Living Sacraments

Grace Episcopal Church, Madison NJ

January 13, 2013

Year C: The First Sunday after the Epiphany – the Baptism of Our Lord

Isaiah 43:1-7

Psalm 29

(Acts 8:14-17)

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

Living Sacraments

            Last Sunday was the Feast of the Epiphany when we remembered the manifestation of God’s glory to the mysterious wise men from the East. God’s glory appeared to the wise men not in the capital city of Jerusalem – not in King Herod’s palace – but in the form of a little child and his mother under a star in Bethlehem.

            As Lauren reminded us in her sermon last Sunday, the Feast of the Epiphany marks the beginning of the Epiphany season – a season when we remember a whole series of manifestations – a whole series of appearances – of God’s glory.

            And so here we are today, remembering Epiphany number two: the Baptism of Jesus.

            All four gospels tell us something about Jesus’ baptism, but they tell the story in somewhat different ways.

            Partly that’s because of different traditions that were circulating about Jesus in the years before the gospels were written down.

            Partly that’s because the four gospels have different theological interests.

            And partly it’s because of some early Christian discomfort with the fact that Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist.

            And we can understand that discomfort.

            After all, remember that John preached a baptism of repentance – but, of course, Jesus had nothing to repent.

            And, it’s reasonable to assume that the baptizer – the one doing the dunking – has greater spiritual power and experience than the one being baptized, the one getting dunked.

            So all the gospels go to great lengths to make sure that we get that Jesus is far greater than John the Baptist!

            And we hear that very clearly in today’s lesson from Luke.

            According to Luke, John says to the crowd: “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”

            And then Luke goes even further to minimize John by completely removing him from the scene of Jesus’ baptism.

            You may have noticed there’s a gap in today’s lesson. The part that’s missing is about John’s arrest by Herod.

            Then, after getting John out of the way, Luke gets to what he really wants to tell us. Luke jumps ahead to when Jesus is praying after his baptism.

            Luke tells us “the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’”

            At his baptism, Jesus has an epiphany.

            At his baptism, Jesus – maybe for the first time – recognizes his special, unbreakable, indissoluble, bond with God.

            And right after his baptism, Jesus begins his work, begins his ministry of sharing God’s love with the whole world.

            I get the discomfort with John the Baptist, but I’m glad we know that Jesus was baptized.

            For us, of course, Baptism is the first sacrament. And at least some of you will remember the prayer book definition of sacrament: an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.

            In the outward and visible water we receive an inward and spiritual grace.

            In baptism we recognize our own special, unbreakable, indissoluble, bond with God.

            Which we forget about all the time. So, we are reminded of that unbreakable, indissoluble, bond every time we have a baptism – every time we gather at the font and welcome another new Christian into the fold.

            Every time there’s a baptism we’re reminded of our unbreakable, indissoluble bond with God – we’re reminded that there’s nothing we can do or not do that would make God stop loving us.

            And, though we might not want to hear it, every time there’s a baptism we also renew our Baptismal Covenant – we’re reminded that God expects a lot of us.

            Every time there’s a baptism we’re reminded that we’re expected to break bread together, to pray together.

            Every time there’s a baptism we’re reminded that God expects us to resist evil and, when we sin, to repent and turn back to God.

            Every time there’s a baptism we’re reminded that God expects us to proclaim the Good News by word and example.

            Every time there’s a baptism we’re reminded that God expects us to seek and serve Christ in every single person.

            Every time there’s a baptism we’re reminded that God expects us to respect the dignity of every human being.

            It’s a lot.

            Of course, we can only do any of this with God’s help.

            But, still...it’s a lot.

            Even with God’s help, seeking and serving Christ in every person and loving our neighbor as our self is a lot.

            Life is hard enough. Even with God’s help, how can we do all this?

            And, I admit, I’m a big believer in doing stuff. Most of you have heard me preach over and over about the Food for Friends barrel, the soup kitchen, mission trips, and on and on.

            But all that doing can make us miss what’s most important.

            God knows, there’s plenty to do – but before and behind and beneath all that doing, what’s most important - all that’s really expected of us – all that God hopes for us - is openness to God’s love.

            At his baptism, Jesus was open to God.

            Because he was open to God, Jesus was able to hear and feel God’s love. “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

            And, after his baptism, Jesus became an outward and visible sign of inward and spiritual grace.

            After his baptism, Jesus became a living sacrament.

            Yes, Jesus shared God’s love by doing lots of things – by teaching and healing, by challenging and forgiving.

            But, you know, all of that doing is not what’s most special about Jesus.

            Jesus is special because when people met him they met God’s love.

            Think about the people closest to Jesus – Peter, Mary Magdalene, James and John, Mary and Martha.

            They didn’t become followers of Jesus because of all the amazing things he did.

            They became followers of Jesus because in and through him they felt God’s love in a way they had never felt it before.

            Because Jesus was supremely open to God – because Jesus is a living sacrament - people around him felt God’s love and then unleashed God’s love on the world.

            We Christians are meant to be outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace.

            Most of the time we don’t do such a great job of being living sacraments because usually God’s love gets locked inside of us – chained by our fears and resentments and jealousies and guilt. God’s love gets locked inside of us – chained by all the usual human hang-ups.

            But, every once in a while, we read about or hear about people who are so open to God’s love that they really become living sacraments.

            And, if we’re really fortunate, we get to meet someone who is a living sacrament.

            That’s what Jack Harter was to me – and, I believe, to all of us.

            Jack couldn’t do anything, and yet, somehow, Jack was so open to God that through him God’s love was unleashed in all of us.

            In his brief life, free of all of our usual hang-ups, Jack offered all of us an epiphany – offered all of us a manifestation, an appearance, of God’s grace.

            In his brief life, Jack was an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.

            In his brief life, Jack was a living sacrament.

            So, today as we remember Jesus’ baptism - Jesus’ own epiphany – and today as we mourn the loss of Jack, may we be open to God’s love. May we unlock our hearts to God’s love. May we unleash God’s love to the world.

            May we be living sacraments.

            Amen.

           

           

            

The Feast of the Holy Name: Christmas, Continued

Grace Episcopal Church, Madison NJ
January 1, 2009

The Holy Name of Our Lord
Exodus 34:1-8
Psalm 8
Romans 1:1-7
Luke 2:15-21

The Feast of the Holy Name: Christmas, Continued

Well, happy New Year! As the rest of society sleeps off last night’s partying, or happily turns the page on what was a pretty bleak year, or maybe starts getting used to writing ’09 on their checks, here we are… in church.

While the rest of society focuses a little blearily on the start of a new year, the Church, maybe also a little bleary-eyed, celebrates the Feast of the Holy Name of Our Lord.

It’s the Feast of the Holy Name… but it’s also still Christmas. And what we celebrate on this feast day is very much a continuation of what we celebrated on Christmas. We celebrate the revelation of God in Jesus. God comes into the world in a new and decisive way in that helpless child whose birth we celebrated a little more than a week ago.

Today is Christmas, continued.

According to the Law of Moses on the eighth day all Jewish male newborns are to be circumcised and officially be given their names. And so we just heard the brief account in Luke’s Gospel that tells us that the Messiah was circumcised and was given his name: what was then the relatively common name of Yeshua – Joshua – Jesus in Greek. The Messiah is given a name which means savior or deliverer.
And so the revelation of Christmas continues. God comes into the world in this helpless child – a helpless child who will grow up and be our savior; who will grow up and deliver us from sin and death.

It turns out that, by Christian standards, this not a particularly ancient feast. The Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus “only” goes back to the late middle ages. Long-time Episcopalians may remember that today used to be called the Feast of the Circumcision. But although this feast, by Christian standards, is not very ancient, the fact is that right from the start of Christianity the name of Jesus was seen as very important. The name of Jesus was essentially synonymous with the person of Jesus.

We hear the importance and power of Jesus’ name in the opening of Paul’s letter to the Romans where he writes, “…Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles for the sake of his name…”

This idea that Jesus’ name was seen as essentially synonymous with Jesus himself seems a little odd to us, doesn’t it? We may not make a big fuss about names today, but in the ancient world it was a big deal to tell someone your name. By telling someone your name you revealed something very personal about yourself. Nowadays, I guess we feel that way about our Social Security number, but not our name. I’m happy to tell you my name. My name is no big deal.
I suppose most parents give a lot of thought to the name they choose for their children. And we either like the names we are given or we don’t. A very few of us dislike our names so much that we change them – but I guess after a while most of us don’t really give our names much thought.

In my case, I was named for three Thomases – my father and both of my grandfathers. I like that, but never really given much thought to it. Sometimes, though, I’ve wished I had a more distinctive name. Believe me, there are many Tom Murphys out there! I’ve actually met people who didn’t like some other Tom Murphy and had to try not to transfer those negative feelings toward me. Believe it or not, there was another Tom Murphy ordained in another diocese right around the same time I was. We even accidentally received each other’s General Ordination Exam scores! A few weeks ago in Shop Rite the cashier saw my name and asked if I had grown up in Springfield. I said, no, I wasn’t that Tom Murphy. And he said, yeah, I guess not, that Tom Murphy had red hair!
However, I had an experience this summer that got me thinking about the importance of our name and the significance of revealing, or not revealing, our name with someone else.

For three days this past summer I attended a daily Eucharist at a prominent Episcopal church in California. Each day there were about five or six other people at the service. On the first day I was there, after the service on my way out I introduced myself to the priest. I said something like, “Hi, I’m Tom Murphy. I’m a priest visiting from the Diocese of Newark…” The priest welcomed me, asked how my trip was going, was very pleasant - but he didn’t tell me his name.
The next day I went back. There was a different priest. At the end of the service, same thing: I greeted the priest, and told him my name and where I was from. This priest did the same thing – once again very nice, cordial – but he didn’t tell me his name.

The third day I went back and it was the priest from the first day. As I was leaving, I reintroduced myself, telling him my name again. And once again he didn’t tell me his name!

Now, I don’t want to make too much of these incidents. But it really bugged me that I told these priests my name and they wouldn’t tell me theirs. The fact that this bothered me so much tells me that maybe our names are a big deal and maybe choosing to reveal our names is a bigger deal than I had thought.

And if our names are important, just how much more important must be the name of Jesus?

I never really gave much thought to the name of Jesus until I arrived at General Seminary four years ago. Remember, I grew up Roman Catholic in the 1970s and 1980s – the age of a simplified, folk music liturgy, the age of guitar-playing nuns leading us in song, the age of “Kumbaya”. Jesus was depicted as our groovy, bearded, sandal-wearing friend. It’s easy to make fun of now, but in a lot of ways it was a great time, and I think many of us felt close to Jesus, but we didn’t exactly show reverence to Jesus or his Name. And we certainly didn’t bow our heads whenever the Holy Name of Jesus was mentioned!

In fact it wasn’t until I went to General Seminary that I regularly saw people bowing their heads in the chapel whenever Jesus’ name was mentioned. At first, to be honest, I thought this was a kind of silly overly-pious affectation. But the more I thought about it, I came to see the bowing as a sign, as a physical reminder that, in the case of Jesus of Nazareth, the once relatively common name of “Jesus” is holy – it is other, it is higher than all other names because Jesus himself is holy, Jesus is the revelation of God, God made flesh.

And so today, the Feast of the Holy Name is Christmas, continued. In Christmas we celebrate the revelation of God in this child named Jesus who is our savior and deliverer.

And Christmas is really part of a long story stretching all the way back to Moses on Mt. Sinai. Christmas is part of a story of God reaching out to men and women, revealing God’s self to us, letting us know what God expects of us and how much God loves us.

God reveals God’s self to Moses and on Christmas God reveals God’s self once and for all in the savior named Jesus.

Our job today - no matter how bleary-eyed we are - is to take a moment and give thanks for the Holy Name of Jesus. And then we are to go out and live lives that reveal God’s presence and love to the world.

Now it’s our turn to be part of Christmas, continued.

Amen.