The First Sunday after the Epiphany, Year B, January 11, 2015; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

O God of beginning again, may we have the wisdom, the strength, and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth – come when it may and cost what it will.

Today is a special day in the Church – a Feast Day called, “The Baptism of our Lord.” It’s a perfect day to celebrate Patrick Cheng’s ordination to priesthood in the Episcopal Church. (However, I will tell you that, any day would be a perfect day to celebrate Patrick Cheng’s ordination to priesthood in the Episcopal Church, which took place yesterday. Congratulations Patrick!) As most of you know, Patrick lives in New York City now and is working for the Church Pension Fund. He’s been commuting to Boston to serve Emmanuel for the last four months. It’s a long way to come to volunteer to help out at a church! On behalf of all of us, thank you for that, Patrick, and thank you for choosing Emmanuel, Boston as the place for your first Eucharist as Episcopal priest! This is nearly, but not quite goodbye, because Patrick will be back in two weeks to preach and preside while I am away at the end of the month. Patrick, we hope you’ll be back with us whenever your schedule permits.

Those of us who get ordained in the Episcopal Church go through long, careful, and rigorous discernment and education that is both intensely personal and intensely communal. When ordination is the goal, it is often viewed as the end of what gets called, “the process.” But it is not an end any more than any other sacramental rite in the church is an end – whether it’s baptism or communion, or holy matrimony, or reconciliation of a penitent, or confirmation, or even unction. Each one of the sacramental rites of the church anticipates and leans into the future. Each sacramental rite represents a new beginning. And we have three scripture readings before us today that speak of new beginnings.

“In the beginning,” our first reading goes – from the first book of the Bible. The first words of Genesis, the first words of the Torah, actually say something in Hebrew more like, “when God began shaping.” There is a strong sense of ongoing incomplete creating/shaping. I wonder if you noticed that this is not a story about before there was anything at all. According to this story, there was already darkness and there was already water for a breath of God, a wind, a spirit, to be blowing over. The earth was there as a formless void. Actually, in Hebrew it says that the earth was all “tohu wabohu” which is a little bit like it sounds – helter skelter – nonsense words. When God first began creating, shaping, the earth was tohu wabohu. God began getting things in order, making sense of nonsense through breath – literally inspiration, and through the spoken word. I wonder if you noticed that this story doesn’t have God eliminating chaos or night, God began creating some order, some distinctions, to set some limits. And it was all good. All good. Both darkness and light are good according to holy scripture.

All good, not according to a scientific or historical or even logical account of the beginning of time — this is a mystical and poetic account. Light and evening and morning are being created before the sun or other stars exist in this story. This is a story about Divine morality and spirituality, about goodness and blessing in creating, in shaping. This is an attempt to convey some wisdom about the “Holy-One-Who-Dwells-in-This-World” [1] making order out of chaos, and making good out of what looks like an utter mess, what looks like such a mess that no good can come from it.

It is set in stark contrast to Babylonian creation stories which featured gods who caused chaos. It is even set in contrast to the other creation story in Genesis which is older by several hundred years, and which follows this one in chapter 2. (If you read in the Bible past the first chapter of the first book, you discover that Genesis has two creation stories that are not at all compatible. They’re both true, by the way.) This creation story is one of the newest stories written of the ancient Biblical texts – written late and inserted as prologue or introduction. This story is the answer to Pharaoh’s question to Moses: “Who is the Lord that I should obey his voice and let the people go free?” It is the answer to the Babylonian Empire or any other imperial power enslaving the people of God. Who is the Lord that I should let the people go free? The testimony of scripture is that the one Who delights in the goodness and order of creation is the Lord, the Holy One. This testimony is reminding us of the essential goodness of the world in spite of how it may look to us. This testimony is reminding us not to forfeit our sense of awe about new beginnings.

You may know that according to Christian legend, after Jesus’ death, his mother Mary, along with John, the beloved disciple, and Mary Magdalene, the Apostle to the Apostles, needed a new beginning. They all left Palestine and moved to the city of Ephesus on the western shore of what is now Turkey, some 1100 miles to the northwest of Jerusalem. Ephesus was a very large and old city in the midst of a building boom. Archeologists estimate in the first century the population might have been as high as 250,000. It was a vital and wealthy port city – much bigger than Providence (one-third the size of Boston — it had a stadium that could seat 25,000).

When I visited the expansive archeological dig there a year and a half ago, I learned that in the first century of the common era, Ephesus had a very sophisticated, well-planned urban infrastructure, not only in terms of plumbing and transportation. Street lights lit the city at night. There were also concert halls and theaters, an extensive library. Most interesting to me is that it was a city known for women’s professional leadership. Women in first century Ephesus had rights equal to men and there are records of women teachers, architects, artists, sculptors and painters. Ephesus was sophisticated and progressive.

I tell you that as background to our story from Acts today, in which Paul tells of meeting some disciples in Ephesus and talking to them about baptism. It’s a funny little vignette, don’t you think? “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers?” Paul asks. They replied, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” Then Paul said, “Into what then were you baptized?” They answered, “Into John’s baptism.” Paul said, “John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is, in Jesus.” On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. When Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied– altogether there were about twelve of them.” That’s a small number in a city of 250,000!

Baptism, in this story, doesn’t seem to have as much to do with repentance of sins, as it does with amendment of life to follow Jesus. Baptism here doesn’t explicitly have anything to do with water, or the Trinity, but a laying on of hands by Paul, an intimate touch in a prayerful moment. Baptism here seems to be submersion or immersion in a particular mission, involving prophesying and speaking in tongues, which can mean an unintelligible ecstatic utterance or the ability to speak more than one foreign language. It’s all in the ears of the listener, isn’t it? Whatever it means, it’s clearly a new beginning for these disciples of Jesus who had never heard of a Holy Spirit until Paul found about twelve of them. Whatever baptism means, it’s an inauguration into speaking for God (Who is Love) and speaking forth in God (Who is Love).

And so, we come to our reading from the Gospel of Mark. Many of you know this story well I imagine. Still, I feel compelled to remind you that what looks like a proper noun with a definite article, the Holy Spirit, is an overreaching English translation. There is no definite article – John’s prediction is that Jesus will baptize with a spirit of holiness. Although none of the Gospels describe Jesus baptizing anyone in the way that we think of baptizing, or in the way that John was baptizing, it’s not a stretch to imagine that Jesus was immersing or submerging people in a spirit of holiness with each encounter that was as gentle as a dove and as urgent as fire, inspiring them, inaugurating them into roles of carrying out truth, speaking out truth about the Love of God, creating new beginnings where there is nothing but chaos, helter skelter, tohu wabohu; embodying and enacting the truth of God’s Love, come when it may and cost what it will. Truth and new beginnings, according to the Gospel of Mark, come from being bathed in a spirit of holiness, for Jesus and for any who desire to follow his lead. In his baptism, Jesus hears the words that everyone needs to hear – longs to hear – from the Divine: I will always love you no matter what – you are my beloved with whom I am well pleased.

So what do you know about the existence of a spirit of holiness and if you didn’t know there was one, who can you find to tell you about it? In what new beginnings are any of us now in the midst? Into what mission – what enactment of God’s love are we being inaugurated, with what new insight and inspiration and energy, with the reminder, however hard to believe, that each of us is God’s beloved?

The other day, spiritual teacher and activist, Marianne Williamson wrote on Facebook, “Truth is an explosion of insight, despite whatever tears we cry. It’s the realization that love will prevail because only love is real; that anything not love is an illusion that will pass; … that what is reconciled in our hearts invokes new beginnings in our lives; that underneath our conflicts all of us are one; that life is eternal and that no one and nothing, not even death itself, can put asunder whom God hath brought together; that miracles are natural and love works miracles. That God goes with us wherever we go because God is in our mind. Today, let’s choose what thoughts we think, so forgiveness can happen, miracles can bless us, and laughter and love can return and stay. Forever and ever.”

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