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Baptism of our Lord Year B Epiphany 1
SERMON – 10.15am, Emmanuel Church, Pokfulam, Hong Kong
Sunday 11th January 2009
The Very Revd Andrew Chan
The Dean of St. John's Cathedral, Hong Kong
And 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. And a voice came from heaven, 'You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.'
In the Eastern Church the important truth at this time of year is not that our Lord was born, but that he was manifested to human beings as the incarnate God. Therefore the great festival among Orthodox Christians is not Christmas, but Epiphany. On the Feast of Epiphany, two manifestations are commemorated : First, Christ's baptism and, second, his birth. The latter seems to have been included mainly because it was assured that our Lord was baptized on his thirtieth birthday. The significant event was the baptism, when God the Father publicly acknowledged Jesus as the Son of God, and when Jesus was endowed with the Holy Spirit, who was made known by the visible sign of a dove. This, in the mind of the Eastern Church, was the beginning of his manifestation as the Son of God and the world's redeemer.
When later on the Western church began to observe the Feast of the Epiphany, Christmas had already become established, so that certain adaptations were made, notably that attention was directed to the visit of the Magi, and the story of our Lord's baptism unfortunately dropped out of the liturgical picture. Now, happily, with the revision of the lectionary, we have it back again, and the First Sunday after Epiphany is annually observed as the Baptism of the Lord.
The Sunday of Baptism of our Lord marks the beginning of his public ministry of Jesus. At the River Jordan, Jesus identified himself with those who waited for the coming of the New Israel. Without need of repentance, he stood with those who repented and became one with those who waited for his coming.
So to today's gospel. If you read it carefully, you will see that Mark treats our Lord's baptism as a kind of inauguration ceremony. Prior to the event John the Baptist speaks of the coming ministry of Jesus, and the event itself is plainly the introduction to that ministry. This ministry, as well as we know, was to reach its climax in Jesus' sacrificial death on Golgotha, which means that in a broad sense our Lord, when he was baptized was beginning to tread the way of the cross. Certainly everything he did from this time on was in line with his redemptive purpose : his healing of the sick, his casting out evil spirits, his raising the dead, his preaching of the good news. He was committed to do these things; he had come into the world precisely to save, to liberate, to bring people into God's dominion. This was his task, and he undertook it on the day of his baptism.
All today's readings reveal this. Prophet Isaiah says that the Chosen One, who will have God's Spirit upon him, will bring forth justice to the nations, 'to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness.' One is reminded of the kind of work done by Amnesty International. The Gospel reading is more general; it speaks of how Jesus 'went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed by the devil,' and of the universally of this ministry, for 'in every nation any one who is God-fearing and does what is right is acceptable to God'.
With all these in mind, the tie between Christ's baptism and our own begins to come clear. Reading this passage about Jesus' baptism, we may also reflect upon our own baptisms. When we were baptized, we received the grace of God and meanwhile, take up the ministry as a baptized Christian. For we too are committed by our baptism and our own begins to come clear. For we too are committed by our baptism to the redemptive task, and we agree to do this by the same method, the method of the cross. Certainly this is not the most pleasant assignment in the world, or one that we would have chosen without God's suggestion. We recoil from sacrifice and suffering; we are interested in having a good time. It is sobering to reflect that we are committed by our baptism to a way of life that requires us to live no longer for ourselves but for him who for our sake died and was raised. We can of course refuse to follow through with this, just as our Lord soon after his baptism could conceivably have succumbed to the temptations in the wilderness. But to do this amounts to a repudiation of our baptism, and we must be perfectly clear about it. These are many baptized people who do not live like baptized people. The requirement however remains : to live before God in righteousness and purity forever. If we live as though we had not been baptized, we do so at our soul's peril.
The imagery behind this is the New Testament picture of drowning in holy baptism. St. Paul keeps talking about being baptized into the death of Christ, a death which, since it is associated with baptism, is to be thought of as a drowning. The threat is, that if you go all the way under the water, you may not come up again. And the apostle means this not only as a threat, but the actuality of death; there is to be a real killing of the old sinful self. This is to happen daily, so that, as Luther's Small Catechism has it, the person new in Christ can daily come forth and arise. Every day is Resurrection Day in the Christian experience.
Like the Israelites who passed through the Red Sea, we also have experienced a transitus, a passage through the baptismal water from death to life.
Yet, the baptism of our Lord marked the beginning of a journey. In this journey, the word of God was heard, the healing power of God released, the cross endured and the grave opened. In all of these, the love of God is present in him and come into the world through him.
In baptism, we are wedded to our faith and hope. We grow towards maturity through love. By learning to deny ourselves, we can gradually loosen and deaden our grip at the centre of our small world. Meanwhile, we can possess the freedom of love. This love will reveal to us when we can look at God as he looks at us, with utter and complete love. Then we are able to enjoy being in the family of God because God ever says to us, 'You are my children and my beloved' as well.
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