The Rev. Dan Rondeau
St. Margaret's Episcopal Church & School
Isaiah 42:1-9 | Psalm 89:20-29 | Acts10:34-38 | Luke 3:15-16, 21-22
Grant that we who are baptized may keep the covenant we have made. (Collect for the First Sunday after the Epiphany, modified for clarity)
As we consider the readings on this First Sunday after the Epiphany, as we consider the Baptism of our Lord, I want to link the sacred texts to the child within us. I want to link the sacred texts to the part of us that, like a child, asks a lot of questions. I hope that with such a playful connection we might remember and be guided by God to the fulfillment of our earnest prayer this morning: "Grant that all who are baptized into [Jesus' Name] may keep the covenant they have made, and boldly confess him as Lord and Savior."
Contemplating the scene of the gospel, Jesus and John and the river Jordan, the crowd, the Holy Spirit and affirmation from heaven, contemplating the baptism we will celebrate here, listening to prayers from our Book of Common Prayer, I invite you to play a little, make some new connections, explore, tinker, ask questions, ask lots of questions, pause enough to listen for answers, then play some more.
According to a bunch of fishmongers in Seattle (and I think they are on to something), "Play is not a specific game or activity. It is a state of mind that brings new energy to the tasks at hand and sparks creative solutions."1 Come with a playful state of mind to our story today. Bring your experiences, bring your questions, bring the attitude of a child. "Children explore their world through curiosity and wonder. They try everything."2 Our play in the next few minutes is to explore the baptism of Jesus and our own baptism with the wonder and questions of a child. So let's go exploring.
Notice Luke's account: the people were focused on John, they could see him, hear him, and respond to him. Jesus was invisible in this moment that opens the Gospel story. They're pretty excited; this John guy could be the messiah. The end of time could be drawing close. God's anointed could be this wild man standing in the Jordan.
Had John chosen, he could have basked and gloried in their wonder and their excitement. Had he been deceitful, he could have used their enthusiasm for his own gain. But that was not his vocation. He was to guide people to the real Messiah. He was to prepare the way and then become less obvious, less the center of attention, Jesus was to increase, he was to decrease. John is true to his vocation. "I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire." John gives them Jesus.
John is our older brother in the faith. John is our role model, isn't he? We are not the center of the universe, the pinnacle of God's creation, the way to salvation. We are, like John, to guide, to point to, to bring others to, the one who is all these things and more: we are to give Jesus to others. That is our calling.
Do you hear it in the Baptismal Covenant we make? "Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?"3 Do you hear it in the prayer we make after communion? "And now, Father, send us out to do the work you have given us to do, to love and serve you as faithful witnesses of Christ our Lord."4 Our calling is to be a witness to Jesus, just like John.
"Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized…. " Let your mind play with that a little. Start at the Jordan and end up with Jesus on the road to Jerusalem, ministering to others.
Another preacher puts it this way: "There he is—blameless and blemishless—wading into the waters of the Jordan River, which swirls and teems with sin that has washed off the crowds that preceded him. Whereas the sinful people ahead of Jesus go into the waters and emerge clean, Jesus, the clean One, goes into the waters of baptism and emerges "unclean"—or whatever it is that happens to you after bathing in "dirty" bath water….
"That is, Jesus emerges from the waters of baptism identified with the self-confessed sinners who publicly proclaim their twistedness and desire to get right with God….Jesus must have seen his baptism and the subsequent showing of his "solidarity with sinners" as a central part of the epiphany his vocation was to manifest….
"The message here is that identification with [and] acceptance of sinners is critical to Gospel love. It was never said that John the Baptist underwent baptism, and it is never mentioned that John ever healed anybody. Jesus, however, undergoes baptism and spends the greater part of his ministry healing sin-sick folk. The two go together. Unless you can identify with the other, and accept the other as he or she is, you can never allow the compassion of God to flow through you as a healing agent. Judgment will always turn off the spigot of grace."5
Have you understood just how much Jesus identified with you when he stepped into the Jordan that day? Does it thrill your heart to know that no matter how sin-sick you are Jesus comes with healing, for you? Do you understand that as you draw near to the Lord and learn from him, you are better able to go out and, like him, offer healing and grace? Wow! What power we have because of him who identified with us and loves us still.
"[While Jesus] was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove."
This tells us a truth we know very well: the Holy Spirit comes when we are most available, most open, most vulnerable and dependent, and perhaps most real—in prayer. Too often, I confess, when faced with a challenge, or a setback, or an ending, I have tried everything to meet the challenge, pick myself up after a setback, or move along after an ending, and, exhausted and failing, I have finally prayed. And God has been faithful (even if I have not) and answers come, and healing, and peace, and new life and the Holy Spirit.
We will be reminded by Jesus, that the Holy Spirit, sensing our availability as we quiet and pray, comes when invited: "Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks, receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened….If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!"6
At prayer, in our Service of Baptism, we make ourselves available to God and we intercede for those to be baptized, we ask God to "Open their hearts to your grace and truth, …[and to] Fill them with your holy and life-giving Spirit, …[and to] Teach them to love others in the power of the Spirit."7
At the anointing in Baptism we declare what we know to be true, because we have prayed for this, and we know that God has made it so: "Newly baptized one, you are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ's own forever."8
What does it mean to you? Do you have a childlike curiosity and spirit around this truth? Explore, tinker, wonder at, and probe this truth: in prayer you are open to God, especially to the power and creativity and light of the Holy Spirit. How have you played with this power and creativity and light? Have you given expression to this? Do you want to? It could be fun. It is God's gift to you.
The best is last. "And a voice came from heaven, `You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.'"
Every one of us, reborn by water and the Holy Spirit, baptized, needs to know and understand, believe and delight in, the truth that the words spoken over Jesus in the Jordan are the very same words spoken to us in our baptism: "You are my [Child], the Beloved; with you I am well pleased."
"Am I God's son?" the child within us asks. "Am I God's daughter?" the child within us asks. I am God's child! I am God's child! I am God's child! I am God's Beloved. It is too good to be true (I know too well my mistakes, my sinful and willful ways, my false starts and dismal failures, I know myself at my unlovable worst); but this is one time when I just have to shut up and suspend my self-critical judgment and my disbelief.
It is good. It is true. I am God's child; I am God's Beloved. I don't have to earn this, buy this, steal this, or black mail it out of the Father. It is a gift of the Father, it is my inheritance poured over me and into me at Baptism. And what's true for me is also true for you.
So I look out and recognize the same in you. You are God's child! You are God's Beloved! I am in the midst of God's children, you are everywhere, and each one of you is beloved of the Father, beloved of Abba. This is where I want to be. This is where I want to come as often as I am able. Let me share the joy of the gift I have been given, let me receive the same joy from you, you son of God, you daughter of God.
And, being Episcopalian we acknowledge the truth in our worship and prayer, of course, but tone it down. We'll begin our Great Thanksgiving Prayer today acknowledging that it is always and everywhere good to give thanks "Because in Jesus Christ our Lord you have received us as your sons and daughters, made us citizens of your kingdom, and given us the Holy Spirit…."9
And this is spoken anew after communion as we prepare to re-enter the world, believing we are sons and daughters, and thus, heirs: "Almighty and everliving God, we thank you for feeding us…and for assuring us in these holy mysteries that we are living members of the Body of your Son, and heirs of your eternal kingdom."10
There's a lot to play with in the scriptures, in our prayers, in our lives as sons and daughters of God. To return to Seattle and the fishmongers: "Play is an ongoing experiment to discover what's possible."11 And when we are playing with the Word of God, rather than salmon, when we are playing as a son or daughter of Abba, Father, when we are playing with the energizing presence of the Holy Spirit, well, we just know that all things are possible; we even know that "eye has not seen, and ear has not heard…what God has prepared for those who love him."12 That's you and me. And that is very good! Welcome to the family Samuel, welcome to the family Connor. Amen.