Baptism

by Pastor Marty 

It must have been quite a sight. Scores of people congregating along the banks of the Jordan ready to enter the river to be baptized and then stepping from the Jordan’s current adorned with a robe of water. They were drenched! It was a cleansing, a washing of sin. It communicated forgiveness. Jesus was there…in the midst of it all!

What happened on the banks of the Jordan continues to happen in our life. We are invited to confess and drown our sin, and then, to emerge drenched with God’s forgiveness. In this Spirit-stirred, word-bound water we hear this grace-filled proclamation, “You are my son, my daughter, with you I am well pleased.”

Baptism is a gift.
It is a way of life with God.
It is a way of life with others. 

The following piece is borrowed from a Lutheran community called Holden Village. Over the years, I have often returned to this little story and each time I stand in amazement of the power of forgiveness. While the author is anonymous, the character in the story… might be you!

Down this road above my Mississippi, along the Lake Pepin, I have often walked but never seen what I have seen today. Down the steep bank through the sumac reds and past the ash and willow yellows, impossibly swimming in cold October water were all the people I can’t forgive and all I fear who can’t forgive me.

And they all were happy, wet with forgiveness, all glad to be wearing the same robe of water. They were all one and all was forgiving.

But how could I trust their faces calling me into the same water they swam in? How could I let their water flow over me? How can forgiving and being forgiven be the same? How can both cover me as it covers them as is the nature of water? How could I have stood and just watched?

How could I have stood and just watched?

-- Pastor Marty

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