Taking the Plunge

Easter is on the horizon, so for the next three weeks, we’re going to follow water-stories that revolve around Jesus. Today, Jesus takes the plunge.

Ah, the amazing wonder of water!  Many religions practice ritual washing. Hindus plunge into the Ganges. Shinto worshippers in Japan seek cleansing under waterfalls, orthodox Jews use a mikvah to represent a flowing stream.
  

Baptism is an act of abandoning yourself to the water and embracing the purity, healing and renewal the water represents. It calls for courage and resolve. It says, ‘forget decorum, to hell with face-saving, a new life beckons, it’s time to answer the call’.

800 years before John the Baptist, the Syrian general Naaman, who had a dire skin disease, came to Israel looking for help. The prophet Elisha told him to wash seven times in the Jordan River and he would be healed. At first Naaman was offended - the Jordan was a mediocre river, quite inferior to the rivers of his homeland. But in the end he humbled himself, plunged in, and the God of Israel healed him.

John the Baptist called Israel to a similar humbling, a humbling of national repentance from a life-style that had become more pagan than covenantal. He called Israel to return to their spiritual entry point at the Jordan and to wash away their sins like Naaman.

Jesus joined the crowds who heeded the words of John. It wasn't that he had personal sins to confess, but he chose to ‘number himself with the transgressors’, as Isaiah had said, to confess his love for God and his solidarity with Israel, to stand with a nation that needed to repent.  Down to the Jordan he went, into the waters of death, the waters of judgment and mercy, drenched in obedience and sacrifice.

Here was the True Israel, giving himself for God’s sake on behalf of others.

As Jesus came up out of the river, foreshadowing his own future resurrection, the heavens seemed to split open. God’s Spirit descended dove-like, and the Father’s voice spoke, announcing that in this act of Jesus, God was plunging into the affairs of earth and that God couldn’t be happier. The kingdom of God on earth was being unveiled.

This symbolic act of baptism launched Jesus on a journey to Jerusalem and eventual confrontation with the powers of darkness.  His baptism pre-figured his death and resurrection, the historic event from which a new humanity was born.

As the Anglican Prayer Book says, “to be a Christian is to be part of a new creation which rises from the dark waters of Christ’s death into the dawn of his risen life. Christians are not just baptized individuals; they are a new humanity.”

That is why Jesus took the plunge. This is the great community and the great adventure we plunge into when we resolve to follow him. This is the great joy we miss when we plunge into lesser things.