The
liturgical year is a strange and wonderful thing. It's not even 3
weeks since we celebrated the birth of Jesus: today we fast forward
30 years to the start of his adult ministry. It’s as if the Gospel
writers were focussing on a series of snapshots from the family
album. The opening pages show us the new baby and his first visitors;
now we have another family photo frozen in time. When we say the
Creed, we’d almost be forgiven for thinking that nothing of note
happened between the stable and the cross, but today is a moment of
no less public importance, and it’s appropriate that we celebrate
it just one week after the Epiphany. Last Sunday, after all, we
rejoiced that the glory of God in Jesus Christ was made clear, shown
forth, to all the nations…for that is what “epiphany” means.
Today is another celebration of the public revelation of Christ’s
nature
“this
is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased”.
It’s
a dramatic scene. John the Baptiser, who has so confidently
proclaimed the coming of the Messiah, is confronted by the living
reality….but…oh goodness!…it turns out to be his cousin. I
wonder how that felt – though John seems to grasp straight away
just who stands before him – hence his shock at the idea that he,
John, with all his human faults and failings, should presume to
baptise the longed-for Messiah. You have to sympathise with his
reservations…the baptism he has offered is one of repentance…a
washing away of the sins we all struggle with….yet now, Jesus, the
sinless one, is seeking baptism for himself. Why??
How
can you Christen the Christ – the source of all baptism? How do you
graft him into a Church that has yet to be born?
It
just doesn't make sense – and his response to John's query is not
much help either.
“It’s
necessary to fulfil all righteousness”
Actually,
on second thoughts, that response is oddly similar to that which so
many parents give when they are asked why they seek baptism for their
baby
“It’s
the right thing to do….”
Hmm
But
surely, you say, the baptism of Jesus must be a very different thing
from that of a baby in Cainscross in 2014?
I
thought that too when I started work on this sermon, but now I’m
less convinced.
When
Jesus was baptised, nothing essential changed in his relationship
with God.
He
did nothing extra to deserve that approval which is made
explicit here…this was, after all, the start of his adult
ministry. God was not applauding his teaching of multitudes, his
healings, signs and wonders, for these still lay ahead. At the
moment, there is seems nothing remarkable to report, except, perhaps,
for obedience.
“to
fulfil all righteousness” means, above all, to exist in a right
relationship to God, a relationship based on loving humility.
Just
as Jesus began his life by emptying himself of his heavenly glory, so
he now begins his ministry by submitting humbly to baptism.
And
as he does so he is proclaimed
“my
Son..the beloved..”
Here
a pre-existing truth is made clear – a truth which holds good for
each one of us…we too are beloved of God, without any
need to earn that love.
Though
baptism is an initiation, it is not an initiation into a
relationship with our heavenly Father, as if, when the baptismal
water flows over us, God should suddenly exclaim
“Oh
look! It’s Kathryn. Now I recognise her!”
Baptism
changes nothing on God’s side. Rather it clarifies for our
benefit something that has always, incredibly, been there, beyond our
wildest dreams or deserts.
We
are, each of us, God’s beloved, with whom he is well pleased.
Yes…but….surely
Baptism demands something of us too?? After all, Jesus came to
baptism immediately before he began his public ministry…it acted as
a kind of commissioning, almost an ordination. A friend told me about
a church in America where a new priest arrived and, wishing to make
his parish office his own, positioned his ordination certificate
prominently over the desk. The parish secretary, seeing this, said
proudly “I have one of those too” and produced from her own desk
her baptism certificate. She recognised the truth that baptism, far
from being a one-off event is part of a process by which we each
become more Christ-like. Not “I was baptised” but “I AM
baptised”
the
ordination of each of us into the royal priesthood of all believers…
That's
our fundamental, lifelong calling. For us, baptism is the beginning
of a journey with and towards God…Though it doesn’t depend in any
way upon us and our fitness for the task, it does lay obligations
upon us : to live the lives of those who have been baptised into
Christ’s death so that we may share in his resurrection.
There's
been a lot of water in the news in the past couple of
weeks...dangerous, destructive, sweeping sea walls away, covering low
lying ground, even claiming lives...I'm sure many would currently
sympathise with the ancient Israelites, for whom the sea was the
emblem of chaos, and who looked forward to the time when it would
have no more influence on their world. We know that water is
essential to life – but we know too that all waters can be
dangerous, and those of baptism perhaps most of all.
Baptism
is, truly, a kind of death…of self…of the old order…of anything
that rebels against God’s rule of love. We cannot expect to go down
into those waters and emerge unchanged…
When
we are baptised, the cross is traced on our foreheads…it remains
there as an invisible sign of the event that has taken place and a
reminder of the shape that our lives should take from then on. Each
of us is commissioned to make that sign visible once more, in the way
that we live out our baptism. The way in which Jesus lived his life
from this defining moment of initiation into his ministry led him
inexorably to the cross….but beyond the cross, for him as for us,
the Resurrection beckons.
“this
is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased”
That
is the stupendous message of grace that is available to each of us…
A
son, for the Biblical writers, is one who inherits not just the
family name and estate, but all the honour due to the father. Sharing
his father's name, a good son can act in that name and with that
authority. The family honour -- or the family shame -- is his. The
family business is his business.
Thus,
when we say that Jesus is God's son, we are making a claim for and
about Jesus. We're asserting that Jesus has authority to act in God's
name, that God is honoured when we honour Jesus, that all that Jesus
did represents him simply going about the family business.
"Like father, like
son,".
It
works both ways,too.
When
we say that Jesus is God's son, going about the family business,
we're not just saying that Jesus is like God; we are saying that God
is like Jesus. We are saying that what Jesus did – his championship
of those on the edge, his refusal to play by the world's rules, his
overwhelming sacrificial love -- was God's business on earth. Indeed,
we're saying that the best framework through which we can interpret
what God's business on earth looks like is Jesus' behaviour.
In
other words, God's business on earth is "Yahweh and Sons"
(and daughters, of course!). As God's children, we are co-heirs with
Christ. God's business is our business, and carrying
out that business in the style of our elder brother Jesus is what we
are FOR. As God's children, God's compassion and God's mission are at
the core of our identity. It is this to which we are commissioned at
baptism…this which makes baptism not a one off…a snap shot in the
album of our lives…but the very centre of our beings as Christians.
“this
is my beloved Son…”
God’s
words are heard by the crowd, so that their impact is unmissable.
From
now on, there is to be no doubt about the primary relationship in
Jesus’ life.
He
is to be seen, supremely, as God’s Son and his whole life is
defined in terms of that relationship.
That
is our calling too...as we seek to live out our baptism vows so that
the
invisible sign of the cross becomes clear, and we too can be
recognised by our family likeness “this is my beloved child, with
whom I am well pleased”
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