January 13, 2008
Edwards (Knox) United Church
Baptism of Jesus Sunday
Isaiah 42:1-9
Read the passage: The Message or The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
Matthew 3:13-17
Read the passage: The Message or The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
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The Rev. Dr. George Hermanson
Did you notice how quickly society moved on from Christmas? We had boxing day sales and the lights and trees came down. As the Christmas wrapping paper was sent off to recycling our society turned off the lights.
Yet this church did something so counter. Our Epiphany symbols remained. Now you might not think this is unusual, but several of my colleagues had to tell their worship committees to leave up the symbols of epiphany. Like secular society, the celebration of the light of God breaking into history was moved off stage. And here we kept preparing ourselves for the brilliance of God’s love. We continued to be bathed in the light.
This is attitude is crucial if we are to be touched by the sense of God. We are called through our liturgy and the seasons of the church to see the hints of God breaking into our world, lighting up our existence with hope, to offer the pressing darkness the signs of light.
Our texts are an affirmation of the presence of God within the natural and human experience. They are a radical statement that the light of God touches all reality. In our skeptical age this is not an easy affirmation. For what does it mean to say God’s glory thundering across the great waves? To be able to affirm this reality of God, as close as our breath, is a matter of practice. It is to be open to the mystical tradition of feeling God in all of our experiences, to open ourselves to depth experiences and to see in beauty the source of beauty - God.
One of the affirmations we make about Jesus was he was a God intoxicated man, a mystic who preached the presence of the kingdom of heaven on earth. He was so open to the sense of God that his life reflected the reality of God. We have intimations of this in the Baptism of Jesus.
Matthew uses the template of Moses to explain Jesus. In Jesus the history of Israel is rehearsed. We have in this image of Jordan the chaos of the waters of creation, a new creation and a reaffirmation of the care of God for all creation and all within it. This is a story that affirms we can experience a sense of God, a God who speaks directly to us, calling us to greater action and love.
The baptism of Jesus was a important feast in the early church, more important than Christmas. Like Epiphany, which was one of the three important feasts, it is a celebration of the true nature of the incarnation of God. It is a feast of light which illuminates God’s nature. Baptism celebrates our identity as being formed by the aim of God, bring light and novelty to the world, and our role in living in the light - what God wishes us to be.
So this Sunday we celebrate the Baptism of Jesus. I suspect that for many Christians there is a puzzle about baptism. There is something curious and almost antiquated about the act of baptism. If you ask people why they want their children baptized they would be hard pressed to say why. Those of us who attend church faithfully would be hard pressed to say what their baptism meant to them. Do we do it for the grandparents? Is it a cultural act? Is it a beginning to form our children in what is most basic to us - a sense of God who loves all of reality?
I am not surprised we are not sure of its meaning. In the 70’s I was on the United Church of Canada national committee on Theology and Faith. We had been assigned the task of coming up with a rationale for the meaning of Baptism. The committee was stuck, and we could not come up with one statement - whether it should be infant or adult baptism was one issue. Was it the entrance to communion and membership? Was it a partial sacrament to be fulfilled at confirmation? In the end the committee was discharged without a conclusion. Another committee moved the church to the idea that all Baptized were members and were welcome at the table.
This was based on the idea of rites of passage. Baptism was the entrance to the family called Christian. It is putting on the mind of Christ. In putting on the mind of Christ our identity is reshaped so we are those who see in the reality of the world the finger print of God. Our reality is so formed by our worship and practice that we feel the sense of God in one another - that there is a reality that is luring us to great things.
This is a question of identity. And identity is created by the values of the group and the active participation within the rituals of the group. We are formed by what what we believe about reality, we are formed by symbolic action we participate in, like baptism and communion. Being so formed in love we live this out in daily life. We sense life as sacred and holy. By practicing our faith, being part of worship we are training ourselves to see the world as enchanted, full of the light of God. It gives us new eyes to see in all things the hint of God’s persuasive power.
One of the lines in the baptism ritual is we are made a new person - a new reality. This means living in a way that takes responsibility for both the good and bad we have done, and not be caught in past negative reality. This idea of a new creation is a hard idea to get our heads around. I remember the issue being raised in a program called Northern Exposure, and it was repeated this week on a rerun of Law and Order. A retelling of Les Miserable. Are we the same person we were before our new identity was created? The story line is of a person who commits a crime and now has turned their life around. Should this redemption allow them not to be punished for their past? The solution is that the person takes responsibility for their act - knows that what they did broke our common good. The response of the community was to say you now now pay with a lesser punishment because of the good you did in your new identity.
This principle is used by our parole board - is there contrition? Now if the person believes what they did was justified then of course there can be no contrition. This leaves the issue of justification and who determines it. In the case of Latimer our society has not justified so called mercy killing and thus the parole board could only do what it did. For he is the same person he was when he acted - and it is probably in the same circumstances he will act in the same way again. It is still an open question of the justification but for the moment our society has said no and thus one accepts the result.
I learned this in the civil rights movement. We knew we were breaking the law and thus understood the response. But we broke the law to change the law - to create a new reality based on the idea that the kingdom of heaven accepted all people. Our identities were formed by the aim of God toward inclusion.
Our texts speak of the illumination and beauty of God being found in all aspects of life, in God’s voice over the waters, in the power of creative love found in the wildness of God’s presences. We get a glimpse of God bigger than our understanding and comfort zones- more than all surface experience, something deeper than what we see and seek to control. This is a God who created us in God’s image and whose aim, love, is to embrace all of creation, no exceptions for God makes God’s home in this world and blesses our reality. This deep experience calls a depth of love out of us, forms us in the experience of being bathed in the light so we are those who light up reality.
Baptism forms our identity as those who will be known by our love. We are grafted into a community whose rational is the care of all. This is the meaning of being in the mind of Christ, putting on this new family name that transcends all other loyalties for the sake of the common good.
George Hermanson
www.georgehermanson.ca
