“Rembering the Ecosystem of Baptism”
A sermon preached by Rev. Sarah Henkel at Otisville-Mt. Hope Presbyterian Church on
October 19, 2025
There is not really much to add in a sermon on a Sunday when a congregation
celebrates seven baptisms and welcomes three new members. Wow! Such a joy to be
with you all in these moments of community growth.
Most of my pastorate has been spent serving in Presbytery leadership so this morning’s
baptisms more than tripled the number of baptisms I’ve had the privilege of performing.
So...thank you for this invitation!!
Baptism is one of two sacraments we participate in within the Presbyterian Church. And
while we recognize that baptism need only be enacted one time, we are called to
remember our baptism with great frequency. I’ve always thought this was a kind of
funny thing to ask of Protestants, most of whom are baptized as infants or very young
children. Many of us literally cannot remember our baptisms except through the stories
and photos shared with us. But maybe that’s the point? The call to remember our
baptism is at its root a communal, not individual, call. We remember together.
I hope you felt that collective remembering with the drops of water that landed on you
this morning...or simply by witnessing together the water flow over the heads of these
beautiful people this morning.
Why do we remember our baptism?
Well, because we easily forget. We forget that we exist in a state of grace - God loves
us (and everybody else) and offers us grace not based on merit but founded in love.
Unearned grace.
In a society hyper-focused on merit, on placing requirements based on race,
immigration status, gender, sexuality, class, education on people’s ability to access
food, housing, employment, and ease of living - our baptism stands as a powerful,
cleansing, corrective.
In our baptism we renounce the ways of living that divide us from one another and
therefore separate us from God.
To remember our baptism is to remember that ALL that we have is a gift and so we are
called to extend that gift to others. We live in grace and we are called to offer that grace
to others.
Why do we remember our baptism?
Because rituals that remind us of our belonging are more important than ever. A lot has
been said recently about an epidemic of loneliness in our country. So many people feel
like they have been abandoned by people in power or even by neighbors.
Our baptism signifies entrance into the church, which we also describe as Christ’s body.
Baptism means we belong; we are each a body part!
We remind one another of our baptisms whenever and however we communicate
belonging to each other in the life of a congregation, or in line at the grocery store, or at
lunch at work. Which is to say, church is not the only place where we can remember our
baptism!
We are called to remember our baptism in all times and places.
And this morning, we remember another baptism, too. Jesus’ baptism.
Before we dive into the waters of this story, I first want to note something about
remembering, which is that it can be full of forgetting! Memories are like a game of
telephone in which the memory continues to transform as it is passed from one to
another. Pieces are lost, other things are added in.
Returning to this story of Jesus’ baptism helps us to recollect - like literally RE-collect or
regather - elements of baptism we may have lost along the way. I read this text in Mark
this week using some of my third grade daughter’s literary skills materials - with focused
questions on location, major and minor characters, setting the scene, etc. - to try to
gather new insights from an old story. And what came through clearly is that there are
so many creation characters I had forgotten, so many members of creation who
participate in Jesus’ baptism that I had overlooked.
The event takes place in the wilderness, not in a village. Wilderness populated by wild
boar, leopards, rodents, and other four legged creatures; nightingales, turtle doves, and
other winged creatures; fig trees, olives trees, and numerous other plants and shrubs.
And humans. John, Jesus’ cousin, lives in the wilderness, makes his clothing out of
animal hides and forages food to sustain his body, grasshoppers and honey.
He spends time at and in the river, which is called by name in the story: the Jordan
River. It is a river that connects through many scriptural stories flowing north to south
through the Sea of Galilee and emptying into the Dead Sea; a river filled with mollusks
and trout and many other aquatic creatures. The Jordan river was a life source to many
creatures in the region (human and otherwise) and it is the life source that John calls
people to enter in the cleansings he is offering.
This story’s setting is teeming with creatures, plants, and water. And then God also
joins in the creation choir. When Jesus enters those Jordan waters, we are told God’s
Spirit takes on the form of a dove. God puts on feathers and hovers like a Mama bird
over God enfleshed in Jesus.
Now, many of these creature characters were not physically present in this morning’s
baptisms. Though I’m certain there were some spider witnesses lurking in the corners
of this building. But this story of Jesus’ baptism reminds us of something we may forget
within the walls of a sanctuary which is that baptism is not just a human-God interaction,
it is a God and all creation event.
We are baptized with water that is not just a symbol of new life in Jesus. It is also the
literal lifesource of our watershed, our region of water. Jesus was baptized into the
Jordan River watershed. You in this building are baptized into the Wallkill River
watershed and the larger Hudson River watershed of which it is a part. Through the
water in that font all of us who felt its drops this morning are connected to all the
creatures and plants that also rely on that water for life. God wants us to know and to
remember that connection.
How do we communicate the grace and belonging we remember in our baptism to the
trees we pass by each day? To the soil? To the water? To the hawks and the herons,
the possums and deer? These are questions to hold and live into as we remember.
Remember your baptism. May we have the memory of these waters of grace, love,
transformation and belonging at the forefront of our hearts and minds. And may that
remembrance lead us always to greater love for all of God’s good creation.