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For any of you football fans (go Cardinals!), if you are tuned into any NFL games this weekend you are likely to be inundated with SUV and truck commercials. Each commercial looks about the same. The trucks are going through some ridiculous obstacle course with rock music in the background, or attractive, athletic people load up their oversized 4x4 to head out over some barely negotiable terrain, throwing up mud and gravel. These amazing scenes are usually followed by the same folks setting up camp or jumping into a kayak or dangling off a rock. Looks like fun. I want an SUV that will take me to fun places were I can kayak and camp and dangle off of cliffs. The truth is that only about 5 percent of SUVs are ever taken off-road, which means that you’re more likely to see a Range Rover at Dutch Bros., than anywhere near a mountain lake. We buy our SUV’s for safety and big families, and well for some the idea that one day we may be off road somewhere kickin’ up the mud.

Granted, gas has come down in price, but given the current debate about environmental impacts and alternative energy, one can understand why some SUV owners feel they need to explain themselves to their green-thinking peers. Why have four-wheel drive if the only dirt those four wheels will ever touch is the edge of the kids’ soccer field? But wait! Thanks to a new product, SUV owners don’t need to put up with either the guilt or the critics.

Believe it or not, for a mere $14.50 per quart-sized bottle, you can purchase “Sprayonmud” and create the illusion that your SUV has, on more than one occasion, been baptized in mountain mud. According to the promotional material, “If you’ve got a 4X4 or off-roader, Sprayonmud will send a message to anyone who disapproves or is just plain envious — you use your off-roader, off the road as well as on it.” Yep a few squirts here and a few squirts there and you can show the world that you are an adventurous hard working, attractive person. Now how is that for a deal!

Real off-roaders, of course, know that the best mud is free and generally available. Their vehicles already wear that mud with honor, marking them as adventurers. To be real you have to go where the dirt is. Of course, Jesus didn’t own a vehicle, but when he burst on the scene, one of his first actions was to mark his life and ministry with some real mud. He off-roaded to see his cousin John in the wilderness. Now John was the ultimate rugged individualist. He was livin’ the life of adventure way out in the middle of nowhere. In the manner of other ancient Israelite prophets, John lived a solitary life amid sand and snakes, rivers and great rocks to dangle from. He was out where a lot of people didn’t usually travel, but he preached a message so compelling and so different than what they were used to hearing, that people were willing to get their feet dirty to go find him.

The crowds would gather with John at the Jordan River . Now most days when we think rugged adventurer, we have images of kayakers and rafters navigating crystal clear mountain river rapids, but have any of you had the privilege of seeing the Jordan River ? It is notoriously muddy and murky. This is the very place that John did a “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (1:4).

I find the symbolism ironic really. Over time, baptism has come to symbolize, the washing away of sin, the mud and muck that stains our lives and leaves a bad taste in our mouths. Being washed clean in muddy water is an interesting concept. John called everyone, even ethnic Jews, to be baptized or “marked” as being in need of forgiveness and salvation — the mud and muck of human sin being washed away and replaced with a real mark of repentance and confession. John calls his disciples to be “washed,” marked, or cleansed in the dirty waters of the Jordan . Baptized in dirty water.  

For John, baptism was as much about the reorientation of a person’s life as it was about forgiveness. Baptism is a one-time event because that forgiveness is never lost, but it is also not a magic event that means we will never make poor choices again. Life is muddy and full of choices. Baptism is about making a fresh start, turning toward God and others. Baptism is about committing to be a part of a community dedicated to the Kingdom of God , or for the infant’s sake, making a commitment to nurture that child in a community of God.

You know, maybe it is a disservice to be baptized with clean water. Maybe muddy water would serve to remind us that as followers of Christ, we are called to follow him from the muddy Jordan to Jerusalem , on a path that includes muddy relationships, muddy situations, muddy politics and economics, and muddy choices. That muddy water says, “Don’t expect room service, and a mint on the pillow.” This whole Christianity thing tends to complicate life. We no longer are just looking out for ourselves, but we are bound into a community of people committed to each other, committed to prayer, to acts of justice, to love, to hope, to peace, and to figuring out together what it is to be disciples of Christ.

Now, if anyone needed to skip this particular mud bath it was Jesus. Yet Jesus willingly steps down into the brown water to take on the same muddy mark as his people. God himself was marked by the same waters that mark God’s people. We are in this journey together, mud and all. What does our baptism say about us? We are named in our baptism. Throughout history children were “christened” and given a Christian name. In ancient times, the church literally named the child. Even today among cultures in Africa , when a person becomes a Christian, they replace their given name for a Christian name to express their identity change.

Like in the Old Testament, when Abram becomes Abraham once he receives God’s promise to make of him a mighty nation; Like Jacob who after wrestling with God, become Israel. Like when Cephas becomes Peter when Jesus promises to build his church “upon this rock.” Saul the Persecutor becomes Paul the Apostle on the road to Damascus . Name changes signify a new beginning, a radical break with the old. At baptism, God takes you and says, “Your name is Christian. You are my child, with you I am well pleased.”

This naming is a form of anointing, not just with water, but with Spirit. It’s a powerful expression of the intimacy of God’s own relational nature. God knows us inside and out. God is not fooled by the spray on mud of a theology of convenience. We cannot fool God with our empty religiosity or a social club membership in a church. Baptism is about ownership of our journey. Baptism is about ownership of our role in the Kingdom of God . Baptism reminds us that Christianity is a life style. The waters of baptism should remind us that the Christian life isn’t always convenient or self-serving, but sometimes it is the opposite. Yet no matter how ugly things may get, God is right beside us. Christ has stood in those muddy waters.

For Jesus, and for us, baptism is preparation for ministry. Baptism is a sign that we are ready to work to bring about the kingdom of God . And that allegiance is worked out in our service to others. Baptism marks us as people with a different id ea of power than the world’s idea of power. We believe in a power of love. Our baptism calls us to be a passionate and compassionate people who are sent out to follow Jesus in changing the world. In other words, we’re called to “go” into the world and get muddy serving others. Our baptism is a commission and a call to go into the wilds of a hurting world.

Jesus, God in the flesh, lived and moved in the world. Jesus didn’t merely call people to get straightened up so that they could fly off to some heaven when they died. The real good news that he preached is that God’s kingdom, in the person of Jesus, had broken in a new reality was coming to the forefront. Jesus saw heaven not as being far away but rather quite close at hand, active, working, engaging, breaking into human history. What we do now matters. We are agents in our words and actions, agents of the in-breaking kingdom where we are today, be it on an urban street or a rural back road. We can experience the promises and purposes of God in our present lives. Our baptism, then, invites us to live in that new reality, a God-ordained reality, seeing eternity not “out there” somewhere but see ing God at work here and now.

Okay…I don’t know about you, but that is pretty exciting to me. I don’t need to dangle from a cliff or off-road it up a mountain pass. I can get muddy and go places I never imagined, empowered by the waters of baptism. To that I say, thanks be to God. Amen.