Homily: Baptism of the Lord
St. Paul’s, Monroe * Jan 7, 2018
Bump into baptism
[Image of retreat center east of Chicago and small church ministry] … having coffee with the designer of the chapel and the font.
The font was so refreshing with water running down a little rivulet into a small pool. You could easily put your hand down into the water – make the sign of the cross.
The architect told me he wanted people to bump into their baptism the moment they entered his chapel.
I immediately latched onto that phrase and thought “How perfect.”
I first bumped into my baptism with Owen’s baptism (my first child), then subsequently at the baptism of Julian, then their sister Miriam, etc.
Once my life reaches its end, my hope is that I will have not just bumped into my baptism but I will have lived into the fullness of it.
Jesus baptism marks the beginning of his ministry
Jesus’ baptism by John is at the beginning of all the gospels. The gospels are not reporting to us biographical data about Jesus. They are preaching to us the good news of God’s work in the life of God’s people.
They are good news For people who need good news.
They are not biographies, they are proclamations, intended to create followers of the Risen Lord – otherwise known in later years as Christians
They all place this baptism at the beginning of the Good News
As a great bible story-teller once put it, while telling the story of the whole Bible – “The Bible begins like all good stories begin, with ‘Once upon a time…’”
So with the Gospels and their Good News, they begin the way the gospel has to begin – with Jesus’ baptism by John The evidence from the gospels demonstrates that the early church Gospel story-tellers were in fact scandalized by this part of the story, the part about Jesus being baptized by John at the beginning of his ministry.
Imagine: at the very beginning, from the very beginning, the Gospel has caused a scandal.
We might suspect, then, that where the gospel no longer scandalizes, it may have lost its connection to its origins.
The scandal in the case of the baptism is that Jesus – whom John himself said he had come to prepare the way for – he was but a servant to the one who was to come after – that it was John who baptized Jesus. The lesser, as it were, baptizing the greater.
The Scandal
It has taken me a long time to begin to appreciate the central role baptism plays in our vocation as Christians. In fact I am very much still learning.
Many years ago I was introduced to a phrase that sort of captures my gradual learning about baptism. Baptism, a teacher of mine said, is not the end of something – at least in the sense that you’ve arrived at that point. Our whole life after baptism, he said, is living into our baptism.
At least in my life, this has had enormous significance and I would say also enormous consequences. It turns out Baptism matters.
It has been a journey from thinking of baptism as somehow a ticket to heaven – preventing children from limbo or worse. That was the level I knew and thought about baptism when my first child was born. I didn’t really know anything beyond some kind of folklore version of the meaning of baptism. I thought I should get Owen baptized so that he will be saved.
Without knowing, of course, what that meant.
By the time my 2nd child was born and had major surgery before he was 2 weeks old and we were planning to baptize him at Easter in 2 months but it now appeared that having him baptized instead on Pentecost like his brother was a better idea and I had to be an MC at my first funeral the first funeral I had ever been to was one I MC’ed, attended by 2 bishops and many priests and we carried the coffin of the 2 year old who had died tragically to the cemetery while the bell tolled and I wondered with my seminary teacher what if Julian my son had died before he was baptized –
Well, things happened with a lot of intensity to cause me think in new ways about about Baptism.
It turns out that lots of people were thinking about the meaning of baptism. Even more, as I would say today, Christians have been thinking hard about baptism from the beginning. Baptism is like really really important for Christians.
It’s one of the things that has divided Christians over the centuries. It’s the reason that in the early years people would wait until their death bed to get baptized.
After Jesus was baptized, he went off on retreat and prayed. That’s what we call the temptation in the wilderness. When he returned he preached his first sermon. It started off with the words: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.”
Baptism. Spirit. Prayer. Preaching.
Baptism isn’t so much about salvation – at least from Jesus’ perspective – as it is about what we might call ministry and vocation. Jesus’ ministry and vocation began with his baptism.
That’s a clue for us in trying to understand our own baptism. It is, I have come to believe, the beginning of our vocation and ministry as Christians. Not so much about what we will be doing in life eternal as it is about what our life needs to be about now.
Along the way in my own journey to understand baptism, someone pointed out that for the first few hundred years of the church people would spend – 1, 2, 3, or more years – preparing for baptism. It was a big deal. People prepared for baptism about like people prepare for ordained ministry in our day.
Ministry of all the baptized
Baptism launched Jesus’ ministry. Perhaps we ought to think of it along the same lines for us. It is the beginning of call, of a vocation, – the calling to be a Christian.
It may turn out that the most important thing that can happen to anyone is their baptism. All the other things that have become a part of the Church – ordination, preaching, bishops, priests, deacons, altar guild, vestry – all of that is not as important as the one thing that binds us together. Baptism. And it all began with Jesus’ baptism by John.
Holy Spirit
As Jesus’ baptism is understood in the context of the Spirit – the Spirit about which Isaiah spoke centuries before, and which settled on Jesus to give him the authority of the Father – so we ought to understand our own Baptism as being stamped with the Holy Spirit.
This is not a gentle thing, a peaceful, predictable thing. Our lives are hardly ever gentle, peaceful, and predictable. The meaning of our baptism is not gentle, peaceful, and predictable.
It is wild like the Spirit. It is not to be controlled like the Spirit is not controlled. It is unpredictable like the Spirit is unpredictable.
Wild Goose image of Holy Spirit
Throughout history there have been groups of Christians who have discovered the beauty of a life lived on God’s terms. The Celtic Christians of the early middle ages was one such group. some language for it
They understood from Scripture and from their own life experience that God was not someone we bend to our wants and desires, but rather someone who was beyond our control. Someone who we would need to pursue rather than subdue.
Interestingly, the ancient Celtic people saw the Holy Spirit not as a hovering white dove but as a “wild goose.” The meaning behind this peculiar choice is because they saw how the Holy Spirit has a tendency to disrupt and surprise. The Holy Spirit moves in our lives in an unexpected fashion, similar to the actions of a wild goose. source
We are made in Christ to fly not walk about
Living into our baptism, like Jesus living into his, means living heroic lives. The calling requires extraordinary lives of blessing, forgiveness, service, prayer.
“Come to the edge,“ he said.
”We can’t, we’re afraid!“ they responded.
”Come to the edge,“ he said.
”We can’t, We will fall!“ they responded.
”Come to the edge," he said.
And so they came.
And he pushed them.
And they flew.”
― Guillaume Apollinaire
This life lived with the Holy Wild Goose can look like many different things. But tame and boring it is not. Some traditional characteristics include:
Corporal Works of Mercy
- To feed the hungry.
- To give water to the thirsty.
- To clothe the naked.
- To shelter the homeless.
- To visit the sick.
- To visit the imprisoned, or ransom the captive.[19]
- To bury the dead.
Spiritual Works of Mercy
- To instruct the ignorant.
- To counsel the doubtful.
- To admonish the sinners.
- To bear patiently those who wrong us.
- To forgive offenses.
- To comfort the afflicted.
- To pray for the living and the dead.
It’s not an exhaustive description of the wild adventure the life of the baptized Christian is meant to be. But it begins to describe it.
Your Calling at St. Paul’s
You are calling a priest to your parish. I would urge you to look to your baptism for guidance and discernment.
Choose a leader who seeks to serve not dominate. Find someone who knows that to be a Christian is to fly. Seek a rector who knows first hand that to be a Christian is sometimes wild and sometimes not, but always an adventure.
Trust that the one who comes will have a real attraction for Wild Geese, unpredictable, honking, geese.
You will have found someone who is living into the fullness of his baptism.
