January 14, 2024: Arise, shine! For your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. Amen.
Today we celebrate the baptism of our Lord Jesus Christ. The lectionary appoints this as being celebrated last Sunday, but as we transfer the Feast of the Epiphany to the first Sunday in January, and the baptism of Jesus is a High Holy Day, we ensure it is celebrated on the Sunday following. Don’t worry though, we ensure that both call stories intended to be heard this week and next, will be read next week. The thing is – we do this lectionary dance because it is important that we celebrate both of these important feast days of the church.
This Sunday into the next one is also a time of gratitude for me each year, as it marks the anniversary of my ministry as Rector of this parish. I was no stranger to this parish to be sure. I had been the celebrant for the Christmas Eve service in 2013, days before being publicly announced as the incoming Rector, because at the time, the use of the high altar was not reachable by Mother Kay Locke, the long term supply priest, due to the many steps. I had also led the small Wednesday noon service after Mother Anne left the previous June. And, I attended the January 13th Vestry meeting too. Still, my very first official Sunday with you as your Rector was 10 years ago this coming Friday, January 19th.
Sometimes it feels like the time flew by, but with the pandemic, it also sometimes feels much longer than a decade. So, January is for me a reflection on that beginning, and perhaps it is for you as well.
Certainly, January marks a time of beginnings in other ways – people enter into the new year with resolutions, that while sometimes go unfulfilled, are by their very nature a sign of hope for what may be. Beginnings are like that – fresh slates, blank canvases, a place from which possibilities may become reality. And beginnings are what we are hearing about in our texts today from Genesis and the Gospel.
In the passage from Genesis, we heard the very first words of our Holy Bible. It is the story of the Holy Spirit, that divine breath of God, moving over the chaos and bringing order. God then creates light in the midst of darkness, and gives a divine thumbs up to it all.
And, as we are in Year B, we read from the gospel of Mark, where hear of the baptism of Jesus – right in the first chapter. Mark, the first of the canonical gospels to be written, has no birth narrative. There are no shepherds, no magi, no manger, no 12 year old Jesus getting grounded for scaring Mary and Joseph half to death with his own Home Alone story. The author of Mark starts with an emphatic “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the son of God,” introduces our locust eating prophet John, then a fully adult Jesus shows up to be baptized before starting his ministry in the world. Clearly, this author is in a bit of a hurry here to get the story moving.
Both of these narratives launch a beginning – of God’s creation and of Christ’s ministry. The Spirit moves over the deep, the Spirit descends upon Jesus as he rises from the water. Light broke over the darkness, and the light of Christ was about to really ignite a fire across the world.
And on this weekend, when we also celebrate something else – the ministry and prophetic voice of a follower of Jesus – the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. – it is this knowledge of God’s light entering into the world, Christ’s light breaking across the darkness of humanity that gave Dr. King, and all of us in these troubling times, great hope.
As Dr. King preached in June of 1967, less than a year from his assassination, “Faith in the dawn arises from the faith that God is good and just. When one believes this, he knows that the contradictions of life are neither final nor ultimate. He can walk through the dark night with the radiant conviction that all things work together for good for those that love God. Even the most starless midnight may herald the dawn of some great fulfillment.”
King did not live to see the end of the darkness of racism, the dream he proclaimed to the world.
Neither do we stand in that radiant light of the beloved community God has dreamt for us from that first moment of Creation.
And yet our faith tells us that God is present in the chaos of the dark. That the Spirit moves constantly across creation. That Christ’s light overcomes even the deepest night.
We know this to be true here at our parish. Over these past ten years we have grieved together the violence, hate, oppression, poverty, abuse, and exclusion that brings pain to children of God and all of creation. We have comforted one another as we mourned the death of those we loved. We have supported one another through a devastating pandemic.
Yet we have also rejoiced in the blessings we have received through the years – new births, marriages, the sound of children ringing through the rafters, the build-up of our music program, new members coming through our doors, thriving ministry in our community, and our community using our spaces.
We have also come to know these past several years post-pandemic that God’s creative work in the world isn’t a one time thing. We began together back in 2014 with financial stresses and congregational decline threatening the close of our parish. But we had faith, and together we worked to grow in membership and financial strength to where, by 2020, we were on our way to a bright future. The pandemic years knocked us on our heels financially, and our in-person attendance is less than half of what it once was. For the past two years we faced once again the possibility of having to close our doors.
Yet, we also knew that God wasn’t done with us.
While still low, our in-person attendance continues to grow year after year. The enrollment in our school is increasing, and will soon meet and surpass the goal we set for this year. We also, by God’s grace, and your generous gratitude to God, have had one of our best pledge campaigns in our ten years together. As a result, we can now say that, even while there is still much work to do, we are out of the danger zone.
The dawn is breaking once again here at Christ Church, and it truly is good!
Still, we know that none of this is for us alone, but that we might be witnesses of God’s unconditional love, serving Christ in the least, the last, the lonely, and the lost.
Which is why it is good that in a few moments we will renew our own baptismal covenant.
The vows we make remind us that, just like Jesus, we aren’t meant to stand there toweling off and then return home after our baptism. We are to do as Jesus did after he was baptized. Okay, perhaps not head out to the wilderness for 40 days, but Lordy, our world can sure fill us with a sense of great evil and the temptation to give in to the despair of darkness, doesn’t it? Yet Jesus gives that darkness the divine flip off, and keeps on moving – to do what he was there to do. We are meant to do the same.
Dr. King understood that too. Baptized into Christ, he was gifted by the Holy Spirit with a prophetic voice that will resound through the centuries. Despite the dangers, despite all the evil that surrounded him, despite the desire of the prince of darkness to bring him to his knees in despair, Dr. King knew that his baptismal call was to proclaim that God’s light and love is stronger than the darkness of hate and racism.
And now…it is up to each of us.
We are the body of Christ.
We are the prophetic witnesses to God’s love.
And there is still so much work in Christ’s name to be done.
Ten years ago, I invited you all to come and see.
Come and see where Christ was leading us.
None of could have possibly imagined the wild and wonderful ride this would be for us, for our community, and for the gospel we proclaim. We have had our difficult times to be sure, but as was made clear in our scriptures today – darkness may always be here, but it is light that God brought into being. God’s light. Christ’s light. Our light. And there is no darkness that will ever overcome it.
And so we begin again – into 2024.
Into another year of priest and people.
Into another new life out of near death for our parish.
And into another year of living out our own baptismal call.
We will need the faith and courage of Dr. King to do this, to be sure, for we will enter into 2024 knowing the hate, violence, and oppression that will only grow worse in this election year. Dr. King offers us a message about that courage that we should hold in our hearts in the months ahead when the darkness tries to have its’ sway over us, trying to force us back. He said:
“Courage is an inner resolution to go forward despite obstacles; Cowardice is submissive surrender to circumstances.
Courage breeds creativity; Cowardice represses fear and is mastered by it.
Cowardice asks the question, is it safe?
Expediency asks the question, is it politic?
Vanity asks the question, is it popular?
But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when we must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right.”
We who are baptized must not only act because it is right, but because we are followers of Jesus, and I believe that this courage that King speaks of – that he had himself – it doesn’t come from human power or might. It comes from knowledge of God’s love in our heart, the authenticity of the Holy Spirit in our humility, and the power of Christ’s light working through our brokenness.
And so I invite you again to come and see where Christ is leading us, as we seek to courageously live out our baptismal call in this place we call Christ Church, in our neighborhoods, and in the world. It is another beginning for us, and I suspect you might want to fasten your seatbelts, because we are in for a joyously wild ride as we continue to grow in faith, serve our neighbors, and create community in the name of Jesus Christ.
And in the end, I believe that God will look around here and say – it is good.
Amen.
For the audio, click below, or subscribe to our iTunes Sermon Podcast by clicking here (also available on Audible):
The Rev. Diana L. Wilcox
Christ Church in Bloomfield & Glen Ridge
January 14, 2024
The Second Sunday After The Epiphany
The Baptism of our Lord (trans.)
1st Reading – Genesis 1:1-5
Psalm 29
2nd Reading – Acts 19:1-7
Gospel – Mark 1:4-11
