Sunday, January 8th
Speaker: Martha Sterne
Series: Epiphany

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On the first Sunday in Epiphany, and as Alison pointed out to me this past week – AND on the first Sunday of Advent AND on the first Sunday of Lent –  so heads up -  we always tell the story of the baptism of Jesus, no matter what gospel we are reading.  Mark – which is this year’s gospel -  doesn’t even talk about Mary, Joseph, stable, wise men, shepherds, angels or anything else -  Mark just jumps in right here and says “THE BEGINNING OF THE GOOD NEWS” with Jesus already thirty years old and – no big deal -  just showing up amidst the people, sloshing into the muddy waters of the River Jordan just like all the rest of the ragtag crowd that John the Baptist had convinced to come clean.  

In that first appearance, Jesus doesn’t do anything fine.  He doesn’t preach a good sermon.  He doesn’t heal anybody.  He doesn’t feed a soul.  He just sloshes into the river along with the others.  He just consents to be one of the folks.  And all of a sudden – the heavens tear apart and the Spirit descends like a dove and a voice booms or whispers or sings. “You are my Son, my beloved.  With you I am so, so pleased.”  And so all the people know that God is there.  In the river.  With them. Huge. 


Barbara Kingsolver wrote a terrifying book called The Poisonwood Bible, about a missionary family.  The father is the missionary and he brings his cowed, southern  wife and his four young daughters to the Congo to save the souls of the people.  They land in a little village full of snakes and menacing vegetation and half-naked people and it’s just crystal clear to the missionary that he has arrived not a moment too soon because this crowd needs saving bad. 

The people welcome him with a feast but the women’s breasts are bare so he seizes the moment of their shy hospitality to teach about sin and fornication and the lusts of the body.  Pretty soon everybody slinks away from the feast, heads down in shame from the words of the righteous one who disapproves of them so  and is so clearly not one of them.

He, of course, particularly wants to baptize people.  Like John the Baptist, the missionary tells the people to repent of their sins although, of course, he doesn’t even know yet what their sins are.  While he harangues the people about their sins and tries to coerce them into the river,  he also doesn’t know how deeply his own family unwittingly sins against the village by bathing and washing their things and emptying their garbage where the people have always gone for drinking water.   And he doesn’t know that no sane parent would allow him to take their children out into the part of the river where he wants to baptize for there are crocodiles there.

But the missionary doesn’t know the lay of the land, doesn’t know the culture, doesn’t know the people and worst of all has forgotten that there is another greater than himself whose sandals he is not worthy to untie - who is hidden all around us – waiting for us in thousands of epiphanies every day, in a flash of beauty from this good earth, in a word of truth maybe from the mouth of  an unbeliever.  And God is hidden always in that sudden flame of sacrificial love spurting out of nowhere toward us and in us and among us and through us. 

Today we will baptize two darling little boys.  Not to separate them  or to make them better than others or purer but to join with them in the lifelong work of deepening their love and ours for God and for neighbor, of strengthening all of us for service to others, of opening all our hearts ever, ever wider to all the joy and wonder in the world. 

Because remember for Jackson and Jack and for all of us, Jesus sloshed into the river with us.  To be one of us.  So that we might be one with him.  Look around the river of your life.  You will, I promise, you will see him there, most likely in the muddy, dark places.  Ready to open  the eyes that are blind and to sett the captives free.  A light to the nations and a promise to these little boys, to you and me, to all we love and all God calls us to love, a sloshy, muddy, holy promise to  all the people of the world. amen