First Sunday after Epiphany

First Sunday after Epiphany—Baptism of our Lord Year C
January 10, 2010

“Thus says the Lord… ‘Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine…Because you are precious and I love you…. Do not fear, for I am with you.” In the words from our Old Testament reading today, the prophet Isaiah reports God’s words to the people of Israel, a people taken from their home in God’s promised land and once again enslaved and in exile in Babylon. This poetry of the prophet seeks to reassure a people on the precipice of extinction, a people in grave doubt of their future because God seems to have abandoned them. They had come through the waters of the Red Sea when God rescued them from enslavement in Egypt. They had been established in Israel, the promised land, and named as God’s chosen people. But things are bad again for them, and they are afraid. In the words of the prophet, God commands the people of Israel to cast aside their fear by saying that fear is unnecessary. First, they have been redeemed by God. Now according to the laws of Israel as written in Leviticus (25:47-49), to be redeemed means to be bought out of human bondage by one’s kin, a close member of the extended family. So when God says that God has redeemed Israel, God is freeing them from enslavement (to fear) and is asserting a close, familial relationship with God’s people. Therefore, they belong to God….no matter what. Nothing can happen to destroy their purpose, their destiny, which is to be in relationship with God and to do the work that God gives them to do.
‘Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine…Because you are precious and I love you…. Do not fear, for I am with you.”
But these words could have just as easily been written for us, as fear and anxiety have run rampant through our parish these last few weeks….fear about what will be funded in a budget and what will be cut; fear about what this means for us as a church; fear about what it means about who we will be. In a little while, during our parish meeting, you will hear more about this and about the journey your Vestry has been on these last few weeks as we have worked to prepare a budget for this year. It has been an amazing journey, and I commend the Vestry for being willing to wrestle with tough questions and for being willing to consider new ways of doing things. They have all worked hard and faithfully out of a deep sense of commitment to the work of this church. One thing that I have learned in this process is that the opposite of fear isn’t always courage. The opposite of fear isn’t always faith (although it can be both of those). Sometimes, the opposite of fear is thanksgiving. In our conversations, we were reminded of all that we have been given, all the aid and assistance from the greater church and the diocese in the past. And I think that remembering made us thankful, and it helped us cast aside our fear and move forward.
Today, in addition to holding our annual parish meeting, we remember and mark the baptism of Jesus on this first Sunday after Epiphany. I can think of no more appropriate time to have a parish meeting as Jesus’s baptism helps us remember our own baptisms and the promises that we made or that were made for us. Today, we will once again recommit ourselves to those promises, but first, I want to talk about the overarching meaning of baptism that is found in Luke’s gospel. All three synoptic gospels have an account of Jesus’s baptism, but Luke’s account has two unique characteristics that I think are very important. First, in this account, we don’t get to see the actual baptism of Jesus as in Matthew and Mark. Instead Luke tells us that Jesus is baptized with a whole bunch of other people, and it is after his baptism when Jesus was praying that the heavens open up and the Holy Spirit descends upon him. It is as if the manifestation of the Holy Spirit is directly related to Jesus’s existing relationship with God. He prays, and the Holy Spirit comes. Second, the voice from heaven speaks directly to Jesus in Luke’s account. Instead of speaking to the crowds like in Matthew and saying, “This is my beloved Son…” the voice in Luke speaks to Jesus and says, “You are my Son, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
In our baptism, we, too, are marked as God’s beloved, God’s redeemed, who no longer have to be enslaved by our fear. In our baptism, it is as if each one of us also stands before God and God looks at you and says, “You are my child, the beloved, whom I call by name. And I am proud of you.” And like well-mannered children we say back to God, “Thank you.”
So as the beloved and the redeemed of God, what will our thankful response be? My friend Jennifer Deaton, who preached at the deacon’s ordination yesterday, shared a poem in her sermon that gets right to the heart of what our thankful response as the beloved people of God must be; in fact, I think it is one of the clearest articulations of God’s call to the baptized that I have ever heard. The poem is called “The Work of Christmas” by Howard Thurman.
"When the song of the angels is stilled, When the star in the sky is gone, When the kings and princes are home, When the shepherds are back with their flock, The work of Christmas begins: To find the lost, To heal the broken, To feed the hungry, To release the prisoner, To rebuild the nations, To bring peace among others, To make music in the heart."
That is our thankful response and the call of God to God’s beloved: To find the lost, To heal the broken, To feed the hungry, To release the prisoner, To rebuild the nations, To bring peace among others, To make music in the heart." It is who we are this day, and who we will work to be in the future. May the Lord who redeems us and calls us to do these things, give us the courage and the gratefulness to perform them.