[Propertalk] 1 Epiphany b - part 1

[Robert P Morrison]

Here's the first part of my draft for Sunday.
Bob

	THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ABAN, ALBANY  1 EPIPHANY: THE BAPTISM OF
OUR LORD JESUS

	GENESIS 1:1-5  7th JANUARY, 2018

	ACTS 19:1-7   PSALM 29

	MARK 1:4-11

	 How do you feel about creation? Are you for it or against it? Mind
you, if you say you’re against it, you may be zapped out of your pew
right now, and no one will know if you’ve ever been here.

	 Seriously, though, how DO you feel about creation? What do you think
of it? Or DO you think of it? The first reading refers to it directly
and the Gospel makes an indirect but telling comment on it. 

	 The poem of Genesis talks about the time when everything was
chaotic. Even that, though, is a step up from non-existence. At least
chaos implies the existence of SOMEthing, albeit it without a sense of
purpose or the ability to organize itself. Just as John’s Gospel
last Sunday reiterated again and again that Jesus was Divine, so this
week, our first reading presses home the point that only God can draw
from chaos a semblance of order and peace.

	 This is helpful to remember. For the soul which is seeking meaning,
seeking purpose, seeking something to call home and to celebrate;
behind these, most of us here admit that it is God who is able to help
us tackle the biggest problems, and help us to discover the way out of
chaos.

	 God, according to the first reading’s poetic imagery, draws sense
and rationality, and the glimmerings of the understanding of being –
God draws everything out of water.

	 We can’t live without water. It’s such an intrinsic part of us
that if we exercise or stress ourselves, we’re advised to take water
with us, to replace what we’ve lost. Water doesn’t just taste
good, then, especially in a hot day. It renews us. It draws us out of
the chaotic into which we can sink.

	 Yet water CAN be treacherous. At the very least, it challenges. We
know of its power. We know of the way in which we can be swept away.
It seems that, despite the benefits of water, we’re only one
mis-step away from being overwhelmed.

	 I think this is why Baptism demands so much of us.

	 Jesus submitted to the ministry of John. Jesus was drawn to this act
of submission, perhaps without fully knowing its implications, just as
it is with us.

	 It’s not, nor has it ever been, magic. Being baptized, in Britain
at least, is sometimes described as “being done”. And as long as
there is the clear focus that God is the actor who brings grace to us,
that somewhat crass statement may hold our attention.

	There’s more to it, though. Much more. Throughout the New
Testament, there are references to dying under the waters with Jesus,
and then being raised again with Jesus, as He was. And it was in the
act of rising, in the act of leaving the chaotically charged water of
the cold Jordan river, that the heavens were torn apart and Jesus’
life and intentions were affirmed.

	Yet His life was never far from chaos, either in His own struggles or
in the struggles of those whom He met. He was challenged – not a bad
thing in-and-of-itself; He was challenged and ridiculed and,
ultimately, brutally killed by the forces of chaos, His baptism
notwithstanding, killed by those who preferred that dark chaos to any
form of light.

	This speaks to us. Most, if not all of us here this morning, have
been baptised. Yet we’re surrounded by chaos. We’re threatened by
chaos. There are those who try to use chaos to intimidate and control
us.

	And perhaps the first reaction we may have is to try to shut away all
aspects that chaos presents. But that is to meet like with like.
That’s to become one with chaos in our manner of living.

	The point that God demonstrated at creation; the way that Jesus
submitted to baptism demonstrated that the forces of chaos, the forces
which draw us from the love of God, can’t tolerate being engaged
with opposing thoughts and opinions.

	God didn’t create, Jesus didn’t come or live in the world in
order to bring silence, but to engage all of humanity in the great
exploration and discussion of life.

	The reason, or at least one of the reasons, why society in this
country and around the world seem to be wallowing near or in chaos in
its dark, smothering forms, is because society – and we, we have to
admit – have allowed little or no dialogue. It’s degenerated into
talking so forcefully or shouting that no dialogue is permitted –
between us and God, or among ourselves.

	The chaos which God redirected and which God refocused at creation,
and which Jesus addressed at His baptism, depends on openness, on
thought and discussion – the very things which God brought about,
and empowered and reaffirmed at both creation and baptism.

	When we turn away from this mask of living as God’s image, then,
we’re giving up the very things that God wishes to present to us as
blessing.

	The one thing that God prays that we’ll understand is that
agreement is NOT part of the package. Open, honest discussion,
questioning, challenging as long as it’s not in the brow-beating,
diminishing sense, but learning to help one another to stretch in our
understanding of who God is and who we are: THESE are the ways in
which we are to address chaos in all its forms.

	Two articles authored and published three or four thousand miles
apart, on different continents, bring this home, talking about one of
the signs of chaos, namely a lack of honesty and transparence.


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://stsams.org/pipermail/propertalk_stsams.org/attachments/20180105/1e7fe0a0/attachment.htm>