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Baptism Sermon January 10, 2021A sermon preached by The Rev. Anne Kimball at St. Michael and All Angels Church, Sanibel on January 10, 2021. Text: Mark 1:4-11By now I assume you have all packed away your Christmas decorations, written your thank-you notes and started on your New Year resolutions. This 2021 feels like the start of a brand new year…..Most of us are happy to leave 2020 well behind us.Whether you are ready for the new year or not………. the Church is ready…Advent and Christmas are history and this is now the year the Church focusses on the Gospel of Mark. This is Year B in the Church cycle. Year A focusses on Matthew…year B on Mark and year C on Luke…and passages from John get sprinkled throughout all three years………Then the cycle begins all over again.The Gospel of Mark is believed to be the earliest Gospel that was written and it tells the story of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection as succinctly as possible and in great haste. Everything in this Gospel happens immediately!! That is Mark’s favorite word. And Mark does not spend much time in long descriptive passages. The Gospel opens with simple statement explaining the subject of the book.Verses 1and 2 tell you everything you need to know.“The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God…….. as it is written in Isaiah the Prophet.”Right away we understand that Jesus is the Christ….the Son of God…And that this Son of God…the Messiah…had been fore cast by the Prophet centuries before…..Jesus’ arrival is not a new story……………… it is a continuation of the larger story of God and of God’s people and of how God make’s God’s self known in human history.In the next few verses we are told about the arrival of John who appears in the wilderness preaching about a baptism of repentance. He is preparing the way for the LORD…. Just as Isaiah had prophesied.And before you know it, Jesus appears and is baptized by John. When he came up out of the water…immediately he saw the heavens open up and the Spirit descended upon him like a dove…..and a voice came from heaven saying, “Thou are my beloved Son..with thee I am well pleased.”And the Spirit…immediately…drove him out into the wilderness.Things move fast in the Gospel of Mark.But that doesn’t mean the we should not linger over some of the events that Mark mentions.And on this Day the most important thing that happens in Jesus’ life is his baptism……and the voice that came from heaven.“You are my beloved Son! With you I am well pleased!”Jesus’ baptism was the moment at which God revealed himself by revealing Jesus’ real identity. It was the point at which God publicly announced his entry into the human experience. “I am sending my beloved Son to you……so that he can bring you to me.”That is what we are invited to witness on this First Sunday after the Epiphany.For Jesus it was a life changing event. It marked the beginning of his public ministry and his entrance into our lives. This proclamation….this Epiphany….came to Jesus…not as a result of his extraordinary ministry, but before he had even begun his ministry. He had not yet preached a single word……..or healed a single soul….No! God claimed Jesus as his beloved Son just because he was Beloved.And so it is with us. When we were baptized we were united with Christ in his living….his dying….in his rising again. We were symbolically submerged under the waters of baptism, just as Jesus was submerged under the swirling waters of the Jordan River…and in that moment of submersion our old life was washed away and we came up out of the water… reborn into a new life in Christ.And then we were given an identifying label….…a label that doesn’t say who we are….. but whose we are. We were sealed with the sign of the Cross and marked as Christ’s own forever.If we listened carefully, we might have heard a voice that said, “You are my Beloved.”“You are my Beloved”What an extraordinary thing to be told!What an extraordinary thing to hear!!But how desperately we all need to hear that!!!!..God’s voice saying to us that WE ARE HIS BELOVED. CHILDREN and that he delights in us for no reason other than our existence. God does not love us because of what we have done…or might do. Rather……..he loves us INSPITE ……of what we have done..or might do..WE NEED TO BELIEVE THAT and to simply rest in that love and act out of that love….I know that sounds simplistic…But I’ll bet that the majority of the world’s ills stem from that fact that most people feel unloved and unloveable. And what a different place this world would be if those people only knew the truth.Our Presiding Bishop, Michael Curry, speaks of the Beloved Community and he calls us as Christians to foster the creation of the kind of a Community…………Accepting and loving ALL people..……regardless of the color of their skin or their sexual orientation or even …believe it or not!…….their political persuasion!!In view of what has happened in our Nation’s Capital this past week…..I would say this is THE MOST IMPORTANT thing for us to focus on right now. There is so much hatred and anger and dis-ease in our country these days. We MUST find a way to bring people together to work for peaceful co-existence. We must seek a pathway toward reconciliation and justice and God’s good grace. It is when we let God’s love have its way with us that our lives become a channel for his grace and his peace.I am reminded of a young woman with whom I worked at a shelter for the homeless in New Haven….quite a few years ago now……I spend occasional nights there as a chaplain. She worked there every night.It was the custom at that shelter to search each of the residents as they entered…….. to make sure they weren’t bringing in weapons…..or anything else that was prohibited…alcohol…or drugs. The majority of the staff were pretty brusque in the way they went about this task. Clearly they just wanted to get the job done and over with.This woman had a way of treating each resident like they were really somebody. The task wasn’t as important as the residents were.She would welcome them at the door……look them in the eye…engage them in conversation….…affirming them as human beings.And throughout the evening I’d see her moving through the crowd. Gently laying a hand on a drooping shoulder…….listening intently to a tale of woe……offering to help a tired old man make up his bed.I noticed that each person she connected with seemed to stand a little bit taller…and look a little bit more hopeful….young or old….black or white…sane or not sane..it didn’t matter to her. They were all God’s children and she reached out unceasingly to share God’s love with each one of them.I often wondered where she got her energy and her infinite patience. I think now she just let God’s love have its way with her and He gave her the strength night after night.We also are called to share the love that has been freely given to us with those who are yearning for it. And we are all called to bring justice to the world……to be agents for peaceful change.However, our activities are doomed to failure if we try to act independently of God. It is His Spirit that heals. His Spirit that can restore peace to a troubled world. His love that empowers.All that becomes more clear as we follow in Jesus’ footsteps. As we follow him in the GOSPEL OF MARK during this Epiphany season we will hear bits and pieces of the Good News. For Jesus reveals to us the meaning of life as God would have it be. And he tells us that God has a purpose for each of us. He shows us how to live together in a way that will bring universal peace and joy.and..He promises life in all it’s abundance to those who give their lives to him The more we walk with Jesus, the more we realize that the love that has been given to us is meaningless unless we give it away. It is not enough to hold on to that love for our own sense of security. We must carry it to others. We must strive to make it a reality for everyone. The more we journey with Christ, the more we realize that just as he gave infinite love to all whom he encountered along the way,…We are called to do the same.At our baptism we promise too seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourself….And to strive for justice and peace among all people,respecting the dignity of every human being.When we were baptized we symbolically died to our old way of life in order to be reborn in Christ. When we take that seriously, it means that we may have to give up some things to which we have been accustomed……our complacency………our safe way of life………our compromises……..…our rationalizations ………our prejudices.Being God’s beloved doesn’t put us in some special and privileged category that will exempt us from the pain and the brokenness of life. NO! To the contrary, being God’s beloved puts us in line with the whole human race. And being members of the same family we are responsible for one another’s wellbeing and share in one another’s suffering. If one part of the human race is broken…we all share in the brokenness.Now……that doesn’t sound like very Good News……..And it might be very bad news indeed if it were not for the fact that as we follow Jesus he continues to walk with us and promises never to leave us. But, instead, to love us to a wholeness we can just barely imagine…..to give meaning to our lives…..…and peace to our souls…….Through our Baptism in Christ we are assured that….…no matter what……… we are beloved and chosen forever.And that is an amazing thing to know!!AMEN ................
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