Baptism of Love
January 12, 2025
Over the Christmas break, I watched a favorite holiday movie. Love Actually. It takes place in London around Christmas showing different sides of love. Kira Knightly is getting married, but the groom’s best man is secretly in love with her. Hugh Grant is the Prime Minister of England, who falls in love with his administrative assistant. Emma Thompson discovers her husband is having an affair. Liam Neeson struggles with what to do after his wife dies, jokingly suggesting that he would love to meet Claudia Schaffer. Lo and behold, at his son’s Christmas pageant, he does! The best one is Liam’s 8-year-old son who is mourning his mother, but when his quietness is addressed, the father is surprised by his answer. The boy declares, “I am in Love.” He goes to great lengths, including learning to play the drums and evading airport security to demonstrate his love for his young would-be sweetheart. Each of the interwoven tales expresses another facet of love- Love Actually. I started here because love is not a monolithic thing. Love takes on many shapes and sizes.
We just heard Isaiah offer a testament of love. Both at the beginning and the end, creation and our formation shows God’s love. The Lord claiming us as God’s own, saying, “You are mine” an expression of Love. Protection from the elements, water and fire (something we are all so very aware of at the moment, prayerfully with those in LA). God saving protection is love. The respect God shows us, being precious and honored by our Lord demonstrates love. Then scripture promises God’s love with those three little words, “I love you.” Just imagine God whispering through the breeze, I love you. Let that sink in. God loves you actually!
With God’s love fully in our minds listen now for God’s word. READ. Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
After I shared the opening of this sermon with Parker, he said that he had never seen a real baptism. I probed a bit further. What he meant was that he had never seen an adult baptism by submersion. Being dunked in a river or the ocean, the way we often see them done in movies. To him that was a real baptism, compared to the infant baptism he has seen. He asked, “Is that done more by Baptists?” I said, “Yes, to symbolize our dying and rising again with Christ. Our new life in Christ.” That is why they do adult baptisms instead of infants. There baptism is a washing away of the old life when you accept Jesus. Our understanding of baptism is that God moves first, welcoming us into the family of faith with God’s love. God’s love comes first, and infant baptism is a way of marking God’s sign and seal of love on our life.
Here is an example of a “real baptism” according to Parker. Some of you may have seen the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou. This is a whimsical retelling of Homer’s Odyssey set in 1930s Mississippi. Three hapless escaped convicts–Everett, Pete and Delmar–are hiding out in the woods, running from the law. There they encounter a procession of white-robed people going down to the lake to be baptized. As they move toward the water they sing, “Let’s go down to the river and pray.” As the baptism ceremony begins, Delmar is overwhelmed by the beauty and the mystery of this rite. He runs into the water and is baptized by the minister. As he returns to his companions, he declares that he is now saved and “neither God nor man has got nothing on me now.” He explains that the minister has told him that all his sins have been washed away. Even, he says, when he stole from the Piggly Wiggly for which he’d been convicted. “But you said you were innocent of that,” one of his fellow convicts exclaims.
“I lied,” he says, “and that’s been washed away too!”
Later the three convicts steal a hot pie from a windowsill. The one who felt that his sins had been washed away returns and places a dollar bill on the windowsill. Delmar wasn’t made perfect by his baptism any more than any of the rest of us are made perfect by our baptism. But he was conscious that it was time for him to make a new beginning. (Sermons.com, King Duncan, quoting O Brother, Where Art Thou, by Joel and Ethan Coen).
John baptizing people in the Jordan River preaching repentance offers this understanding of baptism. John just called the people a “brood of vipers” and told them to share their food and clothing, in other words, repent. Then the crowd filled with anticipation wonders if John is the Messiah. But what separates John from Jesus is baptism. One commentator writes, “Jesus’ baptism will be different and Jesus will baptize differently… John’s baptism is just with water. But Jesus? Well, that’s with the Holy Spirit and with fire, think Acts 2 (Pentecost)” (Working Preacher, Karoline Lewis). Jesus baptizes with the Holy Spirit.
On this Baptism of our Lord Sunday, we recall our own baptism, as we remember Jesus’ baptism. But you say, “I was an infant, and I do not remember my baptism.” That is OK. Through baptism we are grafted into the Body of Christ, we are forgiven, we die with Christ and rise to a new life. Baptism is a huge symbol – it’s the visible sign of an inward grace…it’s the water of creation…it’s life in the Spirit. The fact that Jesus, who was without sin, was baptized right along with the sinners John was baptizing, shows Jesus was identifying with us. Our baptism shows our identification with Jesus. Remember, once Jesus was baptized, he prayed and his identification was made visible. The Holy Spirit descended upon him like a dove. Have you ever seen a dove land? It is graceful, soft and gentle. That is how the Holy Spirit alighted upon Jesus. I think of it as “Dove Love.” Jesus is then identified as God’s Son. Claimed as God’s “Beloved.” Through baptism Jesus is loved, is precious and is connected to God and the Holy Spirit.
“Barbara Brown Taylor tells a story about her grandmother Lucy. Lucy would often get strange looks from others. She had lost both her legs to diabetes and had wooden stumps where limbs should be. Her weak eyes demanded that she wear dark glasses and most of the time she dressed like a bomber pilot. But to her granddaughters, Lucy was wonderful. Whenever Barbara would visit her grandmother, grace would abound. In the closet would be wrapped packages — enough for a surprise each day of the visit. The meals were delicious — always with a favorite dessert. And then there were the shopping trips — to buy dresses and crinolines and new hair bows. But the best part of these visits were the baths. Each night Grandma Lucy would draw a hot bath filled with suds and with her big sponge she would polish Barbara’s skin. Then, following the bath she would anoint her granddaughter’s body with Jergens® lotion — all the way down to the soles of her feet. The perfect ending would be the Evening in Paris dusting powder — when Lucy would tickle Barbara’s body with a pale blue powder puff. Barbara writes:
“When grandma Lucy was done, I knew that I was precious. I was absolutely convinced that I was loved and nothing has happened since to shake that conviction” (Sermons.com).
That is what baptism should be like. A wonderful bath given by a beloved relative, who cares for you beyond words and affirms that you are beloved and precious. When we sprinkle water on an infant’s head, baptizing them in the name of the Father Son and Holy Spirit, what God are saying is You are mine. You are protected. You are precious. You are loved. Baptism is when God whispers your name and tells you, I love you. Actually. Amen.
