Epiphany
1 RCL
Rev.
Adam T. Trambley
January
7, 2018, St. John’s Sharon
I think there is a reason why John the Baptist
shows up every January in our lectionary readings. He at least wants to challenge us, but I
think he also may be mocking us just a little bit. Right about now, going out into the desert,
stepping into a nice warm river in the sunshine sounds pretty good – whether to
swim, be baptized, or just play Marco Polo, I don’t really care, as long as I
don’t need to shovel snow off the sidewalk to get there. Usually about a week or two into January is
also when New Year’s resolutions are dropping off. We’ve skipped the gym, eaten the last few of
our favorite Christmas cookies, snuck a cigarette, and spent an evening
scrolling through Facebook instead of cleaning the house or reading that New
York Times bestselling self-help volume.
Here comes John with a call to repent, to make us all perhaps feel just
a little bit guiltier. At least this
year, Mark’s gospel doesn’t recount John calling anyone a brood of vipers.
Yet, if we turn to the reading from Acts of the
Apostles this morning, we hear a very different perspective on John’s
baptism. Paul has gone to Ephesus, where
he spends a number of years in his ministry and then later he leaves and writes
them a letter. Ephesus is an important
early Christian place. We have
traditions that put John the Evangelist and possible even Jesus’ mother in
Ephesus later in their lives. But when
Paul shows up, the disciples there have only experienced the baptism of
repentance that John offered. They have
never been baptized in the name of Jesus, and have never even heard of the Holy
Spirit.
This omission might not be surprising. John the Baptist was a big deal in the ancient world. He was a religious gadfly to some pretty important government leaders, and all sorts of people, even those not fleeing cold climates, came out in the desert to hear him preach and to be baptized by him. However these disciples got to Ephesus, which is a city in Asia Minor in present-day Turkey, they had experienced John’s baptism. They knew what John had instructed, even if their understanding of Jesus message was much less developed.
Saint Paul is never shy about telling people the
full gospel, however, so he lets the Ephesians know that there are two more
steps in this process of becoming a believer. John’s baptism of repentance can
come first, but then there is the baptism in the name of Jesus and receiving
the Holy Spirit. Saint Paul also reminds
them that even John said that there was one coming after him who was more
important than he was, and that one was Jesus.
The Ephesians, then, waste no time in being baptized in the name of
Jesus and then are prayed over and receive the Holy Spirit. Like many in Acts who receive the Holy
Spirit, they begin to speak in tongues and to prophesy.
Let’s look at these three steps into Christian
discipleship, and what they mean for us.
First, John’s baptism of repentance.
Second, baptism in the name of Jesus.
Third, receiving the Holy Spirit, called in some circles baptism in the
Holy Spirit, although it doesn’t always occur in a dramatically expressive way.
First is John’s baptism of repentance. As Christians, we are called to repent of our
sins, but this is, at best, a small part of our baptism. We can understand a piece of baptism,
especially in adults, as washing away our sins, but the rest of what happens
through baptism is much more important.
Let’s just talk about repentance a minute. Repentance is vitally important in our walk
of faith, and we need to take the time regularly to examine our consciences and
turn away from our sins. We do need to
remember that repentance is about us, and, as such, is a small offering to God
in light of what he is going to offer to us.
On the one hand, repentance is something we do. We certainly need God’s grace to do it, but
repentance is our action. God does not
do it on our behalf. On the other hand,
repentance benefits us. When we stop sinning,
our lives get better. Sin is not some
list of good behaviors that God puts off limits so he can catch us being bad
and punish us. Sins are those things we
do that hurt us and the people around us.
Repenting of our sins means that we can start to have the life we want
for ourselves and our families and our communities. Certainly, we sometimes have to take the
advice of more mature people to know how and where we may be hurting others,
but repentance is the first step to the joyful life God wants us to live. He is thrilled for us when we repent, and
draws all of us in that direction.
The second step that Paul talks about, and
often the first one in our Christian journeys, is baptism in the name of Jesus,
or, today, usually in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Spirit. This baptism is baptism into the
death of Jesus so that we are also baptized into his resurrection. Here the water imagery is not of cleansing,
but of drowning. We are literally dying
to our old selves so that we can be born again as new people in Jesus
Christ.
Obviously, infant baptisms have softened some
of this language. For good reason, those
aren’t the images we want with our children.
Plus, when we have babies being born and raised in a Christian home,
their dedication, while still a baptism into the death and resurrection of
Jesus, is another step in the life of faith of being raised in the Body of
Christ. Ideally, they have never been
outside of the community of faith. As
infant baptisms have replaced adult baptisms, we have also domesticated baptism
with our liturgical furnishings. The art
deco baptismal font we have at St. John’s is beautiful, but doesn’t feel very
threatening. No one is likely to drown
in it. Yet baptism in the name of Jesus
should be threatening to us. We are
letting go of everything to be born again into a new and eternal life.
On New Year’s Eve, a few of us from St. John’s
joined some African-American churches for a watch night service. Watch night is a yearly service in the
African-American community remembering December 31, 1862 when slaves went to
church all night to pray and worship as they watched for the Emancipation
Proclamation to declare them free persons on January 1, 1863. At Second Missionary Baptist in Farrell this
year, Pastor McKeathon from Second Baptist Sharpsville preached, and he talked
about what we need to leave behind as we enter the new year. He had a longish list of things like fear,
and criticizing people, and running off our mouths, and holding onto too much
stuff that we all need to leave behind.
But baptism in the name of Jesus goes beyond even that. Baptism in the name of Jesus is leaving
everything behind. We really don’t want
anything going into the water with us, because we are getting dunked and we
need to be free to come up again as new people.
John’s baptism of repentance is letting go of the bad stuff we need to
leave behind for our own good. Baptism
in the name of Jesus is letting go of everything, to die to self and to status
and to stuff, and letting God bring us out of the water again to live for him.
Once we have died to self and come out of the
water for Christ, then we can receive the Holy Spirit. We pray for this at baptisms when we anoint
people with chrism immediately after baptism, and pray, “You are sealed by the
Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.” Being filled with the Holy Spirit allows us
to unlock the gifts we have and be used powerfully for God’s purpose. The Holy Spirit offers us a sense of
closeness with God, and discernment, and whatever else we need to do the work
that God has given us to do. For some
people, the Holy Spirit manifests in exuberant signs such as praying in tongues
or incredibly joyful singing and extended praying. For others, the Holy Spirit manifests in much
quieter, but equally intense and effective ways. Part of receiving this fullness of the Holy
Spirit is wanting it so that we can love and serve God and our neighbors more
fully and completely. The gifts of the
Holy Spirit are meant for the building up of the Body of Christ, and all of us
have different gifts but they serve the same purpose.
Now these distinctions were very important to
the disciples in Ephesus who had not yet been baptized in the name of Jesus or
in the Holy Spirit. Most of us, however,
have been. So why does this matter for
us?
Well, we aren’t going to be baptized again. Once we have been baptized into the death and
resurrection of Jesus, we have brought into the fullness of eternal life. We don’t have to worry about that. But even with the Holy Spirit filling us, we
aren’t perfect. We fall back into sin
after we repent. We accumulate various
stuff and status and situations that we find very hard to give up to jump in
the water and swim with Jesus. We slip
into using our resources for our own benefit instead of offering ourselves to
be used by the Holy Spirit. These
failings are easy and all too human. So
we read John the Baptist every January to shake us out of ourselves and
recommit again wherever we are.
When I was in Hong Kong at a missions
conference in 2015, one of the presenters was an incredible missionary in
Southeast Asia, probably in his 40’s or 50’s.
He had planted churches and preached the gospel in places that were
incredibly dangerous to evangelize. He
had seen friends persecuted and even die for their faith. He was working in a new area and not getting
any traction. He felt a tug to go and
evangelize at a local college. He didn’t
want to do it. He didn’t see how it
could be effective at that point, and it was sort of “been there, done that”
feeling. Then he described having an
encounter with God where he felt convicted that he had to offer everything back
to God again. He said, I’ve already
given you everything, God. And he heard
God reply that he had to give everything again.
He told us that he realized that after he had set out on his Christian
life, at some point he had started to value the comfort and ease his life was taking
on. But God still wanted him to give up
everything so he could receive everything from God and the Holy Spirit. So he made the decision to hand everything
over to God again. And he went to the
college, and he quickly planted a new church that developed great energy and
joy beyond his wildest expectations.
We aren’t all going to be missionaries to
Southeast Asia, but God probably does have a ministry with the college students
in our community he is calling someone to take on. I don’t know if that call is for someone here
today, but I do know that God does have something in mind for each and every
one of us. If we don’t feel like we are
doing it, we should look at ourselves closely. We might find that we have
become one of the barriers to achieving what God has in store for us. Maybe we have decided to let our fear, or our
comfort, or our convenience, or our desire to look good or sensible or sane in
the eyes of those around us, or our security, or our attachment to our own
favorite sins to be our first priority, and let God and his will for us slip
down the list a ways. We all fall into
that trap at some point. But John the
Baptist and Paul remind us of the way out.
Just follow Paul’s early baptism instruction. Repent of our sins. Remember our baptism in Jesus’ name when we
died and rose with him, and let everything that gets in the way of that float
down the river without us. Then ask the
Holy Spirit to give us whatever we need to do the work God gives us to do,
because God will never call us to something without equipping us to do the
work. The twelve disciples at Ephesus became the core of a church that changed
the world. Who knows what God has in mind
for us.
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