The First Sunday after the Epiphany: The Baptism of Our Lord Jesus Christ

Many of you used to enjoy "Calvin and Hobbes," the comic strip of blessed memory. One of my favorite episodes found Calvin at school, where Calvin's teacher, Miss Wormwood, says, "If there are no questions, we'll move on to the next chapter." Calvin's six-year-old hand shoots into the air. "I have a question," he says. "Certainly, Calvin," says Miss Wormwood, "what is it?" "What's the point of human existence?" asks Calvin. "I meant any questions about the subject at hand," replies Miss Wormwood." "Oh," says Calvin, mumbling glumly into his book, "frankly I'd like to have the issue resolved before I expend any more energy on this stuff."

The baptism of Jesus is God's answer to Calvin's question. Calvin's is the question of vocation. Who am I? Who are you? What is the point of life? What am I to be and do in this experience we call human existence?

The baptism of Jesus, God's answer to Calvin's question, is a two-part answer:

That's why Jesus' baptism baffles us. It's only after his baptism, only after the descent of the dove, only after God's word of approval and love for the baptized, that the beloved Son is driven into the wilderness to be tempted and to do battle with the world, the flesh, and the devil.

We think it ought to be the other way around. We think that Jesus should first have struggled with temptation and then, only after he is successful in resisting it, should God have put his seal of approval on him. That's the way we would have written it, if we were God.

A friend of mine compares the biblical order of things with the enlightenment of the Buddha: "Briefly told, his is the story of the young prince who becomes the Buddha through long struggles in a series of temptations by the world, the flesh, and the devil, and ultimately a long struggle with the process of struggle itself, what we call today the mid-life crisis. Overcoming and surrendering desire at every step, the young prince arrives finally at Buddhahood, at the enlightenment of complete peace and perfection that is the possibility at the end of such human struggle." *

"I think we mostly live our lives by this Buddhist pattern," adds my friend, "not the Christian one."

He's right, isn't it? With visions of a Chamber-of-Commerce-brochure ideal life somewhere in the suburbs, with visions of a house with at least a three-car garage and another for the boat, we struggle for the ideal life pictured in Broadmoor real estate ads and for the approval it brings. Or we struggle, as Babe Paley, the wife of the founder of CBS, is said to have struggled. In her Manhattan penthouse, swathed in her Dior gown, Babe Paley is said to have admitted that she really hadn't quite made it yet. "No woman," she was heard to say, "can be too rich or too thin."

"So, like Babe Paley, when the twelve days of Christmas are past, we settle down to the New Year's resolutions of doing more of this and less of that and better of everything," so that our lives, we hope, might someday really be like the ideal in our visions, so that we might receive the seal of approval.

Some years ago, there was a study done in my friend's city, a survey of the problems or concerns that bring people in to see their clergy. At the top of the list was marital conflict and divorce, followed by stress, alcohol, and drug abuse, problems with teenagers and children, and work-related problems. In other words, people come to see the clergy when New Year's Resolutions aren't enough, when the struggle for enlightenment Broadmoor style -- perfect homes, happy marriages, successful careers, stable children -- becomes too much. They come for assistance in putting things back together again.

My friend reports that "only at the very bottom of the survey list, each mentioned by only one clergyman, were two items not concerned with our ability to live up to Chamber of Commerce ideals: 'spiritual dryness' and 'who am I?' [and the priority reflected in the survey] "is consistent with the Buddhist view that life is pretty much a mess that we struggle through, seeking always higher and higher levels of tranquility and peace until we come to ultimate enlightenment -- a heaven where things are really the way they are pictured in Chamber of Commerce brochures. We are such confirmed Buddhists that we've even reduced the sacraments of baptism and confirmation to social rites of passage at childbirth and puberty, best conducted, as Queen Victoria said when reviewing the names of nominees for Archbishop of Canterbury, whose duties include baptizing royal infants, 'by a clean-shaven man of imposing stature and sober mien.' " In other words, John the Baptist need not apply.

But, as Matthew tells it, the baptism of Jesus took place in another manner. Jesus came from Galilee to be baptized by John for the forgiveness of sin. And then, Matthew says, "as soon as he was baptized, he went out of the water, and at that moment heaven was opened and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him, and a voice from heaven declared him approved: 'This is my Son, whom I love. With him I am well pleased.' "

And then, only after receiving God's seal of approval, only after the heavenly declaration of approval and love, did the Spirit drive him into the wilderness to struggle with the world, the flesh, and the devil.

This is the first message of the Epiphany, the first part of God's answer to Calvin's question, the first manifestation from God to the world he came to dwell in, the first epiphany to the people of the world Jesus himself was baptized into: You are approved. You are the beloved of God, beloved just as you are, before you've ever done a blessed thing to try to prove you deserve it. God is well pleased with you just as you are, and there is nothing you can do or not do that can change that fact.

In yesterday's newspaper, I noticed that one pastor's sermon for this morning is entitled, "The Blessing We All Want." My point is that the point of Jesus' baptism is that it's the blessing we all have. God's blessing is just that, a fact. It is the central truth about God and Man revealed in Jesus at his baptism -- that we are blessed by God, loved and approved by God, before we have ever done a blessed thing to try to prove we deserve it. No woman can be too rich or too thin, too poor or too plump, nor have too sweet a smile or too sour a mien, nor can any man have too few garages or too mean an address or too grumpy a demeanor, to make any difference with God. You are the blessed and beloved of God. That's just the way it is.

God's grace and seal of approval, in the Christian view, precedes the struggles of life. You are the accepted and approved, you are the beloved of God, just as you are. The peace of God, the enlightenment human beings need, in other words, is ours as a gift from the beginning. It's not something we have to achieve by our own efforts, or even can achieve by our own efforts.

And that brings us to the second part of God's answer to Calvin's question we find in Jesus' baptism: Sharing Jesus' baptism, you and I are, like Jesus, ones who are sent by God to share God's love and approval with a fallen world.

"And then, immediately after he came up out of the water, the Spirit drove him into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil."

So here is the second truth of the Epiphany, the second part of God's answer to Calvin's question, the second truth about God and Man revealed in Jesus' baptism -- that the vocation we see in Jesus is to plunge into the waters of life, there to give himself utterly to the world. Even in the midst of sin and pestilence and strife, even in the midst of urban chaos and violence in the streets and discord in the Congress, even in the midst of plenty elbowing with poverty for space in the land, even in the midst of drugs in the schools, and terrorism and marital conflict at home, and war abroad.

It was only after his approval by God that Jesus was driven into the wilderness to struggle with all these things and to walk the road to Calvary in the midst of them. And, as those who share Jesus' baptism, the true nature of men and women, the vocation of human beings, the point of human existence, is to be like him -- to walk the road to Calvary, to give, to care, to suffer for others in the world God has given us.

Baptism is a sacrament for us because Jesus is a sacrament for us. Baptism is a sacramental sign of God's way with us and the world. Jesus' baptism, like Jesus himself, is an outward and visible sign of the point of human existence, an outward and visible sign of the blessing and approval and grace God eternally makes available to the world, and an outward and visible sign of the way of life God calls us to, just as he called Jesus to it.

Let's see if I can make it clear with a story. It's a true story, a story about a 19th-century congregation of baptized people and their famous preacher.

On September 19, 1860, just at the beginning of the Civil War, Henry Ward Beecher climbed into the pulpit of Plymouth Church in Brooklyn. Into the pulpit with him he took a young slave girl. Beecher had brought her to Brooklyn on consignment from her owner in Washington, D.C.

With the girl at his side, Beecher challenged his congregation to put their faith in Christ where their baptismal vows were. He challenged those who said they were thankful for their redemption through Christ on the Cross, and who had promised to work for the freedom and dignity of every human being and for justice in the world, to give the $800 it would take to redeem the girl. He challenged them to release her from bondage, to give her the freedom and dignity they promised to work for.

Now that's 800 Civil War dollars, a fantastic amount. Translated into 2002 dollars, it would be in the tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands. It wasn't the pocket change needed to repaint the Sunday School rooms, but a genuine sacrifice to buy the girl from her owner in order that she might live a life of freedom and dignity.

And they did it. They didn't recess for a committee meeting or postpone a decision until the vestry could discuss it. Right then and there, they did it; they pledged the amount to redeem her!

And 68 years later, in 1928, Mrs. James Hunt came to Plymouth Church again one Sunday. And once again she climbed into the pulpit and stood in the same spot where she had stood as a child slave. And quietly and thankfully she told the story of that day when she had thought God was so far away, and how she had then heard the voice of God himself in the words of Henry Ward Beecher as he spoke to her and said, "My child, you are now free."

What is the point of human existence?

The Word of God spoken through his prophet Isaiah is spoken to you and me as well as to Jesus: "Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one, in whom I take delight! I will put my Spirit on him, and he will bring justice to the nations. ...I, the Lord, have called you with righteous purpose. I will take you by the hand. I have formed you and destined you to be a lamp for the nations, to open eyes that are blind, to bring captives out of prison, to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness."

Baptism, Jesus' baptism and ours, is God's seal of approval and his commission: You are blessed, accepted, approved, the beloved of God, beloved just as you are, before you've ever done a blessed thing to try to prove you deserve it. And with that blessing and approval, you are sent by God into the wilderness to share his love with the world he has given you to live in.

Why is it so hard for us to make this epiphany of the Baptism of Jesus the vision by which we live our lives? "Why do we live by the Buddhist pattern rather than by the Bible's?" asks my friend.

"I think," he says, "it is because we are afraid to recognize ourselves as sinners." We would rather be seen by the world as failures. Failure, in our society at least, can be corrected. We can continue to struggle and seek the approval that the rat race earns even if, in winning it, we remain a rat. At least it's something we can achieve on our own. You can make New Year's resolutions about failures. And well, after all, what kind of God is it who just throws his love around indiscriminately before you've ever done a blessed thing to try to deserve it? Shouldn't God at least expect New Year's resolutions, and some effort to live up to them?

But you can't make New Year's resolutions about sin. That's what's so hard for us. If a sinner is to be approved, accepted, and loved, it can only be by grace. No one can save himself from his sin.

And "Jesus came to save sinners," say the billboards (though not in Broadmoor, of course; tranquility and good taste, don't you know). But even in Broadmoor, Jesus really did come to save sinners. And sin, not our failures, really is what the epiphany of Jesus' baptism is all about. Jesus came to be a sacramental sign and a means of grace for us: You are the beloved of God; now go and share that love in the world God has given you to live in. Even as sinners, and even without a Dior gown or a garage for the boat.

What is the point of human existence? Who am I? What am I to be and do? Where am I headed? What is the meaning of my life? Vocation is not a question just for the young, like Calvin. Vocation is a question for us regardless of age or circumstance, regardless of failure or success, regardless of sin. Vocation is as meaningful a question for the elderly and for those in mid-life crisis as it is for the young person at his books.

The sacrament of the baptism of Jesus, the outward and visible sign of the point of our existence and the meaning of our lives, the sign of God's love for us and the world that we find in Jesus as he plunged into the Jordan River and then followed the Spirit into the wilderness, means that God's Spirit is with those who know that they are loved and who commit their lives to God's world and his people.

And this means that salvation and redemption are in history, not an escape from it. It means that salvation and redemption are in the painful mess and failures of our ordinary lives with others, not an escape from them. It means, regardless of circumstance and sin, that our own baptism and meaning consist in plunging into the wilderness after him, to trust, and to hope, and to love as he did.

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

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* For the comparison of Buddhist and Biblical patterns of life, and the stories of Babe Paley and Queen Victoria, I am indebted to a sermon delivered by The Rev. John McCausland (January 8, 1984).