Saint Matthew 3:13-17
On the corner of Irving Park Road and Cumberland Avenue (Route 19 and 176 to those who work in numbers not names) there is a hand-pump. If you were to drive by this pump any hour of the day or even night you would see someone there, much like the guy on the front of your bulletin, with giant water jugs pumping away.
The area is unlit so those who want water after dark park their cars in such a way that the headlights illuminate the entire area.
The people come in all shapes and sizes. There are older folks, and young folk, people bring their entire families along so that even the children can take turns pulling down on the heavy handle and squirting perhaps two cups of water per pull in whatever container they brought along.
What unites all of those pilgrims is that they believe the water in this pump is special.
This particular pump was installed in 1945 and is just one of 300 Forest Preserve District pumps in Cook County meant to serve picnickers and others who might grow thirsty along the jogging trails or bike paths. Only this pump has a following.
Ask those who swear by this pump to explain why this pump, and you hear a lot of things: You hear it tastes better than tap water, it keeps colder for longer, it contains holistic qualities, it’s good for heart and teeth, it’s unfiltered and therefore not chlorinated or fluoridated.
They’ve heard the water comes from a reservoir originating in Michigan, running beneath Lake Michigan, all the way ... a mile and a half from O’Hare. They’ve heard, no, the water actually comes from a spring in Wisconsin. They’ve heard no, no, no, the water comes from Lake Huron.
[Others believe] that ... the water is really a mistake, an unintended tributary that connects to a vein of pure water secretly maintained by wealthy North Shore families.1
No matter what they’ve heard still they come.
They come because they believe that the water in the pump tastes better, is purer, and may even be a fountain of youth. As one woman told Eric Zorn of the Chicago Tribune: “My father lived to be 91 and attributed his good health to this water.”2
While I am skeptical of the powers that flow from the water of a single pump in a forest preserve I do believe in the power of self-fulfilling prophesies.
If you believe that schlepping big jugs of water will be good for your general health it will be.
On a larger scale, two California researchers, Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson, found “that, if teachers were led to expect enhanced performance from children, then the children's performance was enhanced.”3
It’s the power of positive affirmation! Expect water to be good for you and you’ll act like the water will be good for you. Think that the children in your class room are the brightest and best and their performance will improve.”
So this day, I propose that we trudge down to the waters of the Jordan not so much to watch Jesus and John the Baptist but to listen.
The first thing we will hear is a debate between John and Jesus as to who should baptize who. John wants Jesus to baptize him but Jesus knows that if that happens all of us will miss a very important message.
That message comes when Jesus emerges soaking wet from his immersion and “just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”4
This is God not only telling us who Jesus is but proclaiming to us in our baptisms who we are.
Baptism gives us a new status! In our baptism we become children of God.
I can think of no better example of what this is like than a scene from a Michigan courtroom.
Five-year-old Michael Clark Jr sat facing a judge ... with his entire kindergarten class in the pews behind him in solidarity. Each one of them held up a pink or red paper heart, some of them barely able to see above the wooden barrier dividing the courtroom.
A year earlier Michael had become a foster child to Andrea Melvin and Dave Eaton who had decided to adopt him. Michael wanted his kindergarten class to be there with him because “he wanted what he called his ‘other family’, his classmates and teacher, to be there, too, on his big day.”
To show their support when the time came for the judge to sign the papers his classmates voiced their approval by waiving their hearts wildly.
Even the judge’s eyes were said to be moist.3In baptism we are adopted into the family of God. This carries with it a responsibility: to act like we are one of God’s beloved children. This means we should always be searching out the best in each other although often we don’t.
I have always thought that we don’t see the best in other people when we don’t leave things go and the slightest negative thing they do in the present reminds us of something they have done in the past and becomes a negative self-fulfilling prophesy.
We say to ourselves and, worse yet, others: “I can’t get over what she did way back in 2002. Or was it 2000? I’ll never forget what he said to me that night when he was ‘three sheets to the wind in a gale.”
In my last congregation a wonderful Korean congregation was looking for a church home and asked if they could rent Saint John’s.
They had outgrown and sold their landlocked building and were looking for a beautiful place to worship that, most of all, had plenty of parking. We fit the bill! They were also flush with cash and were offering us far more that we had even dared to ask for in rent.
It was a win/win situation but one man was adamantly against it.
When asked he said, “I have a hard time forgetting what they did to us during the war.” A war, I should point out, in which he never served.
As luck would have it I had just finished reading Stephen Ambrose’s biography of President Eisenhower and remembered that the armistice with Korea was signed in the first months of his presidency. I guessed at July and, never one to suffer fools gladly, I shot back: “The Korean War ended six months before I was born and I’m old! You might want to get over this!”
He never did and as the congregations grew closer – worshiping together, studying together and, most of all, eating together he never joined us in finding out what we had in common.
Across cultural and language barriers we discovered that we were all baptized believers in Christ and therefore we had a new relationship with each other. We were all part of God’s family.
The reason Jesus had to be baptized by John is so that we could all hear the words that were spoken by the Spirit to him. “This is my beloved Son, and I am wonderfully pleased with him.”6
This is what Jesus says to us in our own baptism: “This is my son, my daughter, chosen and marked by my love, delight of my life.”7
What if we lived like that? What if we believed that about ourselves and about others?
What if we let Michael and his kindergarten friends remind us that we have all, by our baptisms, been adopted into the family of God?
What if we really believed that God’s really does, in Peter’s words, “show no partiality” and that in God’s eyes Korean Presbyterians are mostly Nordic looking Lutherans are the same in God’s eyes?
What if God didn’t care if you got your water from a tap, a pump, or an overpriced bottle of water?
What if we saw each other and ourselves the way God sees us?
Then, it seems to me, that we would be finally free to live our lives as Jesus wanted.
We would be free to live as one of God’s beloved, given new names, new families, new relationships in Jesus Christ our Lord.
That would be refreshing indeed and, unlike those people laboring at that pump near my house, we wouldn’t have to work so hard, lift a finger, drive a mile, to get it because it would be God’s gift to us in our Baptism!
Let us give thanks to God for this gift by seeing each other as daughters and sons of God, marked by God’s love in our baptism, in whom God takes delight.
____________
1. Christopher Borrelli, “There’s Magic in a Schiller Woods Water Pump, or so Many Chicagoans, for Generations, Have Wanted to Believe.” Chicago Tribune, October 4, 2019. https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/ct-ent-schiller-woods-water-pump-1006-20191004-ogw6bjtetfdnxho5wpletjubr4-story.html.
2. Eric Zorn, “Not Even Scientific Studies Can Quench Underground Mystique.” Chicago Tribune, October 24, 1986. https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1986-10-24-8603200029-story.html.
3. Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson, (1992). Pygmalion in the classroom : teacher expectation and pupils' intellectual development. (Bancyfelin, Carmarthen, Wales: Crown House Pub.
4. St. Matthew 5:16-17. (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version]
5. Khushbu Shah, “'Not a Dry Eye': Entire Kindergarten Class Shows up to Witness Boy's Adoption.” The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, December 6, 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/06/michigan-adoption-boy-kindergarten-class.
6. St. Matthew 3:17. (TLB) [TLB=The Living Bible]
7. St. Matthew 3:17 (MESSAGE) [MESSAGE=The Message]
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