Baptism of Christ

Baptism of Christ 2004 [Year 3]
Preached at Holy Innocents Fallowfield 11 January 2004

Today's Gospel reading invariably takes me back to my early life as a schoolteacher
and to a particular boy.
In class we had spent some time looking at the story of the baptism of Jesus.
I asked them to draw the scene for their homework.
Next class, this particular boy proffered me his book in which, beautifully drawn and coloured, I must admit,
was the sight of Jesus rising from the waters - with a chicken on his head.
I asked where he had got such an unusual idea from.
'Can't draw doves,' he said. 'Only chickens'.

Which of us is to know whether this young man had accidentally stumbled on one of the ways
in which the stories of the bible, as other narratives, can evolve unintentionally
according to the abilities, preferences or oversights of the gospel writers, translators, scribes and editors!

There's a tension at the start of the 4 gospel narratives about what constitutes the beginning of Jesus' story.
Is his beginning to be found in the great birth narratives of Matthew and Luke?
Or in his baptism - with which Mark and John commence their gospel witness?

Was Jesus born great - the typical expectation of classical and mediaeval literature?
Or does the vignette of his baptism rather hint that Jesus grew, during his formative years,
into a special maturity,
a particular self-understanding of his relationship to the creator God?
Does he reach a level of spiritual awareness?
Does he discover a sense of vocation?

And does all this, and more, come together at this one moment, this singularity, of his baptism...
combining together, urging him on to step forward and join the queue on the river bank,
dizzying him as he waded out to where John struggled to stand upright?
Contrast if you will this moment of awakening with the violent dragging aside of Paul on the Damascus road.
What have we to learn from that, I wonder? (Though that's another sermon.)

And fail not to think about the ways in which the Christian tradition has taken the story of Jesus' mature commitment
that day in the Jordan
and built around it a complex web of messages about the need for spiritual rebirth
that has all too frequently - in the past as, sadly, even today -
been so emphasised as to deny the importance of our physical birth
and to devalue the maternal:
often reducing the mothers who bore us and nurtured us
to things that 'need to be set aside and left behind'
as we set out on our journey.

As we set out on our journey. Where? Towards our death?
The short, too-short, space between birth and death being the little time we have
to work hard,
avoid sin and temptation,
stay on the straight and narrow -or else!
strive to reach that 'second birth' of which the carol sings.....
to live out the promises of our baptism (fighting all the way against sin, the world and the devil)
so that at the end we may save our souls
(our souls mind, mine and yours - no need to worry about theirs)
until finally, finally, we enter into life? Our just reward?

No wonder we call ourselves mortals;
our lives but a series of reminders of our mortality.
Our politics, economics, ethics, religion - why, even our bodily pleasures -
but projections of our preoccupation with our own death
and our need to deny, survive and insure against it for as long as possible.
To save our soul and attain to 'real and ever-lasting life'.
No matter what the expense; no matter who else might have to suffer to pay for it.
The story of Jesus of Nazareth at his baptism might just be read another way, though.

As the story of a young man who,
born from the flesh of the woman Mary
born into a family, into a network of connections, into a continuum of kinship and ancestors
raised by her and by them,
nourished by his awareness of all that bound him, connected him viscerally, to that humanity
yet aware, because of all that connection, of his own uniqueness as a son of God.

As the story of a young man who,
nervously,
steps out that day for baptism
because he discerns in his being the possibility that his birth and his beginning - how ever, whatever it was -
was yet a clue to the way life might be lived.

As the story of a young man whose baptism was a first coming-to-fruition of all that had nurtured and nourished and mothered him.
And thus empowered him and inspired him
to step out into a public world
of words and signs,
and prophecies of old
of deeds and encounters
with people, hurting.
Hurting because they had lost and forgotten their connectedness,
because they had been rejected, abjected, subjected,
cut asunder, separated from the body; disconnected:
women, prostitutes, taxcollectors, the mad, the bad, the ill, the lame, the shepherds, the fools, the dying,
those unable to fulfil the righteous demands of legal cleanliness.

As the story of a young man who, because of his birth and his beginning,
because of his nativity - his natality - and his coming-to-baptism
because of his awareness of life as potential-to-be-lived-and-offered

was able to show how life might be lived:
not as the selfish, grab-what-you-can-while-you-can, road to mortality.....

was able to show how we find our wholeness, our salvation, our eternal life:
not as an undertaking for ourselves alone....

was able to show how saving our soul can only be done
by embracing the needs and lives of our brothers and sisters far and wide
and of those too-close for comfort

was able to show how faith is not a well-endowed policy or a cast-iron guarantee or even a warm feeling,
to keep us snug in the dark times
or as a down payment on our eternal security.

was able to show that faith is a risky business;
unsure, uncertain,
though clearly offered, costly to seize,
and whose living-out is something of a secret:
provisional on our making the connections
between ourselves and those and the world around us
provisional on us granting to Death only our death
and living our lives, our potential,
as one beginning, one birth, one plunge of baptism, one coming to fruition, one flourishing after another.
And finding therein all that we are called to be.

From this then might flow
for us as church
for you as Holy Innccents
an understanding of mission as ever bringing to fruition
as ever nurturing what is among and around us

helping what already is to flourish
bringing to birth what is calling out to be

celebrating newness and fresh beginnings
blessing the diversity of the lives around us.....

In this way we help create a space
in which the divine spirit may work only as she can.

And bless us even as we seek to bless others.

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