Psalm 29 imagines God’s voice as a thunderstorm: loud, untamable, and powerful enough to shake forests and deserts alike. Drawing on the ancient Israelites’ fear of chaotic waters, this sermon explores why the Hebrew scriptures so often associate God with such dangerous imagery. The answer, Psalm 29 suggests, is not terror but trust: God is not a force we can control, manage, or tame, and that is precisely the Good News.
This vision reshapes how we understand baptism. Rather than a gentle or domesticated ritual, baptism is revealed as a holy flood. It is a shocking, disruptive grace that drowns our shame, pride, and systems of worthiness. God’s promise, spoken over us in baptism without our consent or preparation, overwhelms every excuse we make about why we are unlovable or why we think we have earned God’s favor.
So if baptism is an unleashing chaotic force of God's grace, what does that mean for the Church, the community of the baptized. It may mean that the Church is invited to live out this “chaotic” grace: accepting others before they are acceptable, loving before worthiness is proven, and trusting God’s promise more than our own measures of merit. Baptism, like the storm in Psalm 29, is not safe—but it is saving!
