Sermon for the 11th of January - Baptism of Christ

Lectionary Readings for the First Sunday of Epiphany The Baptism of Christ

Isaiah 42.1-9
Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.
He will not cry or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street;
a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench;
he will faithfully bring forth justice.  He will not grow faint or be crushed
until he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his teaching.

Thus says God, the Lord, who created the heavens and stretched them out,
who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people upon it and spirit to those who walk in it: I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness, I have taken you by the hand and kept you; I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light 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. I am the Lord, that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to idols. See, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare; before they spring forth, I tell you of them.

Acts 10: 34-43
Then Peter began to speak to them: ‘I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ--he is Lord of all. That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.’

Matthew 3: 13-end
Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, ‘I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?’ But Jesus answered him, ‘Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfil all righteousness.’ Then he consented. And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’

Sermon for the First Sunday of Epiphany

Baptism, repentance, forgiveness.

Three big words for one small sermon, but I don’t see how you can speak of one without speaking of the others.

And this is their very particular order: forgiveness, then repentance, then baptism.

Because if you get the order right, then I think you are able to see more clearly what each word is about: forgiveness, repentance, baptism.

We may have gotten it into our heads that if you don’t repent, you cannot be forgiven; that God’s mercy is conditional upon our repentance. That the formula goes: if you repent, then God will forgive you.

But I think that this is the wrong order, the wrong way round.

Growing up as a Baptist in Texas, I remember my father, with us in the car, driving past a man one day, arms flailing, who was trying to shout words at the passers-by and the knot of people who congregated around him—-words on this theme:

Repent—the time is now—-the Bible says, repent! or your soul will be damned to hell.

So repent and be saved.

In my church on a Sunday, the sermons may have been long, but they didn’t use words like hell and damnation.

So that theological message was not reinforced, but as a child, that encounter did make a strong impression on me!

It hasn’t been helpful that this stereotype, the wild-eyed evangelical preacher brandishing a Bible, is most likely what we see in our mind when we hear the word, repent. If we hear it at all. I wonder when you have last overheard the word repent as you made your way down the sidewalk or in and out of the shops!

But the point I want to make is that even John the Baptist wasn’t baptising people in order to make this kind of statement.

He wasn’t trying to tell people that if they didn’t repent they would go to hell.

Rather, the reverse: it was because the Kingdom of forgiveness was already at hand that John and Jesus therefore summoned everyone to repentance.

The great theologian John Calvin, among others, pondered this.

Paul said this in the Letter to the Romans:

Do you not realize that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? (2:4)

There is the famous episode in Mark’s Gospel where Jesus himself, when the faithful friends lower the paralytic down from the roof because they can’t get through the crowd, Jesus sees the man who is paralyzed and and says,

Son, your sins are forgiven. Not, I can and will heal you—get up and walk!

Jesus is more interested in how the man will live out this restoration of health and well-being—if forgiveness will result in a changed life of true repentance.

John’s Gospel has this characteristic scene: when the scribes and the Pharisees bring before Jesus a woman taken in the act of adultery, expecting him to condemn her, Jesus instead says, Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her. When they have all drifted away and the two are left standing in silence, Jesus then says to her: Neither do I condemn you. Go your way and sin no more.

Having already been forgiven, Jesus sets her free to live a life of repentance.

And then there are Jesus’s words of forgiveness from the cross, setting the whole world free.

So this is the great reversal: forgiveness comes before repentance, making repentance—-true repentance—-a change of life, possible.

Baptism then follows, the last in this sequence.

Forgiveness, repentance, baptism.

John’s baptism of repentance was preparatory, but already a sign that the Kingdom of God was breaking in.

When Jesus came to be baptised by John, the Kingdom became present, actualized. God’s own Spirit descended upon him, identifying him, sealing him, with favour and blessing.

To be baptized in Jesus’s baptism, in the name of the Lord Jesus, is everything. It is all we need.

The symbol of baptism is the sign of our commitment to the God who has already forgiven us.

We are forgiven, redeemed, loved, included in the family of faith that stretches out beyond the horizon, beyond what we will ever be able to see.

Baptism remains, for Christians, the one great symbol of belonging—that’s it.

In Baptism, we declare publicly that we want to graft ourselves into the body of Christ,

we want to enlarge the small family we happen to be born into, we embrace this new kind of life that opens out to us.

There is not a two-tier system.

The role of the Holy Spirit in relation to baptism is not to be a sort of super-authenticating force from above, distinguishing more authentic Christians from all the rest. The Holy Spirit is, rather, a reality that infuses forgiveness into our very lives—and it can be felt and experienced in many ways.

In Luke’s Gospel John the baptizer does shout words of damnation to those who are thronging to the river:

You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?

But he ends by saying:

Bear fruits worthy of repentance.

This is what comes next in the sequence of forgiveness, repentance, and baptism. It is the bearing of fruit in the lives we are given to lead.

The Christian faith is an active faith,

realising the power and grace and goodness of God in the lives we lead every day.

We have been sealed with God’s own Holy Spirit, inspired and enabled to do every good work.

Re-read the beautiful words of the Baptismal service in The Book of Common Prayer

and The Book of Common Worship, both. They are worth reminding ourselves of. I close with this Collect from the service of Baptism:

Heavenly Father,

by the power of your Holy Spirit

you give your faithful people new life in the water of baptism. Guide and strengthen us by the same Spirit,

that we who are born again may serve you in faith and love, and grow into the full stature of your Son, Jesus Christ,

who is alive and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit now and for ever. Amen.