Baptism of our Lord 1/10/10

Our theme in worship and Sunday School classes today is “Baptism of our Lord” --focusing on the baptism of Jesus. We are baptized just like Jesus was. Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist in the river Jordan. At our church, and many other churches, children are baptized from a bowl of water.

As I was thinking of what to say to you today, I was thinking a lot about water. Water is a theme that we are going to be thinking a lot about in Lent this year. Our themes for Qabats are all around stories of water in the Bible. . . The children’s musical will be all about many of those same stories.

As I was thinking of water, I was thinking about all the ways we use water. In a day, there are dozens of times and ways I use water:
 to my body, hair, teeth, clothes and dishes
 I drink water, and I use water to cook my food
 If when cooking my food, I burn myself, I use water to cool and soothe the burn
 I water my plants so that they will grow


Now when we baptize people, we use that same water that comes out of the tap here at church. Maybe that sounds less than exciting--maybe you imagined that we used some special water locked up in a safe in the church somewhere, or some fancy bottled water, but the truth is we use the same water that we use to make coffee and clean counters.

And that is on purpose--the water isn’t important because of where it comes from, it becomes important because of how we use it.

Water does amazing things--it cleans and soothes and helps things grow. When we use it for baptism, it also does amazing things--it is a symbol and reminder that we are God’s own--that God loves us and claims us and cares for us always--just like God has loved and cared for and claimed as God’s own everyone who has been baptized before us and will be baptized after us.

Thanks be to God!

Let’s pray: Loving God
For water that cleans and refreshes
For water that soothes and calms
For water that helps us to grow and thrive
For the waters of baptism
We thank you. Amen.