I love the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou. In fact, I love this movie so much that I wrote a paper about it in seminary in order to convince my professor who hated the movie to give it another watch. I don’t remember everything about the paper I wrote, but I remember making the case that the movie was an important commentary on Christian faith, baptism, and belonging. After reading my paper, my professor wrote, “I’m not sure we watched the same movie. But in any case, you’ve made me think I need to go back and watch it again. I definitely missed something.”

Throughout the movie, water is used as an image of new beginnings, of death to self, and of being a part of something bigger than ourselves. In the most obvious scene about this, the three escaped convicts, Everett, Delmar, and Pete are standing in the woods when they start to hear singing. Slowly, people dressed in white baptismal gowns process together toward the water. They are singing, “As I went down in the river to pray/ Studyin’ about that good ol’ way/ And who shall wear the starry crown?/ Good Lord, show me the way.” One by one, the long line of people steps into the water to receive baptism, and as they do so, Delmar is overcome with joy as he thinks about all of his past sins being washed away. He rushes into the river and pushes past everyone gathered for baptism so that he’s first in line. He says something to the preacher, and then he’s plunged into the river and baptized. 

When he’s raised from the water, he is radiating with joy. He raises his arms and says to the other two convicts he’s been traveling with, “Well that’s it, boys. I’ve been redeemed. The preacher’s done washed away all my sins and transgressions. It’s the straight and narrow from here on out, and heaven everlasting’s my reward.” Everett responds, “Delmar, what are you talking about? We’ve got bigger fish to fry.” And Delmar says, “The preacher says all my sins is washed away, including that Piggly Wiggly I knocked over in Yazoo.”

“I thought you said you was innocent of those charges?” 

Delmar admits, “Well I was lyin’. And the preacher says that that sin’s been washed away too. Neither God nor man’s got nothin’ on me now. C’mon in boys, the water is fine.”

Today is Baptism of Our Lord Sunday, and on this day we remember Jesus coming to John for baptism in the Jordan River. Matthew tells us that during John the Baptist’s ministry, people from Jerusalem, Judea, and all over the region around the Jordan were coming to him for baptism. John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance. The people came to him, confessed their sins, were baptized and raised symbolically into a new life. The Pharisees and Sadducees also came for baptism, but John warned them true repentance isn’t something we do in word only. True repentance requires bearing the fruit of repentance. True repentance requires a changed life. 

When Jesus comes for baptism, John the Baptist protests again, but for different reasons than those he had for rejecting the baptismal requests of the Pharisees and Sadducees. Diane G. Chen, professor of New Testament at Palmer Theological Seminary writes this: “Behind John’s objection were two possible reasons. First, John deemed himself to be far inferior in rank, unworthy to even carry Jesus’ sandals. So how could the lesser baptize the greater? Second, unlike everyone else who was coming for baptism, Jesus did not need to repent. While Jesus’ sinlessness is not explicitly stated in Matthew, Paul asserts that Jesus “knew no sin” (2 Corinthians 5:21), and the author of Hebrews speaks of Jesus as ‘one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin’ (Hebrews 4:15). As such, John’s protest was legitimate.” 

In the New Revised Standard Version, it says, “Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, ‘I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?’” In the Greek, the verb that’s translated “would have prevented him” is far stronger and more active than this. The verb here can be translated as “to utterly prohibit” or “utterly forbid or hinder,” and the imperfect tense used indicates a continuous, ongoing past action. When John the Baptist saw Jesus coming for baptism, John was not about to let this happen. John knew that he was unworthy to baptize Jesus, and he knew Jesus had no need for repentance, and so he drew a line in the sand and said, “Absolutely not.” 

In a way, I find John’s refusal to baptize Jesus humorous. Can you imagine knowing you are “inferior in rank” as Professor Chen put it, and still telling Jesus that he shouldn’t be doing what he is doing? And yet, isn’t that the way we are so often? The Spirit moves in our lives, and we say, “Holy Spirit, not like that. I don’t want to reach out to that person, or change my life in that way.” John the Baptist, despite knowing his place, tries to turn Jesus away, but Jesus persists. He says to John, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfil all righteousness.” And John does what Jesus asks.

For several years, I worked with Rev. Liz Testa, who is the Director of Women’s Transformation and Leadership in the Reformed Church in America. Throughout her years in this position, her role has been to help women identify their spiritual gifts, equip them for leadership, and assist churches in creating cultures in which the gifts and leadership of both men and women are celebrated and encouraged. While I worked with her, she would often sign her emails, “On the move, in the movement of the Spirit.” Her conviction was that the early church moved, adapted, and changed based on the leading of the Holy Spirit, and we should do the same in our lives. 

In the book of Acts, Peter changed his mind on the inclusion of the Gentiles when he saw that Cornelius and his family – Gentiles! – had received the Holy Spirit without first having to observe Jewish law. People – men and women – were chosen to host churches in their homes based on their means and abilities, or to deliver and read the letters of Paul to churches if they had the gifts to do so. Some were sent out as missionaries, and others shared about Jesus in their own towns while they did the jobs they were skilled in. And here, by the Jordan River, John the Baptist thought he knew what was right and proper. He believed Jesus should not be baptized by him, and yet when Jesus called him to baptize him anyway, John followed the movement of what God was doing in the world. The ministry of Jesus constantly challenged people’s ideas of how things ought to be done, and after the gift of the Holy Spirit, the early church was constantly learning and changing as they followed the movement of the Holy Spirit.

We are people who serve a God who surprises us and challenges us through the Holy Spirit. We encounter people and situations that challenge our notions of what we should or shouldn’t do, and we are called to move and change with the movement of the Holy Spirit. The problem is, change is incredibly difficult for us humans. There are many reasons for this, but one reason is that making a small change often reveals other changes that need to be made. When we change one belief, we may realize how that one belief rose out of other beliefs that now need changing. It’s kind of like when you paint a wall with a new coat of paint, and then realize how dingy everything else looks next to the freshly-painted wall. And so, rather than go through the disorienting work of changing, we avoid it. We surround ourselves with people, with voices, with evidence to support our current way of thinking and living so that we feel safer with what we know. But when the Spirit moves, we are called to be people on the move, in the movement of the Holy Spirit. Is this scary? Yes. Will it come with costs? Most likely. Will we be led in a way that leads to abundant life? Absolutely.

Jesus tells John he needs to be baptized in order to “fulfill all righteousness,” but scholars have debated what Jesus meant by that. Diane Chen writes that, “The concept of righteousness, especially in the Old Testament, is not limited to moral uprightness. More importantly, righteousness is a relational concept…Jesus, therefore, was not coming for baptism for his own sins, but he came in solidarity with the sinners whom God had sent him to save.” When John saw Jesus coming for baptism, all John could think was, “Jesus doesn’t need a baptism of repentance!” but Jesus knew it was important for him to fully identify with the people he came to save. He saw what John couldn’t see, and John was humble enough to follow Jesus’s lead even if he didn’t fully understand why it was necessary.

God is always at work in the world, in our church, and in each of our lives. The Spirit is on the move. We may not always see what God is doing, and we may not always be able to understand. Sometimes our vision is clouded by the atrocities in our world, or by the voices we listen to, or by the media we consume, but God is still moving, acting, and calling to us.

Our challenge this week as people of the Spirit caught up in the movement of the Spirit is to listen and watch for the leading of God. This is a risky challenge because what we experience may cause us to realize how deeply we need to change. We may struggle to understand, and we may only see a piece of the picture, but God will not lead us somewhere only to abandon us. Let’s commit to beginning each day with this prayer: “Lord, open my eyes to the movement of your Spirit today, and give me the courage to follow where you lead.” And then, let’s have the courage to look with our eyes, listen with our ears, and be led by the Spirit in our hearts to see this world as God sees it. May God give us the courage to hear and to follow. Amen.