July 20th, 2025 - "Getting Started" - Rev. Dr. Michelle Morris

Matt Nelson: Welcome to the Sermon podcast from First United Methodist

Church in downtown Bentonville.

If you have questions related to what you hear today or just want to find

out more about the ministries at First United Methodist Church, please visit us

online at FUMCbentonville.org ,or check us out on Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok.

Rev. Dr. Michelle Morris: We are in a series on living like Jesus.

And today we're going to be looking at Jesus' baptism to reflect a little bit

about what baptism means for us as well.

So I'm gonna read a passage from Luke and then a passage from Matthew.

And the passage from Matthew is longer than what's printed in your bulletins,

and it may or may not be on the screen.

So here now the word of the Lord.

When everyone was being baptized, Jesus also was baptized.

While he was praying Heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit came down

on him in bodily form like a dove.

There was a voice from heaven.

You are my son, whom I dearly love, and you I find happiness.

And then from Matthew, at that time, Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan

River so that John would baptize him.

John tried to stop him and said, I need to be baptized by you, yet you come to me.

Jesus answered, allow me to be baptized.

Now, this is necessary to fulfill all righteousness.

So John agreed to baptize Jesus.

When Jesus was baptized, he immediately came up out of the water.

Heaven was open to him, and he saw the spirit of God coming down

like a dove and resting on him.

A voice from heaven said, this is my son who my dearly love.

I find happiness in him.

This is the word of God for the people of God.

Thanks be to God.

Let us pray.

Lord, open our hearts, our minds, and our eyes that we might see and know

the word you have for us this day.

In your holy name we pray.

Amen.

So there are professions that get questions.

As soon as you say what you do.

Immediately people have questions.

This is not an exhaustive list, but I know this happens to doctors.

I know it happens to lawyers, certainly to therapists, and after being married for

23 years to a computer systems engineer, it happens to computer professionals as

well, and it certainly happens to pastors.

Now, when people ask me what I do and I say that I'm a pastor, I

usually get one of two reactions.

One is.

People recoil in horror and seek to get somewhere else

like, oh, I gotta go, sorry.

You know, out the door they go.

Or they have a lot of questions and I certainly love the second response.

And it's great when people bring their questions to me and I can dig deep

with them and we can reflect on things.

And I feel like I'm helping a little bit with their faith journey.

And that's powerful, powerful work.

And most of the time it doesn't matter where that happens.

I'm happy that that occasion occurred most of the time recently, however,

it happened in a swimming pool.

I know we call it the deep end, but it's the depth of the water, not the

depth of the theological questions.

But nonetheless, that's where we were when this gentleman, um, came up with.

Questions.

And he had toughies, not an easy breezy conversation we're having here.

He wants to know things like what happens on the cross and what is

salvation and what does Paul mean in such and such verse, right?

And we're standing here having this conversation in basically what is the

socially acceptable version of underwear.

So, you know, I'd have picked somewhere else, but here we are.

The very first question that he started with though was,

what does baptism really do?

And he followed up with, which is more important, baptism

with water or by the spirit.

We're gonna look at his questions today, not in the swimming pool, and we're

gonna use Jesus's own experience of baptism for us to understand a little

bit better about what happens in baptism.

As we get ready for that though, it's important for us to sort of frame up what

cleansing rituals of the first century looked like and what they represented.

So Jesus comes to be baptized by John, and John is doing a baptism of repentance.

A turning away.

A turning around a. And we believe that it is likely that John was an

essene, which was a Jewish sect.

Um, if you've ever heard of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Essenes are

responsible for the Dead Sea Scrolls.

So it's a Jewish sect that took very seriously, that ritual purity

that needed to happen, the cleansing of sins that regularly needed to

occur, especially before you ate.

Or before you prayed, so before every meal and before every prayer,

there was a cleansing ritual that took place and that was a, please

Lord forgive me of my sins ritual.

It is different from the cleansing ritual that took place in more

traditional Judaism that took place to prepare you to go into the temple.

So if you go into Jerusalem, you'll see a ton of baths.

Right outside of the temple.

So you would take a bath to prepare to go into the temple.

Wouldn't that be fun if we had showers right out here?

Right.

Um, just a little bit like the swimming pool, right?

They make you, they tell you to take a shower before you go in the swimming

pool anyway, so before you went into the temple, you did a ritual bath or.

When you are marking, moving from an unclean to a clean

state, and remember, unclean and clean were not moral judgements.

They were recognitions of moving from one state to another.

So after you had a baby, for instance, you would have a ritual cleansing to move

you from an unclean to a clean state.

And when you are healed of a disease.

You would have a ritual cleansing to mark your healing.

You're moving from an unclean to a clean state, or if you touched a

dead body, you would have to move from an unclean to a clean state.

Those were some examples of what was happening, and like I said,

it's a little bit different than what John was calling people to,

which was a baptism of repentance.

When Jesus shows up and wants to be baptized, John immediately objects.

No, I cannot baptize you because he recognizes that Jesus does

not need to repent of his sin.

So no, no, no.

Let's not do this.

I need to be baptized by you, not the other way around.

And Jesus's response is, we need to do this to fulfill all righteousness.

What does that mean?

Well, I think the key to what that means lies in what happens

in the course of Jesus' baptism.

Did anybody here notice that Luke and Matthew do not agree

on what God says at that moment

In Luke, God says, you are my son.

You are my beloved.

And you.

I am well pleased.

It is a loving gift and announcement for Jesus about the love of God that

pours over Jesus Christ in that moment.

It's an abundant declaration of God's love.

Matthew says, this is my son whom I love in him.

I am pleased.

That is an announcement for the community.

This is my son.

Acknowledge that.

Pay attention to that.

This is an announcement for all of you.

This is a public recognition of who Jesus Christ is.

His special, unique relationship to God.

That is a fulfillment of righteousness because we confuse all the time.

We think righteousness is in doing the right thing,

but righteousness is actually being in right relationship.

So there's that acknowledgement of the fullness of God's love and

this invitation to the whole of the community, so God and the community are

in right relationship through Jesus.

And the other thing that happens is that the Holy Spirit descends

like a dove and rests on Jesus.

And then Jesus' public ministry begins.

It is acknowledgement that the Holy Spirit empowers Jesus for the

ministry that is ahead gifts Jesus for the work that is before him.

Y'all let's What happens in our baptisms too?

We recognize two sacraments in the United Methodist Church, baptism and communion.

Let's remember what a sacrament is.

First of all, we acknowledge those two as a sacrament because

they are things that Jesus did.

And so as we are trying to emulate Jesus, we emulate those things that Jesus did.

But in the United Methodist Church, we specifically define

a sacrament as an outward sign.

Of God's invisible grace, and remember that I help people understand grace

by saying it's God's loving presence with us throughout our lives.

Right?

So God's love, it's a sign, it's a physical reality.

It's a representation of the love that God heaps into our lives.

So when we are being baptized, we are baptized by water and

the spirit is not an either or.

As the gentleman in the swimming pool framed it as it is a both and

we are baptized by water and the spirit just as Jesus was, and it

is to fulfill all righteousness.

It sets us in right relationship with God and with others.

Through two things.

It allows the pouring out of God's love on us.

It's a recognition that God's grace is already at work in our lives.

We are already loved and called beloved children by God, which

is why we can baptize babies or toddlers as the case may be.

We can baptize them because we already know that God loves them.

That love is already poured out all over Samuel.

And Jack and all of us that are in here, whether we've been baptized or not, but

the baptism allows a public representation of the pouring out of that love, and

it allows us to confess Jesus Christ as our Lord to serve him in union with

the church, which Christ has offered to all people, all nations, all ages.

So it is.

That receiving of that love, that pouring out of that love and the public

declaration, that Jesus is God's son.

And when those things are done, we are in right relationship with God and others.

We have fulfilled all righteousness.

And that's why we use water as a symbol of the pouring out

of that love and that grace.

But it is a symbol.

It is not the power.

We recognize that there's some cleansing that happens.

We do a confession of our sins when we take our vows, but for us, the

power is not in that, and the power is certainly not in the water.

The power is in God, and it's just a public acknowledgement that God's

power has already been at work with us.

So we do it once and not again.

Because to do it again is like saying God's love and power

didn't take well, uh, sorry.

It did.

It did.

It only needs to be done once to show that public acknowledgement

of what's happening and baptism is not necessary for salvation.

If it was the power of salvation lies in the water and the pastor

and, oh, good God, do not make me in charge of salvation.

God can save anytime, anywhere, anyhow, what or no, pastor or no.

God's salvation is already extended to us all.

So if you know someone who died, who wasn't baptized, let it go

and trust in the Lord, because that's where salvation lies.

Now, we did do a Holy Spirit blessing over Samuel.

We called upon the Holy Spirit to be present in his life.

We marked him for ministry.

In this world, a ministry.

He's already called to a giftedness.

God has already given him just like it's already given to all of us, but

we acknowledged it and we promised and help him be that person and know

this God, because we also have to fulfill all righteousness for him.

If you have been baptized every time you encounter water, I wanna invite you

to think of God's love heaped on you.

There's water up here at the end of church if you wanna come up, or if you

happen to be one of the ones coming up here for communion and you wanna touch

the water and remember that, do so.

But remember it with every drink you take, every raindrop that falls.

Every tear on your cheek.

I want you to remember in the presence of water that that is a representation

of God's love heaped on you and of God's empowerment through the Holy

Spirit to do great things for the Lord.

If you haven't been baptized and you would like to be.

Catch me.

Catch me here.

Look, we already have water that's already blessed.

I can work with it.

Catch me at a water fountain.

Also a convenient place.

Catch me at a coffee shop.

I can work with coffee and if we're at the swimming pool, great.

Perfect place to say I wanna be baptized.

All that water right there ready to go, but you may just still have

questions and that's wonderful.

Catch me here.

Ask me those questions.

Catch me at the water fountain.

Ask those questions.

Catch me at the coffee shop.

Ask those questions, and if you happen to see me at the swimming pool,

maybe make a mental note to call me tomorrow and ask me those questions.

Wherever, whenever, however.

Know that you are loved and beloved, and know that you're empowered by God.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

Matt Nelson: Thanks for listening to the Sermon podcast from First United

Methodist Church in downtown Bentonville.

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Grace and peace.