January 8, 2006 - The First Sunday After Epiphany - The Baptism of Our Lord Jesus Christ - Mother Stephanie Parker

FIRST READING: Genesis 1:1-5
PSALM: Psalm 29: 1-6, 9-11
SECOND READING: Acts 19: 1-7
GOSPEL: Mark 1: 4-11

(Audience participation will be noted in bold print and italics)

Barbara Brown Taylor tells a story about her Grandmother Lucy. Lucy was a very strange-looking woman. She had lost both of her legs to diabetes and had wooden stumps where here limbs should be. Her weak eyes demanded that she wear dark glasses. Most of the time, especially to her granddaughter maybe, she looked like a disabled bomber pilot. But, in the end, to her granddaughter, she was wonderful. Whenever Barbara would visit her grandmother, grace would abound. In the closet would be wrapped packages enough for a surprise for each day of the visit. The meals were always delicious, followed by her most favorite desserts. Then, there were the shopping trips to buy dresses and new hair bows.

But, the best part of these visits, she remembered, was the baths. Each night, Grandma Lucy would draw a hot bath, filled with suds, and, with her big sponge, she would polish Barbara's skin. Then, following the bath, she would anoint her granddaughter's body with Jergen's lotion - all the way down to the soles of her feet.

(Have you ever bathed lovely Olivia like that? I bet you have!)

All the way down! The perfect ending for Barbara would be the Evening in Paris dusting powder, when Lucy would tickle her granddaughter with a pale blue powder puff. Barbara writes: "When Grandma Lucy was done, I knew I was precious. I was absolutely convinced that I was loved, and nothing has happened since to shake that conviction" _

Fond memories of being loved and cherished by someone wonderful like that are treasures to have and to hold, but even if we've never had this kind of treasure, Baptism is the place where we all meet perfect Love. Baptism is where all of us are bound in love and trust to the One who loves us most of all.

If you have ever wondered if God is a mean God or a merciful God; if you have ever worried that God may want to blast us or curse us instead of bless us; if you have ever even thought that God is a God of law more than a God of Love, today's Gospel alleviates any last trace of confusion about that.

The voice of God speaks clearly to us today, but, unlike the megaphone voice of Hollywood-renown, best personified in Cecil B. DeMille movies, the Voice of God that we hear is warm and welcoming: "You are my Son, the Beloved One; with you I am well pleased".

Now, listen to the words again, and, this time, put your name at the beginning. "You are my child, the beloved one; with you I am well pleased." This is God's assurance to us today, and this assurance is, in fact, God's greatest gift to us.

Listen again to today's Gospel: "In those days . . ." With these words, Mark points straight to Jesus as the one who is to come. The early followers of Jesus would have recognized instantly that, after the words, "In those days", a promise of God's deliverance would follow. This is how the prophets of old announced the news that God's mercy was at hand, and, on this day at the River Jordan, God was about to tear open the barrier between God and humanity, once and for all. Mark tells us that, just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, "He saw the heavens torn apart, and the Spirit descending, like a dove, on Him".

Now, as lovely and popular art of soft and fuzzy religious images would have us picture this scene, we could envision Heaven as a bright blue sky, filled with puffy white clouds, gently parting as a white dove dives toward the earth, coming to rest, where? Straight over Jesus' head. But the image Mark paints for us is so much more powerful than that. In the Greek, the word we translate as "the heavens torn apart" is where we get the word "schism".

Think of it! God made a schism in the heavens. God ripped open the fabric of human history to deliver words that, through the power of the Holy Spirit - the same Spirit that hovered over those waters at creation - through the power of the Holy Spirit, those words fell soft and sweet as a dove into Jesus' ears. The words that could break the cedars of Lebanon fell soft and loving into Jesus' ears, "You are My Son, the Beloved; with You I am well pleased".

And Mark will use this word, "schism", one more time in his Gospel, and that is at Jesus' death, when the curtain of the Temple is torn in two, and all that separates us from God as invisible, unknowable, or punishing, is rent asunder, forever. Forever!

Today, we are reminded that God is not out there, far away and inaccessible. What Jesus sees in His vision is a brief glimpse into a reality that goes beyond the one that the world offers. As one of my favorite theology professors used to say, we are offered a glimpse into the really real. We think of the world in its brokenness, and we think that is our true reality. But, in moments like this, we are offered a momentary glimpse into a different reality - a reality that is just as present to us as the reality we see every day, should we decide to reach out and grasp it and hold onto it tightly as the deeper and most meaningful truth in our lives.

This man, whom we see today stepping deep into the muddy waters of the Jordan - to this Son who has become a servant, and to all of us - God speaks. God speaks. Even before Jesus has done anything noteworthy or worthwhile, God praises Him. In Mark's Gospel, this happens long before the miracles, the healings, or any other of Jesus' great deeds are done. God affirms that Jesus is precious, that He is unique, that He is loved - not for what He does, but for who He is! In this Baptism scene, God echoes the Divine delight and pleasure that was expressed in the very beginning days of creation, as in the words we read earlier: After the creation of the sea and the dry land, God said. . . .

It is good!

It is good! After the creation of the light and the dark, the stars and the sun and the moon, God said. . . . .

It is good!

After the creation of the birds and the animals, the plants and the trees, and the fish of the sea, God said . . . . . I am going to throw you a curve!

It is very good!

Very good! Excellent!

And, after the creation of man and woman in God's image, God said, "It is good, it is . . .

Very, very good!

Excellent! Remember that for later!


And, after the Baptism of Jesus, after this total immersion into the human condition, God says, "This is good. This is delightful! This is beautiful! This is the Beloved, who brings Me great pleasure. This is very, very good."

And so it is with each and every one of us - and with Olivia, who, today, we are going to join into this family in just a moment - so it is with each and every one of us when we are baptized. We, too, are blessed as God's Beloved. We, too - and never forget it - bring immense pleasure to God! For what we do?

No!

No! For who we are!

And, if you are not baptized yet, fear not, today is not about making you feel excluded. You, too, are deeply beloved of God - of this you must never have any doubt. Baptism is simply when we - or, if we are infants, like Olivia, our family and community of faith, on our behalf - claim our inheritance as children of God. We all - we all, baptized and unbaptized alike - share in this inheritance. In the end, it is up to us to claim it and to live into it with all that we are worth.

Now, the Greek word for Baptism means: "To dip, to immerse (we don't quite do that here), to submerge - but my favorite - to saturate!" Baptism is, for all of us, the bath of the Beloved, when God takes pleasure in saturating us - saturating us with water, saturating us with Grace, saturating us with Blessing.

When we read about Jesus' Baptism, it offers us a new insight about Baptism and its relationship to sin. The wagging finger of accusation and failure slips away, and it takes on a deeper, more meaningful, loving dimension. Rather than simply "saving us" from the sin we leaned from the first Adam, Jesus' Baptism - Jesus, the second Adam - Jesus' Baptism mirrors for us nor our original sin, but our original blessing. As one writer has said, it is a blessing that encourages us to become servants of love, and to become a people that offer blessing and not judgment to others. And, despite the fact that we remain only partial, broken, fragile, imperfect people, our original blessing can empower us - if we remember that we are God's children and God's Beloved! And, when we know ourselves as God's Beloved - when we truly grasp that God, in Christ, has named us and claimed us as Beloved forever - it will be impossible, my friends, for us not to see in each and every person we meet that same Beloved-ness.


It is through the saturation, blessing, and belonging given in Baptism that we not only become the Beloved, but it is then that we are ordained by God's Love to become love in the world. Every time we celebrate a Baptism, we are reminded of our original blessing - reminded of the waters that have washed over our own lives - and we are reminded that the Holy Spirit bears God's voice to our hearts, saying to each and every one of us, "You are my child, the Beloved; in you I am well pleased".

Remember your Baptism and remember that you are truly and lovingly marked as Christ's Own forever, and, if you are not yet baptized, anticipate the day with great joy and longing.

Remember that you are blessed.

Remember that you belong.

Remember that you are the Beloved.

And remember that it is a gracious God that has taken delight and pleasure in who you are and who you are becoming.

This profound gift changes us - how could it not?

This profound gift defines us.

This profound gift is what we have to share with the world.

In this Light, how can we do anything else but offer this blessing to others? How can we do anything else but welcome and name all the others who are Beloved, as well, and to give each and every human being, all others, the sense of belonging in God's family? Every living soul - and, I repeat, everyone - everyone is invited to claim their inheritance as God's sons and daughters.

This is the Gift to us on this holy day.

This is the Good News of this day.

This is the Call of this day.

And it is good . . . . it is . . . .

Very, very good!

Excellent!

AMEN!


_ The Preaching Life, page 17.
_ Susan R. Andrews