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“Arise, your light has come! The Spirit’s call obey; show forth the glory of your God which shines on you today.” I must confess that is probably my favorite hymn for the season and message of Epiphany. The text and inspiration of this hymn comes from the Prophet Isaiah, chapter 60. This is one of those songs that you just need to sing when thinking about the inauguration of your New Life in Christ born through the water and the Word! Speaking of the water and the Word—there is that voice again. The voice has declared and now revealed the way of the Lord throughout the wilderness of this world: “1Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations….”
The foretelling of the Christian journey owes a lot to
the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah’s prophecy of
the rising of the Son, the Messiah and suffering servant is that spiritual seed
planted creating roots for what we know, as the Christian faith. God has spoken and is still speaking—in one
way or another—in, with and throughout our life time’s journey. In order,
however for us to rise and shine in the world, we must begin to grow. There is that gardening metaphor again. The gift of Grace has been planted in our
hearts as that New Nature promise—a seedling needing to be tended to…
Outside of the fact of needing “good soil,” things that
need to grow, need the sun and water.
Spiritually for us, this means we need the Son and the waters of our
Baptism to remind and shape us as we grow— as those children of grace and
promise—for we are the future, hopeful members of the priesthood of all
believers. There is that wonderful
Reformation image of understanding who we are, in both incorporating God’s
Grace into our hearts and lives, as well as the gracious response born of faith.
This gracious response are the shoots or blooms to the flowering, growing child
of God we are called and commissioned to become!
Today’s Gospel is our witness to essentially Jesus’ “ordination”
service to begin His ministry for the glory of God—saving us from sin, death
and the power of evil. This is God’s
self-revelation to the world—Christ Jesus’ ministerial inauguration to laying
down the foundation of the lifestyle of Grace.
This lifestyle of Grace is a gift our New Nature seed grows for, aspires
towards… This is our raison d’être—truly our meaning
and purpose of the joy of living itself! This is a joy of living—incorporating the
Love and Grace of Christ and most importantly, sharing this same love and Grace
with your neighbor. This is our ministry in the world. Grace is God’s miracle
grow to our New Nature, taking root, building a foundation and growing forward
to be and become all that God desires of us to be. In essence, God is seeking
for us to live up to what could be our full potential, as His disciples.
More often than not, our humanity along with the devil’s
help, of course, misses the mark. We
miss the mark in understanding the meaning and purpose of being His disciples
yet alone thinking of ourselves with the same prayerful humility of St. Paul—that
we are all God’s children. We have been
born and baptized into Grace and are now challenged to live in hope. This is living into hope towards that promise
of an end to all the darkness in this world… In many ways, which may sound
disturbing to hear, but the fact is, we are dying to live. We are dying, but sadly it is a spiritual
death of no longer seeing purpose and meaning beyond the self. Living a life curved inward, still like the
fetus in the womb or the chrysalis of a butterfly… is no real quality of life
to sustain… We are called to break out of ourselves and live graciously beyond
the self to love God and neighbor—a much greater purpose, goal for our lives....
This leads me to share the night and day differences of
living into hope—living into your baptism as a full spiritual incorporation of
Christ Jesus’ Gospel of light and New Life! As many of you know, I truly was
called to a ministry to love people and it was through the voice of God that
fateful August of 2003, that my entire life began an ongoing prayerful journey
of shaping myself to answer God’s call. That August day was my conversion. There
have been many experiences in my journey to minister to others but nothing as
powerful and humbly affirming as my own ordination which will see its’ 2nd
anniversary this coming January 17th. A lot of words were said and a lot of
wonderful tears shed where simply the New commencement, turn of my life’s story
took place.
Baptism itself was originally supposed to reflect this
same or similar affirmation to any new disciple coming to take part communally in
serving and growing together as a people of faith. Sadly too many years alongside too many
misinterpretations of its actual, spiritual function in the ‘church,’ have made
it lost to being considered merely as an “initiation rite” of membership into a
church… The spiritual, live-giving,
transforming aspect of it has been, to a certain extent, lost. That is why, as well, it seems the Christian
church across the globe is in decline. Numbers aren’t everything but when think
about where people are spiritually, it is. When you don’t take seriously and
prayerfully enough the spiritual importance of many experiences the Christian
faith has to offer… How are you to truly
see and understand how much harboring faith sustains our lives?
When I first started seminary, my mentoring pastor at the
time told me that he had to, wanted to experience a couple of baptismal remembrance
events. I wanted to get dunked too! Though I have still yet to do this. Let’s just say it’s on my spiritual bucket
list of experiences I want to grow from. My ordination, though, was profound
enough to satisfy my hungry heart to go and begin to serve the Gospel! The
scene we have in today’s Gospel is profound and beautiful, as well, for it
represents a theophany of God in this world.
Yes, that’s another $20 word which simply means God’s manifestation and
most importantly revelation among us—there’s that theme again—‘God with Us.’
Christ came down to us lived a fully human life and began a fully divine
mission for the sake of the world!
The Hospice care experiences I have ministered to
recently, have been essentially, the night aspect in differences to the day.
Caring for someone who no longer wants to live and sees no purpose is terribly
sad to witness and spiritually care for. Yes the illnesses this person has are
terminal and the days and hours are numbered, but wouldn’t you want to just
live every last breath as if it were the beginning of a brand new day? A brand new day with a brand new hope, not only
for the self, but for everyone the light of your own life has touched and needs
to continue to see? I know, I would want
to. I don’t think I’d do something like
sky-diving or other similar crazy stunts, but I would want to be like Zorba,
Zorba the Greek. I want, I choose to
celebrate life. I choose this because
God’s gift to me of was life and a New Life eternal—Grace, makes me appreciate this
so much more!
Perhaps like many of us, our lives have those stop and go
moments. We feel stopped, dead in our tracks by things we have no control of.
Or we feel emotionally abandoned and alone—way too many times to count, way too
many times persevering… This is the darkness, those spiritual bugs, weeds in
the garden where your New Natured seed is planted. They help to shade away the
positive growth and connection to God one needs to have in order to begin to
reap! They are the aspects of death, things needing to die away and out of your
life for a better world to come. Only when we come to realize not only the Son,
shining brightly upon us, but the deep waters of His Grace and love are overflowing
upon us, renewing and recreating us—we begin to rise!
Our first pastor, church planter and example of
conversion, St. Paul, discovered that indeed, the mystery of God was at work
through his life. From this discovery which began to take root and build a
foundation from his conversion experience onward; He began to reap his faith by
willingly becoming a prisoner for Christ—a servant leader to His Gospel. When
your world begins to cease living for itself alone and your heart is open and
willing towards to the grace and promise of the Gospel… Sin and its withered
fruits die. They, are what becomes
irrelevant—not God(!) and we replace that with a gracious new resolve. Soon our lives blossom full of ‘Kingdom-of-God’
purposes, full of light—because we have SEEN the light and it is now setting us
free!
Let us Pray;
Gracious and loving God,
May Your light purify and cauterize away all the darkness
May we LIVE into Your Voice
What You have ascribed to us as well as everything You
have done for our sake
May we renew our hearts into a humble victory over sin,
death and the power of evil
For Thine be the Glory and the Amen
As long, as we are Your servant leaders in this world
May Your Gospel forever reign.
AMEN
Baptism of Our
Lord; Sunday January 8th, 2017; Year A; SOLA Lectionary
Sermon By:
Reverend Nicole A.M. Collins
Psalm 29;
Isaiah 42:1-9; Romans 6:1-11; Matthew 3:13-17; Addlref: Isaiah 60: 1-6;
Ephesians 3:1-12
The link below is to this sermon's delivery at the Grace Hub's 8am service.
https://youtu.be/SGvXBpgPtSw
https://youtu.be/SGvXBpgPtSw
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