Sermon

Jan. 8, 2006

A Sermon Preached at St. Stephen’s on Jan. 8, 2006, by the Rev. Cork Tarplee

See if this ditty by Gloria Pitzer doesn’t ring true:

Procrastination is my sin,

It brings me pain and sorrow.

I know that I should stop it.

In fact I will—tomorrow.

In this season of resolutions and new beginnings, most of us know the frustration of trying to change our lives. For those of us still struggling with being thinner or richer or kinder or more hopeful, there is good news in the season of Epiphany. This period between Christmas and Lent is reserved in the Church calendar for celebrating the ways God appears and is revealed in our lives. On the first Sunday in the Epiphany season we always read about the baptism of Jesus. In today’s readings we remember especially the connection between Jesus’ baptism and his ministry. Our second reading reminds us that Jesus “went about doing good and healing,” after his baptism. The voice from heaven at Jesus’ baptism that says, “You are my Son, the beloved, with you I am well pleased” is confirmed by what Jesus says and does for the rest of his life. In other words, God’s presence in the world is revealed most clearly in human action. Wherever love and charity prevail, there God is present.

In case you are wondering, I do mean that this pattern which is so clear in Jesus’ baptism and ministry is also true for our own baptism and ministry. In our baptism, God accepts us and affirms us as beloved and sends us to go about doing good and healing. And wherever we succeed in love and charity, God is present in this world.

Given the frustration most of us feel when we attempt to change our lives, this news about God’s being present in the world through our love and charity is both good news and bad news. It is good news because it affirms our potential to accomplish wonderful things. It is bad news because we know that we often don’t succeed in even our simplest good intentions.

There is an irony in Jesus’ baptism that I think can help with our frustration as we try to become people who do a little good in the world. The irony is this: the Jordan River in which Jesus was baptized is notoriously muddy. Apparently it has always been full of silt and sediment, and so it is ironic that the Jordan has become an emblem for the washing away of sins to make a new beginning. Usually we don’t wash things in dirty water, but in Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan , Jesus joined us in the murky waters of life. Perhaps the cleansing of baptism isn’t intended to render us squeaky clean. Perhaps it makes us subtly and maybe infinitesimally, but powerfully different. Maybe the glory of God shines out in our lives less like a beacon, but more like the glow that comes through muddy water. Muddy it may be, but it makes a difference.

Raymond Hunthausen tells a fable which illustrates just how great a difference our weak and muddy light can make. The story involves a conversation between two little birds. One says to the other, “Tell me the weight of a snowflake.” The other, a dove, replies, “The weight of a snowflake is nothing more than nothing.” “In that case I must tell you a marvelous story,” said the first bird to the dove. “I sat on the branch of a tree, close to the trunk, when it began to snow—not heavily, not in a giant blizzard—no, just like in a dream without any violence. Since I didn’t have anything better to do, I counted the snowflakes settling on the twigs and needles of my branch. Their number was exactly 3,741,952. Then the next snowflake dropped on the branch—‘nothing more than nothing,’ as you say—and the branch broke off.” Hunthausen adds: “The dove, since Noah’s time, an authority on such matters, thought about the story for awhile, and finally said to herself: “Perhaps there is only one person’s voice lacking for peace to come about in this world.”

Muddy and unclear as our light might be, God’s promise is that what we have to offer is enough. Your voice or mine might be all that is lacking for God’s reign of peace and justice to take tangible form. That is one bit of good news, and I will tell you another. Just as we can make a difference, as murky as we are, so too our baptism, as insignificant as it may seem, also makes a difference. Consciously knowing that we are a part of the body of Christ—though it is in itself as light as a snowflake—just knowing that can make a difference in our lives. Martin Luther, who was known to be an irascible and cantankerous man, was said to stop himself when he started to vent his frustration. He would touch his forehead and say, “I am baptized,” and the tangle of self-doubt and recrimination would fade away. I doubt if many of us are as aware as Luther of the difference our baptism has made in our lives. But I do believe that like the snowflake that felled a branch, being part of Christ’s body makes a powerful difference in who we are and what we do.

I’m not sure that makes much of a difference in our attempts to get thinner or richer, but I am positive that it makes us all better people. It also makes this world a better place—still murky like the muddy waters of the River Jordan—but a place in which the glory of God still shines. AMEN