| Rector’s
Sermon
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| I have a friend who is 78 years old, and every year at this time in Maine where he lives he goes swimming. Can you imagine? There are two reasons why he does. The first is to raise money for a good cause. It’s a charity event, and I’m sure that there are lots of people who think that if he’s crazy enough to go swimming at his age and in that water and air temperature, they’re willing to give him money for the charity he represents. The second reason he does it, I suspect, is the same reason he and I play tennis in the summertime and the same reason he bikes 20–30 miles a day as if he’s not 78, but 38 or 48. It’s good for his body, but it’s also good for his ego. Nothing wrong with that—we should be quick to add except for the Polar Bear Club stuff. This morning we remember how Jesus went swimming or at least was dunked in the Jordan River when he was about 30 years old. In lots of ways it was just as arresting as my friend’s plunge into 30º water, not because it was as cold for Jesus but because it marked the beginning of a public life that would change the world. Our readings this morning have all to do with beginnings. Genesis is about the beginning of Creation, the beginning of the heavens and the earth and the necessity for light. That particular beginning as distant as it is from us now would still bring the life of God to us in creative, revealing ways. Listen to this brief meditation: [David Richo in The Five Things We Cannot Change] When we are sure we can’t get through another minute and we do, that is the grace of a Creator life in us. The second lesson from the Book of Acts is about the beginning of the Church. It’s miracle time for those earliest Christians, conversion time, Spirit time, amazing and energetic and incredibly hopeful. This little snippet from the Book of Acts doesn’t do justice for the picture I’m painting, and I’ve said before that if you read nothing else in the Bible you should read the Book of Acts, that could be a helpful New Year’s resolution. But then in Mark’s gospel Mark begins with the beginning of Jesus’ ministry as Jesus comes out of the water of his baptism and God proclaims Jesus his Son. This was the beginning of a public life that changed the history of the world, the beginning of a path that would lead inexorably to Jesus’ crucifixion, but a path that ultimately led to his resurrection and all that hope and new life represented. Today, baptism marks the beginning of our Christian lives. William Willlimon, former chaplain of Duke University, recalled his baptism: After a large Sunday dinner, family and friends gathered in the living room of my grandmother’s rambling house for the event that made me a Christian. Lifting a silver bowl filled with water, the preacher said some ritual words, made some promises and then baptized me. There is much about my baptism that I would have done differently. Baptism properly belongs in a church, not in a living room but God manages to work wonders despite our ineptitude. And becoming a Christian is something done to us and for us before it is anything done by us. As an infant I was a passive recipient. Someone had to hold me, administer the water of baptism, tell the story of what Jesus had done and the promise of what he would do, and model the life of faith for me. It was all gift, all grace. Thus I began my life as a Christian by water and the Word. Thus the whole world began. Brooding over the primordial waters, God speaks and a new world springs forth. And in each generation God makes the Church, calling by water and the Word a new people into being. I couldn’t possibly be alone at the beginning of this year in looking for hope. So often it feels as if we are being ground down by events too large for us to have any control over, too dire in their implications, just too much. I understand that there are fifth graders at Christ Church worried about and/or don’t understand what this business in Gaza means. I’ll spend a few minutes with you in your class this morning and we can talk about that. Of course, the economy is larger than life with images of bread lines, massive unemployment, inconceivable, really, when we think that those grainy film clips of the ‘30s couldn’t possibly happen today. However we perceive the current threat, it’s acutely anxious if not for ourselves then certainly for someone we love, if not for the whole of humankind in this global village. And yet the beginning of a new year can always be legitimately about hope and healing which can find a timely focus in the inauguration of our next president, an inauguration we need to be prayerful about, an inauguration we need to hope will be an evidence of God’s spirit and the wellbeing of a world God loves so desperately. Later in this service you and I will have an opportunity to renew our Baptismal promises. This will be not only an exercise of hope but of re-commitment to the God who created us, to Jesus who saves us, to the Holy Spirit who empowers us. We are recommitting ourselves not only to our faith but also to our participation in simple justice which knows no faith or political boundaries in recognizing the dignity of every human being. How’s that for another New Year’s resolution? |
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