It’s strange, isn’t it, that the new year feels, somehow, so drastically different from the last? Last year my constant companion was “exhaustion”. If you had asked me how I was, as many of you did, at essentially any point during the year, I was likely to say something like “oh I’m doing okay… I’m just exhausted”. Sometimes it was physical exhaustion, sometimes emotional, sometimes social, but always total. That feeling extended right through December and Christmas, as we prepared for Christmas and then traveled afterwards to visit relatives, right up to the new year. On New Year’s Eve Trent and I made ourselves stay up until midnight to see in the new year, because in previous years we have been well and truly asleep by then… we thought we better see the fireworks at least once every couple of years. As soon as they were over, and we were allowed to sleep, we stumbled off to bed, exhausted.
And the next thing I knew the sun was streaming in and it was a new day – a new year even. I didn’t need an alarm, and I didn’t feel like going back to sleep – I felt refreshed. I got out of bed and as usual made myself a cup of tea, and by all accounts it was a normal day. But something felt different. I felt at peace. I felt hopeful for this new year – it was so full of promise.
Because last year had been really tough for me, and I was so glad it was finally 2017. I had a massive uni load, but I think what was really hard was seeing so much hate in our world, so much division, so much polarisation… elections and war and idiots on social media. It seems so silly, but to be able to say that 2016 is over and that 2017 is here – a new year – there’s something healing about it, we can look forward to and have hope for something new.
I started preparing for this sermon that day – New Year’s Day, and the thing that struck me first about the baptism of Jesus was that feeling of hope – as Jesus came up out of the water, the heavens opened, the Spirit of God descended and a voice was heard “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” Jesus went to John to be baptized at the start of his ministry – it signaled his entry into “public” life, he was starting something new.
But the early church thought Jesus’ baptism was actually quite embarrassing – if Jesus was without sin, why did he submit himself to a “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins”? It seems contrary and out-of-place, and it certainly didn’t fit with the narrative of following a blameless and sinless Jesus. This embarrassment of the early church is echoed in John’s reticence to baptize Jesus who thought it was all wrong saying “I need to be baptized by you”. But Jesus says that it must happen this way to “fulfill all righteousness”. Jesus was following God’s call to bring the Good News, and it needed to begin here, with Jesus identifying himself with us in our brokenness, even though he was without sin. Jesus comes in humility – he asks for a baptism he does not “need” to be with us. He descends to the lowest place possible – not just incarnated as human, but identifying with us in our need for repentance and forgiveness.
So, then, who is “us”? Jesus, in his baptism, identifies and joins with us – but it’s not an “us” that was defined before, the “us” is defined in Jesus’ baptism as the new community – the community of Jesus’ followers who proclaim that there is no “us and them” only “us”. As Lee C. Camp [1] explains, it’s an astonishing reality that is proclaimed at Jesus’ baptism, and proclaimed at each baptism since, that says that “all the division, all the social groupings, all the forms of identity that serve to categorise, divide, estrange and alienate one from the other, these are all broken down – we are given a new identity in Christ.”
In the church we are bound together in baptism – ‘the sign by which the Spirit of God joins people to Jesus Christ and incorporates them into his body – the Church’ [2]. We take on a new identity in Christ, proclaiming that all other social groupings have been overcome – “there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). We could probably add a few more to that list – whatever it is that separates us, no longer does – our ultimate identity is that of Christian, followers and disciples of Christ Jesus.
And as a church together, our calling is to follow Christ. In living out our baptism we are called to love – seek reconciliation, forgiveness and inclusivity rather than accept or promote estrangement, prejudice and exclusion. This is the message the world desperately needs to hear, wants to hear, and yet at the same time finds impossible to believe – how can it be possible? How can we love in the midst of difference? How can we be friends with people who are so different to us? How can we love others when they hate us? It’s impossible, it’s ridiculous, it’s reckless!
But I think it’s more than an intellectual objection, I think they’re even a little afraid of it, and it’s hard to blame them! Whilst we don’t want to live in world of division and violence, anything else would require a humility that few possess, an admission that we might be wrong, an openness to being vulnerable with those we’d rather keep at arms length. We must accept the radical notion that the “other” is a lot like us in some ways, celebrate rather than just tolerate our differences, and embrace the inclusivity of us all at the same table. I think we can be afraid to love because it requires so much of us, it requires everything we are – we died to ourselves and rose again as new creations in Christ. This is the test of our faith – do we really believe that love can overcome fear?
Though I have been shamed for being a foolish idealist, I cling to this hope of God-with-us, and the call to follow and join in the story of reconciliation and renewal for all, that God’s radical love might just save us. Amen.
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[1] Camp, Lee C., 2008, Mere Discipleship – Radical Christianity in Rebellious World, 2nd Ed., Brazos Press
[2] ‘The Meaning of Baptism’ from ‘The Sacrament of Baptism and the Reaffirmation of Baptism called Confirmation’ in Uniting in Worship 2, © 2005 The Uniting Church in Australia, p. 74, also Baptism Doc.byte
Helen Travers 