Sermon preached for 1st Sunday after Epiphany – The Baptism of Christ: Mark 1, 4-11

Fr Leonard Doolan

 

Some films jump backwards and forwards in time. Occasionally the viewer is assisted by the director – a prompt will come up on the screen saying  things like ‘6 months before’ or ’30 years later ‘ or if it is an American film, which they usually are, you are given a location as well, like, ’10 years previously in Sparta, Greece’ as if Sparta could be anywhere else but Greece! But I forgot, there is a Sparta in Tennessee. But surely London can only be in the UK, so ‘London, England, is one piece of information too much.

On the other hand some films jump backwards and forwards with no helpful directions – to show someone as an adolescent, or a pivotal event in someone’s life as they were growing up – or the influence of a mother or father. A classic example of this is Mama Mia, Here we go again! I hardly dare to admit that I have watched it! Films like these just move from one time zone or place with smooth, unannounced continuity, and it’s our job as the viewer to keep up with it. This requires quite a quick mind, and a dose of imagination. I’m not so quick witted so often get confused until the penny drops.

Being liturgical Christians, by which I mean historic Christians who by tradition divide the year up into religious seasons and events and celebrate them with specific customs or texts, requires something of this sort of quickness of mind, especially at this time of year.

For example – a few weeks ago we celebrated the birth of Jesus. A couple of days after that we recall the tragic Slaughter of the Holy Innocents which by St. Matthew’s record must have been 2 years after the birth of Jesus, coinciding with when the Wise Men from the East arrive. A few days after that we go back and celebrate the Arrival of the Wise Men at what we call Epiphany. Within a few days, within the season we call Epiphanytide as Anglicans, we have an event when Jesus is about 30 years old, and for several weeks we concentrate on ‘manifestations of God’s glory’ in events like the Baptism of Jesus, the Wedding Feast at Cana of Galilee, the Call of the first disciples, depending on which annual 3 Year cycle of readings we are following. Then suddenly we jump back from the wonders performed by the adult Jesus to his Presentation as a child in the Temple on 2^nd February, 40 days after his birth. Do you see what I mean by flitting backwards and forwards?

We need a certain cerebral dexterity to keep up with the narrative as it weaves events in our Lord’s life both as a baby, an infant, and as an adult. It’s not impossible, though, you just have to get used to it by allowing yourself to be schooled and nurtured in a deep, rich, and profound liturgical understanding of the life of Our Lord. In many ways it is what holds it all together, and the directors of this narrative are all very skilled – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

I forgot to include one little scene in this narrative whose chronology is not sequential. The director of this brief scene is St. Luke. Uniquely he tells us that on the 8th day after the birth of Jesus he was circumcised. This happens to be on our 1^st January, so it is a festival that gets rather ignored, but in the Prayer Book there is a provision of Collect, Epistle, and Gospel, for the Circumcision of Christ. New revisions call it The Naming of Jesus. That’s OK because it is when he was officially given his name according to Jewish custom. The Prayer Book Collect includes the words ‘obedient to the law for man’. That’s interesting isn’t it? Jesus, our Christian Lord, is circumcised to show ‘obedience to the law for man’. Not only is he circumcised but his parents are obedient to the law of Moses.  Don’t let any of us forget that Jesus was born a Jew, and formed in the school of Judaism.

 

Over the Christmas period I happened to watch a film, not made in America, called ‘Goodnight Mr. Tom’. In it Tom Oakley looks after a child called William Beech who is badly treated by his own parents.

In one scene William says to his cruel mother that Jesus was a Jew. She whacks him on the head and locks him away in a cold, damp, dark cupboard as a punishment for his ‘blasphemous’ statement. We know differently, so no one should be put in the darkness of a cupboard for recognizing in the full light of day, the facts of Christ’s real life narrative.

So, I have tried to liken the biblical witness to Jesus to that type of film where we need to be agile in jumping backwards and forwards in the scenes of his life, at least in the way our liturgical canon presents it.

Today is a good example. Having celebrated the birth of Jesus, the arrival of the Wise Men, suddenly we are standing beside the waters of the River Jordan as John the Baptizer agrees to baptize Jesus. For those following this sermon live on Zoom, you have an icon of this event. It is a photograph from a book of 12 icons showing the 12 ‘evangelical events’ in the life of Christ. The iconographer, Fr. Marc du Four was a friend of mine, a Benedictine monk in the Abbey of Sint Andries in Bruges. These were painted for the Romanian College in Rome hence the writing is in Cyrillic rather than Greek. Fr. Marc died just before Christmas.

We are looking at the baptism of Christ at the river Jordan, but what we are seeing is a manifestation of God, Father, son and Holy Spirit. This is what the Orthodox call the Theophania, because it is not just a baptism that is happening, but the glory of God being revealed. The Father’s voice is heard as the cloud is broken open; the Spirit is revealed by the image of a dove; the Son, of course is revealed as none other than Jesus himself.

 

However, I am asking you to make another chronological jump. One caption would read, River Jordan, the other caption would read Jerusalem, three years later, because I would like to superimpose the scene of the Crucifixion. This is a baptism also, but of a different kind. Central to the picture, again, is Jesus. The divine voice comes from within him as he cries out ‘My God, My God, why have you forsaken me.’ The Spirit leaves him as he breathes his last. It is the curtain of the Temple that is torn apart (the same verb as is used for the cloud being torn apart in the Jordan baptism event – I am grateful to Dr. Clare Amos for this insight). It is the Greek verb from which we get the English word ‘scissors’. The curtain is rent asunder, as the cloud is, by way of expressing a new, personal, face to face relationship with God. In Jesus’ birth God is among us – Emmanuel –  in his baptism God is among us, Father Son and Holy Spirit, In this death scene God’s glory is revealed on the throne of the cross, and the victory of Christ over death itself.

Ironically we are looking at two baptism scenes – one on Golgotha, the other 3 years earlier at the Jordan River. We can only understand God’s work in Jesus when we yoke together the two images, the two icons, the two truths or realities.

St. Paul expresses this truth for us in his letter to the Romans (Romans 6, 3-4). ‘Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.’

So as we remember liturgically today the Baptism of Christ, we are already entering into the mystery of the cross. When we are mindful of our own baptized life in Christ, we too are recalling the cross (and of course the resurrection) and we are affirming our life in the Holy Trinity. We live ‘in the Trinity’ through baptism. We don’t gaze on the Trinity; we don’t objectify the Trinity so as to explain it; we don’t pray to the Trinity as if the Trinity is external to us; but rather we are in the Trinity as participants in the divine life.

This is not just a theological truth – it determines our ethics and behaviour as well. The Commissioning in our Baptism Service makes clear that the baptized life is a serving life – service to the needs of our neighbours; it is in serving others, and not being self-serving, that we truly reveal the very nature of God within us. ‘Will you seek and serve Christ in all people, loving your neighbour as yourself? With the help of God, I will.’ (from the CW Baptism service).

So we are living in the present day, living out the baptized life. Our reality is to be embraced here and now, whether we are in Athens, Thessaloniki, London, Connecticut, Aberdeen, Bristol, or wherever, but the caption on the narrative of our lives will always say ‘Jordan River, Galilee 2,020 years before, or Golgotha, an area just outside Jerusalem, Israel 2,017 years previously. That’s the life of faith we lead.