December 9, 2018 – Luke 3:1-6
Luke 3:1-6
Don’t Get in the Water with Someone Who Doesn’t Love You!
Second Sunday of Advent – December 9, 2018
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
Don’t get in the water with someone who doesn’t love you.
This summer at the Canadian Lutheran Youth Gathering, Diana and the youth and I met
Pastor Doreen, the pastor at
St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in Niagara Falls, Canada,
where we stayed for a few nights.
Pastor Doreen is retired and was not always a pastor – she and her husband
led a very colourful life before she became a pastor.
Among other things, they were opera singers on cruise ships.
Pastor Doreen is a live wire – and one day she came to meet us and engaged
Diana and Catriona and Emily and Kyle in conversation.
Youth Minister Diana tells the story of how when she was a young girl Pastor Doreen almost drowned in a pool. But a young man who was in love with her jumped into the pool and saved her. The moral of the story as Pastor Doreen told it? Don’t get into the water with someone who doesn’t love you. The girls asked her, starry-eyed, “Is that how you met your husband?” Pastor Doreen: “Oh, no! He wasn’t good looking enough!” Hahahaha!
Don’t get into the water with someone who doesn’t love you.
This morning, John the Baptist begins baptizing people in the wilderness.
John, who appears to be crazy, is the one to whom God’s word comes.
John, who appears to be irresponsibly traipsing around Galilee with his cousin Jesus,
is the one through whom God wants to begin to change the world.
God’s word does not come through the emperor, or the governor,
or any of the other big shot rulers.
God’s word for change does not come to the big shot priests Annas and Caiaphas.
Oh no.
God’s word comes to John.
And that word? The word is to invite people to be baptized, to get into the water –
with someone who loves them.
Because here’s the thing:
the emperor doesn’t love them. The governor doesn’t love them.
not even their own priests love them.
The people are drowning – and there is no one to save them.
They are drowning in poverty. They are drowning in illness. They are drowning oppression. They feel powerless.
They are without hope.
They are drowning.
And John comes along, and God’s word comes to John, and John tells the word to the people.
And what John says is: I’m going to invite you to get into the water today,
the waters of the Jordan River.
And I’m going to baptize you.
I’m going to baptize you in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
The Triune God here will be in the water with you from now on.
And will save you and this whole world from drowning in apathy and injustice.
Today: the God who loves you and this whole sorry world is getting into the water with you.
To save you. To save this whole world.
Some come on into this water – Jesus is going to get in too.
Because I am going to baptize him as well.
From now on, Jesus will be in the water with you.
Jesus will save you – and Jesus will save this whole world from drowning.
Don’t get in the water with someone who doesn’t love you.
Alexander and Kyle and Dale are getting into the water today with someone who loves them.
They have entered into the water with someone who loves them –
and with someone who loves this whole world.
They have entered into the water with Jesus.
It’s a good place to be.
When they feel like they are drowning, they will be with someone who loves them:
with Jesus, with us.
And, in turn, Jesus will invite them – with him – to save others who are drowning.
That is the point of the church:
God is on a mission to love, bless, heal, feed, and set free this whole world and
every person in it.
And when we are baptized, we too are baptized into that mission.
With Jesus, we are called to love those who are in the waters of poverty, and hunger,
and injustice, and despair – and hold out our hands, and embrace them, and save them.
Today, we have added a few more who will love in the waters.
So join us, Dale, and Kyle, and Alexander.
Join us as a company of those who get in the water with those who are drowning.
Join us as a company of those who care enough to get wet.
Join us as a company of those who love –
as a company of those through whom God is changing the world,
one community meal at a time, one food bank at a time,
one Christmas hamper at a time, one act of welcome at a time,
one act of inclusion at a time, one act of compassion at a time.
Today, you are getting in the water with those who love you.
Welcome.
Together – let us all say, “Welcome!” And together, let us all say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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