Feast of the Baptism of Christ 2024

You might remember if you were here that last year we said that during the season of epiphany, the primary focus isn't on us discovering something, which is often how modern people use the word epiphany.

They say, I've had an epiphany, I've had a eureka moment, but that's not what the ancient world meant when they said epiphany.

For the season of Epiphany, the primary focus is on God revealing something about Himself.

An epiphany is a revelation or an encounter or a manifestation, and it's only as a result of that that something might change in our hearts or our thinking.

Let me offer a third, a fourth way of imagining what an epiphany is, and we're going to reflect on this further.

An epiphany is like peeling back the fabric of reality so that we might see more clearly the truth about the way the world really is.

So let me just give us a quick primer on where we're going over the course of this season.

There are four weeks in Epiphany.

We start with the baptism of Jesus, which is what we'll be thinking about today.

Next week, we'll be seeing Jesus encounter the disciples for the first time, or maybe we should say, the disciples encountering Jesus.

And we get to discover what it might be to be a disciple based on that epiphany.

In the third week, we have the wedding of Cana, where Jesus turns water into wine.

And John's gospel says that this is the first sign of Jesus' glory.

And then in the fourth week, Jesus is met by some unclean spirits, and we discover that they know precisely who he is and what he's here to do.

A series of vignettes of epiphanies where the curtain of reality is pulled back and we get to see what is really going on.

There's lots of wonderful things to unpack in this season of life.

And I wanted to give that brief primer because I think this season is sometimes overlooked as Christians.

It feels like the kind of leftovers after Christmas.

And I hope we don't do that this year.

There's so much to think about and process.

But it does mean that when we think about the baptism of Jesus, we're not just thinking about an event that happened 2,000 years ago, but we should take time to reflect on and find the places where this curtain is being pulled back.

And then ask, what might that mean for us 2,000 years later?

So, in our remaining time, I'd like to ask three questions.

What did Jesus experience in his baptism?

Secondly, what does that reveal about the nature of reality?

About the relationship between God and God's creation.

And then thirdly, what does all this mean for you and me?

You can imagine the scene, can't you?

I don't know if you've ever seen pictures of the River Jordan.

It's quite a small, dirty river on the west coast, uh excuse me, on the east coast of uh eastern edge of Israel.

And John the baptizer, or as we like to call him here, John the Pointer, uh is uh has gathered a crowd of people who want to be baptized by him.

And Jesus comes into the water, and as he's baptized, the scriptures tell us the heavens were torn apart, and a voice from heaven spoke words of affirmation to Jesus, and a dove descended.

Now, I was reading a commentary by John N.

T.

Wright on this, and he says this, which I found so helpful.

It opened up the whole passage for me.

We must realize that the phrase seeing heaven opened doesn't mean that Jesus saw a little door ajar miles up in the sky.

As if, and some of these paintings depict it like this, there was a kind of God peeled back a cur uh a cloud and stuck his head down and said something to God, or said something to Jesus.

That's not what the Bible means when it talks about tearing back the heavens.

Heaven, Tom Wright goes on to say, in the Bible often means God's dimension behind ordinary reality.

It's more as though an invisible curtain right in front of us was suddenly pulled back so that the trees and the flowers and the buildings, or in Jesus' case, the river and the sandy desert and the crowds.

Behind that, we're standing in the presence of a quite different reality.

Hannah and I have a friend called Abby, and she's an actress, uh, quite an accomplished actress, and she's a puppeteer.

She does a lot with puppets and um has done some wonderful things around the country.

She's currently in a show uh that she's uh doing The Wizard of Oz, and she's playing Toto in The Wizards of Oz, which is currently on at Liverpool, uh, and then they're going to be touring all around uh the UK.

And so we went to see her in it on press night a few weeks ago, and it was it was lovely.

But I've been reflecting on the climax of that story when Toto pulls back the curtain and reveals that there is no Wizard of Oz, there's just a con artist pulling levers, using smoke and lasers to make himself look like something that he wasn't.

Toto pulls back the curtain and the wizard is revealed to just be an ordinary man operating machinery that protects this ghastly and ghostly image of his face.

And so our four travelers, the Dorothy and the Tin Man and the Lion and the Strawman, are left bereft.

They've spent their entire story traveling along the yellow brick roads to find the wizard who could give them what they need.

And then, of course, the wizard says, You've had it all along.

The ultimate uh turn of events.

But it left me wondering, why is the Wizard of Oz such a popular story still over a hundred years after it was first written?

Why is it that us moderns like the idea of pulling back the curtain and discovering that the big incredible wizard is just a con artist with smoke machines, lasers, and fancy puppets?

I think there's nothing us moderns like more than to be skeptical, to be suspicious, to be critical, and frustratingly, we have been proved right again and again and again.

So often, the result of our skepticism and our suspicion proves that there isn't really a wizard, there is just a con artist.

I was reminded this week of an article I read uh in a newspaper about 10 years ago called Everyone Is Always Winging It.

And the journalist described his experience of his 30 years in journalism, where he said he started on a tin pot radio station, and every week they were just kind of holding on for dear life, tried to make sure that they had enough material and they could kind of look proper on a sound proper on the radio.

But he was quite good at his job, so he got promoted to a regional newspaper, and he was shocked to discover that these guys were winging it just like he was with his friends in the tin pot radio station.

But he assured himself, of course, when I get to the big leagues, they'll have it all together.

And then he got to the national newspapers and to his horror, discovered that the New York Times and The Guardian and the Telegraph, they're all winging it.

And then, because of his position now in the news media, he was able to look over the wall and see how the politicians were running things, and it turned out they too were just winging it.

So often, we look behind the curtain and we're disappointed with what we find.

There is no wizard, there's just a con artist.

And so Jesus is baptized, and the heavens are torn apart.

We get to see behind the curtain, and what does he discover?

The creator of all things, accepting him and delighting in him, the Spirit of God being given to him to empower him for his life and his ministry.

Firstly, what does Jesus experience on that day 2000 years ago?

Now, secondly, what does this mean for the nature of reality?

And I'd like us to turn now from the gospel reading to Genesis, because what we discover is that in Mark 1 and Genesis 1 are talking to one another in a quite interesting way.

Mark 1 is written aware of all that happens in Genesis 1.

And in Genesis 1, we find the same picture: the Father and the Son and the Spirit hovering over creation, filling it, blessing it, endowing it with all of its goodness.

And so we discover that the thing that happens to Jesus in his baptism 2000 years ago is not a one-off event or the start of something new, but simply the continuation of the dynamic relationship between God and his creator for all eternity past and into the future forever.

That the Father and the Word through which all creation is formed, and the Spirit hovering over the deep, forming creation, blessing it and filling it, that is what it is to be caught up in the life of God.

I think it's very easy at this time of year to be filled with the nagging suspicion that if you pulled back the curtain on reality, there wouldn't really be anything there.

Or worse, that there'd be some sort of pasty, flaccid God who's not really worth your time.

It's dark and doom-filled and dreary in the world.

January is a tough month for many people.

But I think the epiphany of God to us today is to say that the Wizard of Oz is not reality.

That existential dread that us moderns feel, that the Wizard of Oz so clearly depicts, is not the story that Mark I and Genesis 1 tell.

They tell a very different story.

So, what does this mean for us 2000 years after the event?

For you and for I, we find ourselves in Jesus' baptism.

We find ourselves in Christ.

And so that means that we are continually drawn into this Trinitarian dynamic.

That just as God calls Jesus his beloved Son, in whom he is well pleased, so God is saying to each one of us this morning that same promise, blessing, and benediction because of who we are in Christ.

I was talking to someone yesterday after evening prayer who uh we got into a bit of discussion about his life, and we were talking about forgiveness, we were talking about grace, and he said to me, You do not know the things that have happened to me, and you don't know the things I've done, it would take an awful lot for God to forgive me.

Wouldn't it be terrible if someone who felt like that peeled back the curtain of reality and found only a con artist?

Instead, we read in the Gospel of Mark that when you peel back reality, you hear the creator of all things saying, You are my child, you're my beloved, and with you I am well pleased.

I know that this can be a very tough time of year for people, and so let us pray during this epiphany season that we would see behind the curtain of reality and not be disappointed, that we would hear God our Father say to all who are in Christ, all who are baptized into his eternal life You're my child, my beloved, with you I'm well pleased.