Sermons from St Faith's
The Baptism of Christ
Revd Sue Lucas, Sunday,
January 11th, 2015
I wonder if you've seen the pictures on TV
this New Year of Cornwall, and Blackpool and
even Aberdeen of those brave souls, sometimes in
silly costumes, who brave the cold and take the
plunge for the sake of raising a bit of money
for charity. Perhaps we've seen something
similar last year with the ice bucket challenge.
I did contemplate doing it for the roof but
only for a few seconds!
Swimming in open water is not perhaps
immediately appealing but those who do it say
it has a refreshing astringency, a renewal and
refreshment the world scrubbed clean, at
least, if not made new.
In today's Gospel, Jesus takes the plunge. There
are many images of this in art, of
course. One of the most famous is the
Ravenna mosaic Jesus is shown waist-deep in
the water, eschewing divinity, and as it were by
his divinity sanctifying the whole of
creation. It is at once a moment of
transformation, and a forerunner of the Cross. -
the divine nature enters into flesh, not
half-heartedly, but fully, and committedly, and
subject, fully, to the shocks that flesh is
heir to.
It is, perhaps, as astringent and painful as a
bucket of cold water. It is perhaps as
violent and shocking as the moment in labour
when the waters break, and the process of birth
accelerates. We are all, in this sense, born of
water, and the plunge we take into the second
birth of baptism is an echo a loud echo - of
this.
For even as it is an emptying out of divinity,
it also takes place in the wilderness, the place
where John the Baptizer appears; it is, that is,
also a radical disassociation from all the
structures of power that are at the centre
in this case, the cultic, political, economic
and social centre of Jerusalem. But the
wilderness is not far from this; nor is it an
empty wilderness; rather, it is the place where
those who are cast out, marginalised by the
centre, find a home, a place of regrouping,
re-evaluation, and, ultimately, opposition to
the oppressive and dehumanising power of the
centre. It is, then, the place in which
Jesus ministry is made manifest, and to which
he periodically returns to renew and regroup.
It is then, in several ways, a radical, even a
violent, break with what has gone before with
tradition, as we might say; it is a bursting
through into consciousness of a new way of
divinity manifesting itself, a new way of being
human, ultimately, and the Ravenna mosaic
strongly suggests this, it is a new creation, a
new creation that bursts on the scene as
violently and shockingly as a bucket of cold
water, as the waters breaking, a violence
and shock that the status quo, the ruling powers
cannot stand.
And what about our own baptism, the baptism in
which we shall shortly be renewed. In its own
way, it is equally violent and shocking. For we
are baptised into the death of The Lord not
any death, but the death of the Cross, the death
of one against whom the powers of tradition and
respectability did their worst.
Is this Good News? It is good news with a
strange astringency, with a sharpness. And it is
good news that might not immediately be manifest
in our lives and in our world; and so God
operates in an altogether more cunning way,
sneaking the astringency of our vocation past
the conservative instincts of sinful human
nature.
For the death into which we are baptised,
the waters in which we are, if you like drowned,
is one in which the dehumanising powers did
their worst; and in the resurrection,
comprehensively lost.
So whilst, at one level, not much seems
different, and life goes on being the same
humdrum ordinariness, and we go on being the old
Adam, with all our sinful cautiousness about
reaching out to the other we are, with the
one, who in his incarnation, baptism,
crucifixion and resurrection sanctified all the
material world and all human experience a new
creation.
And perhaps, when we renew our baptismal
vows today, or whenever we make the
signify the cross on our foreheads as we enter
church, or when we witness a baptism here we
catch, sidelong, a glimpse of the wonder of the
work God has done in Christ, and continues to
do, perhaps sidelong, perhaps by stealth,
perhaps quietly, in us, in each of us, in his
new creation, his body the church.
Perhaps we will this day be touched anew with
the shocking grace of our own baptism, given new
hope, new energy, new lives for old and the
capacity to seethe world as tinged, shot through
with the transforming love of Christ and the
glory of God.
Amen.
The sermons
index page
Return to St
Faith's home page