First Sunday after the Epiphany Year C--The Baptism of our Lord

The First Sunday after the Epiphany—Year C January 10, 2016 When I was a teenager, one of my younger brothers got a rock tumbler for some Christmas. I had never encountered a rock tumbler before, so I followed the process curiously. My brother added some broken old dull rocks into the compact machine. He added water and some sort of abrasive grit. He plugged it into the wall in the formal living room—the remotest part of the house. He turned it on, and he left it running in there for an entire month. If I was very quiet, I could hear the sound of the machine running and the rocks tumbling from my room. When the month was over, my brother opened the machine and retrieved the rocks, and I was amazed to behold how those broken, old, dull rocks had been transformed into shiny, beautiful polished rocks whose unique character was much more evident. I think about that rock tumbler all the time because I think it is a useful image for what happens in Christian community. Whether it is through the community of church, of households or families, circles of friends or even work communities, we are like those broken old rocks thrown together into a tight space and left to tumble against each other--mixed with a bunch of grit--and knocking off all the sharp edges. It is not an especially comfortable process, but it is effective when the Holy Spirit is in the mix. In our baptism, we make promises to live our lives a certain way. We fall short of those again and again and again, but instead of giving up, we renew our promises (both when new people are being baptized and at other times of the year, like today, when our prayer book encourages us to do so.) Being in that rock tumbler with one another is really hard and sometimes discouraging, and so it is important for us to remember why we do this uncomfortable difficult work and to remember that we really are all in this together. But that is not the end of the good news this Sunday. There is another very important part. When Jesus emerges from the water of his baptism, after all those who were there also had been baptized, the Holy Spirit descended upon him…like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Our baptisms and the renewal of our baptisms all find their meaning in Jesus’s own baptism. God has also claimed each one of us, each and every one of you, as God’s beloved, with whom God is well pleased. We are God’s beloved even when we are old, dull-colored, broken and jagged rocks, thrown together in the rock tumbler; and we are God’s beloved when we are smoothed and polished through our common life together. No matter what, you are God’s beloved. No matter what, the person whom you find to be most infuriating and difficult (in the rock tumbler of Christian community) is God’s beloved. The person who posts the obnoxious things on Facebook is God's beloved. The one whose bumper stickers you don't agree with is God's beloved. The family member who you just can't forgive is God's beloved. The person here in this church who just rubs up against you the wrong way is God's beloved. We accept this about ourselves and each other every time we renew our baptismal vows (which is why we need to do it so frequently)--promising to seek and serve Christ in all persons and love our neighbors as ourselves; promising to respect the dignity of every human being--and we accept this about ourselves every time we celebrate Eucharist. This past week, I was able to be a participant in a Eucharist (with no preaching or sacramental responsibilities which is a rare gift for us). The celebrant, the Very Rev. Billie Abram, told us that she regularly makes retreat at the monastic community of the Society of St. John the Evangelist in Cambridge, MA, an Episcopal monastery. And Billie told us that in their Eucharistic celebrations, the brothers have added a line that may be included in the next prayer book revision. When the celebrant holds up the consecrated bread and wine in the Eucharist, he says “Behold what you are; become what you receive.” In and through our baptism, we are accepting God’s claim on and of us as God’s beloved. In and through our baptism, we are becoming the body and blood of Christ in this world. In and through our weekly celebrations of Eucharist, we are becoming more and more of what we already are; being transformed more and more into what we have already received—those made worthy of being called God’s beloved. “Behold what you are; become what you receive.”