ETCHED IN STONE

 

A sermon by the Rev. Dr. James G. Kirk

Harundale Presbyterian Church

Glen Burnie, Maryland

 

January 13, 2002

 

Text: “This is my Son, the Beloved.”  (Matthew 3:17)

 

First Reading: Isaiah 42: 1-9

Second Reading: Acts 10:34-43

 

            “A story tells that two friends were walking through the desert.  In a specific point of the journey, they had an argument, and one friend slapped the other one in the face.  The one, who got slapped, was hurt, but without anything to say, he wrote in the sand: ‘Today, my best friend slapped me in the face.’

 

            “They kept on walking, until they found an oasis, where they decided to take a bath.  The one who got slapped and hurt started drowning, and the other friend saved him.  When he recovered from the fright, he wrote on a stone: ‘Today, my best friend saved my life.’

 

            “The friend who saved and slapped his best friend asked him, ‘Why, after I hurt you, you wrote in the sand, and now your write on a stone?’  The other friend, smiling, replied: ‘When a friend hurts us, we should write it down in the sand, where the winds of forgiveness get in charge of erasing it away.  And when something great happens, we should engrave it in the stone of the memory of the heart, where no wind can erase it.’”

 

            That’s what Jesus does when he asks John to baptize him.  He etches in stone how serious God is that all of God’s children shall be forgiven.  When Jesus came from Galilee along the Jordan to be baptized by John we hear how “John would have prevented him, saying ‘I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?’  It’s a legitimate question.  People have asked through the years why Jesus, apparently the Son of God, had to be baptized.  It’s he who should be doing the baptizing.  Yet, we have no recorded evidence that Jesus ever baptized anyone.

 

            At any rate, Jesus replies to John’s statement with just as puzzling a comment, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.’”  “To fulfill all righteousness” is where Jesus’ baptism etches in stone once and for all just how serious God is that all of God’s people shall be forgiven.  At the same time God writes in the sand all the grievances that God has against us.  Whenever we remember our baptism it’s as though the winds blow away all God’s grievances against us and what’s left is the indelible carving of God’s love for us in Jesus Christ.

 

            Contemplating the horror of September 11th, we’ve come to realize how fragile and sacred life is.  We’ve also learned how beautiful it is to be loved and to love in return and how important it may be on any given day to make sure those who love you know that you love them also.  We’ve learned a little bit how not to dwell so much on things that don’t really matter all that much, but also to spend more time on those things that do.  Why etch in stone a grudge or a complaint or some bitterness when it would be so much better to write it in the sand and be done with it?  Let the winds of tomorrow take care of it. 

 

            What Jesus did in his baptism was to put things right between God and us in such a way that we couldn’t undo it.  What do we say in the wedding service, “What God has joined together let no one separate.”  The problem is, of course, that we do tend to lapse into the way things used to be.  We do bear grudges, we do complain, we do let bitterness get the better of us. So, while we can’t undo our baptism, we go on living as though it never happened.  We get back to the same problem Paul had when he wrote to the Romans: “For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.”(Romans 7:15)