The Surprise of God
We continue to celebrate God in this season of Epiphany, the season of revelation or of the manifestation of God to unexpected people, and in unexpected ways. It is the season to think outside the box, a season to look for God in places we don't like or within relationships we have found difficult or unfamiliar; a season also to look within and to let God be present to those parts of our own lives we don't like being reminded about. It is a season for surprise!
And speaking of surprise, I am reminded of the Christmas Card my wife received from a teaching colleague and which she passed on to me. The card depicts two middle aged women, both wearing sun glasses, chatting over cups of tea. One woman says to the other, "A virgin birth I can believe, but finding three wise men?" Epiphany really is the season of surprise!
It is not a coincidence that we read today the story of the baptism of Jesus on this second Sunday of Epiphany. It is surprising that the Son of God is baptised and even more surprising that the voice of God speaks!
The Voice of Assurance:
This story of the baptism of Jesus is also full of revelation of new understandings and new encounters with God. We need these new insights just as people did of old and down the years.
The first surprise is the voice from heaven. Voices from heaven are not usual. If any of us suddenly make such a claim we are more than likely to get locked away or at least be looked at in scant regard! Yet it is part of our faith that God has spoken and speaks today. And we do have to be discerning. In his book called God of Surprises, Gerard Hughes refers to the vast cemeteries in France and Germany that contain the mortal remains of hundreds of thousands of men who died in battle and whose graveyards declare that their dead gave their lives "For God and Country." It cannot, as Hughes says, be God's will that we kill each other. 1
But God does speak and it is always in the Spirit of love for the Beloved that rings true to the words spoken to the Human One at his baptism: "You are my Child, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased."
Lest I risk being locked away, there was one occasion in my late teenage years that I "heard" God speak. It was strange; no audible voice but yet a voice arising up from deep within, as I recall in the midst of feeling very inadequate about who I was, hearing from within what I instantly sensed was the Lord's voice saying to me "You are ok!" I have to say these three words changed my life.
I am however in good company. It would be interesting to ask you here today to speak about the times it has turned out that you "heard" the voice or at least a sense of God speaking. (I won't let us all get locked up!)
St Augustine tells of the time he also "heard" God speak. It was at a time when he struggled with his whole world view and his life as it had been to that point in time. He was not as yet a Christian but he had a growing sense of God and of his need: "And I cried out at large to thee," he writes, "And thou O lord, how long? How long, O Lord wilt thou be angry with me for ever? Remember not my iniquities of old times....and I wept in the most bitter sorrow of my heart." And then he continues,
And lo, I heard a voice, as if it had been some boy or girl from the house not far off, uttering and often repeating in a sing-song manner, "Take up and read. Take up and read." And instantly, with changed countenance, I began to consider intently...I rose up, conceiving that I was required from heaven to read that chapter, which the first opening of the book should lead me to....[and he read the words of Jesus from the gospel] "Go, sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shall have treasure in heaven; and come thou, and follow me." 2
I suspect most of us will hear God in this way, speaking through neighbour, or friend or spouse. But the implication is the same: "Come follow me!"
Words to all the Beloved
We also meet Jesus, surprisingly, at the point of his baptism. I say surprisingly because we might wonder why on earth he needed to be baptised! Jesus, we might think had no reason to repent. Well in one sense this is so, but at another more mysterious level we must realise that Jesus was one of us, the Human One, or "Son of Man" as the scriptures say. So this Jesus, who is being baptised, is the One who already stands before God as our representative human being and so being, he symbolically gathers us to God which is the purpose of his mission. Jesus has no need of repentance from sin, but like all human beings he has learned to keep turning to God, as his source of life and love and in doing now at his baptism he begins to gather us.
In God's pronouncement at the baptism of Christ there are strong echoes of words spoken down the years to the people of the Old Testament, a people chosen by God but, like us, hard of hearing. Now in this unfolding life of Jesus of Nazareth we see a growing testimony to God's compassionate embrace of all we human beings in the life, and flesh and blood of Jesus the Human One.
These words "You are my Child, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased," are not words that come out of the blue. We have heard them before, I hope. From the very time of creation the God of compassion and of life has been trying to get this across to us, we human creatures created in love. When God looked at what had been created, God said "Ah, it is good!" (Genesis 1 and 2)
The words spoken to Jesus at his baptism also echo God's words from the prophet Isaiah spoken some 550 yrs before the time of Jesus. They are words that spoke to a people who increasingly doubted God and their faith. They were spoken at a time when it seemed that the powers of this world were about to win, when all seemed hopeless. Israel was in captivity in Babylon, where powers were hostile to faith and the faithful community, and where the "empire" regularly sought to domesticate or tame and distract this community who saw its vocation residing with God. 3
So the words of Isaiah came to this community, and they come to the community of faith in every age: "Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine...you are precious in my sight, and honoured, and I love you" (43:1b, 4a). Who is God speaking to here? It is the people of Jacob and of Leah and of Rachel, the community of faith, the community of Jesus, the community of St Clement's on the Hill.
Remembering Your Baptismal (Christian) Life
"I have called you by name, you are mine" (43:1b), says Isaiah. These words remind us of the Spirit of Love that lies behind our own baptism, or, if you like, behind our own efforts as men and women to follow Christ today. There were many things about Jesus' life and ministry that were unique, but Jesus' intimate relationship with God as we hear today was not one of them. This life of intimacy with God is something that God has offered to all of God's beloved children from the beginning. In that sense this message of Epiphany should be no surprise to us. But love always has its surprises because it is unconditional and ever present.
What we are doing today has happened and still happens in churches all around the world. People are still being baptized and still being washed in the living waters. We still thirst for God's grace and words of forgiveness and life. We still wait to be included and to find our place in this story of healing and salvation; we still long for the chance to start their life afresh.
The old but ever surprising Good News of Jesus is, as one writer recently said, that
"God's love didn't start yesterday, or even in the New Testament. It is from of old, and it is focused on each one of us, by name. We belong to God, and God loves us. It's as if God is trying to say to each one of us, ‘No matter what happens and no matter how low and discouraged you feel, no matter what is happening around you and in your life, don't you ever let anyone tell you that you are anything but a precious and beloved child of God.'" 5
Don Saines, 10.1.2010
1. Page 104.
2. The Confessions of St Augustine, pp.216-7.
3. Walter Breuggemann, Hopeful Imagination: Prophetic 2. Voices in Exile, (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986), p.107.
4. Sarah Dylan Breuer, http://www.sarahlaughed.net/lectionary/2007/01/first_sunday_af.html , Accessed 8.1.2010
5. Kate Huey, http://www.ucc.org/worship/samuel/january-10-2010.html . Accessed 6/1/10