One of my favorite stories and one that I told almost every year at the start of school is a story about a young raccoon named Chester who tells his mother through big tears that he does not want to go to school. He wants to stay with her. He wants to play with his own toys. He wants to stay in his own room and read his own books. He wants to swing in his swing. He begs his mother to please let him stay home with her. His mother tells him that sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to do even when it feels scary and strange. But she tells him that once he goes he will love school! He will make new friends and play with new toys and read new books and swing on new swings.
And then she tells him that she knows a secret that will make his time at school as safe and cozy as his time at home. Of course, Chester wants to know the secret. His mother tells him that it is an old secret. One that she learned from her mother and her mother learned it from hers.
She takes his hand in hers and spreads out his little fingers into a fan. Then she leans over and plants a kiss right in the middle of his palm. Chester feels the warmth of his mother’s kiss spread from his hand up his arm and right to his heart. Even the whiskers on his face tingle. His mother smiles and tells him that whenever he feels lonely or needs to be reminded of how much he is loved, he should just press his hand to his face and think, “Mommy loves me. Mommy loves me.” And that kiss will jump to his face and fill him with warmth and love. She wraps his fingers carefully around the kiss and tells him that he doesn’t need to worry about losing it or washing it off. That this kiss will stick. Chester loves his kissing hand and knows that wherever he went his mother’s love would go with him.[1]
As I was thinking about our Gospel reading today from Luke, this story came to mind. Because I believe that this is what God does with us at our baptism. God places love in our hearts and we become God’s own children forever. Water is poured over our heads and fragrant oil is marked on our foreheads and with these signs we carry this love in our bodies and in our hearts always. A part of our discipleship—a part of our practice of being followers of Jesus Christ—is to remember this love that is always with us and goes with us wherever we are.
In our story today from Luke’s Gospel, we hear very little about Jesus’ baptism. The passage opens with the crowds discussing whether John is the one to come—the Messiah for whom they hope. But he quickly makes clear that he is the messenger—he is the one who is to prepare the way for the one who is coming, who is the Messiah. John says, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”
We then jump to hearing that Jesus has been baptized along with many others. In Luke’s Gospel it does not say that John baptizes Jesus. But as Jesus is praying, the heavens open and the Spirit of God comes down on him like a dove and then a voice speaks from heaven and says, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’ And then in the next verse we hear that Jesus at about age 30 begins his ministry.
One thing in particular we hear in this story is that Jesus is called out as God’s own. The voice from heaven tells Jesus very particularly “You are my son, the beloved. With you I am delighted.” From this moment on, Jesus is marked as God’s love, as the one in whom God is thrilled.
How many times can you remember in your lives when you were looked at with complete love? There may have been tears in the eyes of the one who beheld you or just a radiant smile. But for a moment you knew and you felt within you that you are loved deeply. This is what happens at our baptisms. Baptism teaches us who we are—that we are God’s beloved children—and gives us the promise of God’s unconditional favor. We are marked—we are given an identity as ones who are beloved and in whom our very being is regarded by God as very good.
We become new creation. Our baptism is the beginning of God’s creative and loving work in us. Just as Jesus coming up out of the water received God’s Spirit and heard the words, “You are my beloved,” in our baptism, the voice of God says, “You are my beloved child.” From that moment we become new, we take on a new identity as ones who are beloved and known and seen completely as sources of delight.
How each of us long for this identity that we are given as a free gift from our Creator. In baptism our lives take on new meaning. We are promised that we will always be enfolded in love and that this love will go with us wherever we go.
It is easy to forget this identity. Life comes at us fast and sometimes hard. We may find ourselves in the chaos that life can bring and go in search, sometimes in all the wrong places, for a sign of who we are. We certainly are people who are identified in many ways, through—our family; our friendships; our jobs and careers; what gives us pleasure—sports, music, art, literature; what organizations we belong to—on and on. But often these identities, that are important in connecting us with life and with others—ebb and flow, come and go, and can change or disappear completely. But in our baptism we are reminded that always who we are is in relation to whose we are. Each one of us is God’s child. We are beloved and in this identity we can grow into such a love that who we are as a person becomes fully what our Creator intends for us to be.
And in this love we are drawn into a community of people who have accepted the invitation to be close to the heart of God. Baptism brings us into the community of other Christians—other people whose identity has been shaped by this love that has no end. This is a gift, because in this community of baptized people, we receive life from the prayers and love of others and we in turn share our love and prayers that others need. We become a part of a great web of giving and receiving—the great economy of hospitality and compassion that reminds us that as Rowan Williams says, “We are implicated in one another, our lives are interwoven. What affects one affects all, what affects all affects each one. It means that the darkness that comes in life is never my own problem exclusively. It is shared: how it is shared is mysterious, and yet most of us who are baptized Christians can witness in one way or another to the fact that it is true–it works.”[2]
I remember my baptism because I was baptized at age 12. I can remember the truth of this community—how it cared for me and my family; how it made us as children feel welcome and valued. I remember how they shared in my joy and how they shared in times of suffering and grief so that my joy was more than doubled and my grief was shared and accompanied in tenderness. I have witnessed this over and over in communities of faith. There is a particular bond that we share. As baptized people, we have both an openness to human need and an openness to the Holy Spirit. In our lives as baptized people, we constantly rediscover and recreate God’s embracing love for Jesus in the Holy Spirit. There is this interconnected regenerating relationship that radiates from the love and delight of God.
So while our baptism does not set us apart from the struggles and vagaries of life, we are a people who are constantly learning and being reminded that we can reach out our hands from the depth of chaos and confusion to be touched by the hand of God. And in doing this we connect with others who are reaching out as well. This is truly one of the most extraordinary mysteries of being a Christian.
And within and among this community of those who have accepted God’s invitation to receive the gift of identity as God’s children, we recognize that in our baptism we have been claimed in a radical way. Baptism does not separate us from or set us apart as superior to the rest of the human family. Rather to say, “I’m baptized” is to live into a new solidarity with all people. It is to stand alongside Jesus, being with Jesus in the deep waters of human need–including the deep waters of our own need,—but also in the deep waters of God’s love. To be Christian is to enter into relationship with all creation and that carries with it a sense of responsibility for all creation. As a child of God, I am related to and responsible for every child of God. The gathering of the baptized people is not a closed circle of those who are privileged or elite, but rather those people who have accepted what it means to live in a needy and messy world totally dependent on God who in love is continuously recreating and refreshing creation as God means it to be.
We will be recommitting ourselves as baptized Christians in a few minutes. As we say the words of the Baptismal Covenant, listen carefully to the promises we make with God and with God’s people. Listen carefully and remember that it is only by placing our trust in God’s love and mercy that we dare enter into such a demanding and risky path of discipleship.
Chester’s mother marked him with a tangible mark so that he would always remember, wherever he went, that he was loved. This helped him enter fully into his abundant life.
Generation after generation, the church passes on this promise of relationship and responsibility to all persons. When we hear the words as water is poured over the one receiving baptism “I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” and then placing fragrant oil on the beloved’s face we hear, “you are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever” we enter into an identity founded in love. Baptism takes us where Jesus is. It takes us into a community of people who walk with us in following the way of Christ; it takes us into the world of need. And it is framed by the belief that God knows us as beloved children, ones in whom God takes great delight. God’s blessing—“You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased”—marks the beginning of Jesus’ ministry and equips him for his work.
It is in this Spirit of Love that we too are sent out to love and serve others in the name of Christ knowing that who we are and to whom we belong is imprinted forever on our lives.
[1] Audrey Penn. The Kissing Hand. Terre Haute, IN: Tanglewood Press, Inc., 2006.
[2] Rowan Williams, Being Christian: Baptism, Bible, Eucharist, Prayer. Grand Rapids MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2014, 12.