Remember your baptism?
The Story of Jesus (and the New Exodus)
My youngest daughter followed Jesus through the waters of baptism just two short months ago. All four of my daughters have taken this step in reenacting Jesus’ story, and yet this is just one scene.
Blessing, covenant, testing - these are all scenes they’ll act out, too. This is one reason why we’ve been following this story through every covenant in the Bible. Because these stories, too, reenact them over and over again. And when we know where we’re at in the story, Jesus can help us subvert it, too. (But more on that in future weeks.)
In this week’s story, we’ll see how baptism is a reenactment of the Israelites crossing the Jordan River (which was a reenactment of the Sea of Reeds…and the Flood…and Creation). After they crossed, God instructed Joshua to send one member from each tribe to pick up a stone from the middle of the Jordan - right by the feet of the priests who were standing with the ark in the middle of the river bed.
These stones were to remind them - and future generations - of how God had brought them through the waters.
In the same way, we need to remember our own baptisms. Congregations with a liturgical background have baptismal waters at the entrance for this very purpose. The water urges us “remember your baptism.”
I mainly remember how cold the water in my little country-church baptistry was. But my mom tells me I was so eager to be baptized that I didn’t exactly wait patiently for my pastor to lower me into the waters.
Apparently, daughter #3 (bottom left) took after me. I wrote this the day after her baptism:
“Go?”
Laughter. She was close to going down on her own. (Rumor has it that I was proactive in this area as well.)
But that’s the thing with baptism. We don’t pass through the waters on our own. We have to be helped.
John (“Yahweh is Gracious”) helped Jesus.
It was an echo of how Yahweh had dammed up that same river for the Israelites. And split the sea for Moses. And receded the waters for Noah.
And divided the waters at creation.
On the other side of those waters lay a pathway to a garden. To Eden. Then a vineyard. Then a promised land. For Jesus, it led to Gethsemane.
And finally it will lead us to the long-awaited Garden City that teaches shalom.
In baptism, we physically enter into this grand story and make our way to our own Sinai - our own “thorny bush” of a covenant mountain. Our own communion with God and His family.
It’s a story that grounds us in God’s intended goodness for this world.
For between the waters and the garden lays a covenant partnership to join with God in blessing the earth with His rule and reign and Presence. It’s at the heart of our vocation as imagers of God.
Jesus‘ thorny crown in our Sinai. His cup is our own. His Spirit the one that enlivens us. Our embodiment of His love the evidence of our covenant partnership.
We need to help one another remember our baptisms too. Not the physical facts like the temperature of the water, but the truth of it: that Jesus has brought us through the waters to bring us into communion with him. We aren’t alone. And even when we find ourselves in a wild place, he is with us, tabernacling with us, giving us gifts of Eden in the wilderness, as he invites us to join him in renewing creation. We are part of a New Exodus.
- Amber
Story of the Week: The Story of Jesus
We’ve been exploring how God and His human partners keep reliving the Story of God, Humanity, and Creation.
In the second part of the Story of God and Israel’s Family, God brings the family of Israel out of the wilderness and into a garden-land. But this story ends like the rest of them do: with God’s partners leaving the garden, just like Moses knew they would.
They are in exile. God’s temple – the place where the hot-spot of His presence had lived – was destroyed. However, God’s presence had already left it.
A very small group return to the garden-land. Most of them are from the tribe of Judah, and they become known as “Jews”. Their land becomes known as Judea.
Judea is more of a waste-land than a garden. In order for God’s blessing to overflow from this land to the nations, this garden needed to be a hot-spot of God’s presence. God’s human partners needed to rule it with His wisdom. Instead, other nations told them what they could and couldn’t do. They build a new temple for God, but it never becomes the hot-spot of God’s presence…
Until Jesus arrives.
And when Jesus arrives on the scene (500 years after they return), the King of Judea is acting a lot like Pharaoh. The Jews are desperately waiting for “the seed” (aka the Messiah) to come and bring them back into Eden for good.
This sets the stage for Jesus to relive the story. And this time, the story is finally going to get a different ending. But Jesus isn’t what most people were looking for in a Messiah. And the new ending is really a new beginning.
The rest of the family guide for the Story of Jesus is available here:
The New Exodus
Here’s another piece of AI art from Tim Hall. Do you see the Spirit coming down like a dove? Tim writes, “This piece invites us to meditate on the parallels between Jesus' baptism, the Exodus, and the New Creation (and even deeper, the creation itself).”
And if this art reminds you of Jesus walking on water and calming the seas, that’s no mistake. Jesus’ disciples weren’t just amazed at the miracle of what he was doing - they were amazed at what those miracles represented.
Celebrating Giver of Rest
Thank you to everyone who helped us celebrate the launch of Giver of Rest this past week! We were able to give away a coffee table book and several poster books from our friends at BibleProject! If you didn’t win one but still want hard copies, you can download the posters for free here:
Or you can buy the books here:
A Blessing
May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all (II Cor. 13:14).
In grace and truth,
Nicole and Amber
