Filled
with Expectation
©
by the Reverend Dr. Byron E. Shafer
(Rutgers, January 7, 2001; Baptism
of the Lord Sunday , Year C;
Reception of a New Member; Renewal
of Baptismal Vows)
Isaiah
43:1–7 (OT, p. 745); Luke
3:15–17, 21–22 (NT, pp. 61–62)
Well,
way back then, in biblical days, even though it wasn’t happening at the
beginning of a new year, those who went out into the wilderness to hear John
preach were also giving expression to a hope that things would get better. They, too, were filled with expectation—the expectation
that Rome’s regime of occupation and exploitation would soon be brought to an
end, that ere long God’s Messiah would come to usher in an era of true
justice and peace, not the false peace of pax
Romana and the false justice of lex
Romana.
Certainly
John the Baptist himself was filled with such expectation, as this morning’s
Second Lesson makes clear. When
people asked him if he himself was the Messiah, he replied: No, “I baptize you
with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming.…
He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing
floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with
unquenchable fire.”
So
the people who went out into the wilderness to hear John preach came in penance,
lest God should reckon them among the chaff, and in hope, that God might account
them among the wheat. In penance
and hope, they were washed in the river Jordan and made clean in spirit; in
penance and hope, they were called by name and baptized.
I
like to imagine that as the people were being immersed in the waters of the
river they heard being recited to them the words from Isaiah 43 that we heard in
this morning’s First Lesson:
“…thus says [God], …who created … and formed you …:
Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I
have called you by name, you are mine.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and
through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
and
the flame shall not consume you.
For I am the Lord your God,
the
Holy One of Israel, your Savior.”
Now
it so happened that, in those days, among the people going out into the
wilderness was a man named Jesus, who journeyed from his home village of
Nazareth, in the north of the country, to the deserted southern reaches of the
Jordan River where John was preaching and baptizing.
As
Jesus traveled, he, too, must have been filled with expectation.
Surely he sensed his life was about to take a dramatic new turn, from
pursuing the rather settled life of a carpenter in a small, obscure,
poverty-stricken Galilean village to undertaking an itinerant, public ministry
of proclaiming and embodying God’s Word to Israel and the world.
And
then, as Jesus was being baptized in the waters of Jordan, it came about that
the expectation of John, and of the people, and of Jesus himself, was fulfilled.
An event that would make things dramatically better did indeed happen.
On that day, a startling new era was indeed set in motion—not exactly
the kind of revolution that John and the people had anticipated, but exactly the
kind of birth of faith and hope and love that God had all the while intended.
As
Luke portrays the scene, Jesus, having been baptized, was immediately thereafter
in prayer, when suddenly the Holy Spirit filled him with power and a voice from
heaven proclaimed to him, “You are my Son, the Beloved.”
As
Luke portrays the scene, it was in Jesus’s experience of baptism that he was
commissioned and empowered for his new, Spirit-filled vocation of ministering to
the world as Son of God.
And
on this Baptism of the Lord Sunday, as we reflect on the meaning of Jesus’s
baptism in the river Jordan, God invites each of us to understand our own
baptism in the symbolic river that is the baptismal font or bowl—God invites
each of us to understand our own baptism as the time when we were commissioned
and empowered for Spirit-filled vocations of ministry within the world as sons
and daughters of God.
When
we were baptized, the Creator, who formed us in the womb, acted anew to wash us
and cleanse us in spirit and call us by name, granting us both grace and the
power of the Holy Spirit, to the end that throughout our lives we might serve
both God and neighbor.
Baptism—the
water of healing and of transformation, the water of grace and of the power of
the Spirit, given to us that we might minister both gracefully and powerfully in
the name of God.
We
who follow Christ are baptized only once in life.
Yet God invites us on this Sunday near the beginning of the New Year, on
this Baptism of the Lord Sunday, to prepare ourselves for fulfilling the tasks
our ministry will present in the year ahead.
God invites us to renew our
baptismal vows and once again to open ourselves to being healed by the grace of
God and transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Thus may we be enabled through our own vocations to fulfill in some small
measure people’s longing and expectation for a new and better world, a world
of true justice and peace.
Baptism—the
water of healing and of transformation, the water of grace and of the power of
the Spirit, given to us that we might minister both gracefully and powerfully in
the spirit of Christ and in the name of God.
On
this Sunday when we remember the baptism of Jesus in the river Jordan, let those
of us who have been baptized in the name of Jesus remember that we are a people
of water and that we have come to worship God, whose creating and saving love
flows through water—the water of rivers and oceans, the water of the womb, the
water of baptism, the water of baptismal renewal!
As
we prepare ourselves for ministering in God’s name throughout this coming
year, let us renew our baptismal covenant with God, opening ourselves once again
to a cleansing by God's grace, and to an empowerment by God’s Spirit, a
cleansing and an empowerment mediated to us through this symbol of the water of
life.
In
this coming year of ominously changing and challenging circumstances, both
political and social, national and international, God will doubtless lead us
into a number of new journeys, beckoning us into strange and unfamiliar
territory, asking us to follow paths of service and of prophetic witness that
may seem disquieting or even dangerous. But
on every journey of life, however strange or disquieting it may seem, God
invites us to remember our baptism and to hear again these words of divine
assurance:
“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I
have called you by name, you are mine.…
For I am the Lord your God,
…
your Savior.”
Let
us pray:
Holy
Spirit, who in the beginning hovered over the waters of creation, who later
formed Jesus in the water of Mary's womb, who at Jesus's baptism descended in
the form of a dove, who at Pentecost descended again to form the church—O Holy
Spirit, come to us afresh today and renew us in ministries of grace and power. Amen.