This is a test of longevity: remember Olympia beer? “It’s the water.” Well, in today’s readings, it’s all about the water!

In the first reading we hear the ancient story of the creation. As the translation we used puts it: “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. “ This is a sadly pedestrian translation of the Hebrew. In Hebrew (as well as Latin and Greek for that matter), there was only one word for “breath” and “wind” and spirit. In a sense this triple meaning still persists in English. We say, “she became dispirited’” “he had the wind knocked out of him.”  This wind from God, the breath of God, the Spirit of God brooded over the waters, like a bird warming its eggs, full of the potential for life and freedom and wildness.

In the passage from the Acts, we read of Paul offering the baptism of Jesus to believers and after laying his hands on them, they experience the miracle of Pentecost.

Then the gospel. Mark is the earliest, the most primitive of all the gospels. The story of the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan by John is one part of the gospel that scholars agree to be certainly historical. This really happened, and probably happened much as Mark tells it. John predicts the coming of one greater than himself but does not recognize him when he comes to receive the baptism of repentance.

The idea of Jesus receiving a baptism of repentance troubled the early churches and probably troubles us. The book, The Last Temptation of Christ, by Nikos Kantzanzakis, and the movie of it, actually says a lot more about the author than it does about Jesus. But the book and the movie offended many Christians because it portrayed Jesus as a man deeply conflicted within himself, struggling with his call to be both Messiah and Suffering Servant, and carrying a burden of guilt for what he perceived to be sin. Think of it: Jesus, like us in all things but sin, also experienced guilt and shame and fear. I don’t find the idea offensive at all, I find it comforting; I feel closer to Christ since he suffered everything that we suffer.

For Christmas, I made a slide show of family pictures for as my gift to my family. As I was watching the finished product, I found myself feeling sad because I was looking at images of my parents, myself,, my sisters and, in turn, their children, as young children, fresh and full of promise, as yet untouched by . But I watching was acutely aware of the pain that I knew awaited them, the struggles that they would face as the grew and changed and moved toward death.

It comforts me that Jesus endured the same process, the same changes as he grew into his vocation and ministry.

In the Gospel, Jesus goes down into the water as one in a crowd, among the several seeking purification in the waters of the Jordan. As he comes up from the water he experiences a theophany (it is unclear whether anyone around him saw what he saw).

In the Orthodox Churches the feast of Epiphany is called the Feast of the Theophany. The primary focus of this feast, in the East, is the baptism of Jesus and not the visit of the Wise Men. It is celebrated with a special blessing of water. The Orthodox believe that by descending into the Jordan, Jesus sanctified all the waters of the earth--that with the currents and tides of the oceans, the molecules of water that bathed Jesus’ body in the Jordan, have commingled with all the waters rendering them holy and capable of washing away sin.

The theophany Jesus saw as he ascended from the water was not a public phenomenon. He saw the heavens were torn apart. The Greek word is schizo (sound familiar?). The only other place it appears in Mark is at the time of the crucifixion, when the veil in the temple that separates God from his people is  in like fashion torn apart.

He saw the Spirit, the Wind of God, the Breath of God, in the form of a dove descending upon him, to brood and sit, opening the resplendent possibilities and wildness of Jesus’ life.

And the Father proclaims: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased. ” This is not entirely good news. “You are my son” confirms Jesus in his identity as the Messiah, the son of David, the King who was to come to Israel. “You are the Beloved” carries an entirely different weight in the language of the Bible: it means that Jesus is called to be the Suffering Servant prophesied by the prophet Isaiah, through whose wounds, we are healed.

Jesus by coming in the flesh, has sanctified the entire creation not just the waters of the earth. He has sanctified the messy, often unpleasant and painful process of being a human being. In a sense, Jesus finds himself in the waters of baptism. His identity is confirmed, his future laid out for him, at least in broad strokes. Not an entirely happy or easy future but then again, who of us has experienced an entirely happy or easy future? Likewise, in the waters of Baptism, our identity is confirmed and our future is laid out for us, at least in broad strokes.

In the first volume of J. R. R. Tolkein’s trilogy, Lord of the Rings, after the supposed death of Gandalf, the company comes in grief to the elven forest of Lothlorien. There they meet Galadriel, the queen of the Elves, keeper of one of the Three Rings. Galadriel leads Sam and Frodo to a fountain and a basin tucked into the roots of one of the great trees in the forest. There she draws water from a spring and pours it into a silver  basin encouraging Frodo and Sam Gamgee to look into it. She says something like, "The mirror will show you what has been, what is, and some of what may come to be."

It took a lot of courage for Sam and Frodo to look into Galadriel’s mirror. It took even more courage for them to continue their quest in the light of what they saw.

Having had a ringside seat at most of the baptisms that we have done for the last five years, it intrigues me to ponder what each person might see in the mirror of the baptismal font. Dinko deForest, here, as I recall, was fairly reluctant to experience the waters. Maybe he had a right to be reluctant? Maybe we all have reason to be reluctant about what we will learn through the waters of Baptism?

Through Baptism, we enter into the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, unfortunately not necessarily in that order, and unfortunately not always balanced between the three. Jesus came to understand himself through the waters of Baptism in a very dramatic way. But then, he had a dramatic life and a painfully dramatic death. Though hopefully with less drama, we find ourselves through the waters of Baptism, our true selves, our deepest selves. And the adventure has begun.

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