Collect
Eternal Father, who at the baptism of Jesus revealed him to be your Son, anointing him with the Holy Spirit: grant to us, who are born again by water and the Spirit, that we may be faithful to our calling as your adopted children; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
or
Heavenly Father, at the Jordan you revealed Jesus as your Son: may we recognize him as our Lord and know ourselves to be your beloved children; through Jesus Christ our Saviour.
Post Communion
Lo rd of all time and eternity, you opened the heavens and revealed yourself as Father in the baptism of Jesus your beloved Son: by the power of your Spirit complete the heavenly work of our rebirth through the waters of the new creation; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Readings
Old Testament – Isaiah 43.1–7
43Thus says the Lord,
he who created you, O Jacob,
he who formed you, O Israel:
Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are mine.
2 When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.
3 For I am the Lord your God,
the Holy One of Israel, your Saviour.
I give Egypt as your ransom,
Ethiopia and Seba in exchange for you.
4 Because you are precious in my sight,
and honoured, and I love you,
I give people in return for you,
nations in exchange for your life.
5 Do not fear, for I am with you;
I will bring your offspring from the east,
and from the west I will gather you;
6 I will say to the north, ‘Give them up’,
and to the south, ‘Do not withhold;
bring my sons from far away
and my daughters from the end of the earth—
7 everyone who is called by my name,
whom I created for my glory,
whom I formed and made.’
Psalm 29
1 Ascribe to the Lord, you powers of heaven, w
ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.
2 Ascribe to the Lord the honour due to his name; w
worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.
3 The voice of the Lord is upon the waters;
the God of glory thunders; w
the Lord is upon the mighty waters.
4 The voice of the Lord is mighty in operation; w
the voice of the Lord is a glorious voice.
5 The voice of the Lord breaks the cedar trees; w
the Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon;
6 He makes Lebanon skip like a calf w
and Sirion like a young wild ox.
7 The voice of the Lord splits the flash of lightning;
the voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness; w
the Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh.
8 The voice of the Lord makes the oak trees writhe and strips the forests bare; w
in his temple all cry, ‘Glory!’
9 The Lord sits enthroned above the water flood; w
the Lord sits enthroned as king for evermore.
10 The Lord shall give strength to his people; w
the Lord shall give his people the blessing of peace.
Epistle – Acts 8.14–17
Now when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the
word of God, they sent Peter and John to them. The two went down and prayed
for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit (for as yet the Spirit
had not come upon any of them; they had only been baptized in the name
of the Lord Jesus). Then Peter and John laid their hands on them, and they
received the Holy Spirit.
Gospel – Luke 3.15–17, 21, 22
As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in
their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, John answered
all of them by saying, ‘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. His winnowing-fork is in
his hand, to clear his threshing-floor and to gather the wheat into his
granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.’
Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized
and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon
him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are
my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’
Sermon for the Baptism of Christ
Did your mother or father ever say to you, “You are my Son [or Daughter],
the Beloved [Child born to me]; with you I am so well pleased”? If our
parents have never said this to us, their children, how can we expect anyone
else to express such love? Indeed, how can we proclaim our love for anyone
else?
Life is not full of affirmation, is it? We ourselves often fail to appreciate
all of the people around us. This is the sort of thing that happens all
the time. This is the sort of thing we ought to safe-guard against. All
of us must examine our behaviour daily to see whether we have failed those
who have come into our daily orbit, whether it is the fellow who delivers
the post, or the doctor who delivers a life-changing health report. We
must commit our time with others fully. We need to speak with them with
a care–full witness to our encounter. I think we should be able to take
the post deliberately in our hand and mean that anodyne “Thank you,” as
the postie departs.
Little things make the world the place it is. We all know that is true,
don’t we? We remember the little things people have done, and perhaps our
conscience pricks us when we remember some of the little things we have
done. Perhaps our conscience disturbs us because we have not done anything
for others.
John was preaching that we are to make a way in the desert for our King.
He was preaching for a conversion of the heart – he preached about a true
turning to God, and I would say that this new person, the converted heart,
was an appropriate person for that acclamation our parents never made about
us. But it is something God from heaven declares about Jesus. John also
delights – for John rejoices in his cousin as he rises from the waters
of baptism just as everyone hears that thunder rolling around the hills
as a commendation of this fellow.
Perhaps we never heard that peal from the heavens at our baptism. We might
even lose track of the voice of God in our lives – or we don’t hear the
Word of God in the scriptures as it directs us this way and that, away
from temptation and keeping us from evil. It is clear that we fail so very
often, isn’t it? We pray, off and on, with the Desert Fathers, “Have mercy
on me, Lord, for I am a sinner,” as we attempt to clear our conscience
and reconcile ourselves with God and neighbour. That, I would say, is the
moment of baptism. We turn to God as the words of the baptismal liturgy
say. However, God doesn’t stay in only one place the whole of our lives.
We have to keep our eye on, and our ear out for, God. The ancient Church
had a terrible time with idolatry, when it became fixated on one image
of God. You remember those passages in the Bible, don’t you? You may even
remember that the Church has been torn apart many times by the vexed question
of images in the church. The Protestants wanted churches without decoration
at all – just white walls and clear glass windows. There should be nothing
to distract our attention when we attend to worship. The Quakers go even
further, not even a pulpit or a preacher – just silence in a white room
with light streaming through clear glass windows.
Baptism is to wash everything away which gets in the way of God for our
lives – to cleanse us of anything that could distract our attention away
from the most profound reality in our lives, a reality we too often forget.
I think we have turned away from that fascinating and terrifying reality
of the holy – I suppose we are just like Herod and all of Jerusalem in
the Epiphany reading last week, when the Magi asked about the whereabouts
of the newly born king. We have to wash away all that fear, to sit quietly
in that fascinating silence of purity, in order to attend to our ownmost
possibility. — Baptism is when we present ourselves as the beloved child
in whom the parent should be well pleased. The child must work hard for
that reality, as does the parent. Both must present themselves to each
other. The child must say, “Here I stand in the infinite possibility of
purity, ready to make my way in this world.” And the parent must be able
to say, “You stand innocently before me, my child in whom I am well pleased,
and I shall let my beloved child go forth in hope.”
Baptism is the sign of a conversion, when we strip away all that is not
conducive to the new life we have appropriated – the purity which descends
with the waters of a divine bathing. Baptism is symbolic of that absolutely
different quality of life we realise in the depths of our being upon conversion.
The depth of life in all its fullness is what we experience in these profound
existential moments, when the whole of life presents itself completely,
when we open ourselves up to the whole of life without any barriers between
self and the reality of existence. We experience our ownmost possibility
at that moment of conversion. Baptism confirms it within the tradition
in which we find ourselves, whether it is the simplicity of the silent
Quaker meeting room or the complexity of a rococo cathedral with crowds
and music swelling all around. Wherever we experience it, it is most profound,
but at the same time it is so ephemeral. It comes and overwhelms and it
leaves us exhausted and perhaps even empty.
That is the moment of danger – the moment after the exhilaration of conversion
– that period of exhaustion. What will fill that emptiness? We have worked
so very hard through our baptismal preparations, the converted now must
build a new life, taking on the new habits of virtue, forsaking a life
which may have been habitually vicious.
Did anyone listen to the Breakfast programme on Radio Three on New Year’s
Eve? Hannah French, the presenter, catalogued so many little rituals in
different places of the world. The Japanese eat “long meals” consisting
of long noodles to symbolise longevity. In other places Buddhists tone
bells in their temples to cleanse the world of bad spirits. In some of
our own churches the bellringers fired the bells at midnight to announce
the New Year’s commencement, probably for the same effect as the temple
bells in Asia.
Life is symbolic in so many ways, these signs should point us to the depth
of our lives and the heights of joy to which we should aspire. Baptism
is the moment when we should feel the weight of symbols in our lives, with
our conversion a sign which announces itself to the crowd which presses
upon us from all sides. We have to stand in that new quality of being,
shining as lights in the world where darkness attempts to overcome us.
In the baptism which reveals our conversion, we have revalued our lives,
those new lives which we offer to share with our neighbour through love,
those new lives which should say, “You are my beloved friend with whom
I am pleased.”