1 Epiphany

 

The Baptism of Our Lord

 

January 8, 2023

 

Isaiah 42.1-9; Matthew 3.13-17

 

+ Let’s go back in time, shall we?

 

We’re going back all the way to…1995.

 

More specifically, this Sunday, and this day in 1995.

 

In 1995, January 8 fell on Sunday.

 

And that Sunday was also the First Sunday After Epiphany or the Celebration of the Baptism of Jesus.

 

That Sunday was a momentous Sunday for me.

 

The 25 year old Jamie.

 

25 year old grunged out Jamie who was probably wearing my Sunday best plaid flannel and sporting a goatee.

 

I was a bit of a searcher at the point in my life.

 

I had been a good Catholic boy in my teens, converting to Roman Catholicsim 10 years before in 1985.

 

But by the time I was in my late teens, the Church had changed, or I had changed, or we both had changed, and I no longer felt comfortable and at home there.

 

And so I began wandering.

 

My wanderings took me far and wide.

 

I explored Zen Buddhism, I became a Unitarian-Universalist, and then finally I became a plain old-fashioned  agnostic who still loved things Christian, just not the Church.

 

For some time before that cold January morning in 1995, I was craving something more.

 

I had tried to go back to the Roman Church, but we were both so different from each other.

 

I tried to go back to my parents’ Lutheran Church, but it didn’t quite challenge me enough.

 

It seemed too simple. It seemed to lack the mystery I was longing for.

 

I was friends at the time with my parents’ pastor, and around Christmas of 1994, I shared with her my frustration that I was just searching for something and was not able to find it.

 

It was she who said to me, “Have you tried to Episcopalians?”

 

Hmmm, I thought.

 

By this point in my life, I was a poet, I had published a book of poems when I was 22, and my second book would be published the following April.

 

And so I looked at the whole experience through the eyes of a poet.

 

T.S. Eliot was an Anglican, I rationalized. And Robert Lowell was an Episcopalian. Anne Sexton had been attending the Episcopal Church in the months before she died.

 

I loved the beauty and poetry of The Book of Common Prayer.

 

So, yes, I thought I would try it out.

 

So, I looked for a church to attend.

 

I perused the phone book (that’s what we did in those days of the infancy of the internet), and I came across a little Episcopal Church.

 

I talked my mother into going with me.

 

And so we went that morning.

 

And we came to a little red left-wing church in a far corner of Fargo.

 

St. Stephen’s.

 

St. Stephen’s in 1995 looked very differently than it does now.

 

The entrance was on the side, where the labyrinth is now.

 

There was no narthex at that time.

 

We arrived early.

 

No one else was here except for organist.

 

Who was James.

 

We sat in the back pew, along the wall.

 

Sandy came in and gave us bulletins.

 

And the Mass proceeded.

 

And suddenly…I felt at home for the first time in a long time.

 

It was everything I longed for.

 

It was the Eucharist, which of course I loved! And craved!

 

And with a woman priest nonetheless.

 

It was the Book of Common Prayer.

 

It was Anglican hymns.

 

It was mystery and beauty.

 

And it was also weirdly liberal and against the norm and eccentric.

 

And it was beautifully Anglican.

 

And that was it for me.

 

I never looked back.

 

And, all these years later, here I am.

 

I never would’ve thought on that cold morning in January 1995 that I would one day be the Rector of the first Episcopal Church I ever attended.

 

But, you know what?

 

That’s how life works sometimes.

 

That is what this crazy, bizarre journey of following Jesus is like sometimes.

 

All the paradoxical stuff, all the strange, bizarre things that don’t make sense suddenly, somehow making sense, is what this baptismal journey is like sometimes.

 

I think it’s especially great that the Sunday I first visited here was the feast of the Baptism of Jesus.

 

And today, we celebrate it again, as we do every year.

 

As I do on a very regular basis, I preach about baptism, and how important baptism if for us as followers of Jesus.

 

After all, everything we do as Christians should come from the joy and amazing beauty of that simple event—that baptism, in which we were washed in the waters of Baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.

 

As you all know, as you have heard me preach from this pulpit many, many times, probably to the point you start rolling your eyes, Baptism, for me anyway, is not a sweet little christening event for us as Christians.

 

It is not a quaint little service of dedication we do.

 

For us Episcopalians, it a radical event in our lives as Christians.

 

Just as the Eucharist is a truly radical event in our lives, over and over again.

 

It is the event from which everything we do and believe flows.

 

It was the day we were welcomed as loved children of God.

 

And it was the day we began following Jesus.

 

And when we look at the actual service of Baptism in the Book of Common Prayer, the words of that service drive home to us how important that event is.

 

For example, after the Baptism, when the priest traces a cross on the newly baptized person’s forehead, she or he says, “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own for ever.”

 

You have heard me preach how truly transformational those words are many times before.

 

And trust me, I will preach them again and again.

 

I will because they are probably the most important words we are ever going to hear in our lives.

 

That is not just some nice little sentiment.

 

Those words convey that something transformational and amazing has happened in the life of that person.

 

This is essential to our belief of what happens at baptism.

 

In baptism, we are marked as Christ’s own.

 

For ever.

 

It is a bond that can never be broken.

 

We can try to break it as we please.

 

We can struggle under that bond.

 

We can squirm and resist it.

 

We can try to escape it.

 

But the simple fact is this: we can’t.

 

For ever is for ever.

 

On this Sunday on which we commemorate Jesus’ own baptism—on this Sunday in which we remember the fact that Jesus led the way through those waters of baptism and showed us a glimpse of all that happens in this singular event, we should remember and think about what happened at own baptisms.

 

Yes, we might not remember the actual event.

 

But the great thing about baptism is that, our own individual baptismal event was, for the most part, just like everyone else’s.

 

In those waters, God spoke to us the words God spoke to Jesus in today’s Gospel reading.

 

In those waters, the words we heard in our reading from Isaiah were affirmed in us as well.

 

Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
   my chosen, in whom my soul delights;

Those words are our words.

 

Those words were spoken to us in those waters.

 

In those waters, we were all made equal.

 

In those waters, the same water washed all of us—no matter who are.

 

In those waters, there are no class distinctions, no hatred, or discrimination or homophobia or sexism or war or violence.

 

In those waters, we are all equal to one another and we are all equally loved.

 

In a few moments, we will stand and renew the vows we made at baptism.

 

When we are done, I will sprinkle you with water.

 

The sprinkling of water, like all our signs and actions that we do in this church, is not some strange practice a few of  High Church-minded people do.

 

That water that comes to us this morning is a stark reminder of those waters in which we were washed at Baptism—those waters that made us who we are, those waters in which we all stand on equal ground, with no distinctions between us.

 

Here at St. Stephen’s, all of our ministry—every time we seek to serve Christ and further the Kingdom of God in our midst—is a continuation of the celebration of baptism.

 

Sometimes we lose sight of that.

 

Sometimes we forget what it is that motivates us and charges us to do that wonderful work.

 

Sometimes we forget that our ministry as baptized people is a ministry to stand up and speak out against injustice.

 

Our ministry is to echo those words from Isaiah God spoke to us at the beginning of our ministries:

 

I have put my spirit upon [you];
   [you] will bring forth justice to the nations. 
   [You] will faithfully bring forth justice. 
[You] will not grow faint or be crushed
   until [you have] established justice in the earth;

 

The water of our baptism is a stark reminder to us of our call to the ministry of justice.

 

There is a reason the baptismal font in the narthex—the place we actually baptize—is always uncovered and always filled with fresh, blessed water.

 

Again, this is not some quaint, archaic tradition that spiky Fr. Jamie introduced here.

 

This is a very valid and real reminder that in that place, in those waters, we began to do the radical things we are called to us as Christians.

 

It is good for us to take that water and bless ourselves, and with it to be renewed for our call to justice.

 

It is good for us to be occasionally sprinkled with water as a reminder of what we must still do in this world

 

It is good to feel that cold water on our fingers and on our foreheads and on our faces as a reminder of our equality and our commitment to a God of love and justice. 

 

And, as you have heard me say so  many times, it is good to remember the date of our baptism and to celebrate that day, just as we would a birthday or a wedding anniversary.

 

Today, on this first Sunday in Epiphany, we start out on the right note.

 

We start out celebrating.

 

We start our commemorating the baptism of Jesus in the river Jordan.

 

And by doing so, we commemorate our own baptism as well.

 

In our collect today, we prayed to God to “Grant that all who are baptized into [Jesus’] Name maybe keep the covenant that they have made, and boldly confess him as Lord and Saviour.”

 

That should be our prayer as well today and always.

 

We pray that we may keep this Baptismal covenant in which we seek to follow Jesus and serve all people equally and fully in his name, no matter who they are.

 

And we pray that we may boldly live out our covenant by all that we do as Christians in seeking out and helping others in love and compassion and justice.

 

May we always celebrate that wonderful baptismal event in our lives.

 

And may we each strive to live out that baptism in our radical ministry of love and service of God and of one another.

 

Amen.