All Scriptures quoted are from The New Revised Standard Version unless otherwise quoted.

Every Wednesday evening from about 5:30 until 6:00 p.m., our Children’s Minister, Michelle Collins, finds herself with a real problem that she’s chosen to reshape into a window of opportunity to share the gospel. Our Wednesday night kids come from a number of different places, the Charter School that leases our space, some from the neighborhood whose parents don’t go to church here but allow their children to do so and some Cliff Temple families. All of these show up before most of the workers have yet to arrive. Not wanting to leave the children unattended, Michelle takes them to the Children’s area downstairs and plays games with them.

Just after Christmas, she was playing a game that involved the children standing in a circle and tossing a ball back and forth to each other. As the ball was tossed to each child, he or she was supposed to tell some part of the story of Jesus’ birth. As the ball bounced to this one little boy he was supposed to tell the story of how the wise men went to see Jesus. When he caught the ball he stood silent, finally looking at Michelle and saying, “I haven’t seen that movie. I don’t know that story.”

Michelle was lamenting that here was a child, in our own church basement, not overseas or even out in our community, but in our own basement who didn’t know the Jesus story because he hadn’t seen the movie, yet. The staff also saw it as a stark reminder of what children think of and use as the primary means of getting information about history and culture these days.

If you were going to be the screen writer for a movie about Jesus, what would be the opening scene? Would you start with the manger? Or, would you, like Matthew, start by drawing a picture of Jesus’ family tree all the way back to Abraham? Where would you start?

Given the chance, I think I might start with Jesus’ baptism, and work backward and forward from there. It is an event, compared to all the other drama in Jesus’ life. Yet, in the church year, Jesus’ baptism tends to wash out as something anti-climatic. We are, are we not, in a rush to get to the cross and to Easter this time of year. After all, it’s just a baptism. We’ve all seen one of those. Or, have we?

Understanding the answer to that question has everything to do with listening seriously to John’s objection about being the one who would baptize Jesus. "I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?" In John’s mind, Jesus, the sinless son of God, didn’t need his sins washed away. True enough. So, Jesus asking for his own baptism at the hands of a fully human sinner must be about something else. What might that be?

Well, if this were a movie, you’d have to wait until the end to be able to interpret the meaning of this scene. There will be lots to keep your attention. Lots of drama, walking on water, raising the dead, ransacking the Temple, feeding 5,000 and on and on. We won’t get bored. Neither will we understand this baptism of a sinless man until we get, finally, to the cross.

We tend to highlight the crucifixion of Jesus as the ultimate act of self-giving on our behalf, for good reason.  But, before Jesus got to the cross, he surrendered himself to the water.  He must have had some sense of what getting into the water would cost him - and went in anyway.  What should that tell us?

This is what the baptism of Jesus should teach us. The most significant things we'll ever accomplish are on the other side of our surrender to self, a surrender both symbolized and promised when, and only when, we surrender our very bodies to the waters of baptism.  Even the act of surrendering ourselves to the physical control of another person while we're under the water represents a deeper spiritual significance.

Do you remember what that moment felt like? I’ll never forget. It was both thrilling and spooky. As Brother Ed immersed me in the water, I remember the fear of going under the water while he had his hand over my nose. I remember that split second I wondered if I’d get back up in time. Do you remember your baptism?

Children often ask to actually see the baptistery before their baptism. I love to bring the children up and show them around. It’s hard to remember how intimidating that big tank can look, especially before we fill it with water, it looks fifty deep to them I’m sure. Yet – how encouraging that they are taking the moment so seriously that they want to know what they’re getting into before they get into it.

Did you realize what you were getting into when you were baptized? I was relieved that I was getting out of hell. I had no idea what I was getting into. I’m still trying to figure that out. Jesus seemed to know something of it but had some learning to do himself.

I am not one of those who believes that Jesus knew everything about the call of God on his life from the moment he was born. The scripture speaks of Jesus as having emptied himself, becoming like us. To some extent, that had to mean that he, like us, had to grow into his own understanding of what doing his Father’s will would mean.

Even the physical act of surrendering himself to the physical control of another person while he was under the water tells us a lot about God. Jesus identified with the lowliness of humanity and did not try to defend himself or distance himself for his own benefit. He was baptized as a way of symbolically joining every one of us that will eventually go down to the grave when our own spirit leaves us.

And Jesus’ baptism was just a foretaste of his own voluntary death on a cross for us and our salvation. If you are the Son of God, they shouted to him on the cross, come down from there and save yourself (Matthew 27:40, NIV). But his mission was not to save himself; it was to save all of us who think it is our job to save ourselves. It truly is the most counterintuitive thing about the gospel. In order to live, we must die. In order to conquer evil, we must let go of our desire to conquer and surrender ourselves to whatever love demands. In his baptism, Jesus was surrendering to the suffering he would ultimately endure, and thereby conquer. It is surrendering, and nothing else, that ultimately conquers evil.

That’s what Jesus was getting into when he got into the water. He was positioning himself as dead, so that, in his death, God could work his resurrection power for us.

If the movie that is your life isn’t making much sense right now, the scenes seem disconnected with no unifying theme and there seems to be no meaningful end in sight, maybe it’s time to go back to the beginning.

When was the last time, or, have you ever, visited your baptism and asked God to show you what it was meant to mean for you?