Sermon – My Best Self

Exodus 14:1-30a; Mark 1:4-12

Farmville Presbyterian Church

1/12/25

 

If you have ever tried to teach someone else to swim, one of the biggest hurdles can be actually getting into the water.  My wife used to teach community swimming lessons, and I even helped a little toward the beginning.  Getting kids to jump into the water or to put their faces in can be a real feat.  We had the same struggle with our own children – challenging, encouraging, cajoling, promising, maybe even threatening (ok, maybe not that one).  Somehow, they all made it in and learned how to swim somewhat, but making that first step or leap or dive is nothing easy.

My own experience with swim lessons was less edifying.  The only lessons I recall ever having was while I was visiting grandparents in upstate Ohio with complete strangers.  At some point my very buoyant grandmother decided to get in the water with me, and she compelled me to try to push her down under the water because she wanted to dive.  There are some memories in my life that I wish I could forget and that is one.

In early high school, somehow I got trapped on the swim team.  I was so bad that they made me practice with the younger kids.  Competitive swimming was not my thing, but I guess they had NO ONE else to swim the events.  I remember doing back, free, breast, and butterfly.  The only event I ever beat anyone was the backstroke, and that was just one person.  I felt sorry for Herbie.  We went to school together, and he had to live with the shame of being beaten by the Creekwood Crawler – me.

When I was forced to go to camp as a child, it was the last thing I wanted to do.  The mountains of North Carolina with a bunch of strangers was not my happy place, and it was hard not to feel something like trapped there for that week.  Then, I found something that I could do because I wanted to.  I discovered polar bear swims.  Every morning, we could go down to the lake and jump in first thing.  Boy, that water was cold.  Most of the few people who did it only did it once and headed back.  I would jump in again and again.  It was my choice.  I was deciding who I wanted to be in that moment of self-determination.  It got easier once I numbed up a bit, and I never got hypothermia, but I always made sure I had jumped in more times than anyone else.  I needed that for myself.  That drove me into the water.

Something does need to drive us into the water.  Something does need to make us take the plunge.  In my little stories, each one says something about my life and who I was.  In coming to the water, I had to face things about myself that were difficult, maybe even things that I didn’t like about myself.  I had to confront my weaknesses, my shortcomings, and my insecurities.  The water did not cure me, but it did help me see better who I needed to be – someone who could face challenges.  I did not want to be in the water, not really for those reasons, but if I was going to jump in, I would learn about myself.

Believe it or not, that is also what’s going on in our stories today.

When Pharoah was chasing down the people of Israel after he had let them leave, he discovered them trapped between him and water of the Red Sea.  They had no escape.  They knew there was no escape.  You heard their exclamations of fear and dread and anger toward Moses, “You brought us here to die!  We would have been better off being slaves in Egypt than dying here!”  Just before, God had told Moses that this would happen.  The writer wants us to not be terrified as the people were.  This was in God’s hand.  What the people needed to see, however, is how they could follow God even into impossible places.  They needed to see how they could be faithful to the God who delivered them, even when the path was through a sea.  They had to see themselves as faithful followers.  This is who they were made to be, who they were called to be, and who they were redeemed to be.  God delivered them from Egypt and the hand of Pharoah so that they could be God’s faithful people.  They could do it.  They crossed and they were saved.  From then on, the Exodus was a defining moment for them.  The same water showed Pharoah how powerless he was before God.  Water showed those who entered it who they really were.

Water is a force of chaos and death as well as life and salvation in the Bible.  Big water, stormy water, deep water is the stuff of danger and death and chaos.  Peaceful water, calm water, drinking water is the kind of water Jesus envisions when he says he gives Living Water.  The Lord our Shepherd leads us by still waters.  In John’s Apocalyptic vision of the life to come, the sea is no more but is like glass in God’s victory.

We saw just recently in dramatic ways how water can show us something important.  In the Richmond area, water became precious and unavailable.  We take water for granted, and as we do not have it, lives become stressed and difficult, even to the point of crisis.  I love the story of the Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, about a young Malawian boy who through a series of struggles and setbacks, devises how to build a windmill to save his village from starvation.  He uses junk and his inventive mind to create an irrigation system.  I doubt any of us has watched our community literally come to the brink of starvation, but so many communities live with water scarcity.  It is a good movie based on this true story of an unlikely hero who discovered who he was in his dream of finding water for his family and his community.

Jesus also came to the water to find who he was.  It is strange to say that, but John the Baptizer was there at the Jordan River to help people reclaim their place in God’s family.  People had forgotten, had drifted away, or had never known how important they were to God’s heart.  John was there to remind them and to call them to new life.  That is what repentance is all about.  Mark wants us to see how people who were living one way and thought of themselves in one way needed to discover themselves as someone else.  They came to the water and left a changed person.  Literally, their minds changed; their hearts changed.  They were more the way God that created them to be.  Jesus did not have the need for repentance, per se, but even he came to reveal to us all who he was.  As he emerged from the water, God’s own voice claimed Jesus and named him.  He was washed in God’s Spirit.  In that moment, he became the Christ, our Messiah, the Anointed One.

Any unforgiven sin or brokenness that we carry prevents us from being the people that we want to be.  It prevents us from seeing ourselves or others the way we are meant to be seen.  It prevents us from getting along in the ways we are supposed to live.  This is why we need the gift of repentance in the grace of God.  We are washed and freed.  We are washed and renewed.  We are washed and become more like the people we were created to be.  We should never forget what it means to be baptized.  There is no magic here.  The water itself is not holy.  What it does for you and for me, however, is very holy.  It shows us on the outside what God’s Spirit is doing on the inside.  We are cleansed and freed to be more the people we wished we were.  We are cleansed and freed to be more the people God knows we are.

In a few minutes, you will have the opportunity to come forward and reconnect with the gift of baptism.  If you have been baptized, remember you are washed in God’s grace to be your best self.  If you are not baptized and you feel the desire to learn more, come see me and let’s talk.  The Spirit stirs our waters in ways that surprise us and call us into deeper water.  The Spirit is moving right now to comfort us in the confidence of Christ and to reclaim us as a washed people.

It might feel like we are still the same old, same old, but that is why we have moments like these to reconnect us to God’s renewing presence.  Even the oldest person here is still a child of God.  The water still shows us all how precious and new we are.  Yes, friends, come and reclaim your place in God’s family.  Be loved, be precious, and be redeemed.  Be your best self.  To God be the glory.  Amen.