Baptism and the Birth of Story

a Sermon for Epiphany 6B
Text: Mark 1:40-45


I want to talk for a minute about water. Water is many things. We know that our bodies are composed mostly of water. We know that water is the one thing we can’t live without: without shelter, we can perhaps survive months, without food, we can potentially survive a couple of weeks, whereas for water, its days. It is our most essential element.

We are a little landlocked here in the middle of our state, but Michigan survives on water. Its abundance makes it difficult for us to see the value Israelites would have placed on it. Two of the most potent stories for Christians involve a scarcity of water. The first is the Israelites’ departure from Egypt and their ensuing decades in the desert. The second, is our gospel for the first Sunday in Lent in which Jesus goes into the desert to quarantine himself. Of course, we know this as the temptation story based on what Jesus found in the desert, but Jesus’s time in the wilderness was about deprivation, cleansing; he deprived himself of this most necessary resource. Being deprived of water would no doubt lead to a great appreciation of the substance.

It is also an essential element of our spiritual faith and religious tradition, most notably in baptism. We also know of it from its place in Jewish cleansing rituals and in Jesus’s washing of his disciples’ feet. This is our relationship to water.

In our gospel this morning, Jesus cures a man of his leprosy. At the 8:00 service, I spent time talking about the first part—about the relationship between Jesus and this man. Copies of that sermon are in the narthex. Here, I want to take time on the second part. The part in which Jesus gives the man instruction and the man seems to ignore it.

We don’t know much about this guy, right? Let’s look at what we do know.

1. The text refers to him as a “leper”. We know that we shouldn’t call a person a leper any more than we would call someone a cancer or an AIDSer. He is a man, not a disease.
2. We know that he has a skin condition. The disease we know in modern times as leprosy was unknown to them—leprosy in Scripture instead speaks of any skin condition—a rash, chickenpox, for instince—so it is entirely likely that this man’s condition may not have been permanent.
3. He is ritually impure based on his condition. His status as a man with a skin condition put him as an outsider for the time in which he has the condition.
4. As long as this man has a skin condition and does not seek ritual cleansing, he will be considered ritually impure. This means that any contact with him would cause another person to become ritually impure.
5. A cleansing ritual would have included the man’s bathing in water.

That is what we know of him. So this man comes up to Jesus, asks to be cured, and Jesus makes it happen. He then said to the man “See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.’ Here, Jesus is telling him that the first part is done: the part in which his cause of impurity is removed, but his status as impure remains. As a good Jew, he must go to a spiritual leader who would return him to a right relationship with God. But he doesn’t. He runs around telling people about Jesus.

This passage raises some real questions for us. What of the man’s ritual impurity? What of the man’s defiance of Jesus? And what of Jesus’s own ritual impurity? By curing the man of his condition, he has made himself ritually impure and he didn’t seek the ritual cleansing he commanded the man to receive. At that moment does Jesus believe he possesses the so-called ‘leprosy’ and is now in a permanent state of impurity? I don’t know.

I do know that many of us think that we are impure or that we do something, “wrong” that must be atoned. We come to church or seek out a clergyperson for a ritual cleansing. Some of us no doubt think that we have done something or embody something so “wrong” that we could never atone for that level of sin. We might see ourselves as permanently impure—that no amount of ritual cleansing could wash away that sin. For some, the belief is that we are sinful from birth—that our very flesh is sinful. Some extend this notion to baptism—as the great, permanent ritual cleansing.

But I don’t think this is Jesus’s intention, nor do I think Mark is suggesting anything like this. In last week’s gospel, just two verses before the start of this week’s, in verse 38, Jesus tells his disciples, ‘Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.’ Jesus’s intentions are proclamation. So what did this man do immediately after he is cured by Jesus? He runs into town and starts blabbing. But he isn’t shouting like some crazy person, right? It said that “he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word”. The same word is there: proclaim. And spreading the word is different from gossiping or ranting or whatever. It is more like a prayer chain or some other targeted attempt to get information to many people quickly. This man’s action was the fulfillment of what Jesus just said was what he “came out to do.”

[What is perhaps most intriguing about this gospel lesson for us is that we don’t really know how Jesus responded to this experience, just how we would respond. We would be annoyed because we couldn’t go anywhere without being mobbed; that someone else is doing the job that we were called to do; that people seem to be more interested in the miracles than they are in His proclamations. I’m sure that these would annoy us. I can’t help but think that Jesus was pleased.]

One of the things I take from this is that we are all storytellers. That we have received this wonderful good news that we are entrusted to pass on—not to possess or keep to ourselves—but to spread and share as God’s. That we are capable of such an act as storytelling. Telling our story, Jesus’s story, God’s story.

This is what we will be doing in a few minutes as we gather around this pool of water, inviting our newest member into the family. My wife and I will make vows, witnesses will make vows, and the entire community will make vows to raise this new member as a full and important member of the family. We are called to pray for her and support her. We are called to live, ourselves, as Christians. And we are called to “proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ”. In other words, we are vowing to be storytellers, because we already are storytellers.

In this baptism, within this sacred water, we are all committing to not only look after the spiritual health of this beautiful girl, but to pass on our stories to her; to continue the practices of the church with her. Through our vows and with this water, we are committing our love to her.