How do you write a sermon when you don’t know what’s happening next? Full disclosure, I usually start working on sermons at least a week in advance, sometimes more. I like to have at least that much time to savor the appointed scripture readings; Bible study is really one of my favorite ways to spend time. And I intend for my sermons to be relevant, written with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other, as Karl Barth famously said. But in a time of turmoil like the one we currently inhabit— in dangerous conflict with Iran, impeachment pending, Australia on fire, climate and conflict creating more refugees by the millions—who knows what the week’s headlines will bring? Between any given Monday and Sunday the entire world order might be rearranged.
If I were preaching from the headlines only, my sermon preparation schedule might be a problem. I’m convinced that the word of God always has good news for whatever our current human predicament may be, so I wouldn’t want to preach from last week’s news. But I am not a journalist quoting the Bible on the side. Rather, I am an interpreter of ancient texts in light of the news. And one things I have learned from that work is that God’s people have survived many a season of conflict and environmental change. I wish it were not so; all of us wish it were not so. Along with millennia of religious people, we long for God to come—or come again—and set this earthly conundrum aright. In fact, that’s what John and the multitudes gathered at the muddy banks of the Jordan River were longing for too.
What they got instead was Jesus, forthright in his insistence that he needed to be baptized, even though nobody—including John the baptizer—really knew why. To this day, scholars continue to debate the meaning of Jesus’ baptism. If it was not a cleansing of sin, which is one of the ways we understand baptism, what was it for?
My father in law, a New Testament scholar, recently reminded me of the distinctive perspectives the Eastern church has about baptism. In general, Orthodox Christians are not as hung up on theological cause and effect as westerners are; they are more willing to entertain mystery. And one of the ways they interpret the Baptism of Jesus is as the first revelation of the Holy Trinity. Notice how everyone is present there at the riverside? Father speaking, Son bathing, and Holy Spirit descending. Note the difference: Jesus’ baptism was not solving a problem of sin, but revealing a truth of God. That’s what makes it an epiphany.
I’m a Trinitarian Christian in so many ways. For one thing, I’m here with you at Trinity Cathedral. But I came to you from another Trinity Cathedral in Portland Oregon, and before that I was sponsored for ordination by Holy Trinity/La Santisima Trinidad parish in Richmond California. So I feel called to take seriously the power of God’s trinitarian reality. The improbable doctrine that the three persons of Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one God. I invite you to adopt something of an Orthodox mindset about this, because Trinitarian theology reveals itself best in mystery. So ponder the possibility that the unity of God is never enacted in isolation; that the singularity of God is forever revealing itself in a threefold community of love. Which is our fundamental assurance that—even in the most bewildering of times—we who are made in God’s image are not alone. We reveal our own truth in community, too.
Which bring me back to Jesus at the riverside, heading into a water and a wilderness where he could not know what was happening next. But God’s trinitarian revelation assured him that he would not face it alone. I want to underscore that. Jesus was not alone in his baptism, any more than Mike or Bonnie were in their Confirmations last week.
And neither was Jesus alone in the wilderness temptation that his baptism propelled him into. And what is the wilderness but a giant metaphor for not knowing what happens next?
Jesus did not face the wilderness alone. The Israelites were not in the desert alone. Ruth and Naomi did not journey alone. Paul did not brave the sea alone. We enact baptism in community and expect it to propel us into community, even if we go there not knowing what happens next. Even though it takes us into a real or metaphorical wilderness. Even if we go bewildered.
I don’t know what your wilderness has been, or yet will be. You may have come here this morning feeling perfectly content, or you may be lonely or confused. You may be rejoicing or carrying a heavy burden of shame. You are welcome regardless. But whatever else may be going on for any of us, you’re here in a community where none of us really know what happens next. So let us take seriously the words of Swiss philosopher Henri-Frédéric Amiel. “Life is short. We don’t have much time to gladden the hearts of those who walk this way with us. So, be swift to love and make haste to be kind.”
This first Sunday after Epiphany reminds of the promise that Baptism brings: even into the wilderness, we take the love of the our Trinitarian God and the whole community of the baptized with us. Karen Gillette reminded me that John the Baptist was there at the river too, a symbol for her of the communion of saints. We travel our baptismal journey with saints from around the church like who gathered in Saratoga yesterday to consecrate our new bishop, Lucinda Ashby. Over the weekend I had the privilege of shepherding the Bishop of Cuba, a reminder that we have a whole hemisphere of sisters and brothers in Christ traveling with us too.
Jesus’ baptismal epiphany was not a private affair, and neither is ours. Epiphanies—like the church itself—exist to reveal the truth of God and to build a Trinitarian community in Christ.
How do I preach when we don’t know what’s happening next? How do we even live our lives when we don’t know what’s happening next? I still don’t know, but because you are here I know that I don’t have to figure it out all by myself. None of us do. What we have to do is listen to the voices that remind us of who we are and who God is, even if everything else is unknown. Voices like these—
In the words of Isaiah in the 8th century BCE: I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness, I have taken you by the hand and kept you; I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness.
And equally in the words of 20th century writer LR Knost: Do not be dismayed by the brokenness of the world. All things break. And all things can be mended. Not with time, as they say, but with intention. So go. Love intentionally, extravagantly, unconditionally. The broken world waits in darkness for the light that is in you.
