Once upon a time, in the town of Meadow Grove, there was a boy named Billy Branton. He lived just three doors down from the Meadow Grove Presbyterian Church; but his family did not go to church. When Billy was 13, though, his friend Gary invited him to come to Sunday School with him, and Billy started attending.

In February of the following year, when Billy was 14, his friend Gary started attending Confirmation Class, along with half a dozen other 13- and 14 year olds. Those other kids had all been baptized as young children; and so now as young teens they had a class where they would confirm the faith promises that their parents had believed, along with their grandparents and the other members of the church.

And Billy felt left out, all of a sudden. He asked, “Can I be part of this Confirmation thing?” His friend Gary said, “I don’t know. We can ask. But I think the class is just for kids who have already been baptized.” And when they asked, they found out that actually it would be fine: if Billy wanted to be part of the class, he could do that. And at the end of the class, if Billy wanted to be baptized, then they would baptize him, and he would become a member of the church, just like the other students.

Now one of the things you need to know is that back in the early days, the Meadow Grove Presbyterian Church had a fairly ordinary baptismal font, a simple wooden stand with an earthenware bowl of water built into it. But about twenty years ago, the church had purchased a new baptismal font. This font had a small electric pump built into the bottom of a large bowl covered in black pebbles, and the pump rippled the water and made a soft burbling sound when it was turned on. The font had a nice cover, to keep the dust out; but almost every Sunday they uncovered the font and turned it on, and the soft hum of the pump and the burble of the rippling water made a reassuring background sound, during quiet moments during the service.

Back when they had had that plain font, they kept it in a closet and only brought it out when someone was getting baptized. But that new font – after twenty years it was still called the new font – that new font had an honored place up in the front of the sanctuary. When people came into church on Sunday morning, they could hear the faint sound of the stirring of the waters, and see that the water was rippling. You could hear that sound throughout the service, underneath the words of scripture and sermon, as a constant reminder that maybe, just maybe, we might be baptizing someone today.

When they actually had a baptism on the schedule, though, they did it just a little bit differently. They still turned on the pump, and you could hear the sound of the water during the quiet moments of the service: but they left the cover on the font until the family was gathered around the font, and then the cover was lifted with a grand flourish as the living waters of baptism were now revealed.

Every Sunday afternoon during the twelve weeks of the Confirmation class, Pastor Melanie talked with the students about the Bible, about faith, about the Christian life. Billy found some of it interesting, and some of it kind of boring, and some of it puzzling. He had a lot of questions, and Pastor Melanie tried to answer those questions; but sometimes it seemed that the answer was long and involved, and Billy wished that the answers could be short and simple and easy to understand.

“Yeah,” said Pastor Melanie. “I sometimes wish that, too. That’s the thing about important questions, though. Hard questions usually have hard answers, rather than easy answers. If they had easy answers they’d be easy questions, and everyone would already know those answers.”

The Confirmation class was going to conclude the Sunday before Pentecost, with the students meeting with the Session and sharing what they had learned. Then the members of the class would be officially received into the church the following Sunday morning, on Pentecost Day. Billy had decided that he wanted to join the church, and that meant that he would be baptized on that day. He wasn’t sure what to expect from that, but he was kind of excited. Pastor Melanie was going to dip down into that living water from that fountain, and put it on Billy’s head. What would that mean? What would that do?

They never locked the side door of Meadow Grove Presbyterian Church, back in those days; and so Billy would sometimes slip in that side door, take the cover off the font, turn on the pump, and watch the water rippling up from the bottom. He’d listen to the chuckling sound it made. He would stick his hand in the water, to see if it felt any different from other water; but it always felt like ordinary water.

Spring had been unseasonably hot and dry that year. Sometimes spring was sweet and fresh and green, but that year summer seemed to come very early, and the rain had been sparse. it was hot and dry and really quite uncomfortable. On the Friday before Pentecost, late in the afternoon, Billy was playing the church’s back yard. It was hot, very hot that day. Something caught Billy’s eye, there along the back wall: there was a frog. This was not the first frog that Billy had ever encountered; he was actually quite an experienced frog catcher. But this one was different. Usually a frog is quite energetic in its efforts to escape from predators like foxes and herons and small boys; but this particular frog seemed kind of slow.

There is a certain skill or technique to catching and holding a frog in your hand. You have to grip just the right amount. If you are too squeamish about hanging on, that frog will squirm right out of your hand and you’re going to have to catch him all over again. But if you squeeze too hard, you’ll squash that frog, and when you look at the mess in your hand you’ll remember what it was that made you so squeamish.

Billy had developed a pretty good level of skill in frog catching: he could hold a frog closely enough that it couldn’t wiggle free, without causing any damage to the frog. But this particular frog, on this particular hot day in this hot season, didn’t much try to wiggle. Billy opened up his hand, holding the frog in his open palm with just one finger from his other hand. The frog looked sad to him. Not happy and energetic; not scared and trying to get away. Just sad, at the point of giving up.

Then Billy thought, “He’s all dried out. It’s been so hot, there’s been no rain: he’s all dried out.” Billy wondered what to do about that. And then he knew what to do. He took the frog into the church, opened up the baptismal font, and put the frog in the water. The frog seemed grateful, settling into the water and looking content. Billy reached down and turned on the pump, and the water started to burble, and it almost seemed to Billy that the frog smiled, at the coolness and the movement of the water.

Billy felt good about his action: Billy the Rescuer, keeping a frog alive. He thought, “Today’s Friday. I’ll come back tomorrow morning, and he’ll be so much better, because he got to spend plenty of time in the water. Then I’ll take him outside, and let him go.” Billy scooped the pebbles over to one side, so that the frog would have a place to sit and rest overnight. Then he turned off the pump, and carefully put the cover back on, because he didn’t want the frog to jump out after a while and get lost in the church. And he went home to supper.

Jesus went down to the Jordan River, where his cousin, John the Baptist, had a revival going on. Lots of people were coming to get baptized, confessing their sins and praying that God would grant them the power to change. John had used strong language as he called for repentance. “You brood of vipers!” he said to some of them. “The ax is laid at the root of your tree: God is ready to chop you down. The time of the harvest is coming, and the wheat will be gathered into the granary, but the chaff will be burned with unquenchable fire. Right now you’re heading into that unquenchable fire. You need to repent: not with glib words, but in action: you need to bear fruit worthy of repentance.”

Then Jesus showed up. This is how Matthew describes it:

Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now, for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw God’s Spirit descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from the heavens said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:13-17).

John had come to recognize in Jesus the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. That’s a pretty strong recognition: to see Jesus as a sacrificial lamb, not just any lamb but The Sacrificial Lamb, the very Lamb of God, the sacrifice that takes away not just the sins of some people here or there, but the sins of the whole world. That’s a strong recognition.

And that gave John a problem. “I should be baptized by you,” he said to Jesus. “You’re the Lamb of God, taking away the sin of the world; I’m just the voice of one crying in the wilderness. You’re the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit. I’m not worthy to shine your shoes. Why are you coming to me?”

Jesus said, “Just let it happen this way. This is the way we’re going to fulfill all righteousness.” And yet: why and how does the baptism of Jesus fulfill all righteousness? A hard and complex question, one for which there cannot be a brief and easy answer.

So Jesus was baptized. And when he came up from the water the heavens were opened, and the Holy Spirit descended and alighted upon Jesus, and the voice of God came down as well: “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” And we get to see a glimpse of the Trinity in just that moment: you can hear the voice of the Father, you can see the Spirit as dove, together they point to Jesus the Son, standing there at the river.

Part of the complex answer is found in this picture. There is a significance to the fact that Jesus got baptized. He who was not a sinner, as Hebrews 4 teaches us, came down to receive the baptism that sinners were receiving. He who knew no sin became sin for us, as II Corinthians 5 teaches us. Jesus, God the Son, identifies himself with us: and specifically through his baptism, the one who is not a sinner identifies himself with us who are sinners.

Notice what that does. John was offering a baptism of repentance; but Jesus turns it into a baptism of identification. When Jesus gets baptized, he establishes that he is identified with us; and when we get baptized, he establishes that we are identified with him.

Billy had planned to slip in the side door of the Meadow Grove Presbyterian Church on Saturday morning, so that he could set free his revived and healthy frog. But when he got up on that day, his mother said that they were going on a picnic. It turned out to include a family reunion and a softball game, hot dogs and burgers and ice cream sandwiches. It was a great day, full of fun and family. Billy forgot all about that frog.

Until the next day, Sunday morning, during worship. Everyone was there in church. The choir sang. The congregation sang. Gary and Billy and all the other students from the confirmation class were lined up across the front of the sanctuary. Then Billy’s family came forward to stand with him next to the baptismal font. And it was just at that moment that Billy remembered: “There’s a frog in the font!” And he panicked: “What do I do? How do I tell Pastor Melanie?”

But Pastor Melanie was explaining about baptism right then, about how the Gospel of Matthew tells the story of Jesus, and at the beginning of the gospel there’s the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit at the baptism of Jesus, and at the end of the gospel, at the Great Commission, there’s Jesus instructing us to baptize in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. They had covered that in Confirmation class, and Billy had thought that was a cool thing, how the theme of baptism and trinity were there both at the beginning and the end. And he thought it was a cool thing that he remembered that lesson; he felt a kind of gladness in his soul that he had learned that.

I suppose that this gladness of soul must have distracted Billy from his one chance to maybe whisper to Pastor Melanie about that frog in the baptismal font. Because Pastor Melanie had finished what she was saying, and was already lifting the lid off of the baptismal font. And that frog – well, when he saw the light of day again, that frog let out the loudest, deepest frog croak you ever heard! Pastor Melanie stared at that frog. Billy stared at that frog. Gary stared at that frog, and the other kids in the confirmation class, they all stared, too. Some of the people sitting in the first few rows of the sanctuary could see the frog, but the ones in back of them couldn’t: but everyone heard that croak, and then people who were seated stood up and craned their necks, trying to see.

Just about then the frog gave a mighty jump, right over Pastor Melanie’s left shoulder, straight toward Lisa, one of the girls in the confirmation class, standing there looking like a princess in her confirmation dress. Lisa screamed. In some of the old stories the frog gets kissed by the princess: but Lisa was having none of that. She jumped back, and so the frog did not land on her: and just to make sure the frog got the message, she screamed again.

The frog did get the message, and when he landed on the floor, he turned left by 90 degrees and leaped again: each time he landed he turned again, and the front of the chancel dissolved into chaos as 13- and 14-year-olds moved in every direction, and as everyone in the sanctuary spoke up at once.

Billy timed his move perfectly, and as the frog leaped yet again Billy leaped too, sliding sideways on his knees so that the frog landed against his chest: and quick as a flash Billy the Rescuer had trapped that frog against his shirt, holding it just tightly enough to make sure the frog could not escape. And Billy jumped back to his feet and ran out the side door of the church.

In just a minute Billy was back, empty-handed. You could see a kind of frog-shaped water spot on the middle of his shirt. The sanctuary was still full of noise, with people standing and chattering and loudly asking “What happened!?” Pastor Melanie was trying to get the students reorganized into their line again, and Billy walked slowly over and stood next to Gary, wondering just how much trouble he was in.

Pastor Melanie looked at Billy. Billy looked at Pastor Melanie, and thought, “She knows I did it.” He hung his head, and waited for the scolding he knew was coming.

Then Pastor Melanie said, “I bet there were frogs in the river the day Jesus was baptized.” She was shaking her head and grinning, and her eyes were shining. “And I bet some of those frogs were jumping around, even while the voice of the Father was ringing out and the Spirit was descending. There was confusion, and people yelling, ‘What happened!?’ There were people who got a glimmer of an idea about the loving Father and the beloved Son and the sustaining Spirit, and people who didn’t get that at all. But the frogs and the confusion didn’t matter: what mattered was the baptism taking place, where Jesus was identifying himself with us, and creating the reality where we would be identified with him.”

And soon Pastor Melanie was scooping up a handful of water, and letting the water fall on Billy’s head. Billy felt the water trickling down his ears and cheeks, and he heard the words ringing clear: “William Arnold Branton, I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit!” And Billy felt his soul sing out “Yes!”

“Billy, you are one of us, now, here at Meadow Grove Presbyterian Church; and more than that, you are one of us, as part of the church of Jesus Christ all over the world; and more than that, you are identified with Jesus himself: he claims you as one of his own people.” And Billy felt his soul sing out “Yes!”

Pastor Melanie said, “Billy Branton, I saw how you rescued that frog, and carried it to safety out in the church yard. With that same care Jesus rescues you, and he will carry you to safety, too, every day of your life and all the way to heaven some day. He’s got a plan for you: and it is going to be part of the great adventure of your life to discover that plan, and to live it.” And Billy felt his soul sing out “Yes!”

And then they were singing the hymn, and Pastor Melanie was saying the benediction in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit: and it was like everyone in the sanctuary was echoing that same Yes! And that’s how it was, when Billy Branton got baptized.