Unity in Water and Light
A sermon on Luke 3:15-22 for Baptism of Our Lord, 2025, Preached at St Paul's, Ashgrove
Baptism is, among other things, a sign of unity. With the world as divided as it is, that may make baptism the most practical gift we can offer the world right now.
We are united in baptism this morning,
not just to the people here in church with us;
not just with other Anglicans;
not just with people who believe exactly the same things as us;
Not just with people who practice the Christian faith in exactly the same way as us;
We are united in baptism with everyone, everywhere, everywhen, who has ever been baptised. Each baptised person here this morning is united to Christ in baptism, and since we are all united to Christ we are united to each other –
liking each other or not,
agreeing with each or not,
approving of each other’s lifestyles or not.
Unity is a hard reality to stand in, is it not? Our communities are becoming increasingly polarised; increasingly divided into factions. There is so much pressure to pick a team.
We feel pressure to create distance between ourselves and people who think differently from us. We fear that if we stand with people who believe or practice the wrong things then we will be tainted or compromised by their wrongness. So, we are careful about who we stand with – so careful that we are in danger of finding ourselves standing alone.
But here we are in church this morning, sitting and standing with a motley collection of people who have all sorts of strange ways of seeing the world – different from how I see the world – different from how you see the world. Here we are, standing together despite those differences, united by our common baptism.
Week by week, we practice this.
This standing together.
This standing with people who we have very little in common with except that we follow Jesus and value the sacrament of baptism that expresses that Jesus-following. Some were baptised as babies like the beautiful babies we will be baptising this morning. Some were baptised as adults. You may not have been baptised yet, and since you are here with us this morning we invite you to consider joining us in this counter-cultural act of unity.
While polarising conflict is spreading gloomy darkness, Christian baptism may be the shaft of light our world most needs.
Light is big theme in the season of Epiphany, which began last week. An epiphany, in theological understanding, is like a sudden burst of light - a sudden appearing of God – a sudden opening of our eyes to a reality beyond our imagining. In this season we look for God in unexpected places, we
Seek the truth wherever it might lead us, believing true truth will always lead us to God, and
Welcome outsiders as both seekers and bringers of wisdom.
The Epiphany season unsettles us and calls us away from uniformity and comfort into diversity, plurality and questioning – more and more questioning. Where is truth to be found? Where is God to be found? And this morning, as we focus on baptism, we ask where unity can be found in all this diversity and plurality and questioning?
We take that wondering to Jesus and John the Baptist.
John the Baptist had a job to do and he did it without distraction or deviation. He was a prophet so he lived like a prophet, dressed like a prophet and spoke like a prophet.
And as it happens, that sort of behaviour got him noticed. People from all over the place sought him out.
And when they sought him out, he would say:
“You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”
This was not a man of great subtlety.
He lived in a time when injustice, corruption and hypocrisy were corroding his people from within and the Roman empire was oppressing them from without. So, John, the fierce, black and white preacher, had plenty of material to work with. He has that in common with the prophets of today.
His mission was to convince as many people as possible to turn around because judgment was on its way like an axe, clearing out everything that was not as it should be.
And so, Jesus was and was not what John was expecting. He baptised Jesus and seems to have witnessed the dove descending on him, identifying him as God’s son. Yet, four chapters later we will find John doubting whether Jesus really is the one he was meant to prepare for.
That is the nature of epiphany – of the dawning of new insight. It does not bring certainty; it calls us to question all our previous certainties. When our eyes are opened to the appearing of God in Jesus – that is not the end of our doubting and questioning. It may be just the beginning. An epiphany is like a shaft of light that can enter through the keyhole of a mind long locked up tight against new insights. It explodes the lock and opens the mind to new possibilities – with all the doubting and questioning that new possibilities bring.
John’s epiphany came with a paradox:
1. Jesus was the Messiah he had been getting ready for.
And
2. Jesus was not the Messiah he thought he had been getting ready for.
After all, where was his axe? How was this man of peace and forgiveness going to bring God’s judgment?
What was John to do when thrown into paradox by this epiphany of God in Jesus?
The four Gospels each picture him differently. The Gospels of Matthew and John describe him making definite statements about Jesus’ identity; Mark leaves it up in the air, as he does so many things. Luke is unique. Luke chooses to focus not on John’s certainty but on his doubts – to press the point that even someone as sure of himself as John could meet and baptise Jesus and still have questions about his identity.
Perhaps it is OK for us to have questions about Jesus too.
Luke is inviting us all to walk that path of questioning and doubting – of keeping our minds open enough that unsettling new insights can do their work in us.
This allows us be curious about each other’s peculiar ideas –
Curious, rather than dismissive.
Curious, rather than feeling pressure to agree or disagree.
Curious, rather than thinking everyone else must agree or disagree with us.
This is a way of doing life together that makes room for baptismal unity in Christ, even where there is irreconcilable diversity of opinion. Even if you think I am completely incorrect, you can be curious about how I happened to come by my incorrect ideas.
Christians have not consistently walked that path. The other path – the path of dividing over every disagreement, has brought us a works in which hundreds of denominations each believing they are the only correct one. And this has given the rest of the world good reason to wonder whether Christians really believe that God is love.
John has a lot to teach us about baptismal unity. What about Jesus? By this point of his life, he seems to know what he is called to do. And it wasn’t about using an axe. It was about allowing the axe to be used against him. He is called to live the life of a perfect human being, fully alive, and in that perfect, full life to attract to himself all the forces that oppose life: forces of power and violence and greed. He knew he was called to be a lightening rod for all those evil forces until they extinguish themselves in his death and are defeated in his resurrection.
As he approached John at the Jordan, he knew that John didn’t get it, that John couldn’t get it.
So, he could have ignored John. Or he could have publicly rebuked him – told him he was wrong about how God was going to put things right – wrong about the direction in which the axe would be pointing. But that’s not what he did.
He approached John humbly and asked to receive his ministry: Asked John to baptise him.
Here were two very different people with very different ideas about what is going on and what is needed. Yet we don’t see conflict here. We don’t even see tension. We see humble respect.
In this act of baptism, two conflicting positions come together and create unity. Unity that allows two very different people to honour each other while leaving space for diversity of opinion – and for questions and doubts.
This morning we will be baptising two gorgeous babies. One of the things I love about baptising babies is that nobody can say they are acceptable to God because they believe all the right things about God. If we to gave them an exam on Christian doctrine this morning, I’m sorry to say they would not do well.
They do not have a rigidly correct set of beliefs about God. They have the exact opposite. They have the wide-eyed wonder of childhood that keeps their minds open to the many epiphanies that come to them each day. Every moment is an epiphany to toddlers like them. They are full of the curiosity that is essential to learning and growing.
And as they are united to Christ in baptism, and are united to each of us who are already baptised, we receive the gift of their wide-eyed, open-minded, soft-hearted curiosity and wonder! Just as they receive the gift of our wisdom and guidance. We need each other.
We are adults and they are babies, and by being united to Christ in baptism, we all grow, we all learn, we all receive fresh epiphanies from each other.
We are about to promise to support them in their life of faith. It is easy to just read those words because they are part of the liturgy, but that is a big promise – a big commitment. But it isn’t all one way. They support us as well.
They lend us their wide-eyed, open-minded, soft-hearted curiosity and wonder! We need that in our lives of faith, maybe even more than they need our guidance.
We need them and we need each other. We need those odd things things about each other that make us all different; the beliefs that make us uncomfortable; the peculiarities that make us want to push each other away so we can hold on to our certainty and our superiority. Those may be the very things that will open us up just enough for those shafts of light to bring us unexpected epiphanies and fresh questions that just might reveal God to us – and that just might, in us, reveal God to a world that is desperate for light. Amen
With Love from Rev Margaret