BAPTIZED & WINNOWED

Isaiah 43:1-7; Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

The Baptism of Our Lord, Sunday January 12, 2025 

Pastor Ritva H Williams

Our scripture readings for this morning are heavy on images of fire, just as our news is inundated with images of the fires in Los Angeles. Before we dive into them let’s take a minute to offer our prayers for our siblings in southern California:

O Lord, when fires rage and consume the land, when homes are reduced to embers and ashes, when families are displaced and tomorrow is uncertain, grant us faith to truth that even the dust will live by your breath. For in you, Lord, is new life (adapted from “ELCA Litany in Time of Wildfires”).

In our first scripture reading, we hear the prophet Isaiah speaking to a community in exile. Forty years earlier, Babylonian invaders deported 20% of Judah’s population, force marching them a thousand miles across the desert to, what is today, Iraq. These mostly urban elites, professionals, and artisans were regarded with suspicion, reduced to working as peasants and laborers. Their worship life limited to private homes. Now the exiles have permission to return their homeland. But the oldest ones have died, their children are grown up, with children and grandchildren born in exile who have no memories of the homeland. Do they stay in this no familiar but hostile place? Do they venture to make the long, dangerous journey across the desert to a homeland devastated by war? 

Into this situation, Isaiah speaks:

  thus says the Lord … 

who created you … who formed you:

Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; 

I have called you by name, you are mine.

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; 

and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;

when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,

and the flame will not consume you.

For I am your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.

… you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you.

Do not fear, for I am with you …

[with] everyone who is called by my name,

whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.

God’s promises spoken to a people living far away and long ago still resonate today.  All of us will likely experience difficulties and uncertainties, trauma and crisis in our lives. When we do, God urges us to remember who and whose we are. 

God creates and forms every human being, calling each of us by name. So … “do not fear.” God redeems and liberates us. We are God’s own children, precious, honored and loved. So …“do not fear.” Our Savior God is with us, even when we pass through the waters and walk through fire. God is with us especially when we are drowning in sorrow, grief and pain, when seemingly insurmountable obstacles block our way, and devastating disasters threaten to destroy us. The good news is that God is always with us, often in surprising ways, showing up in the most unlikely people. 

Our gospel reading jumps 550 years ahead to a crowd of people gathered by the Jordan River, wondering whether John the Baptist is the Messiah, and if he is, what will happen next? John tersely states that he baptizes with water to prepare the way for the Messiah who will baptize with Holy Spirit and fire. Christ comes with winnowing fork in hand, prepared to separate wheat from chaff. 

John compares humans to wheat. Each of person is like a nutritious, life-giving kernel of grain encapsulated within an hard, indigestible husk, called chaff. The grain of wheat represents the image of God implanted in every soul. It is the blueprint for our best and truest selves, but is encased and boxed in by “chaff.”

Sometimes this chaff is our own emotional impulses and ego-driven decisions. Sometimes this chaff is the hurt, harm and injuries that just happen or are inflicted by others. A lot of chaff is systemic, put on us by groups and societies that define, limit, and judge people by gender expression, sexual orientation, skin color, age, size, ethnicity, nationality, social class and so forth. All too often we fail to see, and hence ignore the image of God uniquely shining forth in ourselves and in our neighbors. Christ’s gift of Holy Spirit and holy fire is given to deal all the chaff. Holy fire reduces and refines the chaff, so Holy Spirit has room to nurture our true image of God self.  

This is the good news John the Baptist proclaims. After all the people were baptized, Jesus also is baptized. As he prays, Holy Spirit descends upon him, and a voice from heaven, declares, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” 

So far in Luke’s gospel Jesus has been born, named, circumcised, dedicated and blessed by religious elders and prophets. He has grown up in the midst of his family, learned a trade, and lived a “normal” life for 30 years. This gift of Holy Spirit and God’s affirmation come before Jesus has preached a single sermon, told any parables, taught or healed anyone. Jesus hasn’t done much to earn this special recognition. The indwelling Holy Spirit is God’s gracious gift to Jesus that prepares him to confront the devil in the wilderness. Like us, Jesus needs affirmation and and encouragement to change the direction of his life. Like us, Jesus needs guidance and comfort to clarify his priorities (that’s what the testing in the desert is all about). 

This event shapes our Lutheran understanding of the sacrament of Holy Baptism as God’s work — a totally gratuitous gift of grace. As practiced in this church, the sacrament of Holy Baptism is a public declaration that the baptized is a beloved child of God, so holy and precious Christ died and rose for them, and whom we are called to love as Christ loves us. To borrow the words of Professor David Lose: 

“no matter how often we fall short or fail, nothing that we do, or fail to do, can remove [our ] identity [as a child of God] … In other words, our relationship with God is the one relationship in life that we cannot screw up because we did not establish it. We can neglect this relationship, we can deny it, run away from it, ignore it, but we cannot destroy it, for God loves us too deeply and completely to ever let us go.”

Precisely because we are God’s beloved children, in, with and through the waters of Baptism were receive the gifts of holy Spirit and Christ’s holy fire. Like Jesus, we receive Holy Spirit to nurture and nourish the image of God within each of us. Like Jesus, we are called to confront and deal with the chaff that gets in the way of our becoming our truest selves. Holy Spirit and holy fire are two sides of a single process which may sound uncomfortable, maybe even downright scary. But as Archbishop Desmond Tutu once quipped, “Dear Child of God, I am sorry to say that suffering is not optional.” 

The only way through it is to cling to the good news, as expressed in these words by Pastor Steve Garnaas-Holmes:

Christ chooses to be with us.

So when you go through the waters, Christ is already there. Breathing life. Enduring. With you.

There is no struggle Christ does not enter, no suffering Christ does not share.

The Beloved will never forsake you.

Every moment of your life is the stream Jesus was baptized into, immersed in you, soaked with you.

When you pass through the waters, and feel no companion, trust: the Beloved is the water itself, bearing you on.

Christ’s abiding presence empowers us to confront the chaff in our lives, again borrowing the words of Pastor Steve Garnaas-Holmes: 

Beloved, winnow my heart;

strip away the chaff of my fears and attachments.

My victories and failures are not me.

Burn the husks I hide behind, my fear that my real self you will not love.

Burn the straw of my attempts to be someone I’m not.

By your grace, I will be the true person within,

not an imaginary self but the one you create.

God of mercy, I welcome your winnowing.

I give thanks for the fire of grace in which I am made new.

Amen. Amen. Let it be so.