Plunging Into Our Human Experience

Matt 3;5 13-17

The bouncy castle stood in the back garden of the Vicarage.

I was told I must not go on it as it was just for children.

The little ones who had attended my daughter’s birthday party had enjoyed a wonderful time bouncing around

Leaping, laughing and jumping for they’re worth – and crying when it all got a bit boisterous..

I had been kept back in the kitchen serving fizzy drinks and cutting cake, when I wanted to be on the bouncy castle with all the kids.

Now they had all gone home and the man was not coming to collect the castle until the morning.

So as evening fell,  I crept out to it all alone., took off my shoes and socks, climbed on and began to bounce.

I was actually not very good as I couldn’t summon up the confidence to lift my feet far off the shiny plastic surface.

But there I was, and when they saw me, my wife came running, aunts and uncles too, and we all plunged onto the bouncy castle together a happy mellay of those who were surely old enough to know better.

A bunch of Fathers and Mothers entering fully into the experiences of their children.

I imagine the scene of Jesus’ baptism to have been one of absolute chaos.

Matthew tells us that Jerusalem and all Judea and everyone from the region about the Jordan went out to be baptised by John, so either the writer is prone to gross exaggeration or else there would have been thousands of people there.

A bit like Blackpool at the height of the season, I would think.

Crowds of people shouting and splashing their way out to one man who stood in the deeper water.

Imagine him taking them one by one, breathless and soaking wet.

Imagine them calling out the burdens from which they wanted to be released, the wounds of the past that had kept them all hunched up and sensible and prevented them from ever leaping and laughing for joy.

And John, plunging them under the water and holding them there until they thought they would drown and bringing them to the surface again – like people twice born.

Imagine the exaltation and the excitement of that.

No one would have wanted to leave the water surely, for this was celebration time. A beach party the like of which had never been witnessed in this wilderness place nor in these wilderness people.

Imagine God walking amidst all this human excitement.

Jesus of Nazareth – a face in the crowd, his ministry not yet begun.

Watching the people with their desire to put things right in their lives and celebrate the difference repentance could make.

God had come down to earth in Jesus Christ to fully share our likeness.

And God had never seen anything like this before and before he knew what he was doing he was plunging in with the rest of them, loving every minute of it.

Eventually, knee deep in water, he stood before John, neither of them knowing quite what to say.

“I need to be baptised by you, and do you come to me” John found himself saying.

Heaven knows if Jesus had anything to confess, but he was plunged under the water just like the rest of them and then joined in the watery celebrations of a second birth.

It must have been like resurrection morning before Easter was anywhere near on the horizon.

This is one of the things we must remember about His baptism and ours.

It is Jesus identifying with our human condition, not just in a general way but it is him saying I want to share fully in the human experience that is uniquely yours.

His baptism is his question to us. Will you let me share your life, for my life as your God can never be complete until you do.

For there is a place in my eternal heart that is for your love and it’s a place nobody else can walk into.

Come down into the water, if you want to share. Plunge in right up to your neck.

But please don’t make a pretence of it because that will only break my heart.

Every time we share in the Eucharist early on a Sunday morning – we’re saying to God we’re still here for him.

Still ready for him to plunge in to our lives in all their ordinariness, in all their inadequacy, sharing in the pain of our sinfulness and the joy of our liberation, day after day after day.

That is the miracle at the heart of this incarnate faith of ours.

RH 13.1.08