I don’t know what’s been going on since I was last in Church but things have moved pretty fast!
They say, as a parent, you blink, and you miss their childhood…
but this is ridiculous!
I left for a short holiday, just after Evensong on Christmas Day-
with Jesus as a newborn babe, firmly lodged in that Crib.
I come back today and, in our Gospel, he’s already a fully grown man
bound for the Jordan
to be initiated into some apocalyptic sect, by his wild cousin John!
… … …
Initiation rites get a bad press from time to time.
Though it seems to me that they are, by and large, good things.
They may seem weird, or outmoded, or worse still: irrelevant!
but generally, they are designed to build social relationships, to develop understanding, empathy, altruism and moral decision-making.
Do they act as barriers? Yes.
Are they resistors to joining in with something? Certainly
But that ‘ticket price’ tells the initiate the value of the activity…
whether that ‘something’ is worth committing to.
And it tells them and everyone else about what is to come and what to expect.
For Jesus- the time of reckoning came when he went out to the Jordan
to be baptised with the baptism of John.
And though there is no record of his baptising anyone himself,
within fifty years, Matthew -in the Closing Act of his Gospel-
has Jesus send out his disciples on an initiation mission saying:
Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:
At the font of this year let us then recall:
- What exactly that initiation tells us about God: for that baptism was a Theophany.
- Let us recall what obligations this Theophany places upon us- our task
- And, lastly, let us recall what is our Telos– our promised End
A Theophany. A Task. A Telos.
- First- Jesus initiation reveals a Theophany.
Immediately upon being baptised, a vision of the God is revealed with astounding clarity: A visible manifestation to humankind, of God.
The many aspects in which God has been experienced by his Children
become unified in this one Vision of God, as Father, & Son, & Holy Spirit.
First, a Father who is Creative Originator, Loving Overseer, Just Judge, Gentle Parent, Faithful Spouse
Second, a Creator God who has chosen to enter His creation-
to be his own Flesh and Blood as a Son in his own Creation
Emmanuel, fulfilling in Himself both Sides of the Bargain.
The Giver and the Gift.
The Call and the Answer
The Potter and the Clay
The Song and the Dancer.
And the Dancing… because the disciples knew this God as alive to them there and then and we can know Him at work within us here and now.
A full revelation but also Living Revealer.
A Holy Tutor and Accompanying Spirit, ever present-
sustaining, upholding, teaching, inspiring , creating us anew.
It is an astonishing thing:
On the banks of the Jordan the disciples saw with their own eyes
that there is no isolation of man from God or of God from man.
In that baptism, and in our own baptised life- in this holy communion this morning- in our life and witness as Christians we encounter
“ Jesus Christ is in His one Person,
as true GOD, HUMANITY’S loyal partner,
and as truly HUMAN, GOD’S loyal partner.
He is the Lord humbled for communion with us
and likewise the Servant exalted to communion with God. “
*Barth, The Humanity of God
(more of which in a moment)
- But before that- let us just recall what this Theophany does to the disciple? What difference does it make to us
and what obligations does this knowledge place it’s initiates?
Well, the rest of the Gospel makes this clear enough
but so too, & much more directly, does today’s epistle from Acts 3:
Our TASK the author says, is to Witness to (it says twice) to what we have seen
to proclaim it
and ‘to testify’ about it- (also twice)
St Paul summed up this five-times given task elsewhere
when he enjoins his readers:
“To be ready always to give an answer to every man
that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you”
Or as the Message Translation puts it:
“Quietly trust yourself to Christ your Lord, and if anybody asks why you believe as you do, be ready to tell him, and do it in a gentle and respectful way.”
I particularly like that translation because it reminds us that,
though the task we have been given is amazing, and serious,
our witness doesn’t have to be complex or overly clever.
It simply needs to be an honest telling of what we have found out.
It just has to be true … and shared with profound carefulness
Profoundly careful because our witness,
(where and when it is a true witness),
is not just an objective testimony at all
Just as our baptism is not just any old rite of passage, and this communion this morning, any old ceremony of remembrance…
Our witness is actually a very participation in God’s witness to Himself:
the Holy Spirit working out, through us, God’s New Creation.
It has a Sacramental Quality and it is a privilege and a great responsibility.
Putting it like that, mind you, it also sounds like quite a daunting task
But it needn’t be…
The eminent theologian Karl Barth put it best:
He was at Rockefeller Chapel on the campus of the University of Chicago during a lecture tour in 1962. After his lecture, during the Q & A , a student asked Barth if he could summarize the whole Christian Message in a single sentence!
Barth thought for a moment and then said, quietly,
“Yes, I can. In the words of a song I learned at my mother’s knee:
‘Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”
- And that then, finally is our end. Our Telos, to use the biblical Greek.
TO BE LOVED BY GOD and TO LOVE HIM FOREVER
As Jesus is baptised along with everyone else- God in His own river-
His disciples see with their own eyes that God’s Glory does not exist any more upon a holy mountain or within a holy city or in holy land which can be marked on a map …but with us all.
“And the reason is not that God’s holiness in space has suddenly become unworthy of Him or has changed into a cheaper ubiquity.
The Reason is that all prophecy is now fulfilled in Jesus,
and God’s holiness in space, like all God’s holiness,
is now called and is Jesus of Nazareth.
In this morning’s gospel Jesus is disclosed to us the togetherness of Man & God
— a union of two totally different kinds of beings…” **
And this Union, of which we also have been witnesses
promises this TELOS- this END: the possibility of our own similar Union
** Barth, The Humanity of God
We are given in Christ a new relationship, a new citizenship, a new family,
a new task and purpose, but the end of all of this is an entire new creation–
so that- as the catechism puts it-
‘we might know Him and to love Him forever’.
Friends, at the font of the year we are faced in the Bible with God’s initiation as a Man.
It is at once a simple Gospel-
(“Jesus loves me this I know”)
But also one that offers to us simply profound truths
about our own nature, destiny and calling:
- A a revelation of what an astounding God God is
- A disclosure of what an astonishing end God has planned for us,
And 3.a serious, role to play in God’s own work.
It is perhaps, a rather High Bar, as far as initiations go.
But at least we know what we are in for- and, I think, it is definitely worth the ticket price and worth committing to the ticket price.
Let us GO therefore, (says Christ in St Matthew)
and teach all nations the same,
baptizing them in the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost
Teach them whatsoever I have commanded you:
and, lo, I am with you always,
even unto the end of the world. Amen.
