Ministries Blog

The River

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By Rev. John W. Nupp

This article originally appeared in the Introduction to the 2017 Annual Conference Devotional, MOSAICS.

“Are We Yet Alive?”
John 1

What does your birth story say about who you are? My wife was born on April Fool’s Day.  When she was growing up, people would not believe it was her birthday. She endured practical jokes like sitting on tacks and getting her hair pulled.

We don’t have any control over the day we are born. In fact, we don’t get to choose much about the way life starts out for us – our families, our neighborhoods, our names, our gender or skin color or economic condition. For better or worse, we take our first breaths in this world and start crying! What will we make of this life we have been given?

Each one of us is so different, which is one thing that makes us all the same. We all share this mystery called “life.” Physical life has certain markers like nutrition and respiration; fancy ways of saying we all need to breathe and eat! But what about the life we share in Christ? I believe that our spiritual life has common markers similar to our physical characteristics. We will be looking at several examples of these markers, these signs of life given by God, in the coming weeks.

As we prepare for our time together at Annual Conference under the theme, “We are One:  Connected in Covenant,” we will come back again and again to the rivers of our baptism. The covenant of baptism binds us together in a common story, together with all our brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ, just as our birth stories say something unique about our identities. God reminds us of the common curses and blessings of being human, but gives us a sense of belonging to a common family.

When people set out to tell about the life of Jesus, some started with the story of his birth. You can read about this through Joseph’s point of view in Matthew’s gospel, or see the nativity through Mary’s eyes in the words of St. Luke. The earliest record, Mark, starts right in with the Baptism of our Lord, and this is where the Gospel writer John returns when he comes back again to retell the story of Jesus.  

We witness the Word of God walking along the banks of the River Jordan, surrounded by saints and sinners.  That prophet, John the Baptizer, points to him, witnesses about him, testifies that here is the One who baptizes with the Holy Spirit! Certainly, it was important that Jesus was born, that he entered fully into this mess of sharing the human condition, with a name and a neighborhood, a family and a face. But here is some good news: Jesus is creating something new – a new creation, a new covenant!

Unlike our human birth, which plunges us into this river of life whether we like it or not, Jesus invites us into a new life. While the water baptism practiced by John was immersed in the repentance of sins and entrance into the covenant community of Moses, Jesus brings a new promise. Here comes one promising to pour out the gift of God’s very presence in the person of the Holy Spirit. To all who receive him, to all who believe in that Name, God grants power to become children; not children born of flesh and blood, not defined only by race or gender, status or skin-color, but defined by God because they are born of God. And not “they” but “we” – this is who we are, this is our life together in Christ.

 

Reflection

What does your birth story say about who you are?

What does your baptism say about whose you are?

How do each of these stories define you?

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