The Sermons at Calvary
By Father Richard Humke
THE MEANING OF OUR BAPTISMS
January 11, 2004, 1 Epiphany C,
Calvary Church
"I
am the LORD, I have called you in righteousness...I have given you as...a light
to the nations...I am the LORD, that is my name." These are the words of Isaiah in the First
Reading today, and this is one thing that I would like you to keep in
mind: I have given you as a light to
the nations.
There
is a second thing, too. The First
Sunday after Epiphany (today) is a celebration of the Baptism of Our Lord each
year, the Baptism that we just heard about in the Gospel reading for the
day. A little history lesson now: While the feast of Easter has been observed
in the Christian community from biblical times and is the primary festival of
the Christian Year, Christmas was a much later feast (from the 4th C.) and a
controversial one at that.
It
was controversial because there already was a festival at this time of
year, you see, and it was called Epiphany, which falls on January 6. It is the older festival. From the 2nd C. some Christians in Egypt
observed January 6 as a time to recall the Baptism of Jesus, and in time
January 6 was celebrated throughout the churches of the East, at which time
they commemorated the birth of Jesus on that day as well. Christmas was a western, Roman invention
that spread only slowly to the eastern churches and still does not rival in
importance for them Epiphany and the remembrance of Jesus' Baptism.
In
our tradition the association of Jesus' Baptism with this time of year was lost
for many centuries, but once again we have the yearly reminder of the Baptism
and the beginning of his active ministry, not on Epiphany itself, but on this
first Sunday following January 6, Epiphany.
That's the second thing I would like you to keep in mind.
A
third thing to remember for the next few minutes is that we are soon to be
engaged in the sacrament of Baptism this morning as little Clare is baptized
and brought into the fellowship of Christ's Church.
The
importance of what we will do in a moment may be lost because of its simplicity
and familiarity. If so, the loss is
ours, and I wonder how we might recover its sense of importance. I do not think we can go back, as if we
lived in the early centuries of the Church, and try to copy them in
detail. In some ways they had an
advantage over us: they lived when the
Faith was new and pristine and controversial.
We live when the Faith is no longer new to the world, and when the
brightness of its primitive light has been dimmed by the accumulation of
centuries.
And
as for its being controversial -- well, it still is controversial, but
we do everything possible to keep it from being so. And when it becomes controversial and takes a daring stand, as
has happened at this moment in the Episcopal Church, we see that as an
unfortunate aberration rather than an expected consequence.
You
have probably noticed in the last years that Baptism has assumed a greater
prominence, or perhaps visibility is the better way to say it, than it had at
one time. What were called
"private Baptisms" are now discouraged, though they occasionally take
place for pastoral reasons. Now Baptism
is administered, as it is this morning, at the Sunday Eucharist.
Beyond
that, we are struggling to bring meaning and responsibility to the act
itself. In the Baptismal Covenant,
which we all are bid to join in proclaiming shortly, we will renew out own
baptismal promises. We will say words
that are an attempt to "flesh out" the implications of our own
Baptisms. They are reminders to us who
are baptized as to how we should live our lives. One can only hope that, in time, and because of this, more and
more of us are going to see the implications of our Baptisms and act upon them.
The
renewal we need for Baptism is this discovery of its implications, not only for
the little one being baptized but for each one of us, for the whole
community. These implications, we will
see shortly in the Covenant, are to be faithful in joining with fellow
Christians for worship and renewal; to resist evil and to ask God's forgiveness
when we do not; to share in proclaiming the Gospel; to see Christ alive in our
neighbors and to serve Christ through them; and to help shape our society, our
nation and our world by working for justice and peace and respect for all human
beings.
That's
a tall order by any way you tally it; but at least it gives us something to
work on! Before we had this Baptismal
Covenant in our Liturgy it may have been hard for some persons to say what it
meant to be a Christian. No more. There are some very concrete things we are
called upon to be and to do.
So
let me refer you back to that verse I read from the First Reading: "I have called you...I have taken you
by the hand and kept you; I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light
to the nations..." It was spoken
to Israel in the 6th C. B.C. It was
spoken, we believe, by implication to Jesus who was sent to be just that when
Israel was not fulfilling its covenant role.
And it is spoken to you and to me and to little Clare. I have called you; I have taken you; I have
given you. That's what our Baptisms
mean.
A
little seven-year-old boy gave his grandmother for her birthday a Bible that he
had carefully picked out in the store.
He had observed that one often wrote something in the front of a book
when one gave it to another person, and he wanted to do this, too. So he took down one of his father's books
from the shelf and carefully and laboriously copied out what was in the front
of that book for his grandmother's Bible. Picture the grandmother's surprise
when she opened the Bible to find these words:
"With the compliments and best wishes of the author."
The
autograph of God has been placed on you and me in our Baptisms in the sign of
the Cross "with the compliments and best wishes of the author," but
unlike the author of a book, God goes with us as we live out our Baptisms. We are only asked to be responsive to his
call.
"I
have called you...I have given you as...a light to the nations."
Richard
H. Humke