St. Paul's On-the-Hill Episcopal Church

The Rev. Stephen C. Holton, Rector

The Baptism of Christ

January 13, 2008

Isaiah 42:1-9

Psalm 29

Acts 10:34-43

Matthew 3:13-17

GOD SENDS JUSTICE INTO THE WORLD

Jesus and Us, Submitting, Together, Into, a Call, to Everybody

Fellow human beings, fellow ordinary people: God is sending us into the world. God wants us to go – into the world, into our normal lives and normal places, and perhaps unusual lives and unusual places.

And he wants us to change those lives and places, every one of them and every person we encounter, by the living of our lives, and by the way we speak and listen, and the way we interact and work and play.

He wants to change the world with our presence.

And the way we do that – is by submitting to him, the way Jesus did.

Now that is the scariest thought. Will we give up our independence? No, we will gain it. We will gain it because we will leave behind all the other things that control us, the way those people by the river Jordan had walked away from the lives of slavery they endured under the Roman Empire in order to get the Baptism of John, where they were joined by Jesus.

They had walked away from an existence where they were defined by whom they were owned by, whom they worked for, what jobs they did. Sounds a lot like us, doesn't it – how much we make, where we live, all this defines who we are – everything but: who we are inside. Everything else defines us.

So when we walk away from that with Jesus, we free ourselves with Jesus.

And we submit to God alone, and not to empire, and not to job, and not even to family expectation; but to God alone.

So Jesus – hitherto known only as a human being, hitherto known only as that boy from Nazareth with certain wonderful powers perhaps – comes before the One True God. He gives up his independence if you will.

And he is given – well, a life if you will; a life that is between him and God, not one that is between him and the empire, or him and the religious establishment; but one that is between him and God Alone.

And when we submit with him, when we come to God with humans, as humans, ordinary humans as he at least appeared to be, we enter into his company, one another's community. We join together, leaving lonely isolation and bondage to job or society or expectation, entering into this loving community before God.

Yet this community does not stop with itself. It is called by God to Continue God's work in the world. It is called by God to everybody else. It is called by God to teach everybody else. It is called by God to heal everybody else.

We are not called by God to serve ourselves alone. That would be no different from the empire or the society we just left. We are called by God to serve and help and love others.

We are called by God to do it with Jesus, with his strength and love – for he remains with us in this human world; or the Spirit of God of which he was the living manifestation remains with us and in us in the world.

And we follow Jesus who was also the living example and the first in line for what we are all called to do – to bring God's justice, peace and love to everyone we encounter, as humans, in this human world.

God is too far away – or seems, too far away – for people to encounter. But you are not. And your healing love might be enough for them to encounter something of God in the world. It might be enough to get through to them. It might be enough to heal them in some way and get them to look beyond themselves to another's needs or another's strengths or another's gifts. It might be enough to get them to look outside themselves and realize they are not alone, working in lonely isolation for jobs and society and empire and family expectation.

It might be enough to get them to look up and realize there are other people out there who love them, and others who need them, and a God who became human and did not live in divine, uncaring isolation but loves them and came to them with you , and seeks to liberate them from the same false hopes and false expectations and false needs as you were liberated from.

We become liberators from isolation. In our submission to the God of freedom, we become missionaries of freedom, liberators from the false freedom and true imprisonment of this world and its priorities.

So we are invited to join with this submission of Jesus.

Submission is an interesting word, a scary word. It is actually the central word in Islam. The word “Islam” itself means submission. And it is a central word in Christianity for we, with Jesus, submit to God whatever our purity or power. We do it to serve him.

There is a wonderful document that has just been issued by more than 100 Muslim scholars. Its called: “A Common Word Between us and you.”

In it they point out that the central commandments of the Qur'an, and of the Bible, are Love of God – which Jesus shows and commands – and Love of Neighbor – which Jesus shows and commands.

They agree not to go into what they mean by the Unity of God or what we mean by the Unity of God, so long as we both agree that we love God however we define him.

And indeed we both agree that God clearly asks us to love our neighbor as ourselves – and sends us out from our Baptism to love our neighbor as ourselves, and from our Shahadah – if we are Muslims (or if they are Muslims) who have just declared that “there is no God but God (again, the oneness of God) and Muhammad is his Prophet.” Again, them, not us.

So we are sent out by the One God in common mission to all people. While the document is not specifically issued to Jews as well, it notes that they have the same command as well. You will hear all of these together when we join together at the Community Martin Luther King Service.

We are sent out together, after submitting separately. After lives of isolation, and fear of one another – fear of the other religion, fear of the other rich competitor down the street, fear of danger, we are brought together by common submission with every neighbor – and sent out in common mission to every other neighbor.

What a wonderful call. It is a call to community. It is a call to togetherness. It is a call to mission and love for every other person in the world, every other person who does not know God, or who does not know love, or who does know danger and hurt.

You, me, all of us together with brothers and sisters we do not know about who have all heeded the call to love – are all sent out in love to love others.

What a wonderful call to mission, a call given with the strength to do it and the community to do it with.

Today is the Baptism of Christ. And so I have inserted the Baptismal Covenant – that we make at our Baptism and Confirmation – into our bulletin. In it the Church challenges us to pick up this call from God.

Will we answer the challenge? I think so. We will do it “with God's help” as we say at the end of the latter challenges – for we know we need it, and we know we have it, for God promised it, and gave it, in Jesus, to us.

Amen