1st Sunday After Epiphany

Sermon-Year B-1st Sunday after Epiphany-Jan.11, 2009

The Cloud of Unknowing,
"O God, our great companion, lead us ever more deeply into the mystery of your life and ours, that we may be faithful interpreters of that Life to each other, through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Amen.
Mark 1:4-11
4John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 5And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. 6Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. 7He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. 8I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” 9In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. 11And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

Jesus comes up out of the water, and God says, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
This is how Jesus’ ministry begins-with God saying to him, “I love you, you are mine. I bless you.”
And from that moment on, Jesus never turns away from the life he was called. I sometimes wonder, what if God hadn’t spoken at Jesus baptism? Or what if God had said, “let’s see how this goes.” What if Jesus had never heard these words? From this moment on, Jesus begins to live a whole different, dangerous life-after this one sentence.
It’s as if God is saying, “you are free now to follow your heart, to live on the edge, to do whatever it takes. You are free to be the hope of the world.” This is one of the few stories that all four gospels have-words spoken from God at Jesus’ baptism.
I’ve told this story before, My favorite tv show for the last several years was “The West Wing”. In one episode an aide to the president goes to a woman who has just been defeated for reelection, her political career is over, and this aide says, “it was our fault you lost. You raised a tough issue for us, and we knew that you would get clobbered.” Anyway, she turns to this presidential aide and says, “In my religion it’s not about winning and losing. The person we follow seemed to the whole world to have failed. I don’t mind losing as long as I do the right thing.”
I don’t know whether we don’t believe that God blesses us, or we don’t care. But for Jesus, this moment, this voice, this blessing from heaven, starts him down a road that never detours. When God says these words to Jesus at his baptism, it’s as if the whole world is possible. And Jesus begins to act like it.
Baptism is that action where God releases us to go out into the world in his name, with his blessing, sent by his Spirit, embraced by his love. I don’t know about you, but I don’t walk around like I’ve been released into the world. It sounds good, but as a rule, I don’t see myself acting a lot differently because of this story. Do you?
But every once in a while I’ll meet someone, or I’ll hear a story that catches me at just the right moment, and I’ll think to myself, “I can do this, I can live this way, I can be this person.” I have a friend I have lunch with a few weeks. He worked in public service for years. He was in a very difficult job, and day after day people would come in and yell and scream at him. And he had an amazing reputation as someone who would take it. I have asked him numerous times, how he did it. And he always says the same thing, “I saw my job as trying to get them past the yelling-not solving their problem, but just to let them know they were being heard and that we could talk.” He had a ministry of getting people past their anger.
Martin Luther, a Roman Catholic monk, desperately wanted to change the church from within. But when it wouldn’t change, he led a large group of people away. Pro-testants they were called. But Martin Luther suffered from great depression all his life. And whenever he was most discouraged he would repeat over and over the words that gave him the most reassurance, and the most strength in his doubts-“I am baptized, I am baptized.”
For most people, hearing the story of Jesus’ baptism does not change their lives. We hear this story several times a year and our minds tend to wander. “Oh, Jesus being baptized-I know how this ends.” Jesus’ ministry begins with this story. One author said, that if all we had was this story, it would be enough. A man goes under the water in a river, a voice speaks from heaven, and life is never the same again.
One last story. During the reign of Emperor Licinius in 320 A.D. While Constantine was making Christianity mandatory in the west, in the east, Licinius decided to end this upstart Christian religion. The Emperor issued an edict, stating that those throughout the Empire who would not worship pagan gods would be tortured and put to death. A contingent of soldiers was sent to Sebaste to change the minds of the garrison of 40 Christian soldiers there. The soldiers were given a choice, worship Licinus or die.They saw this as an opportunity for their faith. It was a very severe winter in this part of Armenia, and when the 40 soldiers refused to give up their faith, they were stripped of their clothes and marched out onto the frozen river beside the town. The soldiers guarding these men started fires on the river bank and kept yelling at them to give up, and come to the heat by the river. Sometime during the night, one of the 40 gave in and left his friends and surrendered. But when the count was taken the next morning, 40 men had frozen to death on the river. During the night, one of the guards from the river bank had joined the men on the river to keep the number at 40. In the early days of Christianity the story was told over and over of the 40 martyrs of Sebaste.

Some days we need to hear the old familiar stories in new ways. Some days we need to look at our lives and realize that we are on a journey. Some days we need a different perspective on what we are going through, and what is happening to us.
“In my religion it’s not about winning and losing. The person we follow seemed to the whole world to have failed. I don’t mind losing as long as I do the right thing.”
We tell the baptismal story over and over not just because it was the start of Jesus’ ministry, but because it’s the start of ours. We hear the words of God, “You are my beloved, you have my blessing.” And on the days when we are unsure, or worried, or doubting, or fearful, we repeat these words: We are baptized. God has called us all to a ministry. God has released us to be a power in this world.