[Propertalk] First Draft for 1 Epiphany - baptism of Jesus

[robertpmorrison at charter.net]

Here's the first draft of Sunday's sermon. Happy meditating and writing!

Bob

THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY  		             THE FIRST 
SUNDAY IN EPIPHANY:
							       		                                     THE BAPTISM OF 
CHIRST B
GENESIS 1:1-5	                          		    	    	 
8th JANUARY, 2012
ACTS 19:1-7				 
PSALM 29
MARK 1:4-11

	If you had a chance to live things differently, would you change 
anything? It’s not a completely idle question. I enjoy the movie 
“Groundhog Day” and caught a bit of it again this week. If you haven’t 
seen it, the premise is that Bill Murray’s character has to learn about 
himself and his relationship with others, and the way in which this is 
accomplished is that he gets to say and do the same things in what is a 
permanent recycling of the same twenty-four hours.

	It takes some getting used to, but the actor’s character finally 
understands – and is a much better person for that!

	Where and how this can happen to and for us, in reality and in real 
time, isn’t always apparent, but for starters, God gives a whole new 
twenty-four hours every day – hours in which we can evaluate in as 
honest and non-judgmental way as we can what we’ve done in certain 
company and certain circumstances. We’re allowed to change course, to 
try to make amends and to help others find fulfillment, and so on.

	Perhaps this is a soft way of looking at New Year’s Resolutions. 
However we think about this and try to put it into effect, though, we 
should never lose sight of the fact that God DOES give us these second, 
and third, and seventy-second and even seventy-third chances. There’s no 
end to the way in which God blesses us and helps us to discover who we 
are and what God hopes we’ll do with that blessing.

	When the artist Henri Matisse talked about his vocation and how he 
transferred what he saw in his mind and heart on to canvass or paper 
cut-outs, he remarked, “The artist begins with a vision — a creative 
operation requiring effort. Creativity takes courage.” 1 That last 
sentence strikes home with me. “Creativity takes courage.” It makes me 
wonder whether or not we can apply these words to God. After all, God is 
the Creator par excellence, and when we think about the way in which 
human beings were introduced into the picture we can almost hear a 
sudden intake of breath as God may have debated what might happen. Yet 
here we are – not just a random collection of people, but each of us a 
special, distinct life within creation – each of us with the ability to 
learn from everything around us; each of us with the possibility of 
developing; and, most importantly, each of us being stamped with the 
image of God.

	Discovering all this, then, is a part of the journey which we’re all 
called to take. The movie “The Way” talks about this journey, one 
brought about through tragedy. What followed that tragedy could have 
gone in any number of directions, but Martin Sheen’s character decided 
to see where his son had been going and to find out why it was so 
important for him – even at the cost of discomfort and the pain of his 
son’s death pressing on him.

	You might think of this as a sort of a baptism – a beginning, a 
commitment, a welcoming to a journey. It’s the sort of gentle – or 
perhaps not so gentle – confrontation in which God calls us to a life of 
discovery, often a life that involves taking new directions.

	So far, so good. However, on the face of it, the reading from Acts 
might make you think that there was a problem with the baptism at which 
John was officiating. Paul, at any rate, talking to folk at Ephesus, 
seemed to find fault with it. Somehow the ideas of baptism as cleansing 
and baptism as power-sharing were divorced.

	You might think that repenting, straightening out one’s life, resolving 
conflicts within and without would be the major part of baptism, and 
that Paul would be very happy. After all, it IS initiation into the 
Christian family. It IS a sign of acceptance and belonging. I think 
we’ve always understood that. When Jesus presented Himself to His 
cousin, therefore, and asked to be baptised, just as all those other 
women and men who’d come to the river to listen to John and receive the 
rites he was offering; when Jesus presented Himself to John and was 
baptised, He was indicating He wanted to be exactly like us. He wanted 
to belong, He wanted to identify as closely as He possibly could with 
every last human being, as each one struggled with what it meant to be 
committed to live by God’s desire.

	It wasn’t a matter of Jesus needing to repent. It was everyone else who 
needed to recommit to serving God and seeking God’s specific design for 
their lives. For Jesus, it was, first and foremost, a matter of 
identification.

	So here we are, two weeks after celebrating Jesus’ birth, one week 
after He was named as God with us and God saves, here we are discovering 
one more act in which God wishes to make us feel totally within the 
family.

	It’s probably not for nothing that the Mafia refers to itself as “The 
Family”. No matter what anyone else does,
whatever happens, that person is ALWAYS family, and the family will take 
care of the problem.

	Not that I’m suggesting that God is head of the Mob – but the sincerity 
of God’s invitation and the totality of Jesus’ identification with us is 
made absolutely clear from the start of Jesus’ Presence on earth. In an 
act of tremendous courage, God has invited every last human being into 
the blessed security and companionship brought about through creation. 
God didn’t say, - to the shepherds, for instance, “Let Me see your 
credentials. What have you been doing with the sheep entrusted to your 
care?” God said simply, through one of the angels, “Come, worship, 
become a part of My Joy.” And God left it up to the shepherds, as it’s 
left up to us, to decide what impact this should have on our lives.

	I don’t doubt that the shepherds’ lives took on a different aspect 
after Bethlehem. Our lives too, after baptism, after coming to the 
waters and finding in them the renewal brought by God’s blessing, our 
lives should be coloured completely differently. So should the lives of 
everyone with whom we come into contact.

	There’s a story about Sam Houston, “the first president of the Republic 
of Texas. It’s said he was a rather nasty fellow with a checkered past. 
Later in life Houston made a commitment to Christ and was baptized in a 
river. The preacher said to him, ‘Sam, your sins are washed away.’ 
Houston replied, ‘God help the fish.’”

	Funny story! “Although most of us were not baptized as adults in a 
river, we can probably relate to this reply.” 2 But Sam Houston missed 
the point. When people flocked to see John and were baptised in the 
Jordan; when those who’ve been baptised since then have been invited and 
brought into the family, not only does God give us rebirth but God wipes 
us free of everything that could contaminate us and hold us back. It’s 
not a matter of passing whatever bothers and burdens us to someone or 
something else. Whatever it is that has made us inform in body, mind or 
spirit is put aside. We become new people. We, like Jesus, identify with 
our Creator’s plan. That’s why we’re supposed to follow through on these 
vows which we’ll be renewing in a few minutes. As members of the vast 
family of God we have to recognise and honour that God loves everyone 
else passionately, and desires that they belong too.

	One of the most difficult things to do after baptism, though, is to 
readjust our attitudes – both towards ourselves and to others.

  	But Jesus doesn’t just draw us into turning our lives around, as 
important as this is. Jesus knew that that’s not enough. Jesus 
recognised that empowering those who’ve made a new commitment is 
absolutely necessary. You don’t just suck away what’s bothering you and 
leave a vacuum. That would produce either tension or the ideal place for 
all sorts of other temptations to rush in. When one renews one’s life, 
when one makes a commitment – no matter what – a sharing of power is 
involved to offer support and strength for the new decisions to be made. 
Otherwise you and I may be quite helpless.

	This lay at the heart of Paul’s lack of ease when he talked to those 
Christians in Ephesus. He had nothing against them. He had nothing 
against the person or people who’d trained them before baptism. He may 
have had little to quarrel about in terms of the actual baptism itself – 
except that he recognised that by being baptised in Jesus’ Name gave 
them access to the power of the Holy Spirit. That, and the candidates’ 
willingness to receive it, was what had been missing.

	When Jesus was baptised by His cousin, not only did He identify with us 
all, He shared His power with us all. And we’re all called to accept it.

	In some ways it can be easy to be baptised. What I remember from my 
time in Scotland is the common expression after the birth of a child. 
The parents or other relatives and friends may ask, “When is the baby 
being ‘done’?” I don’t know if that expression is used anywhere else, 
but it smacks to me of mere formality – the child – or adult, for that 
matter – is brought into the midst of the congregation, some words are 
said and some water is splashed about. Then everyone goes to what is 
sometimes a fairly lavish party.

	I hope I’m not a killjoy. Parties are good, especially if they have 
fruitcake, as they usually do in Scotland! And there’s every reason for 
celebrating when someone is baptised. But everyone – the officiant, the 
congregation, the parents and sponsors, the candidate her or himself, as 
much as is possible – everyone should understand that by becoming a 
member of God’s family, power is promised to us all, and that it is up 
to us to encourage everyone to accept this power and to use it to gild 
God’s reign – specifically by honouring creation, creation’s 
inhabitants, and ourselves. Baptism enrols us as living, working members 
of God’s lavish design. We’re to become creative. As that marvellous 
quote of Henri Matisse puts it, “The artist (in the first instance, God, 
but then each of us too. The artist) begins with a vision – a creative 
operation requiring effort.” Baptism – whether of Jesus, or of those 
folk in Ephesus, or of us right here – baptism requires an effort on our 
part, a decision to become active witnesses in every way we can.

No one said this would be easy. John the Baptist didn’t say to Jesus, 
“Come over here for a minute. This’ll only
take a moment and won’t disturb you in the least.” John didn’t take out 
an ad in “The Jerusalem Post”, or “Haaretz”, or “Al Quds”, telling folk, 
“If you have a spare hour come on down to the River. That’s all it’ll 
take to find happiness.” The problem with John was that he put just 
about everything up front, and, as Henri Matisse concluded, it’s not 
just a matter of having or being given a vision, great as that is. 
“Creativity,” reminded Matisse, “takes courage.”

	As we reaffirm our membership in God’s family, as we renew our 
baptismal vows, then, think about that. Think about Jesus’ total 
identification and presence with us. Think about the gift not only of 
renewal but of power, that we may accomplish more than we can even dream 
is possible – by virtue of all that God offers us. It’s up to us to 
accept and unpack this gift, then.


NOTES:

1 	Artist to Artist : Inspiration and Advice from Visual Artists Past & 
Present (1998), p. 62 See http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Henri_Matisse

2	King Duncan, Collected Sermons,   www.Sermons.com


Robert P Morrison
Interim Vicar
The Episcopal Church of St Alban
PO Box 1556
Albany OR  97321   541-921-1076 (cell)