus

seemed to capture the premise:

“Ah, wretched mortals, change these things,

…wash your bodies in the perennial rivers.

Stretch out your hand to heaven

and ask for forgiveness…

and God will grant repentance.”

(Sibylline Oracle 4.163)

The practice of sacrifice as an act of contrition

had become rote and devoid of meaning;

pay a few coins to buy a pigeon,

hand it over to the priest,

and be on your way.

But baptism: to be washed clean,

to go down into the water and come back up,

a new person, born to new life:

this was a gift from God,

something worth the cost of confession and repentance.

Two thousand years later we still baptize,

baptize as a sign that we have been washed clean,

As the great Reformer John Calvin wrote,

“It is a token and proof of our cleansing from sin….”

And then, as though Calvin had anticipated this very service,

he went on to write,

“As often as we fall away,

we ought to recall the memory of our baptism

and fortify our mind with it,

that we may always be sure and confident

of the forgiveness of sins.”

(Institutes 4.15.3)

We can be sure and confident

of the forgiveness of our sins;

that’s the gift God gives us in Christ through our baptism.

So, confident in our being forgiven,

we should not hesitate to repent of our sins,

should not hesitate to be repentant

of all those things that turn us from God.

                 

We should repent,

that we can be washed clean all over again,

not in a new baptism,

but because of the promise made in our baptism.

So as you come forward,

come with penitent hearts and minds,

come repenting, confessing,

so that when you dip your hand in the bowl

and feel that refreshing, pure water

cover your hand,

you will feel yourself cleansed anew of sin.

“Return to me” says the Lord,

“Return to me, and know forgiveness”,

“Return to me know my love.”

A promise God makes to each of us,

all of us,

symbolized so simply, so elegantly

in the waters of our baptism.

AMEN