Two
Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday January 11, 2025 – Baptism of Jesus
Scripture Readings: Isaiah 42:1-9 and
Matthew 3:13-17
I don’t know about you, but this has felt like a tough news week. On Wednesday, when I put up a post on the Two
Rivers Facebook Page, asking for prayer request, every single person who
commented wanted prayers for the world we are living in right now – prayers for
the world, prayers for world leaders, prayers for world peace. If you follow the news, even just a little
bit, these are scary times we are living through right now.
Greed seems to be the force that is driving the world these days – greed for
land, greed for oil, greed for money, greed for power. And I don’t think that greed can exist
without its sidekick and companion, fear.
Because once you are so greedy that you are willing to do whatever it
takes to get the thing that you want, you also become fearful that you might
lose it some day. And fear can maybe be
an even more powerful motivator of evil acts than greed.
And fear is even more contagious than greed is.
In some ways, we have a bit of an inoculation against greed. We can observe greed, and as we observe it,
we can be tempted to participate in it.
That person has that fancy new car, I want one too. That country has all that lovely oil, I want
some of it too. But it doesn’t take much
self-awareness to recognize greed and resist it. But fear, on the other hand. Fear has a way
of sneaking into our bones and creeping up on us. Often we don’t realize how much our actions
are driven by fear. I’m afraid of that
person, so I’m going to hurt them before they have a chance to hurt me.
And in a week that has seen one country take over another country and threaten
several others; in a week that has seen a woman shot at point-blank range by
people with authority – it seems as though greed and fear and chaos have been
given free reign in the world.
Like I said, it has been a tough news week.
But there is nothing new under the sun, as the author of Ecclesiastes tells
us. Tough news weeks, tough news years,
tough news decades have happened throughout history – I think that the only
difference between then and now is the fact that we are living through it right
now. (And maybe also the current media
landscape makes us more quickly aware of what is going on around the world.)
There is a great Christmas poem by Madeleine L’Engle called “First Coming” –
the first stanza goes:
He did not wait ’til the world was ready,
’til men and nations were at peace.
He came when the Heavens were unsteady,
and prisoners cried out for release.
The world that Jesus was born into was also a world that was filled with
uncertainty and fear and imperialism and wars.
In fact, when you read the stories about Jesus, his world had a lot in
common with our world today, even though the specifics of culture and language
and technology are different.
In Jesus’s world, a global superpower that was hungry for land and resources
had a nasty habit of taking over and assimilating other countries – in that
world, the superpower was the Roman Empire.
In Jesus’s world, if the government felt you were a threat in any way,
they could kill you – the punishment for treason, or plotting against the
Empire, was crucifixion. In Jesus’s
world, systems were designed to keep people “in their place” – the poor had no
opportunities to get ahead in life, and it was only by scrambling through life,
hustling, that they could maintain the status that they had and avoid
imprisonment or slavery.
When we read the stories about Jesus, it is important to remember that he
wasn’t living in some fairy tale, once upon a time, in a land far, far
away. Jesus and his friends and
neighbours were facing many of the same fears and uncertainties that still
exist in our world today. Fear for
safety. Financial uncertainty. Vulnerability to political shifts that they
had no control over.
So all of this is well and good, but I can hear you asking, what does that have
to do with the story of Jesus’s baptism that we read today?
To me, it is everything. Jesus’s baptism
is one of the moments where we can see God breaking in to the ordinariness of
this world. The heavens open. The Holy Spirit descends. A voice proclaims, “This is my Child, whom I
dearly love.” This is one of the stories
that reminds us that the world around us – the world that we can see, and the
world that is presented to us in all of the horrific news stories – this world
isn’t the only reality. There is an even
more real reality that we occasionally catch glimpses of.
Jesus is baptized there in the Jordan River, and then his ministry begins. A ministry that echoes what we heard in
Isaiah this morning. A ministry that is
about bringing justice. A ministry that
is about bringing light to people living in the shadows. A ministry that is about freeing
prisoners. A ministry that is about
bringing the fullness of life to all people.
Jesus’s ministry is all about resisting the forces of Empire and fear in the
world, because he knows that this isn’t in line with God’s plan for the
world. And he does so with confidence,
trusting fully that it is God’s world that will eventually reign, no matter how
many setbacks it encounters along the way.
And the same is true for us as well.
When we think of our own baptism, and when we think about the baptism of
all of the people in all of the churches everywhere, we can think of many
different things. We can think of
baptism as marking a person’s entry into God’s family. We can think of baptism as the Holy Spirit
filling a person with God’s love. But we
can also think of our baptism as marking the beginning of our ministry, the
beginning of our participation in God’s work in the world.
Because of our baptism, because we are baptized, because the Holy Spirit
descended upon the waters that were sprinkled our poured over your head, or the
waters into which you were submerged, because at your baptism, God said, “This
is my child, whom I dearly love” – because of all of this, like Jesus, we are
invited to participate in this alternate world.
Because of our baptism, we know that the chaos and horror that confronts
us every time we turn on the TV or radio, or open up our phones or computers –
we know that this chaos and horror isn’t the ultimate reality.
God’s ultimate reality is one of peace and love and justice. And because of our baptism, we get to
participate in this world. God’s reality
becomes our reality.
Alas, it can’t happen all at once or right away. The work that Jesus began hasn’t reached
completion yet. But each one of us has
an opportunity to manifest God’s world in the here and now.
I sometimes share the story of my first Christmas Eve here at Two Rivers, and
if you have ever been to one of our Christmas Eve services, you know that we
both begin and end with the church in darkness.
The first year I was here, I didn’t realize how dark the church at Long
Reach would get if we turned out all of the lights. Total darkness. The sort of darkness that seems to press
against your eyeballs. The only
illumination came from my iPad, as I read the beginning of the gospel of
John. “The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness did not overcome it.” I
knew where the lighter was, as I had placed it just below the iPad stand before
the service, so I felt around for it and was able to pick it up. The only problem was that I couldn’t see the
Advent Wreath to light the candles. I
knew that it was somewhere in this direction (gesture vaguely to the right),
but it was only when I got the flame of the lighter right next to one of the
candles that I could see it – fortunately it was next to a candle wick and not the
greenery of the wreath that had been slowly drying out over the past month. And I lit the first Advent Candle – a candle
for hope. And with that one small candle
flame, all of a sudden I could see the rest of the wreath, the rest of the
candles, and almost all of the faces of everyone who had gathered that evening.
No matter how oppressive the shadows might feel, it only takes one small candle
to illuminate the world. The power of
one small candle is greater than all of the powers of darkness. The light shines in the darkness, and the
darkness can never overwhelm the light.
It isn’t up to us to bring world peace – that power hasn’t been given to any
one of us. It isn’t up to us to end
homelessness or addictions in New Brunswick – again, no one person has that
power.. It isn’t up to us to change the
whole world so that all people everywhere, of every gender, every gender
identity, every sexual orientation, every race, every religion, can live a life
free of fear. No one person has the
power to change the whole world. But
what we can be are candles of love and hope.
We can do small acts of love and compassion and courage and by doing so,
we can push back the shadows of this world.
For as long as a single candle is burning, the darkness will never be
complete.
Jesus began the work at his baptism, and all of us continue this work in the
here-and-now. The Holy Spirit is working
in all of us, and in all of God’s beloved children, so that we can be beacons
and candles of hope and love in this world.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
“Light in the Darkness”
Image Credit: leoahm on flickr
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