Baptism of the Lord

Blessed be God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Blessed be used to be now and forever.

Amen.

Let's pray together.

Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid.

Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you and worthily magnify your holy name through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

The Lord be with you.

And also with you.

Let us pray.

Father in heaven, who at the baptism of Jesus in the river Jordan proclaimed him your beloved Son and anointed him with the Holy Spirit.

Grant that all who are baptized into his name may keep the covenant they have made and boldly confess him as Lord and Savior, who with you in the Holy Spirit lives and reigns one God, in glory everlasting.

Amen.

A reading from Genesis.

In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void, and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.

Then God said, Let there be light, and there was light.

And God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness.

God called the light day, and the darkness he called night.

And there was an evening and there was a morning of the first day.

The word of the Lord.

Ascribe to the Lord, you gods.

Ascribe to the Lord the glory to the name.

Ascribe to the Lord the glory due the holy name.

Worship the Lord and be the holyness.

The voice of the Lord is upon the waters.

The God of glory thunders.

The voice of the Lord is a powerful voice.

The voice of the Lord breaks the cedar trees.

The Lord makes Lebanon skip like a calf.

The voice of the Lord splits the flames of fire.

The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness.

The voice of the Lord makes the oak trees writhe.

And in the temple of the Lord, all are writing in glory.

The Lord sits enthroned above the flood.

The Lord shall give strength to the chosen people.

Then he said, Into what then were you baptized?

They answered, Into John's baptism.

Paul said, John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is, in Jesus.

On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.

When Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied.

Altogether there were about twelve of them.

The word of the Lord.

Glory to you, Lord Christ.

John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

Now John was clothed in camel's hair with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey.

He proclaimed, The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me.

I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals.

I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.

Just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart, and the Spirit descending like a dove on him, and a voice came from heaven.

With you I am well pleased.

The Gospel of the Lord.

Please be seated.

We get to start with this story from Genesis, and I want to argue against the translation in front of you in two ways that I think are really important.

First, the translation in front of you says, in the beginning, but in Hebrew, the definite article is not there.

In Hebrew, this is to begin with.

Around the 11th century, there was a famous rabbi who's known as the Rambam.

Maybe you've heard of him by his historical name, Moses Maimonides, who said that this explains how God created everything there is out of nothing.

This is the doctrine of Creatio ex nichilo.

That's not how the rabbis before Maimonides read the story, and I want to suggest a lot of that hinges on this little article, the.

We could hear that this is the beginning of everything that is from the start, but I want to suggest instead the Genesis story is inviting us to consider how it is that transformation happens no matter how old or young you are.

This story is about how it is that God takes stuff.

And the text is really clear.

There's stuff.

It's watery, which in the Bible is a symbol for chaos.

God takes this watery stuff and makes order and beauty.

By the way, Stephen Hawking says that too.

This is really interesting to think that in Genesis 1, God doesn't create out of nothing.

God creates out of sort of a primordial soup.

And the best way I explain this to children is imagine taking 124 Crayola crayons, each a different shade, and coloring one over the top.

When you're done, you won't even have a color.

You'll sort of have a murky mess.

And if you look at what follows here, God spends each day not making light out of nothing, God separates light out of darkness.

Now our brains can't even quite determine this because if you put light and darkness together, of course, you get light.

But in the Genesis story, you had neither light nor darkness.

You had like a Vitamix blender churning those things up so that neither could be itself.

Nothing was recognizable.

So in each day of creation, what God does is separates things out so that they can be no longer a chaotic blend, but each has room to be itself.

So God will separate the sky from the water.

I don't think our head can even conceive the sky and the water is blended as one thing, unless you're thinking like a cloud or something.

And from the water, God separates the land out.

This is so important, not because it just happened one time long ago, but if we read this without that definite article, the, this is what Genesis is all about.

God is able to meet us in moments in which we're all blended together and separate things out of us so that they can function as they were intended to do, to hold and support life to be beautiful.

I promise that has to do with the baptism of Jesus.

But I need you to be patient with me because we heard in Mark just now that John the Baptist is offering baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

And if you know your historic church doctrine, you know this little phrase that Jesus is like us in every way, but without sin.

So why would he want that?

If he's without sin, why does he want a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sin?

And I think that's the most important question, and I promise that image from Genesis is going to come back at the end.

But I think if you'll be patient with me, I'd like to define those two words robustly throughout the Bible.

The first one repentance and the second one sin.

So let's start with repentance.

And I've said this before, I think, but it bears repeating.

There's four words that give us the word in English repentance, two Hebrew, one Greek, and one Latin.

So the first Hebrew word is the word shoev, and it doesn't mean I'm yucky or my good deeds are rags to God.

It just means I turn a wheel, I change a direction.

So literally, all of you repented in order to park in our lot today.

And the Bible would use that word.

You had to turn.

So you had to turn.

That's it.

There's no judgment, it's a change of direction.

That's all.

The second is a Greek word.

It's called metanoia, and it's got two parts.

Just like you hear metaphysics is a reality way above what's apparent, right?

Supernatural is how that's often translated.

Metaphysics is uh the metanoia is noose's mind, so it's a way of seeing the world, conceiving reality that is so far above from what's ordinary to you.

To put this in some spiritual terms, it would be like opening your third eye.

To put it in educational terms, it would be like having an epiphany.

It would be like having a change in your schema.

The way you see the world is different.

Please hear that there's no baggage to that kind of repentance.

You learn something and you changed.

Nobody chides a child for not knowing a subject they're supposed to know.

That's why they go to school.

They're educated, they repent.

That's how the word works.

In Latin, the word is poena, and that's how it sounds a lot like our word penance or repent, then that's really the root of the English word penance is poena.

And it means graphically that you've done something to upset the scales of equality.

So what you have to do is make restitution.

Now, the way penance works, if you steal somebody's money, you don't pray to God for forgiveness.

You give the money back with the appropriate level of interest.

And in that way, you've reset the scale.

Now we all get, right, that there's certain things you can do that are really hard to do the appropriate penance for.

How can you make restitution for taking somebody's life?

How can you make restitution for taking somebody's trust?

We still uh have trouble with those in court today.

But please hear, penance is about resetting the scales.

The last word for repentance is a Hebrew word.

It's the word nicham.

And it's a tough one.

Um, it sort of has to do with feeling deep grief in being involved in something out of empathy and relationship that you can't directly overcome.

So, for example, if you've ever had a spouse or a child or a sibling or just somebody you love who did something that hurt them, you most likely have this compassionate grief for them.

Not because they were an embarrassment to you, but because their hurt touched your heart because you were in relationship with them.

And by the way, when you love somebody, you don't have power to make their decisions for them.

You put those four concepts together, and that's repentance.

What about sin?

Three images for sin in the Bible.

I'm gonna start with Greek.

In Greek, the word is hamarsha, and it means a tragic flaw.

Many of you probably read uh Oedipus Rex when you were in high school or college, and Oedipus's tragic flaw is something called hubris, which is thinking or trying to act more than you were made to be.

People loved in Greek drama to watch that tragic flaw follow through out an otherwise really decent person and see where it got them.

It doesn't really ever bring you somewhere good.

That's why it's called a tragic flaw instead of a serendipitous flaw.

Hubris is not the only one.

You probably know people whose tragic flaw is they can't sit still.

Or you know people whose tragic flaw is they can't get up.

Or you know people whose tragic flaw is they can't receive a compliment.

Tragic flaw.

In Hebrew, there's two images that come out of the same word, which is hatat.

The first is an archery term, and that is you're trying to take aim at a mark, a bullseye, and you miss the mark.

I mean, when you're learning to shoot, you're gonna miss the mark.

And nobody goes to hell because they missed the skeet.

Hopefully, you work at it and you shoot again and you improve your aim.

And I know if you've ever been around kids who are learning archery, you've seen the most amazing thing, which is they can pull the bow like this, and the arrow can go straight sideways.

Look, that can happen sometimes.

You keep shooting, you recalibrate, you learn.

That's sin.

The other image of sin has to do with picking up a burden.

So sin is not just disobeying some kind of moral code like breaking the Torah by eating pork.

It is carrying a burden with you.

And of course, you know, the more burdens you carry, the more you're going to not only hurt your posture, you're going to injure yourself.

Unfortunately, a lot of us think of sin as rule breaking.

And I'm really comfortable saying that Jesus, maybe he wasn't a rule breaker, but I am not comfortable saying that Jesus did not need to let himself go of some burdens that he had.

Because if Jesus did not carry burdens from his childhood and his culture, he wasn't a human.

Consider the kind of burdens that we're talking about, like economic instability, or if you don't mind me offering this, um, there's this weird idea called residues.

I know this very well because I've had members of my family join the military.

And I'm not being political, I just want to describe this to you that we all know that it's wrong to kill.

But when a soldier goes and executes their orders, which might involve killing people, they come back and they have a residue of having been in a compact zone.

And what rehabilitation do we offer those people meaningfully to come back and live what we call a normal life?

Not much.

And maybe you've heard of this case.

Oh, people come back with PTSD.

And this is the case.

But you know the DOD has done a thorough study that says more soldiers come back from deployment with PTSD than ever because more soldiers go into deployment with PTSD than ever.

Well, how do you have PTSD before you get there?

Childhood trauma, poverty, neglect, sexual, verbal, physical abuse, lack of any real economic stability.

These things cause PTSD, which by the way is not even something you do.

It can be done to you.

You better believe that's burdensome.

That's sin with a capital S.

It's tough for us to use this word because we like to use sin as if there's agency.

Like you did something terribly wrong intentionally.

And I think we miss, frankly, the kind of sin that burdens us the most.

I don't stay up at night worried because I told a lie in the sixth grade.

I did.

I think I told more than one.

The things that keep me up at night are wondering if I did the right thing by putting my kid in private school in the first grade.

Because the class was really small.

And if I just stayed in public school, maybe that, maybe that would have put him on the road I saw for him.

The kind of things that keep me up our night, these burdens, which the Bible calls sin, are not even things I did wrong.

Please hear this.

Jesus comes to the River Jordan so he can lay down that kind of sin.

What's interesting in the story, I don't know if it's the first time it's ever happened, but when Jesus comes out of the water, whatever residues or burdens it removed for him, he hears, and maybe for the first time in his life, he hears God tell him, You are my beloved.

You have to imagine that.

When you're carrying around sin, whether that's PTSD or combat fatigue, how can you possibly hear God's unconditional, unequivocal delight in you?

When we carry the burden of sin, known and undone, things possibly done to us, how can we accept what Desmond Tutu says, that God loves us so much that there is nothing that we can do to make God love us anymore, and nothing we can do to make God love us any less.

I want to suggest to you that's the epiphany of baptism is an ability to lay down our burdens.

I don't mean in a trite way, I mean in a way that leads to.

Healing and reconciliation.

A way to remove the residues that weigh us down.

You see, when Jesus comes to the River Jordan, he gets a new genesis.

This is not the beginning of Jesus.

This is where the beginning matters for our story.

He comes with whatever burdens he's got, and he's able to, what do you know, turn the wheel and go a different direction?

Because he hears God say he's beloved, he's able to see and behold, have a new mind that other people are beloved, including people who are possessed by unclean spirits, women, you name it.

He's able to use this epiphany God gives him and speak it and offer it to other people.

And by the way, this is why we don't hear this story one time.

We don't remember Jesus' baptism as something that happened once.

We remember it by reconnecting to it each year.

I don't know what residues you're carrying from 2020, but I'm sure you're carrying some.

Residues.

Like isolation.

Some people, it was really life-giving for them, and for many other people, isolation pushed them to be introverts in ways they weren't ready to accept and don't really know how to how to cope with.

Residues.

It's one thing to take a vacation, it's another thing to be forced into one.

Subtle twists makes a world of difference.

It's a burden many of us carry.

I don't even care what your politics are.

If you're not carrying a burden politically from 2020, you need to give me some advice.

Because the residues of 2020 are extremely heavy.

I just mean in the last week.

The fears, the resentments.

By the way, I don't know if you know this, but if you're ever part of Alcoholics Anonymous, your fourth step is where you talk about what got you where you are.

But you don't just say, I drank too much.

I took my child's money to buy a drink.

You talk about not just what you did, but the fears and resentments that got you there.

And that is such a more holistic appreciation from sin than what we've settled for in the church.

What we do is symptomatic of these deeper burdens that we carry, and sometimes we carry them not even knowing them, and sometimes we carry them thinking that's how God would like us to be.

And here in this story, we have an opportunity to hear of Jesus laying them down so he could be something other than just a burden carrier.

We carry one another in love, but that's not a burden.

That's a different way of being.

Jesus doesn't walk away from people, he's able to actually walk into other people by doing this.

That's what we're here to renew and to live into.

Now look, I've got to be honest with you, I've got some water from the Jordan River, and I'm gonna come splash you with it in a second after we uh redo our baptismal vows.

So if you don't want that, now's the time to go to the restroom.

And it's a start, it's a reminder that God's got a new genesis for us in mind, that that chaos that we have, those burdens that are so blended with us, if we could just separate them out, if we could separate those parts of chaos, I think we could put our burdens down better.

And this is a start we can do.

But you're gonna hear from me really a lot this year.

And this is maybe time to go ahead and plug a commercial.

We don't do a good job with systemically laying down our burdens unless you're an alcoholic.

And you you gotta do that on your own.

For those of us who are not alcoholics, and I am not an alcoholic, confession has been about telling what I did wrong and not talking about the burdens that I make.

So I want you to hear that we have something in the church called the sacrament of reconciliation.

It used to just be called confession.

And in the sacrament of reconciliation, we're invited to be reconciled to God and the self God made us to be by taking an inventory of our fears, of our resentments, and of the burdens we carry that could just be like, I am scared that my child has missed the mark and it might somehow be my fault.

That's not even a moral failing.

That's I love my kid and I'm scared as heck for what's gonna happen to them.

Reconciliation is for you.

And it's an opportunity to continue what we started our baptism and say, I'd really like to hear you say to me, God, you are my child, my beloved.

And I'm gonna do it, the work it takes, so that I can genuinely hear that and embrace it and help other people see it in themselves.

And those are some of the elements we're getting ready to say in our baptismal covenant.

Will you serve the dignity in some people?

I bet you will, but that's not what the covenant says.

Will you serve the dignity in all people?

I need some residues removed to really do that.

I don't know about you.

That's what we have reconciliation for.

That's why we have something like baptism.

That's why we return back to images in Genesis of things just being a mess that God, God can use all of the parts of that mess to create a really beautiful world if we can make room for that.

God is not asking you to kill parts of yourself.

God is not asking you to get rid of parts of yourself because you're deficient.

No, this is really different.

Remember what Mark does in this story.

Jesus has not done a single thing.

He has not healed anybody, he hasn't made a speech, he hasn't done any other kind of miracle.

Jesus hears before he does anything, that he is God's beloved child.

That God is well pleased with him before he does anything.

This is not about you doing more.

This is about taking those things that clog our ears from hearing God's truth about who we are, and then us participating with God and unclogging the ears of other people.

And you want to talk about a spiritual discipline?

You think about the person who makes your blood boil the most this week.

I don't know who that is for you.

It might be Nancy Pelosi, it might be Chuck Schumer, it might be Donald Trump.

We come here to renew our baptism so that we can hear that person, so we can imagine that person hearing God say, You are my beloved child, with you I am well pleased.

It's not a leap our imagination can take until we lay down our own burdens and resonues.

And that's our invitation today, is to start.

We're not going to accomplish it this morning, but it's a start.

And I hope it's a journey we'll make together this year for the sake of the world and for our sake.

If there's one thing that we need to hear.

I don't mean in an entitlement way, but maybe I do.

It's that there is nothing you can do to make God love you anymore.

And nothing you can do to make God love you any less.

Until we can bring that in.

We don't have any good news for the world.

We don't.

We just have regular news for the world.

So here's our invitation to begin.

I invite you to join with me as we renew our baptismal covenant.

Do you believe in God the Father?

I believe in God the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth.

Do you believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God?

I believe in Jesus Christ, the only Son, our Lord.

He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and Lord of the Virgin Mary.

He suffered under conscious pilot, was crucified, died, and was buried.

He descended to the dead.

On the third day he rose again.

He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

He will come again to judge the living and the dead.

Do you believe in God, the Holy Spirit?

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.

Will you continue in the apostles' teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and in the prayers?

I will with God's help.

Will you persevere in resisting evil?

Whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord.

I will with God's help.

Will you proclaim by word and example the good news of God in Christ?

I will with God's help.

Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?

I will with God's help.

Will you strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being?

I will with God's help.

Let us now pray as we renew the sacrament of new birth.

Deliver us, O Lord, from the way of sin and death.

O Lord, hear our prayer.

Open our hearts to your grace and truth.

Fill us with your holy and life-giving spirit.

Lord, hear our prayer.

Keep us in the faith and communion of your holy church.

Teach us to love others in the power of the Spirit.

Lord, hear our prayer.

Send us into the world in witness to your love.

Lord, hear our prayer.

Bring us to the fullness of your peace and glory.

Lord, hear our prayer.

Grant, O Lord, that all who are baptized into the death of Jesus Christ, your Son, may live in the power of his resurrection and look for him to come again in glory, who lives and reigns now and forever.

Just a few announcements to call to your attention.

The first is that our day school returns to school tomorrow.

We took an extra three days off to make sure that we were properly quarantining our students because we to this date have had no exposure cases traced back to school.

So we are praying, and I invite your prayers, please, as we come back tomorrow to continue that our school will be safe and that we can continue, obviously, to raise our children not only in knowledge but in wisdom and faith.

I just want to highlight that towards the end of the month you're going to see two back-to-back events.

You'll find more about them in the e-news.

The first is our fresh food distribution on January the 30th, and the second is our parish annual meeting.

Unlike many other years, of course, we'll be having this on Zoom and using software to help us do our three important items of business as a congregation.

Those include passing the 2021 budget, which you'll see in the e-news, I think this week.

It'll be a link you can click through, ask any questions that you have before and during the meeting.

Electing our vestry, we have fine, five very fine candidates running for vestry.

You'll find their bios, a little bit more about them and what they offer us in leadership on our Wednesday e-news.

And electing our delegates for diocesan council, which is sort of like the parish annual meeting for the diocese.

And that will be also an electronic council this year that has voting software and Zoom connecting us together.

And it's kind of a significant year because we have two members who are running for diocesan executive council.

So that's kind of new here, but it but a neat thing that we're doing, and we'll hear more about that at the annual meeting.

But please do take time.

I I know it's a little tough to do this electronically, but it's really important because it sets the tone for the ministry and mission of the coming year.

And as we know, there's a lot to be done.

The last thing I just want you to put your sort of awareness out that there's a small committee of folks who has helped curate in a magazine the first 55 years of ministry here at St.

Thomas.

And using the skills of a parishioner, Christopher Alexander, we've put together a really lovely full-colored magazine that should be arriving here at the end of the week.

So just keep your eyes out, we'll figure out how to distribute this to you because there's not only some neat stories about what was done here, but why it was done, and some great colorful uh photos, and it's really just a great way to get to know the St.

Thomas, maybe you didn't know about, or to celebrate the St.

Thomas you could easily have forgotten about.

So please keep your eyes out for that announcement of the magazine's arrival and its its distribution.

First, we'll be giving it to first responders and then to people who are 65 and older.

Continue to walk in love as Christ first loved us and gave himself for us, an offering and sacrifice to God.

I think I had so do not feel God Come with forgiveness, grace, and praise.

And of your own education.

This is the table not of the church, but of God.

It is to be ready for those who seek relationship with God, so come and make this journey, you who have much faith and you who have little, you who have been here often, and you who have not been in a long time or ever before, you who have tried the following, you who have lost your way.

Come and make this journey, not because I invite you, God advites, and it is God's desire that we gather here.

The Lord be with you.

Also with you.

Lift up your hearts.

Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.

It is right and a good and a joyful thing, always and everywhere, to give thanks to you, Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.

Because in Jesus Christ our Lord, you have received us as your daughters and sons, made us citizens of your kingdom, and given us the Holy Spirit to guide us into all truth.

And therefore we praise you, joining our voices with angels and archangels, and with all the company of heaven, who forever say this hymn to proclaim the glory of your name.

Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of your glory.

Hosanna in the highest.

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, Hosanna in the highest.

Holy and gracious Father, in your infinite love, you made us from yourself.

And when we've fallen into sin and become subject to evil and death, you in your mercy sent Jesus Christ, your only and eternal Son, to share our human nature, to live and die as one of us, to reconcile us to you, the God and Father of all.

He stretched out his arms upon the cross and offered himself in obedience to your will, a perfect sacrifice for the whole world.

On the night he was handed over to suffering and death, our Lord Jesus Christ took bread, and when he given thanks to you, he broke it, and gave it to his disciples, and said, Take, eat.

This is my body which is given for you.

Do this for the remembrance of me.

After supper, Jesus took the cup of wine, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them and said, Drink this, all of you.

This is my blood of the new covenant which is shed for you and for all, for the forgiveness of sins.

Whenever you drink it, do this for the remembrance of me.

Therefore, we proclaim the mystery of faith.

Risen, Christ will come again.

We celebrate the memorial of our redemption, O Father, in this sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving.

Recalling his death, resurrection, and ascension, we offer to you these gifts.

Sanctify them by your Holy Spirit to be for your people the body and blood of your Son, the holy food and drink of new and unending life in Him.

Sanctify us also that we may faithfully receive this holy sacrament, and serve you in unity, constancy, and peace.

And at the last day bring us with all your saints into the joy of your eternal kingdom.

All this we ask through your Son Jesus Christ, by him and with him and in him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all honor and glory is yours, Almighty Father, now and forever.

Amen.

And now, as our Savior Christ has taught us, we are bold to pray, our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever.

Amen.

Be known to us in the breaking of the bread, for we who are many are one body, for we all share in the one bread.

These are the gifts of God.

And we are the people of God.

I invite you to receive bread or a blessing by coming to the aisle closest to your right, coming down forward and returning around the other side.

The beautiful, the beautiful with the saints of the river that falls by the throne of God on the border where the Savior king will we shall meet with sorrow never be the glory of the throne.

Yes, we gather at the river, the beautiful, the beautiful river gather with the saints at the river that flows by the throne of God.

Before all creation, we acknowledge the mystery of this simple meal.

Let it remind us of our common humanity and our commitment to love one another and all of creation.

Through it may we be strengthened to service.

In it may we find peace.

Amen.

May the voice of God, which declared Jesus as beloved at his baptism, fill your heart and mouth as we continue to journey into the beloved community God has in store for the world.

And the blessing of God Almighty, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, be with you this day and remain with you always.

Amen.