I Epiphany Year A 13 January 2008

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Jesus came down from Galilee to be baptized. Now John complained, saying that the roles should be reversed. Jesus, you should be baptizing me. John wanted God as he saw God. We all want God as we want God just as we all want our children to be as we want them or be.

A long, long time ago in what now seems to be a galaxy far, far away.

She was our first child and was born at a time when knowing the flavor of your baby before it was born was not an option. Therefore, if anything was to be bought ahead of time, one requested white, yellow or pale green. ‘She’ came on a December afternoon. She was late, thereby beginning a long career of not being on time.

She was beautiful and I distinctly remember, as I first saw her, I distinctly remember, before I asked if she were a girl or a boy, before I inquired as to whether she has all her fingers and all her toes, I distinctly remember thinking, ‘There is no sin on this child; she is perfect. Two years later, when I caught her trying to drown a kitten in the bathroom, I had to radically reevaluate my stand on the sins of humanity. My child was not perfect and that affected a whole lot.
Jesus came down from Galilee to be baptized. Now John complained, saying that the roles should be reversed; Jesus, you should be baptizing me. John wanted God as he saw God. We all want God as we want God. We all want our children as we want our children.

It was a strange youth. Celia grew up at home for girls who would become mothers before family and society would approve. Celia was the darling of St. Elizabeth’s Home and she was the daughter of the administrator. Celia learned at an early age how to be pastoral to the myriad of girls who flowed through the home and by the age of fifteen, she was a pro. One day, she sat with Lorraine, a new girl who had great red curls. During the conversation, the new girl, Lorraine, asked about how to respond to the questions she would be asked in the interview. Celia said to tell the interviewer the truth. Then Lorraine asked Celia, ‘What did you tell her.’ Celia was speechless.

‘I sat there speechless and frozen,’ she told me; I felt I had just been mistaken for someone on the ‘most wanted list.’ ‘No one had ever mistaken me for one of them. The lobby felt small and airless. Celia thought she was going to pass out because she had been mistaken for a sinner. Couldn’t everyone see she was not? She thought everyone could tell she was just as her mother had wanted her to be.

Jesus came down from Galilee to be baptized.

The child’s birth we hailed less than three weeks ago is now an adult. We move quickly from birth to ministry and I’ve often wondered about the process that brought Jesus of Nazareth to this point of baptism. Nonetheless and all wondering aside, John the Baptist disagrees that this person who approached him for the baptism of cleansing and forgiving was in the right place or relationship. What are you doing here, you aren’t one of them. ‘I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?’

Very different from Celia, an opposite response emerged the day.

This Jesus showed up and got in line, no parting of crowds. Later, though, there was lots of controversy. You see Christians have never been happy with the baptism of Jesus. Surly we want him o be a friend of sinners. Like Celia, we certainly don’t want anyone to think he is one of them; we don’t want to even consider guilt by association.

Only Jesus did not seem too concerned about that. In him, God’s being with us included being in the river with us, standing next to us as we hold the kitten, drive too quickly and try to ignore him. Yet, he still assures us that it’s in the association that we are included. It is through that water that we are all related and it is in our related ness that we can become so much more.

Like all those present on the day of the Lord’s Baptism, we bring ourselves to the waters of the same river to renew our journey. We pray that this will lead us to greater openness to the Spirit.

For Jesus came down from Galilee to be baptized. Today we celebrate, once again the bond that issues from the same source of life that we have shared since our own Baptism.

Thanks be to God.

AMEN
The Rev. Denise P. Mantell, Rector