SUNDAY, JANUARY 7, 2024 | EPIPHANY - Baptism of the Lord, First Sunday After the Epiphany, YEAR B

Good morning and a Happy New Year,

And here is to writing 2023 on checks and documents for few weeks or so!

While the commercial season has shifted rather quickly away from Christmas, we got to enjoy Christmas for a bit longer and now rather than having to wait all the way to Valentine’s Day, we get the season of after epiphany.

Christianity is the only one with epiphany of this kind, but some of the symbolism can be found in other religions:

Islam’s Mawlid al-Nabi, Prophet Muhammad’s birthday. The celebration involves reciting poetry, singing hymns, and sharing stories about the life and teachings of the Prophet Muhammad.

Diwali in Hinduism - the Festival of Lights signifies the victory of light over darkness and good over evil. During Diwali, people light lamps and candles, decorate their homes, exchange gifts, and participate in religious rituals and prayers.

Hanukkah in Judaism, also known as the Festival of Lights is a Jewish holiday that commemorates the re-dedication of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. It is an eight-day celebration during which candles are lit on a menorah, special prayers are recited, and traditional foods like latkes (potato pancakes) and sufganiyot (jelly-filled doughnuts) are enjoyed.

And so on…

It makes sense to have festivals as these - with barren trees, long nights, and biting cold weather or the local variation of winter weather, we need reminders that it is not all there is and that there is light beyond us and our lived experience, which can sometime seem rather dark.

For us, the light is Jesus, who wasn’t revealed just to the chosen nation of Israel, but to us all, gentiles or otherwise! The Magi, the wise men, three or more as it is possible they could have brought gifts of frankinscence, myrhh, and gold not as individuals, but a group, were definitely not of the Abrahamic faith. They knew how to read the signs of the coming of the Messiah, but they were of unspecified faith. And yet, they weren’t turned away from locating and giving honor to Jesus. Great news!

Yes, the epiphany itself was yesterday, but I thought it is important to mention as that is the kick off of the season. And what comes next was made possible by two things - one, the wise men were wise and avoided reporting back to King Herod, who wanted to take control of the situation and second that Jesus and his family escaped the massacre of newborns by Herod’s command by becoming refugees in Egypt at God’s guidance.

And now we get to the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist, the highlight of his ministerial career. And while it is not quite the liturgical jump like between Advent 4 (Mary conceiving) and Jesus being born (Christmas), which was 6 hours, it is still fairly sudden…we are going from his infancy to his young adulthood in about a week. Quite the growth spurt!

But back to his baptism. I bet that if you open many commentaries, they will stress that Jesus didn’t need baptism for forgiveness of sins as John the Baptist proclaimed for others. It is simple- we do the sinning and Jesus does the redeeming. Jesus is not storming any Capitols, killing Imams, shooting up schools, declaring that immigrants are poisoning the blood of the nation, oppressing women and depriving them of their bodily autonomy, … You get the idea, humans do that.

No, he was aligning himself with the teaching and message of John the Baptist that society took a wrong turn and something gotta give, something gotta change! And folks, the change starts with all of us personally! And Jesus also went by example - not even the Son of God is above baptism, baptism is for EVERYONE. Sure, he is probably the only one that can claim that he was approaching baptism already holy, but I don’t see him bragging about that over a cold one!

December and January is the time to be bombarded by ads for gym memberships, mindfulness and meditation apps, weightloss programmes, dentist offers, language apps…and so on. The message is similar - new year, new you! Time to pump it up/tranquil on/learn Spanish/get that shiny smile. You won’t get any of that here - we are not going to sell you just the right thing that will solve all your problems.

And baptism is not about that either - it is not a one and done thing. It is a journey and Jesus began his baptismal accompaniment right then. In both academia and the church, there is a principle at play - you cannot provide, what you have not received. At universities, Bachelor’s should be taught by at least Masters, Masters by Doctors…and in church, we require that leaders in the church are baptized, so that they can serve other baptized or preparing to be baptized people. To join them on a journey, rather than to lord over them.

We begin our year anew and so does our journey to Easter - we do not need to become someone else for that. We come as we are and the rest…is a journey, where all of us are work in progress, never quite finished until the day we pass on and be with the Lord. So let us journey on, admitting we need Jesus as our guide, and let go of toxic perfection, because only God is truly perfect. Amen.