• "The Baptism of Jesus :: a Significant Biblical Epiphany"
• Sermon for the Second Sunday after Epiphany
• January 16, 2005
• The Reverend Stephen C. Scarlett

The baptism of Jesus is an epiphany season gospel because it is one of the most significant biblical epiphanies or revelations. Jesus rose from the water, the Spirit descended like a dove and the Father's voice proclaimed, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." Here is the clearest biblical picture of the Trinity-three persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, who together are the one God. Here is a snapshot in time of God as he has been from all eternity.

This picture helps us to understand our own baptisms. In his baptism, Jesus was revealed to be God's only begotten Son, "begotten of the Father before all worlds." In our baptisms, we become God's adopted children. We become by grace what Jesus is by nature. The familial relationship of communion that was severed by sin is restored in baptism by the gift of the Holy Spirit.

The significance of baptism is explained by the prayer at the end of the baptismal liturgy: "We yield thee hearty thanks, most merciful Father, that it hath pleased thee to regenerate this child with thy Holy Spirit, to receive him for thine own child" (BCP p. 280 par. 4). As Galatians says, "God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts crying, 'Abba, Father!'" (4:6).

Baptism reveals that salvation is a gift from God. There is nothing we can do to earn the baptismal gift. We can only come, with sorrow for sin and faith in Jesus Christ, to receive what God gives. As the epistle of Titus says, God saved us "not because of deeds done by us in righteousness, but in virtue of his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal in the Holy Spirit" (3:5).

The baptism of infants, especially, highlights the grace of God. If God adopts us as his children and gives us the gift of eternal life before we are old enough to say yes or no, then, clearly, our status as children of God is a gift from God and not something we have earned.

Now, many people don't seem to benefit from the baptismal gift. They grow up and fall away from the faith. Or they grow up to live a marginal life of faith: neither fully committed to Christ and his church, nor fully rejecting Christ (see Revelation 3:16 for a commentary on this state). It may be that the stewards of God's gift, the parents and godparents, didn't do their part to fertilize and water the holy seed that was planted in the child. Or it may be that when the child grew up, the contrary influences of the world, the flesh and the devil conspired to make the seed unfruitful.

Unfaithfulness is rooted in forgetfulness. The world, the flesh and the devil conspire to make us forget who we are. The devil tells us that we are slaves to the desires of the flesh. His message is relentlessly hammered home through the media and many of the baptized come to believe it. The devil offers us the world now instead of the eternal kingdom. And many of the baptized accept the offer. It is by temptation, deception and forgetfulness that children of God come to act like children of the devil.

This is why remembrance is such a central concept in the Christian faith. Jesus said, "Do this in remembrance of me." Jesus established a regular means for his church to remember because we are so forgetful. The certainty and resolve of Christian identity, established at the font of baptism, is quickly forgotten in the haste and temptations of life. So Jesus commands us to return and remember.

To remember in the Bible is not just to think about a past thing. To remember in the Bible is to bring the past event into the present so that its power and benefits can be experienced in a new way. Sacraments provide a tangible means of access, in the present moment, to the grace that was made available in the past on the cross.

At the altar of God, the sacrifice of Christ is brought into the present moment and our baptismal identity is renewed. We remember the cross. We remember that we were, as Colossians says, "buried with Him through baptism, in which [we] also were raised with him through faith" (2:12). We are bold to say, "Our Father" because God has made us his children. We remember that the love and favor of God, which abides eternally upon his only begotten Son, now abides upon us.

The Christian life is our response to this gift and status. What manner of life and service is appropriate for children of God? Romans says, "I beseech you therefore brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service" (12:1) The only reasonable response to God's love for us in Christ is the complete offering of self to God.

One way we offer ourselves back to God is by serving others in the name of Christ. The epistle today teaches us that we have "gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us." In giving us the Holy Spirit, God has given specific things to do, in the Spirit, in service to others.

The devil tells us that the purpose of life is to satisfy our desires at the expense of others, to fill our emptiness by taking from them, following his demonic example (cf. 1 Peter 5:8). The pattern is reversed in the lives of God's children. Jesus is the bread of life who comes down from heaven to forgive and feed and strengthen us. Christ fills our emptiness. Being filled with Christ, we are called by Christ to give to others from the abundance we have received.

In other words, we are not born again in Christ as children of God to be slaves to our appetites and desires, to be consumers of products and users of people. We are born again as children of God to worship God in spirit and in truth (John 4:23) and to serve God after the pattern of God's Son with the spiritual gifts he has given us.

Jesus rose from the River Jordan and, led by the Spirit, offered his life in service and sacrifice. We rise from the font, depart from the altar, as children of God to be led by the Spirit into the path of sacrifice and service that God intends for us. What are your gifts? What are you called to do? These questions are raised anew each time we gather at the altar to remember that we are children of God and heirs of the kingdom and to consider anew, What are the good works that God has prepared for us to walk in?