The Baptism of Christ
Isaiah 55:1-11
Romans 6:1-11

God is totally different to us. God’s thoughts are not ours, and God’s ways are not ours.

The words Isaiah uses: דרכים and מחשבות, are quite well translated by “ways” and “thoughts”. They conjure up, for me at least, the image of decisions. God thinks, calculates, considers things in a way totally different to us. The featured image I’ve put on this post is one of a fork in the road, but I’ve chosen an aerial view to communicate an idea of height, distance and sheer difference. It isn’t just that God chooses a different road for a better route to the destination, rather they are on a totally different plane and on a totally different road, one unavailable to us as fallen, sinful creatures.

For example, if someone were to walk up to me now, snatch the laptop on which I’m typing, and run away with it. I would probably consider that to be a sin, and I would consider myself to be the victim. It would be difficult, from my point of view and from the difficulty that would put me in, to see anything else. What about the reasons for which the laptop was stolen though? The thief could have any number of reasons from a desperation for money from living in the same society that allows me to exist comfortably, or some untreated mental health condition that the society I contribute to stigmatizes and underfunds treatment for. From God’s perspective, we’re both sinners. God’s heart breaks for both sinner and victim, and so much of the time we are both.

But it’s impossible to know the reasons for anyone else’s actions, even our own actions are often strange and unclear. We’re not even on the road where the fork is, and even if we we’re we’d be incapable of making the decsion. Is this God’s-eye perspective something that is possible or even desirable?

Isaiah calls us to forsake our ways and return to יהוה for abundant pardon, for life, for water, wine, milk, and bread without price. These ways are desirable, and there is cleary some mechanism of reaching them. This is the purpose of the Word which leave’s God’s mouth to return only when it has been accomplished.

The Word is like water. It descends to the earth to grow grain, which in turn is made into bread and enriches humanity. The Word returns only once it has been ingested by us, once it has sustained us, once it has given us that life to which we are called. This is the eucharistic gospel: we are sustained by the very same energy that set the cosmos in motion, by the power which is totally different from our thoughts and ways of sin and death.

The Word is like water. We are baptized into it. It is the mechanism of our cleansing and the mark of our death. As Paul affirms, we are dead to sin because we are co-crucified with Christ. We are alive to God because we are co-resurrected with Christ. This is the baptismal good news: we are washed, renewed, marked, and held by the life that overcame death. We are adopted into the family of God, and become totally different from this decaying cosmos of sin and death.

What then does this mean? As those who have been baptized in the water and sustained by the bread which are of God? To be marked and sustained as totally different from our whole paradigm? Are we under immense pressure to be perfect from now on lest we disprove the gospel and make God a liar? By no means!

To reverse Paul’s train of thought, there is still the potential for sin, that’s what he’s already said in chapter 5. The good news there is that sin is the very place where grace abounds. The parched land is the very place where the rain falls. We, the hungry, are the very ones who are fed. We, the sinful, are the very ones who die to sin.

What has changed in us isn’t that we are or ought to be capable of walking God’s ways and thinking God’s thoughts. What has changed is that we are brought near, set apart, made holy. What has changed is that our sinful ways and thoughts are no longer the reason for our lives, but something far greater is in store for us.

So let’s neither beat ourselves up nor commit to more sin, but lean into the resurrection promise that we are alive for something totally different.