Epiphany 1 2007
Psalm 29
Acts 8:14-17
Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
Are you saved? That is the question many Christians ask in their zeal to know that a person is in the fold of God. Epiphany is about the question: who is Jesus? Do you know the Lord Jesus Christ? Who is Jesus? Is Jesus a unique individual who lived 2000 years ago in a remote region of the Roman Empire? For many Christians Jesus is the lens through which we see God. In Luke’s account of the baptism of Jesus the primary message is the epiphany – revelation of who Jesus is in relationship with God the Father, the empowerment of the Holy Spirit for ministry, and the founder of a new way of understanding the covenant revealed in the law and the prophets.
Luke does not tell us much in the way of details about the baptism of Jesus. It happened. We learn from the other Gospels that John baptized Jesus in the river Jordan. The Lucan account is Christological in the way the dove descends upon Jesus and the voice from heaven declaring, “this is my son.” God speaks and the physical world of water and the transcendent spirit meet in the person of Jesus. Jesus is the son of the father, the Christ, the one expected.
The way Luke tells the story, the time of the prophets ends with the arrest and imprisonment of John the Baptist. We only learn that John baptized Jesus after John is in jail. The event is accompanied by the opening of the heaven, the coming down of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove, and heavenly speech. The era of Jesus ends with the ascension, which is only told by Luke-Acts. Jesus leaves the scene and the church is born at Pentecost, so that the spirit is to lead the people of God to continue as the beloved daughters and sons of God. The same elements accompany the coming of the spirit at Pentecost: the Spirit comes from heaven, the visible form is tongues of fire, and there is heavenly speech, because people from many nations and languages were able to understand the praise of God.
It is important that we not turn the sequence of Luke’s presentation into modalism (heresy) but understand that as a historical approach, Luke wants us to see the evolving work of God in and among us. The same God who spoke through the prophets, that gave the law to Moses, led the people out of slavery in Egypt into the freedom of the promised land, is the same God who spoke through Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, Ezekiel, and John the Baptist. Again in the person in the life and ministry of Jesus God again reveals the unconditional love poured out for all humanity. When the mission given to Jesus is finished he commissions the disciples telling them to remain in Jerusalem until the spirit comes on them so that they may be his witnesses to Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. At each transition prayer is the human activity that accompanies a divine revelation.
Listen! After Jesus was baptized and while he is praying the Spirit comes upon him. It is not the descent of the Holy Spirit that makes Jesus the Son of God. Luke told us who Jesus is in relationship with the Father at the annunciation to Mary. The Holy Spirit comes to empower the human Jesus for ministry, to lead Jesus through the temptations in the dessert, through a life of joy and sorrow, through death, the grave, and the resurrection. In the account in Acts, Peter and John are sent to pray for the Samaritans that they might receive the Holy Spirit. There is no mention of prayer on the day of Pentecost; we know that they were all together and that they “devoted themselves to the prayers” (Acts 2:42). The Holy Spirit will lead you into all truth. The Holy Spirit comes to empower the church for mission in the world, to empower us to be living witnesses of Christ in our day.
As Christians we may think of Jesus as the man in Galilee, teaching, healing, living a perfectly obedient life, a very generous and gentle man who welcomes all sorts of people, including the outcasts, who engaged women and men in theological debate, and was so consistently in tune with the will of the Father. Jesus died on the cross as a result of his radical inclusivity of the marginal, the poor, and the challenge he presented to the ruling elite. Because love that profound could not be kept in any tomb, Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to the disciples to show them that love is stronger than death. Jesus in history, in a time and place, is the Jesus of the movies, the books, and often of our theology. While it is important that we know the story, it is equally important that we live into the mission and ministry entrusted to us in our turn. We too have a story, and we must ask ourselves whether it too is consistent with the God of the prophets, the God revealed in Jesus, and God as mediator of the ongoing work of the church. If it is our lives will conform to the model of the Son of the Father, empowered by the Holy Spirit.
In the synagogue in Nazareth, Jesus read from the scroll of Isaiah (61:1-2): “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” God is doing a new thing in the life and ministry of Jesus but my friends, is it not clear to you that the mission of God in Jesus is the same as the prophet Isaiah offered to the people almost 1000 years earlier? The poor will be important to Jesus because they are important to God. Healing the blind, releasing the captives, proclaiming the favor/love of God is the mission of Jesus as it was of the prophets of old, as it is for us today. Where the living God is present, there are no margins and no excluded persons. Every person counts in God’s creation. You count. You matter to God. The poor matter to God and they ought to matter to us. Those who are sick are important to God and they ought to be important to us. The power of the spirit frees us from our greed and selfish ways and equips us to go out into the world to love and serve the Lord.
Isaiah asked,” have you not known, have you not heard”? Yes, you have known and you have heard the voice of God in word, in sacrament, in fellowship, in the relationships that have shaped your life to this day. You know God in the love you share in family, with friends, in community. You know that your life matters to God because at some point in your life water was poured on your head or you were immersed in it, but by whatever means you encountered water, a voice said, N, I baptize you in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” Then we prayed, “Heavenly Father, we thank you that by water and the Holy Spirit you have bestowed upon these your servants the forgiveness of sin, and have raised them to the new life of grace. Sustain them, O Lord, in your Holy Spirit. Give them an inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will and to persevere, a spirit to know and to love you, and the gift of joy and wonder in all your works. Amen.” Then a priest or bishop placed a hand on your head, marking on your forehead the sign of the cross and saying, “N., you are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.”
You too have heard the promise of the Father.
Listen! You are God’s adopted sons and daughters.
Baptism is our entry into “vocation” which is based on the Latin term, Vocatio, meaning “calling”. For some of us our job is our vocation, for others our vocation is our volunteer work-service, for others we may wonder if we have a vocation. You do. Some individuals may have multiple vocations in the course of life. Changing directions, doing something new, that allows your passion to intersect with the worlds need is vocation. Stay alert – God may have something new for you. God is moving today. Luke told us about the baptism of Jesus to bring to our awareness our own baptism; the anointing of Jesus with the Spirit to remember our anointing with the Spirit; that God affirmed Jesus as the beloved and you too are the beloved of God.
God calls all of us to ministry and mission. Our vocation is described in the promises we made in baptism or promises that others made on our behalf. The Epiphany in the Baptism of Jesus is a model for us – to be empowered by the Holy Spirit for mission and ministry – to hear the affirming voice of God declare: you are my beloved.
We will now renew our baptismal covenant found on page 304-305 in the Book of Common Prayer. This water will be sanctified as it is for baptism. In many churches some blessed water preferably from baptism is placed near the door, for individuals if they so choose, to dip a finger in the water and make the sign of the cross, an act that remembers their baptism. When you come to communion, I or one of the servers will dip their hand into the water and touch you head and say, “remember your baptism”. Every Sunday we dismiss the congregation saying, “Go into the World to love and serve the Lord.” As you do, remember your baptism.