First Sunday
of Epiphany
Baptism of the Lord (RCL Readings)
Mark 1:4-11
homily preached at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church
When I was the Palliative
Care chaplain at St. Mary’s
I heard so many stories…
and I slowly came to
understand what was actually happening.
To both of us…the teller and
the hearer
Meaning was being made
I bet every one here has had
that experience
Of telling a story…of your
own
A series of real life events
That happened in real time
Events, that…at the time of
their happening
May have seemed a simple unrelated
string of events
And then…In the telling
Some sense of unfolding
appeared
Like puzzle pieces just
falling into place
That is the power of
storytelling
Isn’t that a big portion of
what we do here on Sundays?
We tell and re-tell and
listen and re-listen
And because the Christian
story is a living story
Because it is our story
It just keeps making new
meaning?
Yesterday was the feast of
the Epiphany
Which, once again, put an
official end to the Christmas season
But I’m not ready!
I did pretty well this year
hanging on to Advent
But Christmas is so
impossible---
All the trappings
I can’t resist
I love it all!
The decorating…The guests…The
gatherings…ALL the family…The cooking
And…I musn’t forget…the sugar
I take my Christmas with a thousand pounds of sugar
Now…Here it is the first
Sunday of Epiphany
All I have to show for my
‘liturgical’ Christmas
is a giant sugar hangover
The narratives…the
characters…the events and the settings!
All of it is just a blurr
But if storytelling is
important to making meaning
I’d like to rewind…
Meet Mary
But we will skip the sugary parts
…the blue robe…the crown and
the halo
Imagine giving birth in a
dirty barn
That is where it happened
Mary, whose womb carry’s the
Son of God
The Christ-Bearer
The First Disciple…Imagine
her there
No person, No place, No
time is beyond the reach of God in Christ…it is that ‘YES’…a ‘YES’ like Mary’s…that
God longs to hear
Meet Joseph
Usually depicted as quite a
bit older
And a little stooped
Joseph…What did you get
yourself into?
How remarkable that he
listened to a message delivered in a dream
He has no speaking part…not a
big talker…but listening
That he does well
And open too
Not afraid of the mysterious
God longs for us to be
open and unafraid
To listen for his
disturbing
and uniquely personal message
Meet the Shepherds
Living far away from regular
soap and water
And away from manners and
politeness
My guess is that guiding sheep was a quiet enterprise
In the quiet these shepherds
honed their hearing
They had vigilantly listen
for threats
And so they heard the call
They heard the angel’s
message…Glory to God
And Peace…WHERE?
In a nearby feeding trough?
…And they HURRY
Jesus came eye-level with the human family.
There is no Caste system here.
Being a child of God has no requirements…just hear and
hurry.
Meet Stephen
Just the next day…the church
tells of Stephen.
The Parish feast day…no sugar
here!
This is a whole story
Telling the whole truth
God wants every bit of me. God wants my whole life.
That is the truth.
Meet Herod
No sugar here either
Ego on steroids
Living in a world whose story
is always the same
Competition
Kill the competition
Collateral damage…be damned…slaughter
the innocents
That is the only way to be
sure
Meet the Magi
From different regions
Of different colors
With Different mother-tongues
And yet in their wisdom they
fool the likes of Herod
Resourceful in their
journeying
And protective of what they know…but
haven’t yet seen
Working together, those who choose love, are stronger
than violence
Which brings us to John the Baptist…again…third time
in four weeks!
Not just John the Baptist though
I was taught that the most
important thing about Baptism
Is what God does
And you know how we like to
talk about God being in us?
Which is nice and true…
But at Baptism, the language
is different
we are welcomed into the life
of God
We are baptized into Christ
Into his death as St Paul
says
And we are raised from that
water
And we are IN Christ…
Jesus in the Gospel today
Is raised out of that water
And just then the heavens are
rent…torn
apart
(that is a very forceful
image)
And from the heavens comes
the Holy Spirit
Descending like a dove
Now in just a couple verses
this same Holy Spirit will be driving Jesus into the wilderness
So the descending part is
more important than the dove part
(unless you are thinking of a
dive-bombing, half-crazed dove;)
There is real power and
energy in this scene
Rob and I have close family
friends who are going through a rough time in their marriage. The marriage is RENT... torn apart
There is no going back…
There is no ‘The way things
were.’
There is only room for
something new
In the Gospel today, The
Heavens are torn apart
The word is SCHIZO…in Greek
Mark uses it only twice…
At the very beginning of his
Gospel When God breaks in at the Baptism
And at the very end
When God tears apart the veil
of the Temple at the death of Jesus
Schizo the
word makes bookends around the whole story
This is a tearing apart that
cannot be put back together again
There is no going back to
religion as usual
Heaven and Earth are NOT
opposing forces
God came in the flesh
So that in the flesh we might
meet God
No Temple
No Holy of Holies
No ritual blood sacrifice
No transactions
Being baptized into Chirst
Means that we are invited
into the story…the really BIG story
God’s story
Along with Mary, and Joseph,
and the shepherds, Stephen, and the Magi
… Herod and the Baptist
Our stories belong to this
same story!!!
But this baptism thing
doesn’t take all at once
We have to let
it unfold
And things will get torn
apart from time to time
What in me needs rending?
What needs tearing apart?
Top to bottom
What needs to be broken
So that something new, and
healthier, and holier might emerge in its place?
Answer: PLENTY
But there is time
Not ALL the time in the world
But time
I’ve been at it for 57 years
now
On December 16th,
1960
My Baptism gave me a role
…a part to play in the drama
of salvation
But it didn’t come with a script…no stage direction!
This is no Baptism a la John
This is Baptism by the Holy
Spirit
And my friends…
Could that really be all we
need to work out our scripts?
Maybe everything we need
And everyone we need to work
out our scripts is right here?
Maybe we are each other’s
script editors!
Maybe we are each other’s
inspiration
…each other’s muse!
How we keep unfolding our
baptisms?
When I was putting away all
the Christmas stuff
I forgot one little ‘Jesus in
the Manger’ sitting on a bookshelf
At first I asked Rob where he put the Christmas box
I needed the tissue paper and all
and then it happened
…it took on meaning
I’ll keep it out! It will remind me
That what broke in
On that cold and dirty and
‘not according to plan’ night in Bethlehem
And what broke in on that day
by the Jordan River
Is always breaking in
Grabbing us, raising us up,
calling us Beloved
And saying
YOU…YOU…are part of the STORY
GO TELL it!
