Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Brother Scott Wesley Borden, OHC
BCP – Epiphany 1 C - Sunday 07 January 2007
Baptism of Christ
Isaiah 42:1-9
Acts 10:34-38
Luke 3:15-16,21-22
There is an old Polish Christmas carol that translates roughly: “Christmas is here again... and happy days we’ll have ‘till Easter. Then it is Eastertide, and happy days we’ll have to Christmas.” The carol interrupts its exuberance with a second verse: “This is not the truth, for Lent comes in between with fasting.”
It seems like just a week or so ago that we were celebrating Jesus birth... Because it was... And here we are at his baptism. Not an infant baptism... Decades have passed since last week. Can crucifixion be far away?
There is, perhaps, a message in this odd, “out of time” jumble of events. Jesus is born. Then, a few days and a few decades later, baptism and execution.
It strikes me that these events, bunched up, tell us some astounding things about our relationship with Jesus.
First Incarnation - God takes on human flesh. Jesus comes into our lives. Ready or not, we’re going to encounter God. We respond by saying yes and by saying no.
I think that in a very profound way, crucifixion is the story of how we say no; how we struggle to keep Jesus out of our world. We do our very best to kill him.
There will be a most appropriate time to reflect on crucifixion in just a few weeks. But this morning the only thing I want to note about crucifixion is that, thankfully, it is a failure.
Herod’s genocide is also a struggle to keep Jesus out of the world... a way of saying no... and also a failure - though at a terrible cost.
God will be in the world... God is incarnate.
If crucifixion is about how we struggle to say no to Jesus, then perhaps baptism is about how we struggle to say yes; to have a relationship with Jesus; to let God into our lives. Does it succeed where crucifixion fails? Maybe...
Maybe is probably the wrong word. Gradually is probably more like it.
We know that relationships don’t happen all at once. They don’t happen without work. They demand growth and flexibility. They can become ever more rich and complex over time. They give life.
Baptism marks the beginning of a relationship with Jesus - we should expect that the relationship will grow over time, that we will grow over time. That we will be stretched and shaped. This relationship won’t just give life, it will give life everlasting.
John Wesley was very fond of the term sanctification. As we become more aware of our relationship with God - of God’s grace in our lives, we will become more sanctified.
There is no purpose in sanctification. It is not, in Wesley’s thinking, a path toward salvation. It is a response to salvation - to grace. As we grow in our knowledge and love of God, the wholeness that comes from that awareness will sanctify our lives. Sanctification is the joyful outpouring of God’s love.
Today we contemplate Jesus’ baptism and we contemplate our own sharing of that baptism.
It is perhaps a good day to contemplate our own crucifixions, large and small - the ways we struggle to keep Jesus out of our lives. And it is especially good to celebrate that we fail to keep Jesus out.
It is also a very good day to contemplate how deeply we allow Jesus to enter our lives, and to celebrate that no matter how great our relationship with Jesus is, it can go further. Jesus doesn’t inhibit this relationship in any way - but perhaps we do. What better way to renew our baptismal vows then to consider how we might open ourselves to a deeper and more complete relationship.
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