The Baptism of Christ - You are my beloved in whom I am well pleased

Can you imagine what it would be like to hear the voice of God saying, "I am so very pleased with you"?

“Congratulations”

The banner with bright coloured letters ran up the Vicarage stair case complete with balloons for the home coming of baby Jesse on Wednesday night, hot on the heals of the celebration of the Magi’s visit to the stable in Bethlehem and blessing our home and the churches 20+C+M+B15

Of course we had been waiting, anticipating this moment, indeed praying for him to be well enough and strong enough to be allowed out of hospital and start to live as part of his family. Thank you for all your prayers for Jesse and Jodie these past 6 weeks, this baby has been prayed for in Roman Catholic, Coptic, Anglican and Pentecostal churches he is truly blessed.

“You are my son the beloved, with you I am well pleased” – these are the words of God not just for his only begotten son Jesus but for the whole world to hear and to share in and what could be more wonderful than to hear our heavenly father tell us this?

The joy that came with this small bundle of humanity wrapped in a blue blanket knitted for him by Angie and in a car seat that cost as much in family arguments as it did in terms of cash! was soon followed with the needs of looking after a small baby, the endless cycle of washing and feeding and all that happens in between, but that joy is still with us and in time Jesse will come to understand its full extent in his own life. It is the kind of joy that one gets from looking upon a baby be it ours of that of another that when felt never leaves us.

The first time I saw Jesse, one day old in intensive care wrapped in bubble wrap

the first prayer I said for him

the first time I held him

the first time I fed him

these are moments that cannot be forgotten, will never be forgotten will stay with me for the rest of my life and this is true of our baptism and the baptism on our lord that we remember and celebrate this morning

Baptism is a powerful sign of Gods love for us, those of us who were baptised as infants may not have a direct memory of the event, of the love being expressed and poured out in that simple ceremony but as we grow it is our hope and faith that the words of God the Father to his Son will be equally true of each one of us his sons and daughters.

Our baptism in like a home coming for through the waters of baptism we are granted entry in to the church and the promise of life eternal. In the waters of baptism we are born again in to a new family, the family of Christian people throughout the ages, and the world, yes it really is a homecoming.

In the words of God “You are my child the beloved, with you I am well pleased” we are given the assurance from


...The One who rescued us from death and destruction out of grace simply because He loves us.

...The One who chose you and revealed Himself to you when you were yet in sin, ungodly, without hope.

...The One who turned you from darkness to light, from the power of Satan to the kingdom of God, from death to everlasting life.

...The One who granted you forgiveness of all your sins, who absolved you of condemnation, who breathed into you life that would never end, who assured you He would never leave you nor forsake you, who by His Spirit enabled you to call Him, "Abba, Father!"

What are we to make of that timeless voice, the voice from heaven saying "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased

What do we make of it this morning as we sit here in church and take moment to listen, to remember, to assure ourselves that we have been chosen and are loved because we, like the one on whom we attempt to model our lives, are a beloved child of God in whom God is well pleased?

When you stop to ponder this in your heart, the timing of the Father's words to His Son was incredible. This happened on the eve of Jesus' public ministry! Jesus was about thirty years old. He came to the Jordan where His cousin John was baptising.

¹⁰And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. ¹¹And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’ ¹² And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness”

Up to this point, Jesus hadn't performed a single miracle.

No sign had been performed by Him, or word spoken by him yet the Father himself said He was well-pleased with His Son.

Jesus hadn't successfully resisted the devil; yet the Father opened the heavens and said, "This is My beloved Son in whom I am well-pleased."

Before Jesus had begun any work of his Father he receives God’s blessing and love.

And this is true for each one of us when we were born, before we had done anything, even before we had opened our mouth to draw our first breath we are loved. This is true for Jesse my first Grandson, it is true of Jesus at his baptism and it is true for each one of us here and throughout the world.

What does this tell us? It tells me that what pleases God more than anything else is our intimate relationship with Him, our total submission to His Word, His purpose, His timing.

Imagine the freedom you would experience if you knew that you were already — right now and today — pleasing to God!

Would you face the challenges before you differently?

Would you enjoy your life a little more and live your life abundantly?

And so the yearning strong

With which the soul will long

Shall far out pass the power of human telling;

For none can guess its grace

Till he become the place

Wherein the Holy Spirit makes his dwelling.

‘Come Down O Love Divine’   -   Bianco da Siena, d.1434.

The world did not know him - A New Years thought

The gospel writer John is hardly the most romantic or sentimental of the gospel writers. His vocabulary is technical and his approach seems more the work of a theologian than an eyewitness telling a story that has a beginning middle and end.

       

If you go to John’s gospel for shepherds or angel choruses, or kings following bright stars, friendly beasts, harsh innkeepers, or strange dreams, you have gone to the wrong gospel.

Jesus walks onto the stage of history full grown when John first takes any interest in his life. And John writes like an intellectual, like a philosopher... in circles. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, And immediately we know that this is not a word like supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. It is a Word that has theological meaning.

Of course the Word is translated from the original Greek Logos, which is more than just a word, it is more like a concept, a thought that wants to be uttered rather than a word that must be defined.

So as January begins with the Christmas decorations still around us, our minds finally clearing from the excess of New years parties we have a moment to pause and reflect on this first Sunday of the New Year, before we take up the story anew next Sunday with the beginning of Epiphany.

John’s prologue, the first eighteen or so verses of the gospel, take us back to the beginning of all time. In the beginning, John begins, and if it sounds a little more like Genesis than John, it’s supposed to. John wants us to think about the beginning of everything, when the earth was formless and void. It was at that time that the idea, the Word, was already in God’s mind. God knew from the beginning that a Word would need to be said, a Word would need to be born.

In contrast to St Luke the birth story did not begin with the annunciation. For St John the genealogy of Matthew and Luke is trumped  by tracing the lineage of Jesus not with Adam or Abraham but with God before time began. John states that from the beginning of time, God meant the Word to be. He wants to know from whence all things come. And he gives us a mystery to ponder - the fact that even though the Word was the first thought God ever had, the reception of the Word, the child born of Mary,  by God’s people was the last thing of theirs.

 “He was in the world, and the world came into being through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own,” John goes on, “and his own people did not accept him.”

His own people may have missed the point, but what excuse do we have?

I am struck by John’s words which echo into this new year of our Lord two thousand and fifteen.

Have we really not seen him, not known him?

He was in the world, John says, and the world did not know him. If not, then what is this annual exercise we have just been through?

We have transformed our city with lights and placed candles in our windows. We’ve hauled living trees into our homes and decorated them with strings of bulbs and bows and tinsel. We’ve spent Billions of pounds in our shops.

But maybe “knowing him” should not be confused with the gaudy display and orgy of spending that Christmas has become for so many, pretty as it may be, and relief to the longest nights of the year that it is. Because if all there was to the Word’s coming into the world were pretty lights and tightly wrapped packages, then the only people who gain are those in the business  of retail and advertising, when what Christmas holds out is hope and life for the whole of creation.

We are always challenged to look beneath the surface, to look deeper in to the Christmas story for meaning as Anghard reminded us last Sunday when she preached taking us beyond the perfect night with a nuclear family of Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus to something a little more gritty and uncomfortable, even painful but certainly more inclusive and hopeful.

It is for St John to point us to this in his beautiful words that form the first verses of his gospel, the prologue. For here is the real heart of what we have been preparing to celebrate through the weeks preceding Christmas, the coming of One who would be for us light and hope, joy and strength, the Word become flesh and dwelling among us full of grace and truth. And in the place of the inhospitable Inn keeper of Luke’s gospel John states , “He was in the world, yet the world did not know him.”

As we strive to make our New Years resolutions in a world that is still divided and torn apart by ideology, wealth and religious values that deny our common humanity let us hear the words of hope that St John gives us this morning as we look out to the year beginning in the darkness of our making as well as that of this winter season and pledge ourselves to the hope that we celebrate at Christmas even though “he was in the world, and the world did not know him.”

It’s John’s clear if somewhat minimalist message, without angels or shepherds, stars, strange dreams or magi, nevertheless a message that makes all the difference once you grasp its implications, that in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of a parent for an only child, full of grace and truth.

If there is any hope for this world I am not sure that it lies in images and messages that we are constantly bombarded with but is does lie in the pages of Scripture that we turn to every day of our lives and read and meditate upon.

In a world that does not know the one sent to be its light and life; as we make our New Year resolutions let us look for the evidence that God is indeed with us. Let us commit ourselves to look for those places where there is kindness expressed, and comfort offered, and prayers are said, and people are encouraged, and the dying are soothed, and the ill are not alone.

This is how God is made known in the world, in this and every season. When the Word is expressed in flesh and dwells among us, full of grace and truth.

Feast of the blessed Nativity 2014

Luke 2. 6. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born,

7. and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

Because there was not room for them in the inn!

All this time I was under the impression that the reason Mary and Joseph ended up in the stable was because the inn was full -- that's what we sing in our  Christmas carols -- that's what we see in all of the movies about the birth of Christ and in all the nativity plays across the country, even of our own childhood  "There is no room -- the inn is full -- you can stay in the stable out back"

But, that's not what Luke says happened here, he doesn't say the inn was full -- he just says that there was no room "for them"

what does that mean?  - "For them" - what was it that made the innkeeper turn them away I wonder on this special night?

Tonight we are celebrating the wondrous gift that came from heaven to earth – the birth of Jesus Christ and we do so at a time when the making room for others is a highly contentious issue in the world of politics and for many of us here in West Hendon very close to our own front doors as we see the regeneration of the West Hendon estate gather pace.

Thinking of Front doors reminds me of the presentation last Sunday by our Sunday school on the great I am sayings of Jesus and linking them to the Christmas story - I am the Door – Jn 10.7

In the book of Revelation 3:20, Jesus said, "Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me." I wonder if John the author of the book of Revelation  thought back to that time in Bethlehem -I wonder if He thought of the innkeeper as He wrote those words. when Mary and Joseph showed up at the door of the inn and knocked, it remained closed to them.

 In Jesus' time here on earth, many doors were closed to Him.  He knocked on the door of the synagogue in Nazareth and proclaimed the fulfillment of prophecy, and was thrown out.

He knocked on the doors of the temple and proclaimed His deity, and was crucified .

He knocked on the door of all that He created, the created order and the hearts of everyone created in his image, and He was rejected.

Tonight there are many in our city for whom the door of hospitality, hope and joy is closed to them. While we sleep tonight and as we feast tomorrow there will be those in our own community, city and the countless refugee centers around the world for whom the door is firmly closed to them. but because of the love and generosity of the few that door is for a moment opened and through the crack of that open door the light from the other side will reflect in their eyes and provide a glimmer of hope in their hearts that have become so used to despair.

There are many who will testify as to when Christmas begins, for me it's the Saturday morning before Christmas when we are able to join with Jesus House and offer a Christmas Hamper to those who open the door of their homes wide enough to receive them. This year 68 hampers were given and received in West Hendon.

Returning to the nameless innkeeper who for reasons known only to him, refused to open his door on that night long ago we may choose to speculate why the inn keeper refused to let in Mary and Joseph, and in doing so touch upon the temptations that we suffer from when trying to live up to the example of this child born of Mary.

Was the door closed to them because of their appearance?

because they weren't wearing fine clothes

because the innkeeper thought they were too poor to have the money for a room?

or did he turn them away because he had heard their story? and did he think that Mary had been unfaithful to Joseph?

Was it that he did not want he didn't want that type of person mingling with his righteous guests?

In retelling the Christmas Story year upon year is so that we can, year after year, pledge ourselves to be open, in mind and spirit and strive to accept all who come, the rich and the poor, the saved and the sinner, without judgment or prejudice. This is the good news of Christmas that we see displayed for all the world to see - that the child born of Mary accepts all who come to Him, all who knock on the door and seek His face: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish but have eternal life" John 3.16

Amidst all that we could speculate upon, the one thing seems irrefutable is the fact that the Inn Keeper didn’t have an open mind or heart. That he could have opened the door and let Mary and Joseph into the inn from which they were barred.

 As we celebrate on Wednesday night,

as we gather in these precious days of Christmas,

as we encounter the wondrous birth of our saviour anew in the dark sacred night

as we kneel before the crib at the Altar and receive into our outstretched hand the bread of life and into our parched throats the wine of the new covenant with the promise of a renewed life, a fulfilled life….

let our prayer be that our hearts, our minds and yes the doors of our homes and our community will be open to those who come to us in their need, and that this will be true not just at Christmas but on every day of the year