FEAST OF THE BAPTISM OF OUR LORD
Can you imagine what a scene today’s Gospel story must have been for the people who were there to witness it. The heavens opened. A booming voice was heard from the sky proclaiming, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” A dove descended upon Jesus as he was baptized by John in the River Jordan. Clearly, God considered the baptism of Jesus to be a very important event since God pulled out all the stops to call attention to it. I don’t think that Steven Spielberg could have done any better.
But the baptism of Jesus was more than just a media event. The baptism of Jesus was a moment of revelation. At the Jordan River, the entire Trinity – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – was revealed for the first time. Here, at the very beginning of Jesus’ public ministry, God made himself known in a new and powerful way. By revealing himself as Trinity – something that not even faithful Jews had ever conceived as being possible – God made it clear that something new and exciting was about to happen. The kingdom that Jesus was sent to inaugurate was not just a continuation of what had come before. Jesus was not just going to be another earthly king like the kings of Israel’s past. God was up to something dramatic and surprising, something no one could ever have imagined, and God wanted everyone to pay close attention, including us gathered here today.
In the scene that is presented to us in today’s Gospel, we see each person of the Trinity in action. Jesus willingly submits to baptism by John. He did not need to receive John’s baptism of repentance since he was sinless. But Jesus wanted to enter fully into our sinful human condition so that he could lead us from sin to new life and new possibilities. Speaking from heaven, the Father announces that he is “well pleased” with his Son. And the Holy Spirit rests on Jesus, setting him apart for his mission. All three Persons of the Trinity are united in love, and they are united in their desire to bring about our salvation.
As united as the Persons of the Trinity are, God wants us to know that it is not an exclusive community. Every day of our lives, God invites us to join in the mission of Jesus his son. In fact, God’s deepest desire is that we all become like Jesus and find ways to build his kingdom. And in order to help us do that, God has sent us the Holy Spirit just as Jesus received it. We received the Holy Spirit at our Baptism and Confirmation. And just as God was pleased with and loved Jesus his son, so too God is pleased with and loves each of us. In our prayer and in our worship, God speaks these words to each of us, “You are my beloved son or daughter, with you I am well pleased.” God never stops loving us and being pleased with us. No matter what we have said or done, God will never stop loving and forgiving us and showering his mercy upon us.
Today, then, we celebrate and give thanks not only for the baptism of Jesus by John in the River Jordan. We also celebrate and give thanks for our own baptism. Our baptism was not simply a pretty ceremony, something we did just because it was a family tradition. Our baptism was a summons to join in the mission of Jesus. Our baptism was an initiation into a new way of life in which we try to live with God and with others in the way Jesus Christ lived with God and others. In baptism we were marked as one of God’s sons or daughters. We were given a name but more than just a name. We received an identity as a member of God’s family, as a child of God, an identity that is ours forever.
On this Feast of the Baptism of our Lord, we celebrate the fact that God has come to us in the baptized and Spirit-filled Jesus Christ. Because of our own Baptism and Confirmation, we too have received God’s gift of the Holy Spirit, and we can now find our way to God through Jesus who is our way, our truth, and our life. In light of that, I now invite all of us to renew our baptismal promises as our way of recommitting ourselves to Jesus, to his mission and ministry and to his mind, his heart, and his values so that recommitted to Jesus and strengthened by the Eucharist, we can leave here in peace to carry on the mission of Jesus in our world. – Fr. Paul
THE FEAST OF THE EPIPHANY
When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of King Herod, behold, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying, ‘Where is the newborn king of the Jews? We saw his star at its rising and have come to do him homage.’
Today’s Feast of the Epiphany goes by a variety of names - my grandmother used to call it ‘Little Christmas.’ Sometimes it’s called - after its central characters - the ‘Feast of the Wise Men,’ or ‘Three Kings Day.’ And, of course, in most western art, after the Middle Ages, that’s how they’re depicted --- as richly robed kings, with cleverly distinct crowns or turbans.
All of this - though lovely and traditional - can be misleading, and not only in incidental ways.
Our current translation is true to St. Matthew’s original Greek - and ironically enough, the original Greek word had been borrowed from the Persians before them; and then subsequently passed down, unchanged, first, into Latin, and much later into English. Not ‘three kings,’ but three “Magi” --- which is the plural of “magus,” which is a word that one doesn’t often hear used in modern English. It can mean several different things, all of them variations on an English cognate of “magus’ - which is “magician.”
In the ancient world, though, the thing that all ‘magi’ - across cultures and empires - had in common, was their professed ability to foresee the future. Almost all of them were charlatans, of course, but - insofar as they were consulted by both the lowly and the powerful, by both the wealthy and the poor - they had to make their prognostications both plausible enough, and vague enough, that they wouldn’t run the risk of being confronted by disgruntled clients.
But for our purposes this morning, the skill that almost all magi claimed to possess for the practice of their craft was the ability to ‘read the stars.’ They practiced astrology.
They claimed - and some still do - to be able to read the future in the stars.
So when we look upon the three kings in all of our manger scenes, that’s whom we should see - three astrologers, practicing their craft, following a strange new star, searching its movements for portents of the future.
And the star that these three magi followed led them to Christ. The future revealed in our flesh.
Scripture scholars mostly assert that the magi are meant to represent Christ’s ‘call to the Gentiles.’
That is, that the salvation Christ came to offer is meant, not just for his own Jewish people, but for all people. And the Magi were certainly Gentiles. But they weren’t Gentile merchants or tradesmen or fishermen - they weren’t Gentile shepherd boys. They were Gentile ‘magi,’ which would have made them members of a religious - and in eastern cultures - a priestly caste. They would have been understood to be representatives of, and spokesmen for God.
Within the context of the story, St. Matthew is claiming that even these three, foreign, priestly experts on the future - these three, foreign, priestly experts on God - were led by their star to Christ - the true Light - the true future - the true God.
When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of King Herod, behold, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying, ‘Where is the newborn king of the Jews? We saw his star at its rising and have come to do him homage.’
…the newborn king of the Jews. Of course, at the far end of the story, Jesus is called by the same name, given the same title. Do you remember? “Behold, the King of the Jews.” That’s the title by which Pontius Pilate called him, and the name by which he identified him when he had Jesus hung upon the cross.
But, of course, St. Matthew’s story of the Magi - and St. Matthew is the only evangelist who tells it - St. Matthew’s story of the Magi is only part of the prelude to St. Matthew’s gospel.
And in St. Matthew’s gospel, the future that Christ foretells and promises is the coming of the ‘Kingdom of God.’ As in all four of the gospels, St. Matthew reveals Christ’s vision of the future by means of the parables he tells, and the miracles he performs. But I believe that St. Matthew’s most singular and compelling account of humanity’s future - ‘the kingdom of God’ - as revealed by Christ, is to be found in his Sermon on the Mount.
If you happen to believe that Christ has nothing new to teach us as we begin this New Year, go home and re-read Christ’s Sermon on the Mount - Chapters 5 through 8 in St. Matthew’s gospel. If 2019 is to be any different from 2018 - or from any other year since humanity has been here - we must all begin again to master the demands of the Sermon on the Mount.
“…Love your enemies...Do good to those who hate you...Bless those who persecute you.” “…If you love only those who love you, what merit is there in that? Do not unbelievers do the same?” “Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. For the measure that you measure out will be measured back to you.” “Where your heart is…there will your treasure be.”
My sisters and brothers in Christ, if we’re going to call ourselves ‘Christians,’ if we expect to share in the future that Christ once promised, if we hope, one day, to join him, in the ‘kingdom of God’ that he promised, perhaps we ought to follow his directions, follow in his footsteps, more carefully, more deliberately…follow in his footsteps more faithfully, starting this new year, starting today. – Fr. Brian