There are generally accepted two rules of sermon writing.  The first rule is: no golf jokes.  Golf jokes are over used and elitist.  I struggle with this rule not because I am elitist, but because I have one golf joke and it is very funny and never get to tell it.  The second rule is: no sports analogies.  The problem with sports analogies is that they require a certain knowledge of the sport in question to understand the analogy.  I am going to go out on a limb here and break the second rule today.  Hopefully it will be the only time.  I have always been fascinated with sports.  If you’ve been in my Sunday school class on Sunday mornings during college football season you would know that.  One of things that fascinates me the most is when coaches and analysts speak about a team finding its identity.  When they speak this way, usually they are talking about discovering that their identity is a passing team rather than a running team.  In rare, but important cases they are referring to something deeper.  Their identity goes beyond the plays that are called to who they fundamentally are as individuals and as a team.  I am fascinated by that because it is usually when this deep sense of identity collides with talent and coaching that a team succeeds.  And honestly, that is why I think the Oklahoma Sooners have lost so many bowl games recently, but that is another matter.

          Baptism is about identity.  In the first sermon I preached from this pulpit, I spoke about identity.  I spoke about it in a particular way though.  I talked about how my actions and yours and church’s define in some way who we are and what we value.  That if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck then it probably is a duck that is unless it is a platypus.  The point is all to often we can really judge books by their covers.  We shouldn’t, but we do.  In theology we call this the difference between subjective and objective.  The difference between how we observe things subjectively and the way they truly are as objects in and of themselves.  If a homeless man was to walk into the back of the sanctuary right now, then you would mostly like make several judgments about him almost immediately.  You would think he is dirty.  That perhaps he smells.  You might be scared.  You might think he has a drug or alcohol problem.  Any or none of those things might be true, but that might be what you think.  None of those things describe who he really is though.  They do not say that he child of God.  The he is loved by God.  That he is important to God.  That he was claimed by God before the creation of the world.  You would not get any of those things from the way he looks, but actually those things are more true about him that what you would observe.  And this is where this baptism stuff comes in.  Baptism is about identity.  Baptism is about our identity in a way that is often not observable, but which is more true than anything else.  What does God’s love look like on us, in us?  Can you see grace or salvation?  Do our faces shine?

          Our reading today points to the reality of something more.  Jesus comes to John to be baptized.  He goes down into the water, a river amount of water, not like the fonts we have in churches.  The heavens open and the Spirit of God descends like a dove and a voice says, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”  Two controversies surround this passage.  The first is did the heavens open and voice of God come just to Jesus or could John and everybody else see and hear it too.  The second and more important controversy is whether Jesus knew he was God’s beloved Son prior to this episode.  We are in chapter three of Matthew.  Jesus’ earthly ministry has not begun yet.  He was born, the wise men came, he fled to Egypt, he came back evidently grew up and here he is with John being baptized.  Matthew, of course, knows who Jesus is and so we get a good sense that Jesus knew who he was and is.  And from the rest of the gospels, particularly John we understand that Jesus is eternal, from beginning the Son of God.  We know that.  The people gathered there probably didn’t.  They would have guessed prophet or holy man, but Son of God might not make the list.  What this baptism does for them, is reveal who Jesus really is.  There is no doubt after the heavens open, after the Spirit of god descends, after the voice speaks as to the identity of Jesus Christ.  Baptism does that.

          But does baptism do that for us?  Does it show us who we are?  Laurence Stookey, who wrote the definitive modern book on baptism, Baptism: Christ’s Act in the Church writes on this subject,

          “Each us suffers from spiritual amnesia.  We forget what God has done for us and promised to us.  We also conveniently forget what God wants of us as disciples.  In short, we are oblivious to the identity we have been given by our Creator.  God, aware of our malady and of our inability to effect a cure (or even to recognize the impairment), acts to reveal our true identity to us.”

This is what baptism does for us.  It reveals to us, the fallen broken sinner, that we were elected and saved before the founding of the universe, that God has always loved us even when we could not love ourselves, and that God has promised us that love in this life and the life to come.  It reveals to us our true objective identity.  In baptism, we are revealed to be truly who we are.  Beloved children of God.

          Let me point something out, this happens in spite of everything else.  What I mean is that we are all sinners.  Every person who has ever been baptized, besides Jesus Christ, is sinner.  And for my money, that puts us all in the same boat.  The rich man who cheats on his taxes is no different than the homeless drug addict.  They are just as loved by God.  Just as redeemed by Jesus Christ. And just as able to be washed in these holy waters.  I have always liked the imagery associated with baptism: cleansing, renewal, new life, and all the rest.  I think they are very apt description.  The mothers and fathers and anybody who has spent time with children understand these metaphors.  The child is not made of dirt, although it seems like it sometimes, the child is covered in it.   In baptism, God cleans us.  God cleans us to reveal the real reality of our identity not as messy children covered in grim, but as children of God bathed in radiant light.  The next time we baptize somebody here, look for that light.

          The story does not end there though.  Just as Jesus’ baptism propelled him out into ministry, so does ours.  In a few moments, the church will ordain and install elders.  And it reminds us that our spiritual journey does not end at these waters.  That we are called for more.  I have spoken over the last several weeks about our need to grow spiritually through bible study and reading and worship attendance and the like.  Baptism reminds us of another aspect of spiritual growth: service.  You are called to work in this world for the good of the Kingdom of God.  Not to earn salvation which is already yours and which you could not earn even if you try, but because you have been called to it.  I was called to be a minister.  Others to be an elder.  Others to serve on the committees that are forming in this church.  What’s important is we all have been called.  Remember your baptism, remember who you truly are, but also remember you have been called to service.