1st Sunday after Epiphany, Sermon by The Reverend Loree Reed

luke 3
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in thy sight, O lord our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

I have to admit it’s disconcerting.  One day we see Jesus as a newborn baby heralded by the heavenly host and worshipped by awestruck shepherds as he lies in a manger in a stable in Bethlehem.  And now, just two weeks later, we’re searching for him as an adult – a seemingly ordinary adult in the midst of a motley crowd gathered on the banks of the Jordan River.  What has happened to him in the years since we last saw him?  And what’s become of his divine aura, that holy light that once brought shepherds and wise men to their knees?  Well, Luke is about to tell us, but it’s not a straightforward answer and it’s not what we expect.
What we expect to find is an image, a picture of John the Baptist baptizing Jesus in the waters of the Jordan River, actually dipping his cousin into those waters.  That’s the image the Gospels of Matthew and Mark both offer us, and that’s what we expect to find this morning in the Gospel of Luke.
But that’s not the image we find.  In fact, in Luke’s account – at first – we don’t even see Jesus.  Luke only tells us that Jesus was one of a large crowd of people gathered on the banks of the Jordan, all waiting to be baptized.  And then Luke tells us that all of them were, in fact, baptized.  The way our New Revised Standard Version puts it is –

  Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized –

That’s all of the actual baptism Luke offers us – that Jesus was part of a large crowd of people, all seeking to turn their lives around, all seeking a fresh new relationship with God.  Yet therein lies Luke’s point – that Jesus’ divinity, Jesus’ holy aura will now be glimpsed in the midst of a damaged and broken people, a people who know their need of God.  It isn’t the image we expected – but I promise you, as we read through the Gospel of Luke this year, it’s an understanding we will come to treasure.
In an autobiographical book called The Sacred Journey, Frederick Buechner writes about the day he signed a contract for his first novel in the offices of Alfred Knopf.  He was just out of college, he says, and that day, for him, was the fulfillment of his wildest dreams of literary glory.  But what he remembers most about that day isn’t the actual moment he signed his name to the contract.  What he remembers most about that day is stepping outside the publisher’s office and running into someone he’d known slightly in college – a young man who was now working as a messenger boy in that same publishing house.  There Buechner was – on the brink of possible fame and fortune.  And there was his acquaintance – just a messenger boy.
“. . . instead of feeling any pride or sense of superior accomplishment by the comparison,” he says, “I remember a great and unheralded rush of something like sadness, almost like shame.  I had been very lucky, and he had not been very lucky, and the pleasure that I might have taken in what had happened to me was all but lost in the realization that nothing comparable, as far as I could see, had happened to him.  I wanted to say something or do something to make it up to him, but I had no idea how or what and ended up saying nothing of any consequence at all, least of all anything about the contract that I had just signed.  We simply said good–bye in the lobby, he going his way and I mine, and that was that.  All I can say now is that something small but unforgettable happened inside me as the result of that chance meeting – some small flickering–out of the truth that, in the long run, there can be no real joy for anybody until there is joy finally for us all – and I can take no credit for it.  It was nothing I piously thought my way to.  It was no conscious attempt to work out my own salvation.  What I felt was something better and truer than I was, or than I am, and it happened, as perhaps all such things do, as a gift.”
Well, on that day on the banks of the Jordan River, Jesus received a similar gift as he got in line with people broken down by the wear and tear of the world – people who’d all but given up on themselves and on God.  And Jesus didn’t just get in line with them.  He cast his lot in – with them.  For he, too, seemed to realize there would be no joy for anyone until finally there was joy for all.
In response to that realization, Luke says that Jesus bowed his head in prayer.  Now, we have no way of knowing what it was, exactly, that he prayed – but my guess is that he was praying for all those people around him as well as for himself.  He wanted to get in touch with the Source of his very being – for his own sake and for theirs.  For in that moment, he understood that his wellbeing and theirs were inextricably connected.
And that must have been the right response, for — with that — the heavens opened wide, a shaft of light pierced the clouds, and a dove descended from the heart of God to hover over Jesus.  And then, just so there wouldn’t be any doubt that Jesus was on the right track, a voice came down from heaven saying –

  You are my beloved child, and in you I am well pleased.
Now you and I already know that Jesus was God’s own beloved Son.  I think Jesus knew it too.  But I wonder if we understand why – in that moment as he stood in the water with that whole crowd – God affirmed their kinship with those beautiful words: You’re my child.  And in you I am well pleased.
Now you and I already know that Jesus was God’s own beloved Son.  I think Jesus knew it too.  But I wonder if we understand why – in that moment as he stood in the water with that whole crowd – God affirmed their kinship with those beautiful words: You’re my child.  And in you I am well pleased.
I believe it had something to do with Jesus’ willingness to claim kin with that motley crowd around him on the banks of that river.  I believe it had something to do with Jesus’ willingness to pay attention to them.  I believe it had something to do with the same gift God had given to Frederick Buechner in the lobby of that publishing house: the realization that until there is blessing for us all, until there is joy for us all – there can be no joy for anyone.
At this moment we’re at the very heart of the mystery of our lives.  For you and I too were made in the image of God, who cares for us all.  But it’s only when we begin to care for one another as much as we care for ourselves. . . It’s only when we stay turned towards one another, even in the midst of our own pain and confusion – that God recognizes the resemblance.
For in the moments when we realize the profound significance of the connections between us – we have become God’s beloved children — and in us he is well pleased.
Amen.
 
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