DAILY BYTEWhat makes us unworthy of a calling, whether we’re ministers or teachers or auto-mechanics or prophets or prayers - one minute and seemingly worthy the next?? What makes us un-baptized one minute and baptized the next? Crazy people struggling in the wilderness one minute and holy people the next? For a response to that, we have to return to our friend John the Baptist. But John the Baptist is a bit deceivingly named. Because he may have dunked Jesus in the water of the Jordan River, but it was someone else who made that water holy.
John couldn’t - We cannot - be the people we are called to be, struggling through the wilderness and doing what we’re called to do, without recognizing that before anything else, our first calling in life is to accept the grace offered to us as beloved children of God. Before anything that we do on our own, we must see that the Holy Spirit has been working beforehand in ways that we can’t fathom. We must acknowledge the one who does the real work baptizing Jesus, calling out from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
In the Gospel of Mark, the Holy Spirit descends soaring down like a dove to let us, the hearers of this story, in on a sweet mystery – that Christ is the beloved child of God. This is how the whole Gospel story of Mark begins. The fact that Jesus is a beloved child of God is the key to understanding everything else. The disciples in Mark trip up over their problems and imperfections constantly. But, even though they fail - even though we often fail today and feel unworthy of the callings we have in our lives and the opportunities to be a part of holy times like baptism - we are made worthy and given strength to do these things purely by the grace of God and the constant workings of the Holy Spirit around us and within us. Being in that water with that power of God is where we hear our true identity. Just as Christ was, we, too, are named beloved children of God. If you have not been baptized, God still loves you! God is simply still anticipating a time when you will accept the grace offered to you.
I performed my very first baptism a couple of weeks ago, and it was a very special time. This was the moment, when so much of my training for ministry and learning about the theology of baptism would come to fruition – I would finally get to be “Anna the Baptist!” But then I dipped my hand into the water and found it to be surprisingly warm and enveloping, and I held a squirming baby who felt like he was trying to leap into the baptismal font on his own volition. I splashed some water on his head and signed him with a cross and prayed for him, and I could not have been more aware of the fact that this baptism had very little to do with me and my own strength and power and training – and it had everything to do with the power of God and the presence of the Holy Spirit, making that water and those rituals and that child anything but ordinary. God made him worthy of receiving grace – God named him a child of God, and there was nothing I, or he, could have done to earn it, deserve it, or change it.
FOCUS READING
Acts 19:1-7
While Apollos was in Corinth, Paul passed through the interior regions and came to Ephesus, where he found some disciples. He said to them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers?” They replied, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” Then he said, “Into what then were you baptized?” They answered, “Into John’s baptism.” Paul said, “John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is, in Jesus.” On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. When Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied – altogether there were about twelve of them.
IF YOU ARE FEELING BRAVE…
Ask yourself: How is the Holy Spirit working in my life? How do I understand my identity, as a beloved child of God?
