Richard Davenport
January 12, 2025 – The Baptism of Our Lord
Isaiah 43:1-7
There’s the scene toward the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, where Indiana is working his way through the traps that protect what is supposed to be the resting place of the Holy Grail, the legendary cup that is said to be the one Jesus used at the Last Supper and which now has healing powers. He stands at the edge of a precipice that cannot be crossed. The clue he has is that he must take a leap of faith. He must step out into the void and trust that somehow God will save him and convey him to the other side.
Throughout the various Indiana Jones movies, we see that Indiana accepts that there are supernatural beings and that miraculous things can happen, for good or for ill. He doesn’t seem drawn to any religion in particular, given that he interacts with holy relics from Christianity and Hinduism, as well aliens, and even sees the miraculous power of math. Still, as he stands at the edge of the cliff, he finds himself having a crisis. His senses tell him there is nothing in front of him except empty air. There is no reason to believe he will do anything but fall into the blackness, but he also has no other option but to try.
I can imagine the Israelites thinking much the same thing. There they are, standing at the edge of the sea. Pharoah and his armies have set off after them, but there is nowhere for them to run. They are hundreds of thousands, perhaps even a million people, all who have just been released from captivity in Egypt. They have kids. They have elderly. They are carrying all of their worldly possessions. Even if they had a place to go, they’d have no chance of outrunning healthy, trained fighting men, not to mention horses and chariots.
God tells Moses to raise his staff. The wind blows and the water, impossibly, parts before them. The Red Sea isn’t exactly small. To drive the water back and keep it there in a towering wall on each side is something mankind could probably do with our modern engineering knowledge, but it would be a very long, very expensive, and very arduous process. It certainly wouldn’t be something we could just wave our hands and make happen.
So there you are, standing on the shore, walls of water towering over your head, and all you’re told is, “Follow me.” At this point, God is hanging out with them as a pillar of fire and cloud. It’s all fine for him if the water comes crashing back down. It isn’t going to hurt him at all, but everyone else will be swept away. There’s the little fact too that they aren’t exactly marching through something like the Arkansas River. Assuming there was a path through it, it would only take you a few minutes to get to the other side. Not so here, even the Gulf of Suez, the part of the Red Sea that separates Egypt from the Sinai Peninsula, is substantial. It would take you quite a while to get to the other side and that’s without having to tend to kids and elderly folks, that’s without carrying all of your worldly possessions, that’s without having to keep track of hundreds of thousands of people. Yet, here we are, at the edge of the sea, and we’re told to march.
The Israelites had seen many wonders over the past months, horrible plagues that managed to ravage the Egyptian people while completely avoiding you. There’s no doubt that these plagues were miraculous and that God was declaring his opposition to the false gods of Egypt and its prideful ruler. Standing there on the edge of where the water should be, looking up at it as it towers overhead, knowing that even if the water doesn’t come crashing down on you right away, you have a long trek ahead of you and that protection could be taken away at any moment.
So what makes you take that step? What could convince you that this was a risk worth taking? In the case of Indiana Jones, it was the only way he knew of to save his father. In the case of the Israelites, it’s the threat of immanent death. In either case, if action wasn’t taken soon, there would be very serious consequences. It’s not too often we run into situations like that in our own lives. We aren’t action movie stars that have to decide whether to run into the burning building to save someone or whether to face down the crazed knife-wielding killer. Our problems tend to be a little more mundane. They may have far reaching effects. They may cause a lot of anxiety. They may mean hardship. But, they probably aren’t going to directly threaten your life.
You find out you have cancer or some other major ailment. The doctor tells you there isn’t a whole lot he can do, but there is an experimental treatment that may help. The problem is that it will cost a lot and there are no guarantees it will work. Do you take the leap of faith? Do you go for it even though it may mean hardship, even though the doctor says it may not work at all?
You’ve been having trouble making ends meet. Bills have gone up and you just don’t have enough to cover it anymore. You’ve been offered a job across the country that pays more, but it means packing up and moving. It means leaving your friends here behind. It means being far away from family. You don’t even know if you’ll like the job or the people you’ll be working with. Moving is always a huge undertaking. Moving when there are so many unknowns on the other end. Do you take the leap of faith? Do you risk taking all of the time and energy to make the move? Do you go, knowing it could all end in disaster?
Just about any big decision you make could be seen this way. Marriage, becoming a parent, a new job, a major change in lifestyle, what makes you go through with it, knowing that at any moment it could all just come crashing down? Why risk it? At least where you are you know what to expect. Staying where you are may mean difficulties too, but you won’t be surprised by them.
You’re supposed to trust God, so you take the leap. You step out into the unknown, into what looks like danger…and you find that instead of being buoyed across to safety, you’re in freefall. You trusted, but now it’s all falling apart. Why did God tease you like that? Why did he tempt you into rushing into the unknown? You should have known better. You should have seen it coming. It looked like danger and it was. You trusted blindly and now you’re paying the price for it. What a fool you were to trust in the first place. God doesn’t really keep his promises after all. It was up to you to fix things all along.
That blind trust that we hear now and then is a tricky thing. It sounds so good. It sounds so righteous. It sounds exactly like what we should do. Wherever we go, we trust God. That’s what God is always telling his people. Trust him, and everything will turn out fine.
It is what we should do. We should trust God at all times. But, as with any good thing, we twist it into something it isn’t. Our trust isn’t in made up things. That’s what false gods are. Whether they are statues of some made up being or whether they are worldly ideas that promise security, false gods take all different forms. They can even be us. When we talk about faith, we naturally think of God as we come to church and hear the Bible read to us. But, God reveals himself to us and tells us how the world works, not the other way around. We trust in what God says, but we don’t get to put words in his mouth.
If you want to move across the country and take a job, you can do that. God will be with you regardless, but he doesn’t promise that it will go well. It may not go well at all, but he will still be with you through it, just as he promised. God doesn’t promise that any particular decision you make in life will be a good one, or that it will give you success or happiness or any other thing you might think. We don’t get to blame him for not making good on a promise he never made.
Instead, we look to what he did promise. Deciding whether to move and take a job is a very different situation than what the Israelites faced on the shore of the Red Sea. They didn’t need to wonder or worry. God promised. He told them they would be safe. They made a leap of faith stepping out on the path God had cleared for them, but there was no uncertainty to it. Each step they took was on the path laid by God’s mighty word that parted the sea. No harm would come to them. God said so.
Jesus is baptized in the Jordan at the beginning of his ministry. He brings the promise of God to the waters of baptism. You plunge into the dark waters, not sure what you will find, not sure what will happen to you, but there is nothing to fear. Like the Israelites of old, you go into the water, but God promises to bring you out again. Not only will you come out of the water unharmed, but you will be free from Satan’s grasp. Death is drowned and can’t chase you anymore. He has brought you to the other side, the first step on an eternal journey as his disciple. He will lead you where you need to go. If you hear his word and trust it, then you will know that place to be safe, his word being the firm foundation for every step you take.
Trust in the promise God has made to you in your baptism. You are forgiven. Christ himself defends you against sin, death, and Satan. In his death, you are set free. Trust that, as a disciple, he will continue to lead you even in death. His path does not end in the tomb, but goes out into the glorious light that shines through the opening on Easter morning. Do not trust in your own assumptions about what God will do. Trust in what God says. You are baptized. He has claimed you as his child. He will never abandon or cast out any child who trusts in him. He has forgiven you. He will protect you and strengthen you, even when you stride off into the unknowns in this world. You may struggle and you may find life difficult, but you need not fear. He is already leading you on a path that leads out of this mortal life of sadness into a glorious and eternal one.