THE FIRST SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY

January 8, 2006

Genesis 1:1-5

Acts 19:1-7

Mark 1:4-11

Year B

As a child I had a book called “One Hundred Bible Stories” and the great part about the book for me was the fact that with every story there was a beautiful colored picture. Anyone who’s seen my sermons sitting on this pulpit knows how important colors are to me! So no surprise the pictures in that book captivated me; especially the first one called “In the beginning”. Dark and foreboding clouds swirl against a deep lavender sea. The moon seems out of place, hanging just above those dark waters. Nestled higher, in the curve of those thick clouds, is the brilliant sun. And flowing beside that glorious light, appearing almost to be made from that light itself, is the figure of God.

In spite of the fact that God looks like a figure out of a Cecil B. DeMille biblical movie, with white hair and a long white beard, the whole picture still seems awesome and mysterious. To the child that I was it communicated the message that creation is not only wondrous but alive and mysterious. As much as that picture captivated me, more of my childhood was spent being soaked in the ethos of the Lutheran Church. Lutheran worship always opened with a collect that everyone knew by heart. It began:

“Almighty God, our Maker and Redeemer, we poor sinners confess unto thee, that we are by nature sinful and unclean”.

I had no idea that that collect had influenced me in a negative way until I took my first class at Aquinas Institute of Theology, in St. Louis. The class was on Thomas Aquinas, taught by the venerable Fr. Benedict Ashley. Fr. Ashley was an expert among experts. He would lean back, balancing on the back two legs of his chair, never using a note, and just expound. Information just poured out of him. But what I remember most was the day he leaned back in his chair, his hands folded upon his round tummy, and said, “You see, we must remember that when God finishes creation he saw that it was good”. In that moment the walls of my brain seemed to open to a reality I had missed; that creation, in spite of all its cracks, is essentially good. Hearing as I had for so long, “We are by nature sinful and unclean”, I had somehow missed that great truth spoken of in Genesis.

January is the genesis of the secular world. It is marked by people making resolutions; signs they wish to turn their lives around. Come next January the same resolutions will be made by the same people with no greater chance for success, because most of us are too frightened of moving out of our comfort zones to risk new life. Human resolve is always weak and always in need of something more to empower it for life-transforming change. Today we are told, in all three lessons, the “something more” needed is the power of the Holy Spirit; the agent of creation and new life. We are told that the wind of God swept over the waters in creation and the word “Wind” is the same Hebrew word as ‘spirit’.

On this first Sunday after the Epiphany we always read of Jesus’ baptism by John. As far as we know Jesus had led a rather inconspicuous life until this defining moment in the Jordan. What was it that triggered him to walk into the waters of the Jordan that day? We cannot say. What we can say is - something happened. It is a deep mystery that we have hung theological words and explanations on ever since. While we have spent centuries doing that, I think the key word is right here in today’s gospel. It is the word “beloved”.

The word “beloved” is a word of intimacy, a word that expresses the deep bond between the one who speaks it and the one who hears it. Those who have experienced the tender embrace, the gentle words, the familiar touch of their ‘beloved’, know what it is to be the ‘beloved’. And such deep and intimate love always involves risk.

That’s why this was the defining moment of transition in Jesus’ life. Life for him was forever changed. Jesus could have gone back to his former life. He did not. He began a journey down a road that would not be stopped. The action he took in this baptism was the sign that his whole life was caught up in the explosive energy of God’s creative purposes – and in spite of the fact that his journey would end on a cross – this explosive creative power of God was – and is – good.

One time there was a baptism going on in the chapel at the Church of St. Michael and St. George, (St. Louis), when one of the clergy walked by and asked a child standing outside what was happening in there. “Oh” he said, “they’re crucifying a baby!” There’s more truth to that statement than we like to admit.

John preached a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And while sin (our separation from God) is a given; just glance at the morning newspapers if you doubt it, the definition of repentance has become skewed. For what repentance means, in its truest sense, is transformation of life.

Repentance involves the heart, the mind – and the feet. It will not suffer any cosmetic surface only transformation. It is not spiritual plastic surgery. This is why John chastised the Pharisees and the Sadducees, because they spoke of repentance but did not live it. In the same way Jesus severely criticized the religious establishment when he proclaimed the Kingdom of God in a sense other than political and God’s grace and mercy over law.

John’s baptism had to do with choosing a new direction, a new life. The baptism of Jesus – and the baptism in Jesus’ name in Acts – is not only about human choices, but about God re-creating human life through the power of the Holy Spirit. Whether we speak of the power of the Holy Spirit creating life from chaos or filling Jesus at this Jordan moment, we are speaking about God’s mysterious actions. But the world does not tolerate mystery very well today.

In May of 2005 (May 23 issue) George F. Will wrote in Newsweek magazine:

“…The more (we) appreciate the complexity and improbability of everyday things – including (ourselves) - the more(we) can understand the role that accidents, contingencies and luck have played in bringing the human story to its current chapter. And (the more we) understand the vast and mysterious indeterminacy of things, the more suited (we) will be to participate in writing the next chapter”.

But Will also admonishes us in saying,

“the greatest threat to civility – and ultimately to civilization is an excess of certitude. The world is menaced just now by people who think that the world and their duties in it are clear and simple. They are certain that they know what –who-created the universe and what this creator wants them to do to make our little speck of the universe perfect… America is currently awash in an unpleasant surplus of clanging, clashing certitudes..”

It happened again this week when Pat Robertson declared that the catastrophic stroke suffered by Ariel Sharon is perhaps punishment for his messing with the real estate of the Holy Land. As soon as we set ourselves up as having infinite knowledge, surrendering the mystery, not only have we set our finite minds up as idols, replacing God, we also close ourselves off to the life-transforming powers of the Holy Spirit.

In Jesus’ baptism we see the channeling of a mighty power that flows from the source of Creation. We have called this energy, the person of the Holy Spirit. Our baptism calls us to own what Jesus has accomplished – and what we ourselves are called to do and be. And what we are called to do and be is re-created for life now, for God’s purposes in us and through us, for God’s on-going creative purposes now and beyond. God accomplishes this in and through the goodness of creation, in and through amazing opportunities and creative actions God places before us in life. But we have to be facing in the right direction; not only turning in the right direction, but walking in the right direction.

This week I heard Fr. Blackburn say something that really struck me, so I hope he won’t mind if I quote him. He said that he felt that in retirement he was called to recreate himself. I was impressed by that. I thought later, that is what true repentance means. It means we are called to let go of things that have died, of all that is not part of God’s ongoing creative purposes in us. That is why repentance, beginning again and anew – is never over. Opening the door to the Holy Spirit in that process means the difference between something that is flat and lifeless vs. something that is living and explosive – and therefore – risky.

That’s why baptism is not just about the gift of God’s grace but about our accepting that gift of grace, knowing that in it and through it is always carried God’s explosive creative energy, God’s creative power to transform your life. But, like TNT, it is dangerous stuff. Jesus, in his intimate relationship with the Father, knew that. He struggled with it in the wilderness but still came out knowing that the creative goodness that God was involved in in his life was worth the risk.

Epiphany is the season of light, of revelation. It speaks of mystery made manifest, of divinity made visible. It is a beautiful season, but it demands that we confront the question of whether we are willing to risk getting involved with such power, such mystery. It is not the easy choice we like to think it is, for it always carries with it danger and risk. But it also carries with it God’s action of embracing us as ‘beloved’, and because of that we can rest assured that it is ultimately safe - and always good.

AMEN

The Rev. Virginia L. Bennett, D.Min.

St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church

Edwardsville, Illinois