In the name of God, our light and our life. Amen.
We are now liturgically in the season of light, of enlightenment. By its very nature, the Season of Epiphany is a season of movement: from one experience to another, one understanding to another.
The word Epiphany means revelation, and it points to that “aha” moment when our understanding has been divinely and suddenly expanded and clarified. The movement in this season is one of transformation.
This season celebrates that the light of Christ, that is to say, the revelation of Christ, is given to us again. Year after year, we receive the gift of insight upon insight, of another profound realization that transforms our experience of our relationship with God, the world, and ourselves.
And when I say, “we,” I mean, we as individuals AND as a people. When we, the church, representatives of Christ on the earth, receive the gift of transformed knowing and experience given to us by the love that created, forms, and sends us, we see the actions in the world around us differently.
The light of Christ enlightens us so that we can see with the eyes of God - a skill that takes time, support, and intention to develop. That’s what the church is meant to provide.
Seeing with the eyes of God means loving all whom God has created – all – even our enemies, persecutors, and those who aim to do us harm. It isn’t easy, I promise, but it is what Jesus commanded us to do in Mt 5:44.
John the Baptist’s ministry was transformative because Jewish people didn’t get baptized – proselytes did. A proselyte was a person in the process of converting to Judaism, and Baptism was a ritual purification for them. Remember, unless one was ritually clean, one couldn’t participate in worship. John instituted systemic change, however, by baptizing everyone as a symbolic act of repentance and forgiveness of sin.
We need to remember that Jesus approaching John for baptism was shocking, as evidenced by John’s confused response. As we look at this story today, questions often niggle in the back of our minds... why would Jesus need to be baptized? From what sin would he need to be washed clean?
The answer was simple, as Jesus said: it is proper, which is suitable, even required, to fulfill all righteousness. Baptize me, Jesus is saying, because God is about to reveal the true and right relationship between humanity and divinity.
The gospel writer then describes how Jesus saw the heavens opening up to him as he came up out of the birth-water of Baptism into a new life. From the opened heavens, the spirit of God descended on Jesus the way a dove does: gently. And a voice from heaven affirmed this intimate connection, revealing what right relationship between divinity and humanity is: the spirit of God co-existing within the human body in a cooperative, symbiotic relationship.
St. Teresa of Avila describes this divine-human unity, saying, "it is like rain falling from the heavens into a river or spring; there is nothing but water there and it is impossible to divide or separate the water belonging to the river from that which fell from the heavens." ("Interior Castle," 235)
Do we believe that? If we do, then no human body should be subjected to abuse, neglect, disrespect, or exile because all humanity exists in this revealed relationship with God. It always was so, but became demonstrably and undeniably so at Jesus’ baptism.
When Jesus served, he didn’t just heal and redeem individuals – he wasn’t out saving us one at a time. Jesus brought redemption to the whole world for all time. His ministry actions led to systemic changes in the church, government, and the hearts of people. Our ministry actions should be doing the same in our time.
Many of you know that I was an advocate for adults and children who suffered domestic and/or sexual violence during the 1980s, 90s, and early 2000s. Back then, marital rape was not considered a crime in every state (not until 1993), and there were no stalking laws until a few years later.
The Violence Against Women Act (known as VAWA), enacted in 1994, represented systemic change, federally acknowledging domestic and sexual assault, dating violence, stalking, and, later, human trafficking as crimes and offering compensation and assistance to the victims. More importantly, VAWA provided funding for community response programs and training for law enforcement and the judiciary to help transform their understanding of and response to these crimes.
What we learned as advocates in those decades was that addressing each criminal act didn’t change much. We knew we had to get upstream, as the saying goes, ahead of where the bodies were falling into the river, to stop the continuing destruction.
Change happened, I’m happy to say, when the entire system transformed its understanding of and response to these crimes. Lately, as I watch the unfolding of the Epstein scandal and the frequent blaming of victims of all sorts, I realize that we still have a long way to go before justice is rolling down like water and righteousness like an ever-flowing river, as the prophet Amos said (5:24).
I love the prophets – especially Isaiah. If you read the entirety of Isaiah (or any prophet), you see a transformation of his understanding as his spiritual proclamations transition from anger over injustice to clarity about the divine establishment of a new way of being and the hope that engenders.
God, who spoke creation into being in Genesis, continually speaks a new reality into being, as we hear in Isaiah: “See the former things have come to pass, and the new things I now declare...” In this new reality, the faithful servant brings forth justice as a light to the nations, opening the blind eyes of the powerholders in the existing system, setting people free from darkness and imprisonment of all kinds: poverty, vulnerability, threats and oppression by people in power over them. Systemic change.
Transformed understanding and experience are the fruits of the season of Epiphany, gifts that take us from where we are in our spiritual understanding to where we need to be to be useful to God as co-creators of the new thing God is doing in and among us now. Transformed understanding and experience are the gifts Jesus gave us at his Baptism by John in the Jordan River.
In fact, it isn’t about what happens after our death at all. It’s about how we live.
Our ministry, like the ministry of Jesus, must be characterized by humility, hospitality, mercy, forgiveness, and reconciliation. Like Jesus, we must break bread with foreigners, sinners, curmudgeons, narcissists, and all others who are brought near to us by God.
Boldly proclaiming a new revelation of God’s mercy and forgiveness, Jesus offered all people he encountered, including the religious and governmental leadership that ultimately killed him, forgiveness, which sets us all free from the bondage of sin. So must we.
Jesus generated systemic change by expanding the boundaries of God’s kingdom to include the least and the lost, the outcast and disrespected, the oppressed and the oppressor. So must we.
As I said, it isn’t easy. Thankfully, we do this together, and we have our sacrament of Baptism to guide us on our way.
I invite us all now to stand in body or spirit and renew the vows of our Baptism.
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