On 9 January, we celebrate the Baptism of Christ. The readings are as follows. To read them, click on each reading for a link.
Sermon
Happy New Year! We begin again, here in 2022.
And as we begin this new year, there is a collective hope that it will be different. There is a hope that this year, we will finally deal with the coronavirus, or it will genuinely just go away, so that when 2023 rolls around, we will no longer be wearing masks, or social distancing, or worrying about a new variant, or doing any of the things that have become part of our lives in the past two years.
This is what we hoped a year ago, at the beginning of 2021. We were glad that 2020 was behind us, the year that Covid spread throughout the world, and we all thought that surely by the time this New Year’s came, Covid would be gone, and life would have returned to our so-called “normal.”
Alas, it was not to be. Covid is still with us.
And yet, we have begun again. January 1st may be just a date on the calendar, chosen by the Romans about 2,000 years ago to be the start of a new year. (Before that, the new year started in March.) But in our minds, in our collective imaginations, we have come to look to January as a time to start afresh. Many people make resolutions for how they will live differently. The old year is pictured as an old man; the new year as a fresh young baby, full of life and hope.
Well, Covid may still be with us, but the new year is still one of life and hope.
How is that? We are alive. We are here worshipping God. God is with us, no matter what. Jesus Christ has still been born at Christmas, as God among us. Jesus Christ still offers us new life, rebirth, forgiveness, and mercy. And, we are offered a different way of looking at the world.
But let’s see how that works.
We have just finished Christmas, ending with the arrival of the Three Wise Men visiting the baby Jesus on what we celebrate as the Day of the Epiphany, which is 6 January. And then suddenly in our readings we jump about 30 years or so, to a day when Jesus is an adult and he is being baptised in the River Jordan by John the Baptist. We do not know what happened in all those years in between, except for one story in Luke’s Gospel from when Jesus was about 12 years old. The rest is lost, unknown to us.
But this day today celebrates a beginning. It is the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. And to mark the occasion the Holy Trinity appears. Jesus is there, being baptised: God the Son. The Holy Spirit descends upon him in bodily form like a dove. And the voice of God says, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
In the Christian life, baptism is the beginning. Water is poured upon us in the name of the Holy Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. All that is old is washed away; we are reborn with Christ; we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit and are marked as Christ’s own forever. And we go forth to live the Christmas life, in company with others, because we are all in this together.
So why doesn’t it always feel this way? Because we still have to live; we still have to deal with all the difficulties and trials and temptations that life throws at us. And yet, we still have the promise that in all of it, God is with us. We heard it from the prophet Isaiah:
“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are mine.
2 When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.
3 For I am the Lord your God,
the Holy One of Israel, your Saviour….
4 Because you are precious in my sight,
and honoured, and I love you.”
This is the promise we receive in baptism. This is the promise God gives to us through Christ, all the time, always and forever.
And yes, there are still challenges. When John the Baptist is standing there at the River Jordan, to baptise people, he tells them that One is coming after him, who will baptise with the Holy Spirit and with fire, and who will sift us, you might say. He is referring to Christ. The Christian life is a combination of utter bliss and joy, because of God’s mercy and grace, and because God really is with us, no matter the fire and the waters that we pass through. And also the Christian life is always challenging us to face the trials of our lives in a Christlike way, guided by and aware of God’s grace and mercy. Sometimes trials come, not given by God, but still God gives us the choice as to how we will respond to them.
So back to Covid. This pandemic has caused the greatest worldwide health crisis in 100 years, and it is a global event that has affected our collective lives as a people, as the human race, more obviously than perhaps any other (except maybe climate change). As such, it presents a massive spiritual challenge to us. How will we respond?
One challenge for us is to approach life with a different mindset or criterion than whether Covid is present and what it keeps us from doing. This does not mean ignoring it, as some want to do. It does not mean painting a rosy picture of the face of skyrocketing infection numbers.
But it means we cannot look at life whining and fretting about what Covid is preventing us from doing. Some of those things — such as not being able to visit loved ones in hospital — are very sad, even tragic. Others are less important.
Yes, Covid is omnipresent. It’s all around us. There is no escaping it. But there are actually more important things in life, more important criteria against which to measure our lives. And yes, Covid could kill any one of us, but there is even something more important than physical life and death. What is more important is our spiritual state, our standing with God, because it survives our physical death. Our spiritual condition survives our physical death.
So as we begin a new year, it’s important to have a spiritual tune-up. If we are making resolutions about how we will eat differently, perhaps we also might consider whether what we put into our minds and hearts (and bodies) is spiritually healthy. If we are making resolutions to exercise more, perhaps we also might consider praying more — it’s a spiritual exercise. If we are deciding how to spend money on ourselves, perhaps we might consider doing good for someone else in a display of generosity.
But honestly, what we do is only part of the picture. Christ is there, inviting us, enticing us, calling to us, no matter what. The spiritual exercises just might make it easier to hear him.
And the primary messages are these:
God has given us life — both life of body and life of spirit. Value this gift. In Christ, through baptism, through the Church, we have been welcomed into a way of life that offers us joy, new life, forgiveness, and companionship with others. To experience this fully, we do sometimes walk through fire, but Christ walks with us.
So Lord, we pray that you will walk with us through this year. We pray that you will bring an end to the Covid-19 pandemic, but even more than that, we pray that you might turn our hearts, our souls, and our lives toward you. Help us to accept your gift of life gratefully, to live our lives oriented to you, and to be faithful toward you in how we treat others. This we ask through your most Holy Name. Amen.
— The Rev. Canon Liz Beasley