Singin' in the Rain

 Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, John answered all of them by saying, “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. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

Baptism is like a satellite dish.  Way back at the end of the last century we got our first, little, satellite dish in Wisconsin.  It was either that or no TV.  Some of you here, I know, are made of exceedingly strong stuff and would thrive without TV.  Our family was simply… not that strong.  So, as Harlan Hansen climbed up on roof of the parsonage and then up the pole to attach the dish, I had a revelation.  These signals for half a dozen good channels and three million useless channels had been raining down on me from somewhere out in space ALL THIS TIME!  They had been pouring down on me day and night.  Me just oblivious!  But, when Harlan Hansen came down, all that had previously been obscured, suddenly become digitally clear!  They had been there all along!  It’s just that with a dish… by tuning in… we were able to make sense of what had been raining down on us for so long.  Baptism is like that.

God’s love rains down on us all and has been raining on us all since way before the formless void got any form!  God’s love rains down universally, unconditionally, and ubiquitously!  But it is in Baptism that all that beautiful divine love begins to come into focus, begins to make sense, and begins to become visible.  God’s love was and is always there for everyone, but in Baptism, God makes it so we can see it, embrace it, roll around in it, and share it with the world.  And I say “God makes it so” because Baptism is something that God does, not something we do, not even something we help with.  That truth I believe becomes the most clear when an infant is Baptized and the only contribution the child makes to that precious, sacramental moment is to fill their diaper.  

Another thing Leonard Sweet said Baptism is like is Popcorn.  Lots of people would say that Baptism is like washing, because Baptism involves water.  But real Baptism does more than just make us wet.  A washing in water alone doesn’t really change us.  It’s like running your car through the car wash, it gets wet, but in the end it’s still just your car.  It’s like sending your clothes into the washing machine.  They get wet, but in the end it’s not like you have a brand new outfit.  A washing with water alone doesn’t really CHANGE things; it just gets things wet.  

Real Baptism, on the other hand, changes everything.  It bathes us in the fire of the Holy Spirit.  It’s that fire that transforms us into something wholly different and new… like popcorn.  After all you can wash a kernel of corn in water all day long, but at the end of the day, what do you got?  A wet kernel of corn.  Washing your popcorn doesn’t give you any sizzle.  Washing your popcorn doesn’t draw people into the kitchen from every corner of the house.  Washing your popcorn doesn’t give you that salty, buttery goodness of a completely transformed, warm and fluffy snack!  No!

But give that kernel of popcorn a baptism of fire... AND IT IS TRANSFORMED!  And not quietly either… it is transformed with an explosive force that completely changes that small, hard, dense, flavorless nothing into something large, soft, fluffy, and delicious.

  

John’s Baptism was just a washing… a simple lather, rinse, repeat sort of baptism.  That doesn’t make John a terrible guy… it simply reminds us that John was God’s prophet, not God's Messiah.  Later, rinse, repeat was all he was called to give.  Jesus, on the other hand, was God’s Messiah and Jesus Baptizes with the unquenchable fire of the Holy Spirit.  That's the Baptism that you and I have had.  Our Baptisms had the fiery heat of the Messiah behind them that transformed us dramatically, explosively, and completely.  In that moment we were changed from a collection of minerals worth approximately $576 according to the internet, into a priceless and beloved child of God… from a corpse waiting to happen, to an inheritor of eternal life.  Baptism… Jesus’ Baptism… Baptism with the Holy Spirit and with fire is like that.  The Jesus Baptism of unquenchable fire that every one of us has had, has taken each of us rock hard kernels and transformed us through the power of unquenchable fire and the mysterious workings of the Holy Spirit into something wholly new and wonderful!  

So now what?  What will you do?  How will you live, having  stood under the deluge of God’s love from before you were born?  What will you do and how will you live out your Baptisms of FIRE in the days to come?  Certainly not in a life of just lather, rinse, repeat!!  NO!  God has loved you… God has made you… God has transformed you!  There is so much more to this Baptized life than to just slog through each moment of it soaking wet!  So how are we to live this Baptized life?  (Donnie?  You ready for a slow pitch this week?  Here it comes…)  We are to live this Baptized life… like we are all Gene Kelly in Singin’ in the Rain!  Because in this life we will get soaked and splashed and sometimes it will feel like we're nearly drown… but through it all God has made sure that we will ALWAYS be absolutely on fire... singing and dancing in the rain.  Amen.