January 11, 2009

       Today is full of beginnings. It’s the beginning of a new season, a season when we re-tell the story of Jesus ministry, teaching and healing and proclaiming the kingdom of God. And you saw that in the gospel reading, which tells how his ministry began with his baptism in the river Jordan, by his cousin John. But I wonder if you noticed how the readings reached forward and backward from there, to tell of other beginnings.

The really obvious one was the first reading, the beginning of everything in the wonder of creation, when God said “Let there be light,” and there was. But why do we hear about that today? You might say, we have to start the story somewhere, and January is as good a time as any. At one level that’s right - and it reminds us that the Bible isn’t just a story about faith or about Christians, it’s the story of the whole world.

But we tell that story of the world in tandem with the story of Jesus, and that’s important. Remember the way the gospel of John told us what really happened at Christmas: the word of God came into the world, and the world was made through him, but the world did not know him. Today we’re unpacking the meaning of that, as we tell two stories about what came up out of the water. The Spirit brooded over the chaos that was there in the beginning, the roaring muddy waters in which God alone could see the goodness of everything that was to be. And the Spirit was there too over the muddy Jordan, watching a man come up out of the water who was himself the goodness of everyone and everything.  

But we can also place the story of Jesus’ baptism alongside the other reading we heard, the one that described the beginning of the church in a place called Ephesus. Paul found some people there who had been baptized, just like Jesus, with water and a message of repentance, turning away from their past lives and making a new beginning. But unlike Jesus, they hadn’t seen that the Spirit of God was in the picture.  

The penny dropped for them when Paul came and spoke to them and laid hands on them. Then they realized that they were beginning the same story Jesus began at his baptism. They were also empowered by God’s Spirit, not just to be good followers, not just with the grace to be freed from their sins, but with the passion and fire to make a difference in the world God made. 

Putting those three stories side by side tells us something about what kind of beginning we’re making today, as we baptize Chloe and Caleb. In fact there are many parallels we can draw. The world was created to be good, and human beings were placed in it to be “very good”, or so Genesis tells us - but it turned out we couldn’t be good on our own, without God in the picture. Jesus himself couldn’t just start out on his ministry off his own initiative, he waited - quite a long time it seems - until he had the Father’s blessing, the word in his ear saying “You are my child, I love you and I’m proud of you.” And it’s the same today for our two newest Christians as God says the same to them. God promises he will always be in the picture for them, always work along with them to bring to the fulfilment the goodness that they were created and born for.  

In a way, we could just leave it there. What more is there to be said? God creates us for good things, and God gives us the grace and the creativity we need to discover the goodness we’re made for. It’s incredible, but true. Maybe the only thing more incredible is that we just don’t get it! Even those of us who are baptized, who call ourselves Christians, who follow Jesus - most of the time we’re like those believers in Ephesus, for whom the penny hadn’t really dropped. We don’t understand that we’re not just people for whom Jesus did something - we are the people in whom Jesus is still doing something. The goodness God created us for is not just for us, it’s for the world. Through Jesus, and by the Spirit, God is empowering us to serve and to give of ourselves in amazing ways, just as Jesus did. 

Sometimes we miss that for selfish reasons - we don’t want to expose ourselves to risk and the possibility of failure by stepping out in faith, or we want to sit back and enjoy the goodness we think God has provided just for us. When that happens, what we need is forgiveness - as we promise in the baptismal covenant, whenever we fall into sin, to repent and return to the Lord. But much of the time I think we miss God’s real gift to us simply for lack of imagination. We can’t imagine that our lives amount to something significant in the cosmic scheme of things. We can’t imagine what we are really capable of, when the engine of God’s grace really gets running inside of us.  

It’s that lack of imagination that the gift of God’s Spirit seems to address. We ask for that gift today for Chloe and Caleb, and we spell out what we mean in the prayer after baptism, when we pray for “an inquiring and a discerning heart, the courage to will and to persevere, and the gift of joy and wonder in all [God’s] works.” We are asking that they may be able to grasp all the wonder that God has in store for them, and to persist until they achieve what no one could have imagined without the grace of the Holy Spirit.  

Of course it may be some time until they realize that for themselves! But from what I remember of the first days and months of parenthood, I bet they are even now bringing new grace and insight and wonder into the lives of their parents and everyone else who loves and cares for them. The work that God is doing in them is already beginning.  

As for the rest of us, I’ll just say this: there’s no law that says you can only begin once. In our relationship with God, as in all the most meaningful relationships we have with other people, you begin again and again and again. As we renew our own baptismal vows today, I invite you to make a new beginning. To wipe the slate clean and experience God’s forgiveness all over again. But also to unlock your imagination once more, to be re-immersed and renewed in the Spirit, and to recover afresh the wonder and the goodness that God intends for you, as you follow the path of Jesus, serving and giving or yourself for the sake of the amazing world God made. 

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