The Baptism of the Lord, Year B

Epiphany, God Made Manifest

Readings: Genesis 1:1-5; Psalm 29; Acts 19:1-7; Mark 1:4-11

We have entered a new season of the Church year, the season of Epiphany. During the Sundays of the Epiphany we focus on how God is revealed to us. An epiphany is an appearance, a visible manifestation of God. The Epiphany immediately brings into mind the magi bringing gifts to the baby Jesus. The Wise men in their visit to Jesus were not the Epiphany. They were the beneficiaries of one. God was revealed to them through the child Jesus whom they visited.

We too need to expect Epiphanies in our lives, times when God is revealed in a personal way to each of us. Such times help us to come to know God better. They are times when God seems to reach out to us through time and space. Each Sunday in Epiphany focuses on the ways in which God reveals God’s self to people.

Today we read of how God is revealed to us through the working of the Holy Spirit in our lives. In the Old Testament reading, the spirit is revealed as “a wind from God which swept over the face of the waters.” The creating spirit of God hovered over the waters, the source of life. In the reading from the Acts of the Apostles, Paul points out to the people of Ephesus that the Holy Spirit should have been the great gift of their baptism. He is surprised to find their lack of understanding at how God is revealed. He wants them to experience the Holy Spirit in their lives as a gift of grace. Finally in the Gospel, God is made manifest through the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River.

The Jews were constantly looking for God’s revelation. But they came to a time in their spiritual life as we all do when God seemed not to be present with them. As God became more and more absent in their lives, they looked back with yearning to the days of the prophets when God had been very much a part of their experience. They felt as if the Holy Spirit had been absent since those days. The voice of God which had spoken to the prophets was heard now only as an echo. They looked for the time when the sky would be opened and God would once more speak directly to the people.

And then it happened. Jesus came to John to be baptised. The heavens opened. The dove hovered over him. God called out words of affirmation. “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Clearly in Mark’s Gospel the voice is Jesus’ personal experience. The onlookers are unaware of what is happening. But we who read the Gospel are to understand it as a revelation, a manifestation to us, the people of God. Through it we are to understand Jesus’ unique relationship to God, and his call to ministry.

But we are called to understand far more. For this incident in our Lord’s life is within the experience of each of us. We are intended to experience that same descent of the dove in our own life. We are to experience God’s presence in our lives. How is God revealed to us? Where for us is the deep sense of peace, the sense that our wills and that of God are in harmony? Where is the sense of a presence from which we receive affirmation of our call to ministry?

How do we experience God’s presence? How do we hear God? How do we experience God at work in our lives? How does God speak to us? A young woman asked me that question one day. In fact she had many questions. She had not been brought up in the church and had little experience with the faith. She did have a real hunger for spirituality, so much so that she found her way into the church in which I was serving. And so we had the first of many conversations about how we come to know God.

She said that if anything could convince her of the existence of God it would be going through something like she saw in the movie, “Twister”. Her picture of God was of a judgemental being who punishes, a harsh God, a God of anger. She expected that God would be revealed through some manifestation of power.

Many people have that kind of understanding about God. After all, it would be so much easier to hear the kind of God that spoke angrily and loudly. That kind of God one could really understand. It would leave no doubt in our mind. We want theatrics! Thunder! Lightning! The works! We want something that will make us really take note and know that God is speaking to us. We want to be scared somehow into faith.

Yet it seems that most of the time God’s voice comes in much gentler, subtler ways. Somehow the way in which God speaks to us is more difficult to discern. Not that hearing God’s still small voice is necessarily any more consoling than it would be to hear thunder! To hear God speak in the silence is not always to hear what we want to hear. God may tell us in that still small voice that what we have chosen is not what God would have us do. God may well order us out of our complacency, out of the safety of our lives and into the real world. God may lead us in directions for which we can see very little value.

The other misperception about how God speaks to us comes from intellectuals. They know all the theological jargon. They understand the difference between transubstantiation and consubstantiation. They can speak with authority about the Trinity or about the grace of God. Strange as it may seem, God does not talk ‘God-talk’. Thank God you don’t have to have a theological degree to come into relationship with God. God speaks through the ordinary. God uses words like flower or rainbow or snowflake. God spoke and life began. We speak in concepts. God speaks in reality. That is the great truth of the process of creation.

I suspect that when we are really listening to what God is saying it comes to us, not in some dramatic way, but in the still small voice. How have you encountered God within the last few days? Was it in some earth shattering revelation? Or was it in a letter from a friend or when you were tucking a little one into bed? Was it during a phone call from a friend, a smile from a stranger, an unexpected apology, a touch, an affirmation, a kind word? I would even bet that it didn’t happen in church. God speaks more outside of church than inside. Thank God for that! That is the glory of God! And if it all seems too ordinary for you, too quiet to be God, then I suspect that you need to listen even harder, for you are probably receiving a revelation from God.

Because we are celebrating the Baptism of Our Lord, even though there is no baptism we are going to renew our Baptismal Covenant. At baptism we were promised God’s gift of grace working in our lives. However, like the Ephesians we may not even be aware that there is a Holy Spirit at work in our lives. Baptism isn’t about knowing everything there is to know about God; it is about knowing God.

How do we recover that sense of the presence and power of the Holy Spirit as the source of our gifts? We need to experience the Holy Spirit at work in us with the understanding that such encounters with God are God’s gift to every Christian. We need to expect that God will meet us in our everyday lives. God is constantly revealed to us and in us to others. Each new discovery takes us deeper into relationship with God. It is not about knowing everything there is to know about God; it is about knowing God. What a great thing that is to experience in our lives!

No matter at what stage of our Christian life we may be, there is possible a deeper encounter with God who waits to enter our experience. We must be prepared to search and to be open to such a possibility. We cannot be self-satisfied. We must journey into a maturing and deepening spirituality. Each new discovery takes us deeper. It becomes a new beginning, a new birthing, a renewal of our baptism.

As we renew the promises of our baptism may it bring to us that deep sense of peace, that sense that our wills and that of God are in harmony, that sense of the presence of God in our lives, and our willingness to become all that God calls us to be. May it be a time when we understand that we are beloved children of God. May it be an epiphany for each one of us. Amen.