I'm sure that there are some of you that are fans of "Calvin and Hobbes" cartoons
so I suppose you may have seen the one just before Christmas where Calvin was writing his annual letter to Santa.
This year he had written: "Dear Santa, every year at this time I send you a list of what I want for Christmas...and
every year you callously ignore it and bring me practical things I don't want at all. What's the deal?! ... Are
you insane?? Have you gone senile?? Can't you read?? Or are you just a vindictive, twisted elf bent on destroying
little kids dreams?!?!"
Hobbes, reading these words, suggests "You know, you might want to sleep on this one" to which Calvin
replies: "I know,-- but it feels good to write it."
So it is with our frustrations with God-a God who doesn't always respond to our wishes the way we think a "proper
God" should, and yet we know that people of faith have been discovering that their ultimate needs have been
met by this consistent source of higher wisdom and love for thousands of years. The Gospels, like most of scripture
were attempts by saner minds to reflect in hindsight on what was initially disappointment and, and to point the
way to a higher truth. That is the season of Epiphany…a season of signs that stretches from the manger to the cross…pointing
us to the reality of the gift of God in Jesus that literally saved our lives!
The incarnation event is like a stone thrown into the calm waters of a pond that was human existence, whose ever
broadening ripples encompassed more and more of the reality of our experience. Those signs began ever so quietly
with disclosures limited to a peasant girl and her soon to be husband. They stretched out slowly to include a close
relative, then a field of shepherds and ultimately, our best known "discerners" from the nativity scene-some
wisemen from the east who came in search of him.
The first Sunday after the Epiphany of those foreign visitors coming is always devoted to John the Baptist, the
"last of the prophets." The baby has become a young man over night and is at the brink of his baptism,--a
public entry into a life of service. Luke gives us a picture of Jesus actually and figuratively stepping into his
ordered life- followed by a confirmation of spiritual blessing.
Sometimes we get too hung up on the why. Why would Jesus respond to a baptism of repentance if in fact he himself
was without sin? Perhaps that's another one of those "higher wisdom" answers we are not meant to have
in this life-but a more concrete reality is that in doing so Jesus identified with all of humanity in their need
to be affirmed by God as good and worthy.
It's what we do at every baptism, why each baptism is a sign pointing us to a remembrance of the meaning of baptism
in our lives, and why you are called to be faithful witnesses to that event in the lives of others. For while we
cannot and should not be able to see that those involved are actually sorry for any sins they have committed against
God-as that is totally between God and them-we are present to affirm that moment as a setting of direction, a confirmation
of a life of divine purpose, and as an opportunity to give the audible blessing of a community of faith that yes
indeed--you are a child of God! A person of worth, someone of value.
In each account of Jesus baptism there is one consistent feature,-- what was begun in the River Jordan was continued
and expanded. Christian baptism receives its meaning and significance as life continues and is transformed-everything
that happens to us will now be seen through the lens of this experience.
Luke tells us that at the baptism of Jesus, heaven opened. It was not simply a ceremony John performed, nor is
it simply a ritual we perform. It has to do with heaven because it is God who acts in baptism.
Jesus' identity was established, and the voice from heaven was a public declaration of who he was. It is very significant
that Luke specifically mentions that the voice from heaven was heard by all, a public event--in and through which
God has declared to the world that Jesus is the Son of God in whom he is well pleased. This is also true with all
Christian baptism.
In our baptism, our identity as sons and daughters of God is established. God declares us to be his children. Baptism
is a public declaration that henceforth we belong to God, to the family of God. It is not our physical birth -
of flesh and blood - which is primary, but our spiritual birth as sons and daughters of God.
It can never be undone-for in baptism we are marked as Christ's own for ever." (Book of Common Prayer 1979,
page 308.) What does this mean?
In Judaism, the rabbis used to speak of circumcision as a seal,--the divinely appointed sign, of a person's standing
within the covenant-so to in baptism, we are sealed with the Holy Spirit and marked with the indelible sign of
the cross to show that henceforth we belong to Christ. God has set the seal of ownership on us and of the spirit
in our hearts. (2 Corinthians 1:22)
We are not simply "employees of God"---able to work for God, but also capable of going back to our own
lives when a particular job is finished. Baptism is an entry into the family of God, and if one is truly a child
within a family there is no working it into the schedule,---it is state of being, not a convenience when doable.
It's equally true in our Old Testament lesson from Isaiah where our relationship with God, like our baptism is
not just about, "I will be with you" -- but more completely about "I have called you by name and
you are mine."
Sadly our experience with family loyalty is too often one of convenience. We are not linked forever, for better
or worse, in all the conditions of life-committed to forget and forgive, bearing one another's burdens. To our
shame we have written that off as a nice but unrealistic ideal.
Today's lessons are a reminder that we all have a baptismal vocation! Israel was called by God to be a light to
all nations, was chosen by God to reflect God's love and glory. Our lives were also are claimed by God. We are
called by God to do the same. We are each ministers of the faith, ordained or not.
There is a line in the poem by Thomas Troeger from his book "Borrowed Light" that goes: "Water,
River, Spirit, Grace come and sweep over me; recarve the depths your fingers traced in sculpting, forming me."
It reminds me so much of the awesome power that swiftly moving bodies of water have always had over people's imaginations.
The revolutionary black poet James Weldon Johnson once wrote a poem called "The Creation." It is his
rendition of a preacher telling the Genesis story, he ends it as follows, with God creating humanity:
"Up from the bed of the river God scooped the clay; And by the bank of the river He kneeled Him down; And
there the great God Almighty-- Who lit the sun and fixed it in the sky,--Who flung the stars to the most
far corner of the night,--Who rounded the earth in the middle of His hand; This Great God, Like a mammy bending
over her baby, Kneeled down in the dust--Toiling over a lump of clay Till He shaped it in His own image; Then into
it He blew the breath of life, And man became a living soul. Amen. Amen."
I saw it again in Tim Burton's new film fable "Big Fish." The image of a river as entry into a process
of life-unfolding and ever-flowing. Baptism is being placed into the stream through which the Spirit flows…it carries
us on-and just as a wedding does not make a marriage so too a baptism does not make a completed life- it simply
initiates a process!
And symbolic rivers flow through time and space- just this past week the heavens of Mars opened and the Spirit
descended. Did you know that the Mars Rover is called the "Spirit"? Have you any doubts that voices at
NASA were heard to say (from earth, not the heavens as such) after the safe landing-- "our 'baby' in which
we are all well pleased!"
Near the end of Israel's exile in Babylon, God promised to bring them home! They had wandered far and suffered
much, but they no longer needed to fear, because the one who formed, created, and called them by name now claimed
and redeemed them.
It is easy to feel alone and forgotten in life's inevitable difficult and trying times. These words were given
to God's people in just such a time. The prophet proclaims that God is present "because you are precious in
my sight and honored and I love you" (43.4). Like Mary before us, we have found favor. Our baptism is such
a sign.
In his inaugural speech "Born To Manifest The Glory," Nelson Mandela said:
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves: Who am I to be---brilliant, gorgeous,
talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you NOT to be? You
are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so
that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within
us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other
people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
How very sad indeed to have lost sight of so great gift and still delude ourselves into thinking we have lived
our life,-- only to have missed it all!
May it not be so with you.
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