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Sermon – 12th January

    THE BAPTISM OF JESUS

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    Readings: Isaiah 43: 1-7 and Luke 3: 15-17 and 21-22

    The weather being very severe last weekend, church attendance was understandably low, so people will not have been in church yet during this Epiphany season. A local clergyman was saying this week that for him, Christmas is over once we’ve celebrated the arrival of the wise men on January 6th. But for the Orthodox Communion across the world, it is only just beginning. Both the Greek and Russian Orthodox ‘brand’ celebrate Christmas on 7th January – all to do with the switch from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar in the 16th-century.

    In The Times this week there was the most beautiful photograph of an Orthodox Christmas liturgy taking place in a highly decorated cathedral with ministers in resplendent robes. Unfortunately, the beauty seemed to end there. The cathedral was in Moscow; the celebrant was Patriarch Kirill, the head of the ROC, and he was blessing gifts and icons bearing President Putin’s initials, to be sent to Russian commanders and troops in Ukraine. Kirill is, of course, a great supporter of the Russian regime. He has previously described President Putin’s rule as ‘a miracle of God’, and calls the war against Ukraine a battle against the West’s ‘satanic’ LGBT-friendly policies. He has also claimed that Russian troops who died in battle would have their sins ‘washed away’. One prays that they will – but what about the ones who sent them there?

    It all sounds bizarre, distressing and offensive to us. It is difficult to imagine, for example, palm crosses being given out in this country stamped with Keir Starmer’s or Rushi Sunak’s initials. We may have our reservations about links between Church and State in this country – amidst calls for de-establishment and all that – but, generally speaking, the Church of England has been a huge force for good in our society, and still is. We maybe can’t easily get our heads around the state church representing the fatherland and the state’s political ambitions as it is in Kirill and Putin’s Russia at present. Here, of course, the Church of England has at times been a thorn in the side of the state, and its conscience. It’s a little different now, when we seem to be pilloried from all sides. Perhaps the best advice for us on the ground is to ‘Keep calm and carry on.’ Just to return to the Orthodox Communion for a moment, the Ukraine Orthodox Church has largely distanced itself from the Russian Orthodox, and now celebrates Christmas on 25th December.

    But the focus today is on the baptism of Jesus. It’s an important part of this season of Epiphany; in fact the Orthodox Church sees Jesus’ baptism as the central theme of the Epiphany, ranking greater in importance than the visit of the wise men. We see Jesus willing to accept the discipline of his Father; willing to accept the vocation of being born for us, to live for us, to die for us, and to rise again for us. Baptism of infants was often viewed as some kind of protection in our society, and maybe still is in places. When infant mortality was much higher and a real worry, many parents were anxious to get their child christened quickly. But for Jesus, you could well say that his baptism was not going to afford him protection from what life would hold in store for him. Jesus acted with discipline and in obedience to his Father’s will, which was to be costly.

    This discipline that Jesus accepted saw him willing to undergo the baptism of repentance that John was offering. So he associated himself with ordinary folk by the river, even though he had no need of repentance. We see two examples of true humility here. Firstly, John the baptizer recognised that his own ministry was hardly significant in the light of what was to come, or rather, who was to come. “One is coming” he said “who is more powerful than I; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals.” After this event, John rather fades away from the limelight, until we hear that he had been imprisoned by Herod.

    And Jesus displays his humility. We can’t know his mind at this time, but we can discern that he learned his real vocation. As John’s freedom is taken away, so Jesus’s freedom comes into its own, and his ministry begins. Jesus slips under the water. All the voices from the riverbank are drowned out. He can hear his heart, his existence. He comes up, takes a new breath and then hears the one voice that matters – his Father’s voice from heaven, and it is to this voice that he continues to listen in the years ahead, even when others are louder and more threatening. The priest Mark Oakley says, “Our lives take shape around the voices we dance to.” And that can be either for good, or ill.

    We have been much reminded in recent days of the voices of the mighty and powerful – whether dictators, politicians or media moguls. Their words so often go unchallenged, as they seem to operate in a bubble which protects them from hearing other opinions or identifying with the lives of ordinary people. Jesus came – his vocation being to identify completely with the human experience, and to lift us to a higher realm of living. One of the Christmas collects asks God that as Christ came to share our humanity we might share the life of his divinity. The poet and writer Malcolm Guite points out that the word ‘Christ’ means ‘anointed’, and therefore that every Christian, through baptism is anointed. We participate in Christ’s life through our baptism. It’s a serious business. Other images in scripture link baptism with suffering. In daily parlance, we talk about ‘a baptism of fire’ – such as when somebody has a difficult time when starting a new job. When James and John rather cheekily asked Jesus if they could have the prestigious places in heaven next to him, he asked them “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” To be baptized is to accept that we may have to suffer for our faith, and so find unity with Jesus in that suffering.

    So as we celebrate the baptism of Jesus today, we are left to consider the meaning of our own baptism. Was it just an event in our distant past, seen merely as a traditional religious ceremony with no real effect, or does it still have living significance for us today, as we strive to become more like Jesus in our living response to God; in our willingness to display Christ to those we meet, in seeing the calling we have from him?

    A contributor to Thought for the Day this week noted that the terrible wildfires in Los Angeles were described as an ‘Act of God’ – meaning, she said, that there was no human explanation. But she also noted that in the famous incident of Elijah in the wilderness fleeing from danger to his life, the Lord was not in the whirlwind, or the earthquake, or the fire, but in the still small voice.

    And may we take time to attend to the still small voice of God’s calling, that it may drown out all those other voices louder and more threatening which may lead us away from the truth.

    A closing prayer:

    Lord Jesus Christ, I bow before your glory. Inspire and empower me. Make me humble and obedient, help me to discover what you want of me. Wash me in the waters of baptism, and strengthen my promises to grow in the Christian faith. Amen.

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