In Mark’s version of that long-ago moment, he starts by telling us about the way John was baptizing. John’s was a baptism of repentance, a real washing away of sin as a way of preparing for the powerful things God was going to be doing before long—because, John said, if you’re grimy with sinfulness, you’ll miss it; you’ll literally be blown away. But when Jesus is baptized, the act becomes something different: a voice booms from heaven, “This is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased,” there is a blessing by the Holy Spirit; and when Jesus himself and then his disciples baptized from then on, the same Spirit was given. In contrast to John’s, the baptism of Jesus wasn’t and isn’t just about naming what’s wrong with a person and washing it away, it’s a gift of the Spirit to that person, a mutual acknowledgement of God and that person being forever connected.

This contrast in baptisms described by Mark is helpful, because it’s exactly here where I think that so many of us who are already disciples can get confused and trapped: being a baptized disciple, being a person of faith, being a churchgoer, is mostly not about defining what’s right and wrong with us, and not about trying to follow rules that we feel guilty about if we don’t, or righteous about if we do. That was John’s baptism. The baptism you and I received, the one we’re called to remember once more on this particular day, is about grace, about love, about joy, because God has already given us the gift of the Spirit in the waters of baptism. I’ll talk more in a bit about what exactly that means for us, about why that gift is such good news, but the first step in making sense of our baptisms once more is to see that precisely because of the kind of baptism Jesus practiced, the Christian faith is not meant to be legalistic, or judgmental, or to take away the fun of living, or to divide the world and its people into us and them, the good and the bad. It’s not meant to make us feel bad about ourselves, but always and exactly the opposite: to feel good about ourselves because God loves us and we can know it.

Our friends in the Church of Sweden did a study a while back of 15 and 16 year old Swedish teenagers, most of whom by that point belong to that Church. Researchers found that “the understanding of religion among these young people seems to be very much influenced by a kind of secular humanism in which religion is reduced to ‘fear of punishment’ and ‘desire for security.’” Sound at all familiar? It’s not just teens that think this way. Don’t you think a lot of American Christians, and maybe even some of us from time to time, are in church to hedge our bets about the afterlife, or to avoid criticism from family or more religious friends, or to find out what is always right or always wrong, or to soothe our own internal sense of obligation or guilt about who knows what?

So frequently I encounter people, and I’m sure Donna will echo this, both church members and those who aren’t part of any church, who are wracked by guilt for not attending, or who feel as if they somehow aren’t good enough to be part of a congregation, or don’t deserve prayers on their behalf. But that attitude is really a kind of legalism that discipleship isn’t about. John the Baptist might have approved, but Jesus baptized with the Holy Spirit and that replaced guilt with an opportunity for joy. And as much as the light that comes with baptism reveals both our real responsibilities and real vulnerabilities, by the Spirit Jesus gives us the strength and confidence to live with that clarity of vision.

Which brings us to the actual, tangible act of baptism: our old friend Martin Luther once said, “There is no greater comfort on earth than baptism.” And I think that what he meant is although we are truly loved by God, included in God’s family, freed from guilt and doubt, and that in itself is an amazing thing, we are still creatures of flesh and blood, and it helps us to see ideas and beliefs take tangible form. It helps to have an actual moment in time when something real happens, and people see it and hear it and maybe touch it. Luther found comfort in baptism because when times are hard, and doubt about self-worth or whether God still cares is percolating, and guilt is rearing up, it can make all the difference in the world to have something real like that to hold onto and come back to.

When we finish a course of study and the school registrar says we’re done, we really have graduated, but we still have this ceremony with robes and diplomas. You don’t have to go to commencement to become a graduate, but those exercises tangibly confirm what is already the case: the work has been done. And such acting-out matters. When it comes to that sometimes elusive spiritual reality that God loves you and me, and that such love is not conditional, not dependent on our hoop-jumping, God was sensitive enough to our human needs to make that inner grace outwardly real. Jesus did not need baptism to know God had called him to be the savior (though perhaps he welcomed the confirmation), but baptism allowed the truth about him to be revealed to others who needed to see and believe and trust the grace that overcame guilt.

As a regular practice of discipleship, as habitual as worship and prayer and good works, Luther urged every Christian to remember their baptism, and in some traditions there are special services or simply benedictions in which the minister or priest cries out “Remember your baptism!” as a way of grounding oneself in that primary identity as a beloved member of God’s family. I remember at one of the recent UCC synods, the Collegium of officers walked around the auditorium and used a palm branch to fling water on us as a way of visibly bringing us back to the ground of our shared identity as baptized disciples.

And this tangible moment we are called to remember is such good news because it means that before anything else, we are named and known and loved by God. Baptism means, brothers and sisters, that we are not bound by, or need to worry about or participate in, the standards or judgments of the culture around us. That we belong to the God of Jesus Christ is the only identity that really matters. It doesn’t matter how different we might look, how conventional or unconventional we might appear or behave, whether we have law degrees or tattoos or cluttered houses, where we come from or our political party or the myriad ways we may choose to live our lives—all because by our baptisms the playing field is absolutely leveled: everyone matters, everyone has an equal share of God’s affection, everyone is as valuable and, therefore, as deserving of love and respect as everyone else.

That is an absolutely incredible claim, very countercultural, even radical, because we live in an age that runs on, that relies on, that is fueled by distinctions and accomplishments and classes and judgments. Because of our baptisms we live in—if we choose to—a completely different daily world from the ordinary, in which we see differently, relate to each other differently, experience togetherness differently, and need not be afraid or anxious.

Your baptism also means that everyone has the same access to God’s grace, that your prayers are heard and taken just as seriously as mine; it means that though we certainly want everyone to be in church to join together in worship every Sunday, God is not taking attendance, but is more concerned with your spiritual well-being going into the week ahead; baptism means that others may still judge you, but the sting doesn’t have to go so deep because in your heart of hearts you can be certain that God is still in your corner.

At one moment in your life (and from last year’s informal survey of many of you, it was a moment long ago in childhood for most), people who cared about you gathered and invoked God’s presence, and through water in a font like this made a covenant with God, as Jesus did himself and generations of disciples have since. And in that moment, something happened to you: God touched you, literally touched you, and your life was different from that moment on and has been ever since—even though we don’t always remember that is so. Your baptism and mine was a mystical, sacramental, grace-filled moment when the Holy Spirit came to you and changed you, once and forever. We don’t baptize over and over because the gift is that powerful, that irrevocable, God’s promise is that reliable, it doesn’t need physical repeating. The gift of baptism, however, does need to be remembered and affirmed for its foundational power, and, above all, it needs to be trusted, relied on, banked on, used as our starting place and touchstone, every single day of our lives. Friends, for the sake of the peace of God at work in you, and at work through you to others, remember your baptism!