Pastor Detweiler’s sermon for Sunday, Jan. 11, 2008

 

The season of Epiphany and the festival of the baptism of our Lord give us an opportunity to be renewed in our baptismal promises and to help us align our will and ways with God’s.       

 

Gen. 1:1-5; Mark 1:4-11

 

“You are mine, the Beloved. With you I am well pleased.” Everyone wants to hear these words from their earthly father and their heavenly father, as did Jesus. In the case of our heavenly Father, hearing those words is a matter of aligning our will and ways with God’s – basing our lives on him and following his Son.

 

In a video made some years ago titled “Faith & Sin,” former ELCA Bishop Herbert Chilstrom asked the question: “Is the foundation of my life deeper than something I myself have laid down?” He then went on to tell the story of the suicide of his college age son, Andrew, and the temptation in the aftermath to despair himself.

 

One morning some months afterward he was out walking and was overcome by a confluence of feelings: anger, despair, guilt, a sense of hopelessness. He described looking up to the heavens and saying “Andrew, I forgive you, and I believe that you forgive me, and I love you very much.”

 

After that he began to experience a feeling of release that comes through God’s forgiving love in Jesus. What he experienced that morning, he said, was an epiphany of God’s love, a revealing of the meaning of baptism through which we belong to God.

 

Epiphany means “to reveal,” or “make known,” or “manifest.” It has a mysterious character associated with the Orient. The mystery of Jesus’ divine origin is revealed progressively in the Epiphany season. So there is not just one epiphany or revealing, but a season of Epiphany celebrating a series of epiphanies.

 

In the early church Epiphany was celebrated as the revealing of the Son of God in his birth and baptism. It was the church’s Christmas celebration as it still is for Eastern Orthodox Christians. Epiphany, Jan. 6, is now the 12th day of Christmas. Until the 4th century Epiphany was the second great festival of the church year after Easter. It, like Easter, was a time when people were baptized during a nighttime vigil. Like Easter, baptism was preceded by 40 days of preparation, which was the origin of Advent. The celebration of the Baptism of the Lord is to Christmas what Pentecost is to Easter: it wraps up the more dramatic part of the celebration.

 

The epiphany in today’s readings is the descent of the Spirit at Jesus’ baptism and the voice from heaven announcing “You are my son, the Beloved. With you I am well pleased.” The Spirit who descended on Jesus at baptism is the same Spirit that moved over the waters at creation, that rested upon the prophets and about which they prophesied. The voice from heaven is the same voice that we will hear again at the Transfiguration just before Lent begins, so the season of Epiphany begins and ends with the heavenly voice calling the disciples’ attention to Jesus.

 

But what, you might be asking, does Epiphany mean today, when it is mostly the forgotten season between Christmas and Lent. To our culture it does not and will not mean much. But for those of us who are baptized, it is an opportunity to:

 

In an autobiographical reflection, author James Carroll told a story about growing up during the Vietnam War years, and the tension it brought to his family. His father, an attorney by training, was a general in the Air Force Strategic Air Command. One of James’ older brothers was of draft age and wanted to become a conscientious objector, a treasonous act in many military families of that era. It caused great turmoil among the Carroll family members, to the point that James wondered if the family could or would hold together.

 

Finally, though, Carroll’s brother asked his father the Air Force general to go with him and act as his attorney before the draft board. After some soul searching General Carroll agreed, and appeared before the draft board in uniform to defend his son’s position as a CO. It was his way of saying to his son “You are my son, the Beloved. With you I am well pleased.” It was also an announcement to the draft board and anyone else paying attention that his life was founded on something more than his own accomplishments, that his final loyalty was to God.

 

In the various Eastern Orthodox churches baptism is described as “illumination.” The darkness of our lives which are under the power of sin and death is illuminated by the light of Christ. We are joined to him in baptism, and our lives at their most basic are then founded on him. We can trust him to guide us as we follow him.

 

The season of Epiphany and the festival of the baptism of our Lord give us an opportunity to:

·         Be renewed in our baptismal promises

·         Appropriate the meaning of baptism more fully

·         Align our will and ways with God in Christ

·         Remember how our lives are founded not on ourselves, but on God.

 

We cannot illuminate the darkness of our lives ourselves. Only God can do that for us, and he does that in Jesus. He reveals himself as a God who loves and forgives – who reaches out to us in Jesus. God illuminates our way in Epiphany so we can listen and follow his Son, the one to whom he said, “You are my Son, the Beloved. With you I am well pleased.”