Christ for the World

Epiphany 1

Fr. Tim Nunez

May my spoken word be true to God’s written word and bring us all closer to the living word, Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

There’s an old saying, a bumper sticker phrase that I recall from the 70’s or 80’s. It may be older than that. It goes, “Think globally, act locally.” I have not heard it said that way for a long time and I wonder if younger generations have heard it. In any case, it is very much present in our thinking. We understand more than ever that we are part of a very inter-connected world.

We see it in the life of our church. It’s as simple as our recycling bins, which are a small way we attempt to help the ecology. We have an annual golf tournament to support our sister church in Santa Maria, Honduras. We support missionaries in Southeast Asia and Sao Paolo Brazil. This past year Bishop Patrick Augustine visited and we supported his work for the Diocese of Bor, Sudan.

If you’re keeping score, and I am, that means Church of the Good Shepherd in beautiful Lake Wales, Florida, thinks globally and acts locally to support mission and ministry on four continents. That’s you. That’s all of us. We may think that has grown out of our ever-developing technologies in communication and transportation. That sure has a lot to do with it. I’m sure a lot more does, too.

But our roots run much deeper than that.

I call your attention to this brief aquatic ceremony in an otherwise lonely spot in the River Jordan. (This is our third visit to this spot with John the Baptist in recent weeks.) You will hopefully recall the importance of this lonely spot, where 1500 years earlier God parted the waters and Joshua led Israel across dry land to begin the conquest of the Promised Land, and where 880 years earlier God parted the waters so the prophets Elijah and Elisha could also cross on dry land, just before Elijah was caught up into heaven.

We were here just a few weeks ago talking about John the Baptist preparing the way of the Lord. Baptism is the washing away of sins, and as Mark notes it includes confession. Confession goes all the way back to when God asked Adam and Eve, “Why are you hiding?” Or when God asked Cain, “Where is your brother?” It becomes formalized during the Exodus, when God gave the Law. In Leviticus 5 and Numbers 5, God instructs his people to confess their sins before they present the appropriate offering for sacrifice and atonement.

(That’s why we pray the General Confession before we start the Eucharist. Holy Communion recapitulates Christ’s sacrifice of his own body and blood, and our giving of ourselves to him. We have to be prepared body, mind and spirit to receive Jesus. Don’t ever let that slip by you. Remember Paul’s caution that we never receive communion unworthily.)

As Mark’s account puts it, the one more powerful than John is coming and will baptize with the Holy Spirit. Now, he is here.

But why is Jesus being baptized? Jesus, unlike everyone else, has no sins to confess. For Jesus, it’s not about being cleansed from sin. It’s about his fulfillment of God’s promises.

Perhaps it will help us understand the magnitude of this moment if we pause and back out a little bit from it to look at what’s going on in the world. I don’t mean the big historic events. I’m thinking about the everyday lives of people. People are spending their days seeking and doing work to provide for themselves and their families. People are caring for their children. People are supporting and encouraging each other in friendship. People seeking a measure of stability and safety. And we find in those things so much good, so much that is right, so much that is true.

But then we find also that things are easily disrupted, easily broken. We can look at the wars in our world and see how it is so much easier to destroy a building or a city than it is to build one. Our local news reminds us literally every day how it is so much easier to end a life than to build one. Parents have to be more vigilant than ever because it is so much easier to ruin a child than it is to protect, educate, nurture, and raise one to become a healthy, happy, productive adult. It is so much easier to dismiss or dehumanize people, or to indulge them, than it is to try to understand and actually help them.

We understand God is the ultimate source of good and the ultimate force for good. It is the Word of God that gives life, that builds up, that nurtures and blesses and guides people to true life. Evil tears down. Evil corrupts and corrodes. Evil kills and destroys. Evil makes ruin of everything good. That evil may well up from within us. Or, it may assault us outside, from beyond.

When Jesus is immersed in the waters of the Jordan, he is yielding himself symbolically, but also to the very core of his being, as the beginning of the great restoration of God’s kingdom. He is at once saying “I am with you” and “I am of you”. He, through whom all things were created, is going under the water just as the waters covered the Earth in Noah’s time. He is passing through the water, just as Moses led God’s people out of the bondage of slavery in Egypt, through the Red Sea into the wilderness of freedom. All of this is to establish the ultimate good of God‘s grace, truth and love, and the person of Jesus as the beginning of the new creation. Jesus is not only perfectly good, he is incorruptible. When he rises out of the water, it is a foreshadowing of his resurrection from the dead, his victory over sin and death, which is already begun because he is here. Immanuel, God is with us.

That is why we ask the questions we ask of baptismal candidates or their sponsors. Please turn to page 302 in your Book of Common Prayer. You see the first three questions involve turning away from evil, and all its forms from without and from within. The second three involve turning to Christ. This is to ground us, to give us orientation in a world full of disorientation, because so much can break down so fast. We will renew these promises in just a few minutes.

It comes down to each one of us, then. Having joined Jesus in his baptism, and being empowered by the Holy Spirit, we represent, re-present, Jesus in our place and time.

As we see with the disciples of John in our passage from Acts this morning, the baptism of repentance is necessary, but it is not enough. We need Jesus so we can become ever more like Jesus. We need the power of the Holy Spirit to live in us, to animate our lives to join with God, to guide us to become a source and force for good, to make his kingdom alive in our place and time.

So yes, think globally and act locally. But first, get personal. Always begin with the transformation that Christ is working in you to help each one of us become ever more like him. Remember his mission begins in each heart, each mind, each soul bound to the Holy Spirit, and through such as us - us! - to reconcile the world to the Father, and thereby bring the ultimate triumph of good over evil. Against all odds.

AMEN