BAPTISM OF THE LORD 2008 | Matthew 3:13-17

You might be a connoisseur of the finer things in life: fine cigars, fine wines, great ales, the theater, what have you. Myself, I appreciate one of life’s greatest pleasures, one that often goes unsung and underappreciated: the bath. I’m not kidding here, I am a SERIOUS bather. In searching for an apartment last month I turned down two perfectly good apartments because they did not have a tub.

There is nothing more pleasurable than lighting a few candles, burning some incense, putting on some soft piano music, drawing a really hot bath and settling in with a good book. In fact, I have done 90% of all of my college and grad school work in the tub. I like to say I have the soggiest library on earth.

But aside from reading, a good bath does a lot for me—it relaxes me, and as I’m soaking, I can just feel the stresses and ickiness of the day dissolve and float away. It also puts me in an altered state of consciousness where insight and creativity can flourish. Seriously, whenever I am stumped for next week’s sermon, all I have to do is hop into the tub and float for awhile—I invariably emerge with an outline.

And sometimes, of course, I’m just too exhausted to read or think. In a bath, I feel like I have permission to just BE that is hard to find in any other context. Surrounded by the hot and buoyant water, I can close my eyes and forget that I am even me. I feel at one with everything, and peace and bliss come rushing in. Dude, Buddhist monks got nothin’ on a good hot bath.

I’m not the first to discover the joys of fine bathing, of course. I was going to write a book about it, until that rascal Stephen Mitchell beat me to it. Curse you, Stephen! First the Tao Te Ching, and now this! There’s nothing worse than having a more-famous doppelganger.

But even in ancient times, baths were renown for their benefits. Certain hot springs were famous for their healing powers, and crusty old Heraclitus had some of his most productive think-sessions in the tub. But religious bathing, ritual bathing is an almost universal phenomenon. In the Jewish tradition, and in our Christian heritage, it is known as baptism, and in both religions it is seen as a rite of initiation.

But it is more than that, too. What struck me as significant this week as I was contemplating this form of religious bathing—and especially our Gospel story today of Jesus’ baptism—is that it, too, served a number of functions. In fact, I was surprised to discover that the rite of baptism speaks to all three stages of the Ladder of Divine Ascent.

The Ladder goes back to the very early church, all the way to the Desert Fathers and Mothers, but our old buddy Origen was one of the first people to really expound upon it. Basically, the Ladder outlines three stages of spiritual growth, or “perfections,” that everyone who aspires to mystical communion with God goes through.

The first stage is Purgation—cleansing. The mystics said that in order to progress spiritually we must be cleansed. We must be cleansed from our sins, of course, but also we must be cleansed of our misperceptions, our illusions, and our egoic ambitions. “Wash away, waters, whatever sin is in me,” our Hindu scripture for today reads, “what wrong I have done, what imprecation I have uttered, and what untruth I have spoken.”

John was crying out to the people that they must come to the water to make the crooked things straight, which often includes our thinking. We must be disabused of the notion that we know who we are, who God is, and what life is all about. In other words, everything we know is wrong, and all those old ideas and ways of being must be washed away.

This cleansing metaphor is tailor-made for baptism—or perhaps baptism is a tailor-made metaphor for this process. And it’s no accident that this is the beginning of the journey, and baptism is the rite of Christian initiation. It’s the most obvious symbol, and easy to grasp for those just beginning the spiritual path.

But the next stage is also present in this story: Illumination. When Jesus come up out of the water, he and John—and in some texts, everyone around them—see a vision. They see the Spirit of God in the form of a dove descending and alighting upon Jesus’ head. This symbolizes the in-breaking of God’s Holy Wisdom, the experience of gnosis, the flash of mystical insight that teaches us what no books or teachers ever could, because it is ineffable. In the Book of Acts, the Holy Spirit lights upon the apostles in the form of tongues of fire, another powerful and apt metaphor.

Whereas Purgation is our step towards God, Illumination is God’s step towards us. All we can do is empty the cup by purging ourselves in body, mind, and spirit. Then we must wait, for it is up to God to fill the cup, to pour out upon us the Illumination that can only come from divinity. “Approach me, Agni, god of fire, with your power,” says the Vedas, “and fill me, as I am, with brilliance.”

When I am searching for inspiration, I think it is only because I have been willing to purge myself of busy-ness that God gives those precious gifts of creativity. I have to create the empty space so that God can fill it. I have to be willing to make a place of quiet so that I can hear God speak. This is increasingly difficult in our world today. With the TV blaring, the people we live with chattering away, not to mention the monkey mind yakking it up inside our own heads, it is impossible to hear the still, small voice of the Spirit if we do not make an intentional, concerted effort to do so.

But if we do, great things await us. For the third stage of the Ladder is Union. If we can empty ourselves of sin, of illusion, of noise, of business, when we actually hear and heed the whispered Wisdom of God, we will discover yet another ineffable truth. The ultimate oneness of all things, the unity of Creation, ourselves, and God. “Today I have sought the waters,” says the Hindu sage, “ and we have mingled with their essence.”

This is not something that can actually be described, of course. I can talk about it until I’m blue in the face, but it’s just more noise. Union with Divinity is not something you can talk about. Any attempts to do so only create confusion and stack up metaphor upon metaphor that ultimately need to be washed away or they, too, become impediments. The Gnostics were adamant about this stage. No one can express it, no one can achieve it on their own, there is no way around it, not through service, or blind faith, or by the right beliefs. You can’t know it until you know it for yourself.

No words can describe this experience. Of course, this doesn’t stop the mystics from trying. Even in our story today, the voice that boomed from the heavens only expressed what was true, it did not convey the immediacy of the experience. It proclaimed the relationship between God and Jesus, as Father and Son, united in mission and purpose, and, as later theologians would insist, in substance and being.

For Catholic Christians, Baptism does effect a mystical union, for it is in this act that the new believer is joined to the body of Christ, the church, and thereby, to God. For many Protestants, it is an act that symbolizes a union with divinity that has already taken place. In either case, to borrow the metaphor of the Vedas, we “mingle with the essence” of divinity.

In most Christian traditions, baptism is a sacrament or a sign that occurs only once in a person’s life, but the Catholic tradition has a neat little ritual that serves to remind us of our baptism anytime it seems appropriate to do so. It’s called the Asperges, the sprinkling with water. Okay, I know, it’s more like a shower than a bath—not nearly as relaxing or pleasurable—but hey, it’s symbolic and, frankly, more practical in large groups.

I’d like to end this sermon with the rite of asperges, to remind us of our own baptism—or to give you a taste of baptism if you have not been baptized—but before I do, I’d like us to take two minutes of silence first. During this silence I invite you to enter into God’s presence and to ask for what you most need this morning. Is it Purgation? Is there something in your life you need to let go of or be rid of? Is there some sin, some obsession, some false idea or illusion that you need washed away? If so, bring that thing before God and be prepared to let go of it when the water hits you.

Perhaps, though, you need Illumination. Perhaps you need insight into some difficult question or discernment that you’ve been wrestling with lately. If so, bring your question before God, and then let go of it and all other thoughts. Simply sit with an empty and receptive mind as the drops of water bless you.

Finally, perhaps it is Union you seek. This is the greatest, and most difficult experience to summon, but the truth is that it is only our own misconceptions and mental perambulations that trip us up. The truth is that we are already one with God, with one another, with all of being. But it is the EXPERIENCE of this unity that is the tricky and elusive part. If this is what you need, then I invite you sit, again, in silence, and recognize that when the water hits your face that there is no water, there is no face, there are not two things that come together, but one thing that has never been separate in all of eternity.

Funny what a little water can do, huh? Purgation, Illumination, Union: let us now enter into the divine presence for two minutes, and ask for what we, each of us, most need this morning.

TWO MINUTES OF SILENCE

This water will be used to remind us
of the waters of the womb that bore us,
of the sweet waters of the earth that refresh us,
of the ritual waters of baptism that renew us.
Send thy Holy Spirit upon this water, O God,
that all those who are blessed with it
may obtain their hearts desire,
whether that desire is for cleansing,
or for enlightenment,
or for communion with thee.
In the name of the Holy One, Creator, Liberator, and Sustainer. Amen.