1st Sunday after the Epiphany, Year B, January 8, 2012

O God of new beginnings, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will. Amen.

One of the peculiarities of the Western Christian liturgical calendar in these post-modern times is that the glorious Feast of the Epiphany, which always falls on January 6, the 12th day of Christmas, doesn’t get much purchase in our parish churches unless January 6 happens to fall on a Sunday. And the first Sunday after the Epiphany is the Feast of the Baptism of our Lord. That is the feast we observe today. And the problem, at least for our organist Nancy Granert and me (and probably others), is that that leaves no proper place to sing the most exquisite hymn setting of “Brightest and best of the stars of the morning,” except for maybe a hymn-sing in the summer. And so, as we did our usual weekly collaboration on music, we noted with regret that it would seem out of place to sing this hymn on a day that celebrates the Jesus’ encounter with John the Baptist at the Jordan River some three decades after his infancy. But I couldn’t let it go. I asked if it would be too weird to sing it. And Nancy’s enthusiastic response was “it would be weird and fab!” And I thought, “hey, that’s just like us – weird and fabulous!”

It could be understood as a way of saying goodbye to Christmastide, like Havdalah on the Jewish Sabbath, which contains a sense of sweetness and sadness. But Havdalah is a ceremony to mark the end of the sacred and the move into the mundane, and hopefully we’re not doing that at the beginning of a worship service! Instead, I want to offer the possibility that this is a service about renewal, and that all of our sacred texts and music today testify to the startling renewing urges of the Divine. This is a service about an assortment of new beginnings which the Divine is revealing and inspiring. Inspiring. Inspiration is the English word which, for me, which gets closest to the heart of the Hebrew word ruach, which is spirit and wind and breath – and when it’s from God, it’s holy – and according to scripture, sprit and wind and breath are essential ingredients of holiness, essential ingredients of life itself.

You may know that our sacred story of Genesis begins not with a scientific and historic description of what once happened eons and eons ago, but with what is ongoing and incomplete. It’s not about anything being finished. And if it’s a history at all, it is a moral history – a story of discernment of the good, of distinctions between confusion and order, between ignorance and enlightenment, between gibberish and wisdom, between mayhem and harmony, between darkness and dawn. Furthermore, it’s poetry – treacherous to translate but even more treacherous to turn into prose. Prose tries to pin things down. Poetry opens things up. So for the purposes of this sermon, I’ve turned these first five verses of Genesis back into a poem. I’m going to read the poem to you – and you’ll have to imagine that on the page it looks something like ee cummings – without capital letters and without punctuation. The syntax is a little like ee cummings as well:

with beginning shaped god the sky and the earth
and the earth being utter nonsense and darkness over the face of the deep
and wind or spirit or breath of god hovering tremulously protectively upon the face of the waters
and says god becoming becomes light and becomes light
and sees god becomes light for good
and separates god between becomes light and between the darkness
and calls god for becomes light day and for darkness called night
and becomes sunset and becomes sunrise one day

And one day John baptizer became in the wilderness and everyone was going out to him – from the countryside and from the city. He was immersing them in the river Jordan and they were confessing their active and passive participation in collective estrangement from justice and peace (which is another way of saying they were there for confession of sins) and they were committing to a new identity – to a new way of being in the world (which is another way of saying they were repenting). And John reminded people of Elijah – wild and coarse and prophetic. And he taught them that while he had immersed them in water, one more powerful than he would immerse them with holy spirit.  (Our English Bible translators tend to put definite articles where there are none, and tend to create proper nouns by capitalizing only certain letters.) “The Holy Spirit” does become a title as the Christian Church developed doctrine centuries later, but, according to Mark, it’s not a title yet. And it’s not a title yet in Luke’s Acts of the Apostles either. In our passage appointed for today, one day Paul asked some learners or followers in Ephasus, did you receive holy spirit when you took on confidence in the message of Jesus? And the disciples replied, “no, we have not even heard that there is a holy spirit!” And so Paul immersed them in the name of Jesus and the spirit of the holy came over them.

One day Jesus from Nazareth was immersed in the Jordan River by John – the one who proclaimed an immersion of repentance for the forgiveness of active and passive participation in the collective estrangement from justice and peace. And immediately after Jesus was coming out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart – just like the familiar prayer from Isaiah, “oh that you would tear open the heavens and come down.” It was like that prayer being answered one day. It was the wind – the spirit – the breath of God one day, hovering tremulously protectively like a dove. And Jesus heard a voice from heaven said, “beloved son, I AM so pleased with you.”

One day Jesus, fully committing to a new identity, to a new way of being in the world, publically put himself in John’s hands and waded in over his head to the Jordan River – that ancient boundary between wilderness and promised land, between exile and home, between bondage and liberation, and when his head was above water again, he became fully inspired by God. One day, some three decades after his infancy, Jesus had an epiphany. And one day Jesus became an epiphany – a brightest and best star of the morning – a light shining the way in the darkness.

One day anyone of us got carried away or walked to the water of baptism and prayers for inspiration were being answered, and we publically committed or were committed by our presenters to a particular, indeed, a peculiar mission of following (however clumsily) in Jesus’ footsteps, flawed and beloved as we are. For this baptism is not an arrival, but a new beginning, an indication of new direction and renewed commitment. (I think that’s true for all of the sacraments, by the way, Eucharist, or matrimony, or confirmation or ordination, reconciliation or unction.)

One day we who are Emmanuel Church live into the peculiar mission of following in Jesus’ footsteps, you know, doing things like bringing a bit of healing and reconciliation where there is suffering and broken relationship, offering shelter and hospitality and beauty and reminding folks of belovedness. One day we who are Emmanuel Church are overflowing with people in recovery meetings, one day awash in art or music, one day a rush of community organizing for social and economic justice and peace, one day something to eat or a place to sleep, one day an invitation to go deep into the heart of God with companions along the Way. It strikes me that, when we are at our best, Emmanuel Church is something like that River Jordan for so many people – the boundary between wilderness and promised land, between exile and home, between bondage and liberation – and walking through our doors is a kind of baptism of spirit. And I often hear that even when we are not at our best, Emmanuel Church is something like that River Jordan for so many people – a place of renewal and inspiration. One day any and all who are thirsty come to the water.

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