So, I still remember the exhilaration I felt, skittering over the surface of the Pamlico Sound in North Carolina on a small sailboat. The sun was shining, and all was well with the world in that way that seems to happen magically when you're on a boat.
It was the summer after my senior year of high school, and there were just the three of us. As one of my friends steered and I managed the sail, we looked into the water below. There were schools of jellyfish beneath us, and that made it even more of an adventure, out there in the wild, away from civilization.
Until that moment when the wind changed suddenly. Our small boat capsized, dumping all three of us into the water. My friends splashed into a school of jellyfish. But not me. I had been flung into the sail, in sort of a private wading pool. And there was not a jellyfish to be found in that pool.
And my friends were yelling, “Get off of the sail; we need to get the boat up!"
I would like to say that, as soon as I heard the cries of pain of my friends as they began to get stung by the jellyfish, that I immediately and bravely leapt out of the sail into the school of jellyfish waiting like floating, tentacled land mines in the water below.
I would like to say that. But I can't.
I would like to have been a good Christian soul, bravely coming to the rescue of the needy. But I was pretty cozy in my canvas bubble. I didn't even have to tread water, because the sail was keeping me afloat. I was perfectly content to hang out there a while. I could hear them yelling, and I knew why they were yelling, but I knew that the moment I splashed out of the sail into the water, I would get stung by jellyfish, too. Nope, I decided, I was perfectly content sitting in my sail.
The thing that finally got me out of the sail? Knowing that if I didn't, we'd never go anywhere. And even I knew that we couldn't stay out there all day and all night. And so, I finally plopped myself into the jellyfish-laden water, getting stung immediately and continually while we righted the boat as quickly as possible and clambered aboard. And we sailed back to shore as fast as we could to get some first aid.
Here's the thing: while things had been fine and dandy on the surface of the water, the water itself held many dangers. From the very beginning of our story in creation, water is the fathomless deep which God must divide to allow for sky to be created. The deeps are the habitation of Leviathan and other monsters. And God's people flee from the Egyptians through the chaos of the parted sea to get to the Promised Land. And today the prophet Isaiah sings about God's stalwart love in midst of the dangerous waters: “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you.”
Biblical waters is a place of chaos and flooding, and a place of danger and monsters, somewhere that should only be ventured into with divine protection. And that is exactly where God sends Jesus in his baptism.
Here is Jesus, about to start three years of desperately-needed ministry. He'll be teaching and healing and feeding people. He will develop ardent followers and determined opponents. People will follow him, and they'll turn on him. They'll praise him and wave palms and yell “crucify him,” and we all know how that story turns out. And in preparation for the hazards of life ahead, God sends Jesus into the water.
The dude with that sailing experience in me would have been standing on the side of the Jordan river, saying, "Jesus! Put on a wet suit! Watch out for jellyfish!
But Jesus goes right up to John, who plunges him deep down into the water for a dangerous amount of time. John pulls him back up, and Jesus has water in his eyes, up his nose. And as Jesus catches his breath and shakes off all that water, God's voice echoes, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased."
Now, God, I'm glad you were well-pleased, but why did you make him do this in the first place? Jesus could have caught his death of cold in that water, you know. Maybe caught the flu. Swallowed some amoeba. Not a good start to a life of ministry.
Once again, it is great good news that God is God, and I am not. I prefer to stand safely on dry land, with dry feet, living dry life. Safe. But life isn't always lived in the safe places, and that's just a fact.
Y'all, here's the thing. There are warm and sunny sailboat days and we all have them and love them. But life happens often under the water, in the dangerous places. Life happens during sleepless nights and worry-filled days. Life happens in the families that we have been given, even if they're not always the ones we would have chosen. Life happens in the schools and universities, the ones that think they are safe, and the ones that, sadly, know they are not. Life happens on the streets and in the prison cells and in the legal system. Life happens at the ballot box, and in the food pantries, and the domestic violence shelters. Life happens at the bedsides of hospitals and nursing homes and hospice houses. Life happens in the bodies of people afflicted by disease and in the research labs that seek cures. Life happens in the rain and cold on the sidewalks outside of places of power and inside of those same places of power, too. Life happens in the hurricane, earthquake, wildfire-afflicted parts of the earth. Life happens in the fields, on the borders, and in shiny new concentration camps. Life happens in the uncomfortable conversations we'd rather not have but must. Life happens everywhere that people exist, which means that life happens on lovely cloudless days, and it happens on every other day, too.
Come to find out, when life takes us into the deep water over our heads, the same water that the prophet Isaiah sang about, Jesus' entrance into those waters in his baptism teaches us an important truth: We aren't the first ones in.
When we find ourselves exactly where we never wanted to be, if we're able to listen through our fear and our pain and our tears and our doubts, we might hear the echoing words of a saviour who loves us so very much and who never leaves us: “You are my beloved child, and in you I am well pleased.”
I cling to the hope that this is enough. This assurance that God is pleased with us, not because our lives have been smooth sailing, but because, even in the deepest waters, we are God's beloved child. Maybe these words will bring us a bit of peace in a place where peace seems threatened. Maybe we can manage to keep our head above water just a little bit longer, soaking wet and loved as we may be in these waters of life, because we know with certainty this one thing:
Jesus went into the water and came out again. And so shall we.