The Baptism of Our Lord

Friends, today is an exciting day in the life of the Church. Not only are we about to celebrate the sacrament of Baptism, welcoming a new member into the life of Christ and the life of our community; but we are also celebrating the “Baptism of Our Lord Jesus Christ,” which is the official name for this feast day, the first Sunday after Epiphany.

Now, you probably don’t know this, but your deacon is very active on Twitter. I’ve actually found this to be a helpful online community, as I am able to interact with laypeople, deacons, and priests from the Episcopal Church, the Anglican Church of Canada, the Church of England, and other denominations, including Roman Catholics, Methodists, and many others. We are able to ask and answer each other’s questions about liturgy, sermon preparation, pastoral concerns, and even pray for each other when needed.

One of my Methodist friends this week was confused about the official title of this feast day--something only church nerds really care about, so it was interesting to me. She thought it was the Baptism of our Lord, but the Methodist book of service calls it the Baptism of the Lord.

Now, you probably think this is a pretty insignificant difference, and maybe it is. But as I started thinking about it, I was really glad that, in our church, this feast is called the Baptism of our Lord. This is a day that reminds us, as we are beginning to wrap up the Christmas season, of one more example of how God chooses to come among us, to be with us, to dwell with us, to make his home with us. Calling Jesus Our Lord suggests a more personal, more intimate, more close connection than calling him the Lord. From Christmas through Epiphany, we emphasize that God comes and dwells with US. Jesus is our Lord.

And it is because Jesus is our Lord, because God comes to dwell among us, that Jesus was baptized, after all. Have you ever thought about why Jesus needed to be baptized? If we believe that baptism is the gracious act of God whereby our sin is forgiven and we are raised to the new life of grace, as our prayer book puts it, then why did Jesus need to be baptized?

In fact, John asks the same question of Jesus in the Gospel for today. “Jesus, what are you doing?” He says. “I’m the sinner here, not you. I’m the one who needs the grace of God to wash over me. Why do you come to be baptized by me?”

I think Jesus chooses baptism for two reasons. The first is because he is our Lord. In taking on human form, human flesh, a human body, with all of its vulnerabilities, frailties, and risks, in all of its imperfection, Jesus reminds us that he has come to dwell with us, in our world, in this very world. God chooses not to remain cold, aloof, and distant in some remote heaven. No! God comes to this world and says, I am coming into the same creation into which I breathed life to redeem my people. Just as my spirit brooded over the face of the waters in creation, I come to those same waters, to again bless them and make them new.

When Jesus is baptized, he blesses creation and the stuff of creation. We have a very material faith! We deal in water, in wine, in bread, all of which are meant to communicate God’s desire to dwell among us and within us, to use the stuff of earth to mediate God’s grace and love.

The second reason I believe Jesus chooses to be baptized is to demonstrate a new beginning, in his life and in the lives of all the baptized. Some of you may remember in the old prayer book, right before the baptism, the priest would say “Name this Child.”

In baptism, we are being named not only by our parents or godparents, but by God. In Jesus’s baptism, he is being named: The voice from heaven calls “this is my son, the Beloved.” Jesus is being named; he is being called, being marked and stamped by God for his ministry on earth, for his vocation, for his life’s work. That work is named in the passage from Acts by Peter, who proclaims that, after Jesus’s baptism, he was anointed by God with the Holy Spirit for the good works that God had prepared beforehand for him to walk in.

We, too, are anointed with the Holy Spirit in our baptism. We, too are named as the beloved children of God in our baptism. We, too, are called by God for the particular vocations of our lives. We are being marked as Christ’s own and prepared for the good works of our lives as well.

That work may differ for each of us, but in baptism, our lives are given a particular shape that we are meant to fill. The shape of our lives is the baptismal covenant, found on pages 304 and 305 of the Book of Common Prayer, which we will all reaffirm in a few minutes. Like a coloring page in which the outline is clearly drawn, but the coloring itself is up to us, the Baptismal Covenant is an outline that each of us fills with our own story.

That outline looks like a life of learning, fellowship, prayer and repentance. It looks like a life that accepts the grace of God in Christ and extends that grace to others. It looks like a life that is not perfect, but accepts our own shortcomings and failures even as we repent and ask for God’s grace to live the life God intends for us.

It looks like a life that tries to see the presence of Christ in everyone we encounter, even and especially those who don’t look like us, think like us, have the same politics as us, or speak the same language as us. It looks like a life that remembers that the very God of creation, the God whose loving presence brought the world into existence, has made a home with us.

It looks like a life that remembers that Christ is Our Lord. As Peter says in the book of Acts, God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. In his baptism, Jesus begins his ministry of crossing barriers, of breaking down walls, of showing that the love and grace of God is bigger and more radical than any of us could possibly imagine.

In Acts 10, from which our second reading of the day is taken, Peter gives an impassioned speech to a mixed assembly of Jews and non-Jews. Jewish Christians were concerned that non-Jews, or Gentiles, were coming to faith in Christ without adopting the lifestyle and clothing and eating habits associated with the Jewish law. Peter himself used to think that way; but earlier in this chapter, God changed his mind in a vision. Now, Peter is moved by the expansive and welcoming nature of God, and shares that vision with a mixed community of Jews and Gentiles. Everyone who heard his speech was moved by the Holy Spirit. The chapter ends with Peter exclaiming “surely no one can stand in the way of these non-Jews being baptized with water. They have received the Holy Spirit just as we have.”

Indeed, Jesus Christ is our Lord; the Lord who makes his home with us, who gives each of us a new beginning, and who continues to break down every humanly-constructed barrier to the free-flowing grace of God in our lives. Let us rejoice in our Lord, together, today, as we baptize and welcome a new member to the community of faith. Let us rejoice in our Lord, together, as we renew our own commitment to Christ and the Church. Alleluia! Amen.