Ring around the font.

No, the title doesn't refer to a fun game we play in church when we think that nobody's looking.  It has to do with the ever pervasive problem of what happens to the dirt after you have a bath.

Now, I know, nobody ever takes baths anymore.  There was a commercial on TV (doubtlessly on GSN), for a company, a service, that would, for a price, go into your home, and take out your bathtub, replacing it with a walk-in shower. The nice lady in the commercial said "Come on, who even takes baths anymore?"

Well, me for one.  I never really got into the whole shower thing, and now it's too late.  But as a bather, I have to deal with the criticism of people who think about baths, and say "you're just stewing in your own filth."  I suppose.  The dirt doesn't immediately go down the drain, it sort of sticks around with you in the water.  Granted, if you toss enough Mister Bubble in there, you can't see it, but it's there.  Now, even if we were to assume that all the dirt flows off you and doesn't come back, what happens to it after you get out of the bathtub.  Yes, that's right, it sticks to the sides of the bathtub.  Oh gross.

We call this the ring around the bathtub, and it's quite the phenomenon.  That is, your bathtub, the thing you trust to get you clean, is what you get dirty.  Now, that's a thing on its own, but what do you do with all the accumulated filth?

There's an old folk tale out there, by an old folk artist, named Theodor Geisel, who wrote about a feline in a topper, who returned one day.  And this cat in the hat who came back, he proceeded to eat cake in the bathtub.  And when the kids told him to get the heck out, he hopped out of the tub, and left a big ol' pink ring.  And the whole rest of the book is them trying to get the pink stain off of wherever it ends up, using increasingly creative means (that is, using a dress to get the ring off the tub, the using the wall to get the stain off the dress, then hilariously using "dad's new $10 shoes" to get the stain off the wall, and so on).  It's a spiraling web of turmoil and frustration, as the cat in the hat, who knows a lot about that, continues to try to get the stain off of things.  But the punchline in this story is that the dirt, the stain, doesn't go anywhere.  That is to say, it doesn't ever really go away.  Whatever the cat uses to get the stain off of the last item, it just clings to the next one.  It does that all the way until they get the stain outside, to the snow, and it makes the snow pink.  And mom would not like pink snow!

Now, we in the church, we tend to think about forgiven sin as being sort of water-soluble.  That is, your sin is forgiven, and it just goes away.  It disappears.  Functionally, it never happened, and never existed in the first place.  It's gone.  Well, that's a way of looking at it, but it doesn't really get to the heart of exactly what we're talking about.

Have you ever read Leviticus chapter sixteen?  No, of course not, pastor Jim, I don't read that boring and mildly disturbing Old Testament claptrap. Well, perhaps not.  But if you don't, then you've missed out on something rather important.  Check out, in Leviticus 16, the concept of the scapegoat.

"When [Aaron] has finished atoning for the holy place and the tent of meeting and the altar, he shall present the live goat.  Then Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins, putting them on the head of the goat, and sending it away into the wilderness by means of someone designated for the task.  The goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to a barren region, and the goat shall be free in the wilderness."

Okay, do you notice anything about this?  You should.  The idea here is that the sins committed by the congregation were not neutral.  They didn't just get dissipated and vanish into thin air.  The sins committed by the Hebrew people got transferred to this goat, and the goat was driven out into the wilderness with the sins of the people upon its head, presumably to die.  But they didn't sacrifice that goat. They let it go out into the wilderness with all their sins on it.  This is so phenomenally key that I can't possibly overstate it.  Just like the cat in the hat with the ring around his tub, the stain that went along with their transgressions didn't go anywhere at all.  They aren't neutral, they don't just vanish, they got transferred over to the scapegoat who took them away from the people.


Now, this last weekend, our reading was about the baptism of Jesus, which many of us in the Christian church may say would be unnecessary.  Why oh why is Jesus Christ getting baptized? He's perfect!  What we know about baptism, we take from Luther's small catechism, which states about baptism:

"It works forgiveness of sins, delivers from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe this, as the words and promises of God declare"
                                                                                                                       -Luther's small catechism.

Okay, great.  If those are the benefits of baptism, what did Jesus have to do with all that?  He's sin-free, perfect, flawless in the extreme.  And John the Baptism even confesses as much when he sees Jesus, and says, when Jesus asks him to baptize him in the Jordan river:

"I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?"
                                                                                                                       -Matthew 3:14

Jesus, with no sins, went to be baptized by John, even though John was pretty sure that there was no forgiveness of sins required.  And he was right.  There was no forgiveness of sins required.  So what the heck was Jesus doing going into that baptismal water?  He was taking that ring around the tub, the ring around the font, onto himself.  Just like that stupid pink stain that the cat in the hat had, the sins had to go somewhere.  And so when Jesus was dipped into the baptsimal waters, he took all those sins on himself, just like the scapegoat did.  And just like the scapegoat, he was then driven out into the wilderness.

"Then, Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.  He fasted for forty days and forty nights."
                                                                                                                       -Matthew 4:1-2

Do you see what's going on here?  Jesus is not only the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, he's the goat of God too.  The sins that get washed away in baptism, that's what Jesus takes with him, out to the wilderness.  In a way, it's a lot like bathwater.  If you go into clean bathwater, as in water that's cleaner than you are, then you get cleaner.  But if you get into a bathtub that fifteen, twenty, or a hundred people have bathed in, and you're using the same water, you're going to end up with an awful lot of other peoples' filth on you.  It's a beautiful thing, really, though it may not seem like it at first.  When the goat is led away into the wilderness, it presumably dies, is eaten by predators, who knows really.  When Jesus is led out into the wilderness, he comes back better and stronger. When animals are offered for sin offerings in the old testament, they are killed, their bodies are burned, and their flesh is eaten.  When Jesus is killed, with your sin on him and mine, he comes back better and stronger, with death no longer having any dominion over him.  He is free from death forever.  And if, as St. Paul says, we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.

Happy festival of the baptism of Christ, everyone.

PJ.