Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary

By Osvaldo Vena, Associate Professor of New Testament

THANKSGIVING OVER THE WATER (Paragraph 2)

The Lord be with you. And also with you. Let us pray.

In the fullness of time you sent Jesus, nurtured in the water of a womb. He was baptized by John and anointed by your Spirit. He called his disciples to share in the baptism of his death and resurrection and to make disciples of all nations.

Declare his works to the nations, his glory among all people.

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Jesus, the disciple of God, came to call people to be co-disciples with him in the service of that reality he referred to as the kingdom of God. But the precondition for discipleship was baptism, a symbolic death to the world and its demands. Jesus experienced baptism three times. First, in the water of his mother's womb, where the world did not matter much to him; second, in the waters of the river Jordan, where the words of the Father and the anointing of the Holy Spirit set him apart for his work in the world; and third, in the waters of death, where the world was called to accountability and later transformed by the power of his resurrection. My baptism was by immersion, a powerful metaphor for death and rebirth. Since then, the circle of death and rebirth has continued, as many ways of being and knowing have died and new ones have been born. One of them is how I look at Jesus these days, as a disciple of God's kingdom who invites us to walk with him with and toward God. For me, living into my baptism means to follow Jesus in his journey from unconscious to full discipleship, and through it, to the transformation of the world.