Worship

Sermon Archive

Sunday January 10, 2010
11:00 am - Saint Thomas Church
Preacher: Fr Mead

Luke 3:15-16, 21-22

Epiphany Procession 2010

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Welcome back to our Choir of Men and Boys. The boys, and the Choir School staff, have been on a much deserved Christmas break. What a magnificent Christmas you provided! I would be surprised to learn that there is anything like Christmas at Saint Thomas anywhere in the city, and perhaps anywhere else.

Join us if you can for coffee hour following this liturgy in the parish house; you take the stairs on your left through the ambulatory. The Bookstore is on the first floor of the parish house, where you may purchase recordings by the Choir and books for our classes. The Rector’s Christian Doctrine Class has just begun and continues on Tuesday evenings until the Bishop comes the first Sunday in May to confirm and receive new members. It is good as a refresher as well. I enjoy teaching that class, which I have done for over 30 years, as much as anything I do in the ministry.

Today we celebrate the Epiphany of our Lord Jesus Christ. Epiphany means manifestation. Everything our Lord said and did was a manifestation of his Person and the Work God sent him to accomplish. As you can see from some of the anthems and hymns, three of the epiphanies of Christ come to the fore in this special service. These are the journey of the Magi, led by a star, to the infant Christ at Bethlehem; Jesus’ Baptism in the River Jordan by John the Baptist at the beginning of his public ministry; and Jesus’ first miracle, changing water into wine at a wedding in Cana of Galilee. Today’s service, rooted in the Church’s tradition about Epiphany, marks a transition from Christmas to the Season of Epiphany, and then Lent which follows. It connects the Epiphanies of the Infant Christ to the words and deeds of his Ministry. Following that lead, let us look at the one in the middle, the Baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan.

All the epiphanies of Christ, before and after, flow to and from what is revealed in Jesus’ Baptism, particularly as Saint Luke today tells it. What was announced by the Angel Gabriel to the Blessed Virgin Mary at Christ’s conception is seen and heard now at the commencement of Jesus’ public ministry. Having voluntarily submitted to baptism for the forgiveness of sins, he who knew no sin was praying. The heavens opened. The Holy Spirit, the same Spirit who overshadowed his Mother Mary, descended in bodily form as a dove. A voice came from heaven, “Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased.”

The Gospel here shows us a revelation of God the Holy Trinity, most particularly of God the Son, incarnate in Jesus. Even more, Christ’s Baptism is followed by a disclosure of the relationships within the Holy Trinity, particularly as they are manifested in the life of the Son.

The Son’s humanity was conceived, not by the will of man or by the exertion of the flesh, but by the power of the Holy Spirit. He was endowed with all the gifts of our first parents before their fall. His upbringing had brought him to this critical point, the start of his life’s work; and now, having identified himself with what he is not, with sinners, he once again is overshadowed by the Holy Spirit as he prays and hears his Father’s voice, “You are my beloved Son; in you I am well pleased.” This relationship is free and unbroken. It is all-powerful and empowering. It will immediately be tested by Satan, and it will lead Jesus to his cross. Significantly, what is revealed at his Baptism will be repeated at his Transfiguration on the Mountain with Moses and Elijah in glory before three witnesses – after which he set his face towards his passion in Jerusalem.

Jesus’ submission to a Baptism for sinners seems to contradict his freedom from sin and his unbroken relationship with God. But Jesus’ life’s work was to share the riches of his life, his relationship to God and in God, with the rest of us. His relationship to God, his divine and human Sonship, means that Christ’s Humanity is something we have hardly known or experienced. It passes our imagining. Our knowledge and experience of sin has taken us into a different place which, far from enriching and enhancing, diminishes and defaces human life. But Christ came to repair our losses and to introduce us to worlds lost and long since unfathomed, intrinsically connected to his life and relationship within God the Holy Trinity. He will provide glimpses, epiphanies, of these places and worlds in his Kingdom, the Kingdom of God, as he moves through his extraordinary three-year ministry.

What the Wise Men saw and did when they worshiped the Infant Christ is a sign that the manifestation of Christ at his baptism thirty years later is a gift for all. He is King of kings and Lord of lords. All kings shall fall down before him; all nations shall do him service. And now here are we. And we are baptized! When Jesus plunged into the Jordan, he sanctified all our baptisms by his own. When we were baptized it was the water of Christ that purified us. Our Savior willed to be baptized for that reason – not that he might cleanse himself but that he might purify us, that we might join him.¹ All this today is nothing more than his own invitation.

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

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¹My paraphrase of Maximus of Turin, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, NT III, Luke, p. 67.