I had the pleasure of being current for the providing of this reflection on Jesus' baptism in the Jordan at Edgebrook neighborhood Church (UCC) on January 12, 2020.– Alan Hommerding
by Rev. Tim Wolfe
(Isaiah forty two:1-9; Matthew three:13-17)
have you observed how epiphanies are being commercialized nowadays? There are books and seminars and TED Talkers piling up on YouTube. Kanye has commoditized Sunday worship and became it right into a goldmine. Oprah's on her World imaginative and prescient 2020 arena tour. (in case you want to trap her next Saturday in Raleigh, North Carolina, be prepared to spend $ninety for nosebleed seats; if you need to take a seat on the leading ground, it's going to set you back about $500.) total trip agencies have caught the vision and now they specialise in eat-Pray-Love excursions.
Over the vacations I caught up with an historic pal who just got here returned from a fancy shamanistic retreat that blanketed some severe hallucinogenic use. "you should definitely do it," Lizzie mentioned. "It's extraordinary!" once I couldn't conceal my horror she observed, "Oh, this isn't street medicine like LSD. every thing is holistic and plant-primarily based. it will change your existence!"
Which delivered to mind my buddy Taylor who spent most of final summer time at a plant-based mostly yoga retreat in the Colorado Rockies…and Ellie, who spent a fortnight dwelling in silence with 50 strangers close a volcano in Maui…and Moira who took a six-month depart from her job to commute round India and "soak up all the spirituality." all of them come returned speaking about epiphanies that modified their lives.
As a person who's ostensibly within the life-altering profession, I'm neither doubtful nor disparaging of those experiences. but you've got to ask yourself what's riding this epiphany craze.
The outstanding poet John Milton regarded epiphanies as "these transcendent moments of awe that trade always how we adventure existence and the world."
actual, genuine epiphanies recalibrate our sensibilities. They reorder our considering. at this time they're in excessive demand, frequently marketed, packaged, and sold at excessive expenditures because we are living in a moment when people crave clarity and truthfulness and profound experience. in the event that they can't find these necessities in their newsfeeds or their government, on their jobs, in their buildings and communities, at the very least, perhaps they could get some of their own inner turmoil sorted out. That's what epiphanies are meant to do.
an identical want for readability and certainty could be what brings Jesus to the Jordan, as a result of he lives in a crazy world where each are in brief give: foreign pursuits have seized control of the vicinity and assert their vigor through proxy dictators; Herod Antipas, the reigning king of Judea, is a conniving narcissist who has amalgamated his vigour by means of divorcing his first spouse to marry his brother's ex-wife. Like his father, Herod the superb, he's an egomaniacal actual property developer who loves to construct tall monuments to himself and professes faithfulness to Judaism, however naturally has now n ot embraced any of its principles.
in the meantime, the neatly-being of Palestinian Jews swings in the balance of Roman imperialism and fomenting revolution. Abusive taxation has impoverished the americans. Political and spiritual fault lines spark off tremors that destabilize every element of existence. Confusion and bitterness abound and hope is at highest quality a flicker within the hearts of a extremely few.
here is the realm Jesus grows up in. this is all he's primary for the primary three a long time of his lifestyles. and frankly once we examine his story in distinction to his cousin, John the Baptist, Jesus comes off as late bloomer. What has he been doing for 30 years? The Gospels don't say. Yet by the time he receives to the Jordan, John has already made a big name for himself, drawing multitudes to the riverbanks to listen to him preach.
That's not how John the Baptizer's story turned into alleged to go. in line with way of life, John should be following in his father's footsteps as a Temple priest. Yet his disgust with Herod's marital mess and the way Temple authorities toady to Roman vigor compels John to go one other route. He turns into a self-styled guru, the outsized chief of an option spiritual movement whose teachings, politics, and practices raise a lot of eyebrows. (And we should bear in mind that of their day, John and Jesus led option non secular actions.) John is presiding over a nonconformist counter-lifestyle epitomized in its most bizarre and assorted practice: baptism.
What's so loopy about that? John is baptizing Jews! They don't want baptism. Their claim is in line with their birthright. best converts to Judaism get baptized. Yet John is baptizing his own individuals…reinitiating them…restoring their realizing of who they are and why they are…re-recruiting them to rise up and be counted for righteousness…bringing them into a radically new method of being.
In impact, John is out within the desolate tract alongside this little muddy river triggering epiphanies.
each year, because the lectionary invites us to think about Jesus's baptism, it's very handy to get swept up in the cinematics of the event, lots like we do in our retellings of the Christmas narrative. There's the quiet approach to the riverbank, the testy second when John and Jesus argue about who should still be baptizing whom, the voice from heaven, the dove, the haziness in the texts about who definitely hears and sees what's happening, and Jesus comes out of the river and unexpectedly he is aware of who he's…We watch it unfold, paying half mind as a result of we've heard this story so time and again. Seldom do we ask, "What is this experience like for Jesus?"
It's an interesting question, because we don't recognize what prompts Jesus to be baptized. Is he simply inquisitive about what his cousin's up to? Is he seeking to join a subversive spiritual movement? Does he even suspect that letting John take him down into the water will effect with him coming returned to shore certain of who he is, why he's right here, and what his calling should be?
Who can say? we are able to say this: baptism equals epiphany for Jesus. earlier than this, he's not made the slightest dent on the world. but after this move through the water, nothing will ever be the identical. In those few moments, everything opens up. The narrow circulate we call the Jordan River grows as broad as all of introduction and as deep as the most fulfilling percentages God can endow to anyone.
whatever thing happens in that water. some thing occurs to us when we don't forget our own baptisms—and here I'm the use of "baptism" in its most figurative experience. not just the Christian rite of water and washing, however the other baptisms we move through, other transcendent moments of awe that exchange forever how we journey life and the area…the glint of ask yourself in a child's eye…uproarious laughter that clears the air all around us…that second when what seemed impenetrable all at once opens up and we consider…surprising epiphanies that plunge us into deep and extensive rivers of transformation…lifestyles-changing moments when we too are claimed, when we admire that God loves us and our Maker is chuffed with us.
We count. We healthy. We belong. it is the epiphany for us these days. It's what brings to lifestyles the prophet's assurance that the mild Christ we observe is our friend. "A bruised reed he will now not ruin, and a dimly burning wick he will now not quench," Isaiah tells us. New things are streaming forth. outstanding issues can happen.
So, I don't know if I'll ever make it to the outposts of Costa Rica or the summits of Colorado and Hawaii or the teeming streets of recent Delhi. but I've been to the river again and again and i've been baptized repeatedly in surprising and amazing moments that taught me what my existence was all about. I've traveled through thin locations to experience the wideness and depth of God's unfathomable love. you have got too.
Given how loopy the area is these days, I think we all can be intelligent to come to that river on every occasion we're looking for clarity and truth and reassurance. as a result of I've been sensing we could all use a little epiphany this present day, all of us may advantage from one of those moments once we step into the river a technique and are available out of it with a completely diverse photo of who we are and what our lives may also be.
The author Debie Thomas* says: "We follow Epiphany. The problem is all the time earlier than us…Regardless how jaded you suppose, dangle to the chance of surprise. Epiphany is deep water—that you may't stand on the shore and dip your toes in. You must take a breath and plunge."
Al eco-friendly sang it this manner: "Take me to the river. Drop me within the water. Wash me down…"
Reimagine your baptism as a recurring adventure. Let the river name you in case you need some transcendent readability and awe-stung certainty. make the leap. Get dropped in the water. Come out figuring out who you are and whose you are.
Amen.
Tim Wolfe is the founding pastor of collect, a brand new Christian community on Chicago's West side it is dedicated to reaching and reclaiming people who've lost faith as a result of spiritual exclusion and disillusionment.
*skinny area, Deep Water. [online] Journeywithjesus.web. accessible at: https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/1232-this-location-deep-water-2
Illustration: "Baptism in the Jordan" by way of John Pirtle, from "Praying the Rosary together" (giamusic.com). Used with permission.
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