Father in heaven…Grant that all who are baptized into his Name may keep the covenant they have made, and boldly confess him as Lord and Savior; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.
Among the many nerdy theological arguments clergy find themselves engrossed in, is a lively debate about what to call the season we’re currently in.
Is it the Season of Epiphany or the Season after the Epiphany? The Feast of the Epiphany was Monday. Every year on January 6, we celebrate the arrival of the Wise Men bearing their gold, frankincense, and myrrh, and announcing Jesus as the “King of the Jews.”
Epiphany marks the end of the Christmas season and the return to “ordinary time.” While “ordinary,” in this case, means “counted,” in many ways, we are also getting back to “normal” until Lent begins.
But preachers and scholars can’t quite agree on the thematic details. Some feel like the broader theme of epiphany – meaning “sudden revelation or insight” – invades and permeates the scripture readings set for this season. They insist that we keep looking for signs and wonders of Christ’s action in the world.
And I take their point.
But personally, I am inclined to say Epiphany is done, and there’s nothing else to say about it. I think it’s just that I’m over the twinkly lights and the Christmas trees and the heightened sense of optimism, that our secular Christmas and New Year’s celebrations bring. I’m ready to put all that away and sink into my Seasonal Affective Disorder until spring. (Yes, I have been diagnosed.)
But in his weekly newsletter, Dr. Andrew McGowan suggested that we can’t say goodbye to “epiphanies” just yet. Because today, we celebrate the Baptism of Jesus, the descent of the Holy Spirit, and the sudden revelation of Jesus as the Son of God, announced by God himself.
As a colleague put it, this moment in our Gospels is when the clock starts ticking on Jesus’ earthly ministry. He is baptized here, among the people he has come to save. He will spend the next three years with them, walking slowly toward Jerusalem, the cross, and the resurrection.
In other words, Jesus’ baptism marks a spiritual, relational, and ritual transformation that will bond Jesus and this burgeoning faith community to one another for eternity. Jesus’ baptism, in a mystical and physical sense, is the beginning of the church. Because it gives form to a new religious movement that will eventually be called Christianity.
That’s not ordinary at all. That’s an epiphany!
This is why baptism has been so important to the church since the very beginning. And it is why we call it the “initiation rite” of our church…
Our Book of Common Prayer describes Holy Baptism as “…the sacrament by which God adopts us as his children and makes us members of Christ’s Body, the Church, and inheritors of the kingdom of God.” It was described by the early church reformers as “the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.”
While Christ can and does speak to us whether we’re baptized or not, our baptism welcomes us into new life, a life dictated not by the finality of death and brokenness, but by the last Word of eternal life, held forever in the hand of God.
While we usually baptize at a font by pouring water on the person’s forehead, the early church preferred baptizing in a pool of water. These were inground pools built within the walls of the church. The person to be baptized would be brought into the room, descend down several steps into the pool, be immersed face first, and then step up and out of the pool, where they would be clothed in white.i
The layout was significant to the meaning of baptism: Stepping down into the pool signified stepping into the grave, being immersed in the water signified death (and purification), and stepping back out to be clothed in white signified the resurrection.
This ritual, an “outward and visible sign,” revealed what baptism actually is: becoming one with the Body of Christ in his death, and his resurrection.
Just like those ancient Christians, our baptisms still make us one with Christ and with his Body, the church. Whether water is poured on our foreheads, or we are immersed in a pool, at baptism we participate in our own funeral, and our own homecoming.
But we don’t do it alone. The Episcopal Church no longer performs private baptisms, because we understand that our faith is not only for ourselves, but for our community, and strengthened by our community.
This is why infant baptisms are part of our practice. We believe that life in Christ is nurtured in the church, that we learn from one another and, in turn, teach one another what it means to be “born again.”
Our initiation into the church through baptism prepares us for a lifetime of growing in the faith. And it helps us pay attention to life’s epiphanies that both reveal Christ’s grace and urge us to respond in kind.
Baptism, Christ’s and our own, points us to who we are.
We are “resurrection people.” Life in Christ, and in his church, will not protect us from the trials and horrors of this life – from the fires and floods and griefs.
But we are a people called to run toward the challenges of this life in service of love, drawing from a deep well of hope in Christ that can’t be moved by the death, destruction, and decay all around us, because we know we are held forever in the hand of God.
To use a Biblical term, we can “gird our loins” for whatever comes, because we know we belong to Jesus, we are led by the Holy Spirit, and we have one another as mentors on the Way.
[As we prepare to say together the Baptismal Covenant, I encourage you to take some time to reflect on and pray with the words. Consider how the Holy Spirit is leading you to more fully embody your baptism.
Later, as you come up for Communion, I encourage you to place a finger in the font and make the sign of the cross on your forehead, as a physical reminder of your participation in the resurrected life of Christ and his church.
We will now take a couple minutes of silence for prayer and reflection…]
Leah Wise 