January 8, 2017 Matthew 3.13-17

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?”
But Jesus answered him,
“Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.”
Then John consented.
And when Jesus had been baptized,
just as he came up from the water,
suddenly the heavens were opened to him
and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him.
And a voice from heaven said,
“This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

***
I was riding down our snowy mountain with Lisa Lauch, listening to her tell of her father’s recent funeral service. The things she and her brothers remembered and experienced differently now, like how hard it had been to put on skis for the first time since his passing, as he had taught her, holding her upright, her skis between his own when she was barely knee high. This past-time which had become and remained such a passion for her, came from him. She talked too, of how easily and unexpectedly the tears came, with memories she didn’t even realize were memories until they were no longer there, like calling her mother knowing she wouldn’t hear her father’s voice. She talked of the initial impossibility and ultimate catharsis of writing her father a eulogy and the subsequent inability to speak it, and how her own brother got choked up by her words. In the thick of her narration, something, low and grew moved just beyond a berm off the left hand shoulder of the road. In the road’s channel abutted by steep solid snow any movement and sudden change of color became an easy alert, a white surrender flag waving wildly over a hunkered down green battlefield. And before either of us could say anything, or even stop the sentence Lisa was speaking, a large grey spotted cat raced across the road. Even with its thoroughbred speed, time seemed to stop, its giant winter fur paws stretched and planted, its back bounded and lengthened, and just as it disappeared into the slope on the far side, its ears tufted left their imprint like a picture of shadow gone by.

I had clasped my hands in excitement, “I’ve never seen one, I’ve never seen one! I am so excited!” as Lisa pulled slowly over to a convenient shoulder. As the shock of what we had seen, settled in on us both, a couple cars past, unknowing the sight ten seconds difference would have made for them, nor what awakening was underway in the shouldered Subaru. “That was amazing,” we said over and over, as we relived each modicum of description we could remember, trying to name what we later identified as a bobcat.

We were paused there for awhile, not ready to move on, the moment having not left us yet, the humility of the rare experience still unsettling reality’s sense of routine,
and the coincidence of the conversation about her father creating meaning as if he and the Spirit had touched down upon us. I felt as if I had met her father, the bobcat and Lisa’s description of him came so intrinsically tied. Then, I remembered this verse, and said,

“You know, the scripture for Sunday is, the Baptism of Jesus, and just as he is coming out of the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him
and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him.
And a voice from heaven said,
“This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

I didn’t have to explain, as Lisa understood, as we laid our fresh memory over the scripture and felt the portents of both. That coming down the mountain was our River Jordan, that baptism happened in the middle of a road and the depths of the water was the depths of her memories of her father, and there the heavens opened, and with the rush of a bobcat the Spirit descended like a dove up on us, and a voice said, “This is my daughter, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

And I can only imagine how John the Baptist felt, the intimacy of another human in his arms, like the hearing of Lisa’s memories. And then, seemingly so coincidentally, us both, privy to witness God touching down in front of us, a bobcat and a dove, and hearing the father’s voice.

I remember with Maddie and Alex, my first baptism, the way I wept, without really knowing why, just being overcome, the way God was so alive and present, beyond our claiming or knowing, or being. I was in awe, the grace of holding other people’s children in my arms, and lifting them all the way up to the font, touching their heads with water, and speaking Madaline Loretta and Alexander ___ I baptized you in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and setting them down, forever claimed by a God beyond their knowing, beyond explaining, beyond predicting, but so present in the sheer awesomeness of it all. This baptism into the humility of grace.