January 10, 2016: May God’s words alone be spoken, may God’s words alone be heard. Amen.
Okay, so how many of you bought a lottery ticket? I did. And the best part is always before the drawing (well, unless you win, I suppose). I mean, you think about all the things you might do with it – pay off bills, buy something or travel, give to the church – of course, right?? The expectancy mounts until, well…we find out we didn’t win.
And speaking of expectancy, we just finished our 12 days of Christmas. The stockings and trees are put away. The greens are gone from the church. And for many, the New Year’s resolutions are already cast aside in a virtual file labeled (in NJ anyway) “fuhgeddaboutit” or “what was I thinking?”
In our post holiday awakening, I wonder if we ever look back – back to Advent and our anticipation of the birth of Christ and all that Christmas would bring. Was it what we expected?
For one little girl, she didn’t get what she expected at Christmas – not at church anyway. See, there was a little girl visiting here on Christmas Eve at the 5pm service. I did both a children’s message and a homily for the adults, and after the worship service, she came over to me. She said “Didn’t Jesus hang?” I was startled…I mean this was Christmas Eve, and she couldn’t have been more than about 8 years old, and that’s not really what we teach children at that age. Then pointing to one of our beautiful painted cloth hangings of the stations of the cross, the one with Jesus crucified, she said again “Didn’t Jesus hang?” “Ummm….well, yes, in a manner of speaking.” I answered. “Then how come you didn’t talk about that?” she asked. By this time her mom was next to her, and I said to her, “Well, I talk about that a lot at Easter.” Turning to her mom she said “Can we come back at Easter?” I replied “You know, you can come back between now and Easter and hear a whole lot more too.”
I told her mother that I thought she was a very bright girl, and I do, and I told the girl that she didn’t really need to think about that hanging bit now, just know that Jesus loves her – truth is…that is the message we adults need to remember too.
And afterward, I thought about the many folks who come here only on Christmas and Easter, and I felt badly for them. No, not because you get some sort of brownie points for church attendance, but because it is like reading the beginning of a book and the middle of a book, but nothing else – or seeing only the first Star Wars movie, and say the fourth one, but none of the others (though I might argue that the first one is in a class by itself).
Christmas and Easter are pivotal parts of our faith journey as Christians to be sure, but they are milestones in a sense, not the road itself. Christmas is a celebration of a beginning, and Easter is as well, but neither are the entire journey.
Our sense of anticipation of the birth, should now be turned to expectancy of what will be revealed to us about Jesus, about God, and about ourselves in the weeks ahead. Because that is what Epiphany is all about. It is from the Greek επιφάνεια: “manifestation” or “appearance,” and it is when we come to fully understand what Christmas really was about – to really grasp the impact of the incarnation on the world, and on each of us too.
Today, the baptism of Jesus offers an epiphany to us – about him, and about us. And it turns out, there are others also expecting something. The Gospel of Luke that we heard today begins with “As the people were filled with expectation…” Folks had been told the messiah was coming. They were, in a very real sense, in Advent. And then Jesus arrived at the river to be baptized by John. The gospel account goes like this, “Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
We hear this baptism story in all the synoptic gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke, but only in Luke is Jesus praying after his baptism. We’ll talk about that more in the Adult Forum today and over the next few weeks, but I wonder – what was he praying? What would you be praying at that moment?
I wonder about that. Jesus seemed to know that nothing would be the same – that this was a transformative moment. Did we at Christmas know just how transformative this new life among us would be?
Something else happened too – heaven was opened, the Holy Spirit anointed him, and then God claimed him as a beloved child, in whom God was well pleased. You have to wonder – why? Why was God “well pleased?” I mean, it’s not like Jesus had done anything yet, right?
Of course, God might have meant it the way I use these words for my son Bogart – my furry feline 18 year old boy. Except I am fairly honest when I say “You are my son, my beloved, in whom I am mostly, kinda sorta, on occasion – you know, when you’ve been good, well pleased.” For his part, he just looks at me with that standard disdain that cats generally hold for humans, and continues about with whatever he had been up to before I so rudely interrupted him with my human chatter and attention.
But back to this moment on the banks of the Jordan, as one commentator noted, “This is the power of Baptism – that God has opened up the heavens, descended from on high, and come to meet us where we are and as we are… all in order that we might know that we, too, are beloved children of God and that God is well pleased also with us.”[1] I would argue that while that is true, it is really the power of the incarnation.
You see that’s the real epiphany we get today – that God loves us, and is well pleased with us too.
And even more wonderful is that this love didn’t begin at Christmas, but was there for all time. Just look at our Isaiah reading, where God tells the people, “Because you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you.”
“I love you” God says.
Imagine that.
Think about that.
You are loved by God, deeply loved, each and every one of you. God loves us from the moment we are created – even before we are born, really. Jesus didn’t need to be baptized to be God’s son, nor did he have to do any miracles to be loved. We also don’t need to be baptized to be loved by God, or to be welcome at God’s table. But, while Baptism doesn’t create that love, it is far more than a simple dunk in water. It is a sacrament – an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace – and that grace is of God. It is yet another way that God seeks to be in relationship with us.
Jesus knew nothing would be the same after his baptism. This was a turning point for him…as our baptisms are for each of us too. But our lives don’t stop with baptism. Just as with Jesus, it is when we truly begin the life we were meant to live. But for that to happen, we must, as Jesus did, let those words of God’s love fill us. We must hear it, believe it, let it fill us up, because there is a reason God opens those heavens and makes this well known to Jesus – and to us. There is a reason that baptism is important to us as Christians. The reason is because of such an important truth, vital to who we are, and how we are to live. I’m going to share with you a story that in a very real way exemplifies the reason for all of this.
There’s a story a pastor tells about a man, a leader in a church, who was an example of all things good and decent and helpful. His wise faith gave guidance to his whole church, and his courageous commitments gave leadership. But, by his own admission, he had not always been that way. He told his pastor that as a young man, in his words, “I was always looking for trouble. And if the trouble were really bad, I’d look for it twice! But then,” he said, “I met Elizabeth–a kind, sweet, moral, smiling girl who loved me no matter how big a scoundrel I was. And little by little, because I wanted to live up to her love, I became less and less a scoundrel. Finally we married, and I’ve spent my whole life trying to make her as happy as she made me.” Then he said something that pastor has never forgotten, a powerful statement. He said this: “The truth is, Elizabeth loved me into loving.”[2]
She loved him into loving. And…
God wants to love us into loving.
That is why incarnation is so amazing. That is why our own baptisms are powerful. “You are my beloved, with you I am well pleased.” Jesus is not the only one who is beloved – we are too! And love is not only a many splendored thing, it is a transformative thing too. It propels us, the experience of God’s love, into loving ourselves, and one another.
God loves us into loving!
That is why God has continued, throughout all of human history, to try to be in relationship with all of us. “Because you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you…” God needed us to know that we are loved. God knows that if we can only come to see that we are loved beyond measure, than our hearts will be opened and filled with the Holy Spirit, and the love that we experience will shatter any darkness. That love will transform us, all who know us, and the world – if we let it.
It is the reason God came and walked among us – the gift we got at Christmas – that we might know, in Jesus, this very deep and abiding love.
We don’t have to understand it all right from the start.
It is a gift that will, for many of us, take some time to unwrap.
We only have to want to live up to the love that God has for us – a love that is ours – not because we earned it, or did some sort of wondrous act of piety, not because we are rich or powerful, not because we are Christian or Jewish or Muslim or Hindu, not because we are gay or straight, not because we are democrat or republican, not because we are male or female, not because of anything other than that we exist.
We are – and so we are loved.
And as we grow into that incredible truth, we, like that man in the story, will grow to love. And the love that fills us will push us out the door to follow the Holy Spirit into the world, being the Christ that is here and now, and sharing that love and light in a world so desperately in need of it.
I don’t know what you expected at Christmas, but I am quite sure this is the greatest gift anyone could ever have imagined. I feel like I won the lottery – I hope you do too.
Amen.
For the audio of the sermon from the 10:30am service, click here:
[1] David Lose, workingpreacher.com
[2] The Rev. Dr. Michael Brown is senior minister of Marble Collegiate Church in New York, NY.
Rev. Diana L. Wilcox
Christ Church in Bloomfield & Glen Ridge
January 10, 2016
Epiphany 1 – Year C – Baptism of Jesus
1st Reading – Isaiah 43:1-7
Psalm 29
2nd Reading – Acts 8:14-17
Gospel – Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
