The First Sunday After the Epiphany  January 12, 2003

 

The Rev. Dayle Casey

The Chapel of Our Saviour

Colorado Springs, Colorado

January 12, 2003

 

 

 

1 Epiphany - B

Isaiah 60:1-9

Acts 10:34-38

Mark 1:1-11

 

 
After they left their gifts at the manger, the Wise Men took the good news of Jesus' birth to nations beyond Judea. "A new king has been born," they announced, "not for the Jews alone, but for all of us."

Thirty years later Jesus was baptized by John in the Jordan River, and this brings the same announcement, the good news of Christmas. Jesus' baptism is part of the story of Christmas; Jesus' baptism in the Jordan River makes it clear that Jesus was sent by God, not for the sake of Israel alone, but for the sake of the whole world.

How? Well, in order to answer the question "how?" we have first to ask the question "why?" Why was Jesus baptized by John?

John was baptizing for the repentance of sin. So why was Jesus, who knew no sin, baptized for the repentance of sin? In Matthew, Jesus comes to John to be baptized, and John says, "No way! I should be baptized by you, not you by me." But Jesus says, "It is proper, John, for you to baptize me in order to fulfill all righteousness. Let's do it."

The Evangelists tell us that people from Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region of the Jordan were coming to be baptized by John. Thousands of people coming to wash away their sin in the Jordan River. And then here comes Jesus, someone who knew no sin at all, the Scriptures say, and he is immersed in the dirty water of the Jordan River, which all the multitudes have just used to wash away their sin. It is like someone who is already clean jumping into a bathtub full of water that all the rest of the family has already used to take baths in. Think about it. If Jesus is the Son of God, then he is the only one who came out of the Jordan River less clean than when he entered it!

What does this have to do with the Incarnation, with the good news of Christmas?

First, a word about what Jesus' baptism is not about? It's not about morality. When Jesus was baptized, it didn't make him a better person, anymore than our baptisms have made us better persons. Religion as morality is not something that belongs to Christianity alone. All religions teach that it is better to be good than bad. All religions teach that it is better to be moral than immoral. And the religion of the Jews also teaches, as Christianity does, that God cares about his people.

What is different about Christianity is that Christianity insists that God cares about us so much that he becomes one of us in order to show his love for us in person, that God cares about us so much that he becomes one of us in order to tell us, in no uncertain terms, that we count with him.

With John's baptism for repentance of sin Jesus publicly identifies the flesh he assumed at his birth with our sinful human condition as well. When Jesus was baptized, he assumed our sinful state along with our flesh, which was his way of saying to us, "We're in this thing called life together, baby, all the way, because you count with me!"

A movie I saw years ago helped me understand this. It wasn't a particularly good movie, and I don't even remember the name of the movie or who played in it. But I do remember what it was about. It was about a young girl who ran away from home. She went to Hollywood to seek her fortune, hoping to become a movie star. And, as happens all too often, she had little talent and she didn't become a star. And, in time, she found herself far from home, earning her living as a prostitute. Like the prodigal son who longed for the scraps meant for pigs, she managed a pitiful existence with the scraps left her by society. Separated from those she loved and who loved her, wanting to go home but ashamed to, she was intimate with several different people every night, and yet, at the depths of her being, she was alone, and afraid. 

And the movie was also about her father, about how he searched for his daughter for years, losing his job, mortgaging his home, spending every dime he had, searching all the worst sections of Los Angeles, and being beat up by the pimps whenever he got close to finding his daughter, because they, of course, were making their living off her. The movie was about her father's doing all this because, and only because, he wanted to tell her, "I love you; you count with me."

And just so, says Paul, "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." God comes searching for us in the depths of our lostness to say, "I love you; you count with me."

Jesus' baptism is not about our sins, but about our sin. And about grace. Jesus' baptism is part of this great season of the Incarnation, part of Christmas and part of Epiphany, because, like Christmas, baptism is about reconciliation, about God's love incarnate in the world. Baptism is about God's righteousness, which is God's loving us so much that he searches us out, even in our sin, even in the lostness of the world.

"But where sin abounded," said St. Paul, "grace did abound all the more." And that's what happens at baptism, at Jesus' baptism and at ours.

"There are few words more strange to most of us than 'sin' and 'grace'," said Paul Tillich, one of the great theologians of the last century. The words 'sin' and 'grace' are strange to us now, he says, because they are so well-known, and they have therefore lost much of their power.1

But there are no substitutes for words like 'sin' and 'grace,' because, when we understand them in the right way, they speak something to us about the depths of our experience as human beings.

"Do we still realize," Tillich asks, "that sin does not mean an immoral act, that [the word] 'sin' should never be used in the plural...? Do we still realize that not our sins, but rather our sin, is the great, all-pervading problem of our life? Do we still know that it is arrogant and erroneous to divide [people] by calling some 'sinners' and others 'righteous'? For by way of such a division, we can usually discover that we ourselves do not quite belong to the 'sinners,' since we have avoided the heavy sins, have made some progress in the control of this or that sin, and have even been humble enough not to call ourselves 'righteous.'

"Are we still able to realize," Tillich asks, "that this kind of thinking and feeling about sin is far removed from what the great religious tradition, both within and outside the Bible, has meant when it speaks of sin?"

In the Bible, sin is about separation, about estrangement. "To be in the state of sin is to be in the state of separation," Tillich reminds us. Separation of a person from other persons, separation of a person from his own true self, and separation of a person from God.

"This three-fold separation constitutes the state of everything that exists. It is a universal fact. It is the fate of every life. And it is our human fate in a very special sense, for we know that we are separated. We not only suffer with all other creatures because of the self-destructive consequences of our separation, but [we] also know why we suffer. We know that we are estranged from [that] to which we really belong and with which we should be united.

"Before sin is an act," says Tillich, "it is a state." Sin is a state of being. It is the state of our existence. Existence is separation. Separation from each other, separation from one's true self, separation from God. Such separation, such estrangement is what sin is, and it abounds!

But where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more! 

The word 'grace' is as hard to understand as the word 'sin,' adds Tillich. Grace is not merely "the willingness of a divine king and father to forgive over and over again the foolishness and weakness of his children." Grace is not merely the willingness of a divine father to forgive our foolish actions.

"In grace something is overcome. Grace occurs 'in spite of' something. Grace occurs in spite of separation and estrangement. Grace is the reunion of life with life. Grace is the reconciliation of the self with itself. Grace transforms fate into a meaningful destiny. Grace changes guilt into confidence and courage.

"There is something triumphant about the word 'grace,'" said Tillich. "In spite of the abounding of sin, grace abounds much more."

"The words themselves are not important. It is the response of the deepest levels of our being that is important."

Think about separation, about estrangement. "Who has not, at some time, been lonely in the midst of a [crowd]?" asks Tillich. "The feeling of our separation from the rest of life is most acute when we are surrounded by it in noise and talk. We realize then, much more than in moments of solitude, how strange we are to one another, how estranged life is from life. Each one of us draws back into himself, and we cannot penetrate the hidden center of another individual," nor can the other person penetrate the shield that we use to hide our own selves.

"Even the greatest love cannot penetrate another person, another self, completely. And our estrangement, our sin, is so complete that we are willing even to use each other for our own sakes. This is a fact about every one of us.

"There is something in the misfortune of our best friends which does not displease us," Tillich confesses. "Who among us is dishonest enough to deny that this is true also of him?" he asks. "Are we not always ready to abuse everybody and everything, although often in a very refined way, for the pleasure of self-elevation, for an occasion of boasting, for a moment of lust?" To know that we are ready to do that, to be honest with ourselves about that fact, says Tillich, is "to know the meaning of the separation of life from life, the meaning of 'sin abounding.'"

We know, deep inside ourselves, that we really belong to God and to each other, and yet we do not live that way. And this fact "brings us to the ultimate depth of sin. Separated and yet bound, estranged and yet belonging, we are brought, finally, to despair. No escape, no hope." As lost as a young girl in Los Angeles. As lost as a prodigal in a far country.

But though sin abounds, grace abounds all the more. Where despair abounds, hope abounds all the more. Where estrangement abounds, reconciliation abounds all the more. And that brings us back to Jesus' baptism, to why he did it and what it means for us, and to why it's part of the story of Christmas.

We do not understand grace. "Grace strikes us," says Tillich. "It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life. It strikes us when we feel that our separation is deeper than usual because we have violated another life, a life which we loved, or from which we were estranged.

"It strikes us when our disgust for our own being, -- our indifference, our weakness, our hostility, and our lack of direction and composure -- have become intolerable to us. 

"It strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for perfection of life does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage."

And then, just at that moment of our deepest despair, "a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying, 'You are accepted.' 

We do not understand grace. Grace happens to us! Like Christmas.

"You are accepted. You are accepted by that which is greater than you are, and the name of which you do not know." And which you cannot know. You are accepted by him who is greater than you are, and whose name you do not know and cannot know.

"Do not ask for the name now," Tillich advises. "Perhaps you will find it later. Do not try to do anything now. Perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything. Do not perform anything. Do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted!"

That's what baptism means to us, Jesus' baptism and ours. Baptism is a father's search for his sons and daughters lost in a far country, a search long on love and short on leads. "I don't care where you are or what you have done," he says. "You and I belong together, and I want you to know that."

In Jesus, the One whose name we do not know and cannot know, the One in whom our own very existence is truly grounded but from whom we are estranged, this One has come into this world to close the gap of our estrangement. He has come to be washed in our sin, and even to take on our death, so that we can know his righteousness, his love for us. He has come to be washed in our sin, and even to take on our death, so that we can hear him say to us, "We are in this thing called life together, because I love you."

That's Jesus' baptism. And it's little Emma's baptism this morning as well, a Father's search for us that is long on love, but short on leads. And that's grace! 

It's part of the love story of Christmas. And it ends as all Jesus' stories end: "Go and do likewise."

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

___________________
1 Quotations are from "You Are Accepted," by Paul Tillich, in The Twentieth Century Pulpit, vol. 2, ed. by James W. Cox (1981)