This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 69; Judges 5:1-18; Acts 2:1-21; Matthew 28:1-10

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 10 (“The Second Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 55:6-11; BCP, p. 86); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9-10, 13, BCP, p. 93)

Psalm 69 & a song for deliverance from drowning waters. With raw honesty in Psalm 69, David confesses his sinfulness, while asking that the Lord’s honor nonetheless not be besmirched at the hands of those who are endangering his life. Despite his own faults, he protests the injustice of the accusations of his enemies, and he laments the shame of his abandonment by friends and family. In doing all this, he anticipates specific features of Christ’s experience 1,000 years later: zeal for his Father’s house (Psalm 69:9; John 2:15), the bearing of insult on God’s behalf (Psalm 69:9; Romans 15:3), and being offered sour wine for his thirst (Psalm 69:21; Matthew 27:34, 48). 

In all of this, David thinks of himself being threatened by drowning waters:

1 Save me, O God, *for the waters have risen up to my neck.2 I am sinking in deep mire, *and there is no firm ground for my feet.3 I have come into deep waters, *and the torrent washes over me.

16 Save me from the mire; do not let me sink; *let me be rescued from those who hate meand out of the deep waters.17 Let not the torrent of waters wash over me,neither let the deep swallow me up; *do not let the Pit shut its mouth upon me.

It’s hard to imagine a better setup to Jesus’s dramatic question, in anticipation of the Cross: “Are you able to … be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” (Mark 10:38). 

Judges 5 & a song of celebration for rescuing waters. Deborah’s song in Judges 5 recalls the way God enabled Israel’s victory over the Canaanite chariots (per yesterday’s narrative in Joshua 4) by a tremendous storm: 

…the heavens poured,the clouds indeed poured water. …

The torrent Kishon swept them away,    the onrushing torrent, the torrent Kishon (Judges 5:4 ,21).

It would appear that one of the reasons that the Canaanites’ mighty chariots of iron were so easily defeated by Deborah and Barak’s infantry was that Yahweh sent a mighty storm that so swelled the banks of the Kishon that the chariots had to be abandoned. As it had at the Red Sea, water proved to be a means by which the Lord brought deliverance to his people. 

Thus, Deborah’s song anticipates the other half of Jesus’s baptism on the Cross: his rising to life and victory. In the waters of the River Jordan, Jesus had identified with his people’s sins, so that in his rising from those waters he could receive power from on high to minister life and healing to them. That’s why the Holy Spirit descends upon him like a dove. That’s why he immediately journeys into the wilderness for his victorious contest with Satan. 

Baptism portrays both dying and rising. The deluge drowns evil and empowers life. The (metaphorical) waters of (literal) death that swept over Jesus were simultaneously waters that washed away the power of evil and Satan and sin and death. Drowning waters prove simultaneously to be delivering waters, for Jesus rises to restore life. Just so, Jesus’s baptism of death destroys sin, and his rising from death confers life. 

Matthew 28 and Jesus’s resurrection as baptism unto life. Here is the far side of “the baptism with which I am to be baptized”—Jesus rises unto life and strength and authority and healing presence.  With the triumphant angel at the tomb, and Matthew’s brief resurrection account, the stage is set for Jesus’s final instructions to his disciples.  Jesus announces that “all authority in heaven and on earth had been given to me,” and he commissions his followers to bring good news to all the nations of the earth. And he promises to be with them “to the end of the age.” 

Acts 2 & the baptism of the Holy Spirit. At Pentecost, the church receives its own version of the descent of the Holy Spirit upon Jesus: indeed, the Holy Spirit as Jesus’s very presence and power. Just as Jesus received the Spirit from heaven for his ministry at his baptism, so now the church receives the Spirit from heaven for her ministry at Pentecost: that “their sons and daughters may prophesy” (Acts 2:17). Now, by virtue of Jesus’s real and authoritative presence in the Holy Spirit, the nations (represented in the gathering of people from Parthia to Rome, and parts in between, in Jerusalem at Pentecost) may be discipled and baptized “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:20). 

Prayers at Baptism (Book of Common Prayer, pp. 305-306):

Deliver us, O Lord, from the way of sin and death. Lord, hear our prayer. 

Open our hearts to your grace and truth. Lord, hear our prayer. 

Fill us with your holy and life-giving Spirit. Lord, hear our prayer. 

Keep us in the faith and communion of your holy Church. Lord, hear our prayer. 

Teach us to love others in the power of the Spirit. Lord, hear our prayer. 

Send us into the world in witness to your love. Lord, hear our prayer. 

Bring us to the fullness of your peace and glory. Lord, hear our prayer. … Amen.

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+