Epiphany 1

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Sermon for the 1st Sunday after Epiphany: Baptism of Our Lord Emmanuel, Greenwood 12 January 2014 (The Rev.) Christopher M. Garcia

Go in Peace to Love and Serve the Lord Go in peace to love and serve the Lord. You all know these words. With these or similar words our deacon or celebrant dismisses us at the end of each Eucharistic liturgy. Go in peace to love and serve the Lord. This dismissal may seem a strange way to begin a sermon, yet these words encapsulate what we are about. We go in peace because we have been fed and nourished by God’s word and sacrament. We go in peace not because we are perfect, or our lives are perfect. To the contrary, you know that’s not the case. Yet we can go in peace even in the face of terrible and tragic circumstances, because we know God’s love. We go in peace because we know God’s love. We go in peace to bear witness to that love. We go in peace to share God’s love with a world that too often settles for some other idol, yet is desperate to know the real thing Our Gospel passage today echoes with this same thought. Go in peace to love and serve the lord. This story comes very early in Matthew’s gospel and marks the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry. Matthew gives us Jesus’ birth story, and then the flight into Egypt and return, and then nothing of Jesus’ childhood or upbringing or the dawning in him of his awareness of his divinity, of God’s will, of the plan for his earthly ministry. We get a few paragraphs about the John the Forerunner, and then, this baptismal story. After Jesus is baptized by John, just as Jesus come up from the water, suddenly the heavens are opened and the Spirit of God comes down and God’s voice is heard, “this is my beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” Not a dismissal, but rather a commissioning, a beginning. Inauguration, not a dismissal, yet in fact what Jesus does for the rest of his time on this earth is to Go in Peace to Love and Serve the Lord. Jesus can go in peace because he has been nourished with God’s spirit. Jesus can go in peace to fulfill all righteousness, to obey God’s will. Jesus can go in peace to love and serve the Lord because he is perfectly aligned with God the Father’s will and plan. Jesus knows perfect intimacy with God. _______________________________ First Sunday after the Epiphany: the Baptism of Our Lord, Revised Common Lectionary A. Isaiah 42:1-9; Psalm 29; Acts 10:34-43; Matthew 3:13-17. “Father in heaven, who at the baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan proclaimed him your beloved Son and anointed him with the Holy Spirit: Grant that all who are baptized into his Name may keep the covenant they have made, and boldly confess him as Lord and Savior; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.” 1

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Today’s reading from Acts captures another baptismal story, another version of Go in Peace to Love and serve the Lord. Not very long after Jesus’ death and resurrection and ascension, His friends are still trying to figure out what it means to be Jesus followers now that their Lord is no longer with them in the flesh. Peter, one of Jesus’ closest companions, finds himself in the seaside city of Joppa. The ancient seaside port of Joppa now has been swallowed up by modern Tel Aviv, but it is on the shore of the Mediterranean, about thirty miles north of Caesarea Maritima. Two cities, about thirty miles apart. One, Joppa, is a trading port. The other, Caesarea Maritima, is the political capital of the Roman province of Judea. Caesarea, and not Jerusalem, is the center of Roman rule and domination. Acts tells us of two overlapping visions. Peter falls into a trance and the Spirit of God tells Peter that he’s about to have some visitors. “Go with them, for I have sent them.” Meanwhile, thirty miles to the south, Cornelius, a Roman centurion, hears God telling him to send for somebody named Simon Peter, whom they will find in Joppa. Both of them obey. The Roman officer sends off his messengers to find this Simon Peter character. And when Simon Peter gets the summons, he obeys, and travels south to the capital. Think about this. How incredulous is this? A busy roman official, sends off for someone he has never heard from. Simon Peter, who has just seen his master crucified by the Romans, now finds himself summoned to the seat of Roman authority. And yet he goes. What happens next does nothing less than transform what we now understand to be Christianity. Peter preaches the Gospel to this powerful Roman official and to his household. The Holy Spirit falls on them and they believe. This Roman commander accepts the Good News. These Romans, these outsiders to Judaism, these hated foreigners, accept the Good News. God’s love is for them, too, not just the children of Israel. God’s love is for everyone. And when Peter realizes this, he orders that these Romans, these hated foreigners, these outsiders, are to be baptized. Brought into the family. God ‘s love is for everyone. And so we come to today’s third baptismal story. First we had Jesus’ baptism. Then we had Cornelius’s baptism, along with his household. Our third baptismal story today is your baptismal story and my baptismal story. I am told that I was baptized on 11 October 1959. That was a long time ago. I was only 39 days old at the time. I don’t remember very much about it. Many of you were baptized as infants or very young children, and you can’t remember your baptism. And so the Church does something quite wonderful. Whenever we baptize anyone, we invite everyone who is present to renew his or her own baptismal covenant. Today is the feast of the Baptism of our Lord. The Feast of the Baptism of our Lord is one of the days in the church year that are traditional days for baptism. The

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other days are the Great Vigil of Eater, the Feast of Pentecost, All Saints Day, and whenever the Bishop visits a congregation. And our prayer book tells us that on any of these special days, if we don’t have a baptism, we are invited to remember our own baptisms anyway, by renewing our own baptismal vows. So at least four or five times every year, we are invited to remember and renew the promises we made at our own baptisms, or that were made for us by our parents and our sponsors. In a few minutes, I will invite you to join with me as we renew our baptismal promises. When we do, I want you to listen for this pattern, this pattern of Go in Peace to Love and Serve the Lord. Let’s go ahead and turn now, in our prayer books, to page 292, a take a look at what we’re about to do. First we reaffirm our renunciation of evil and renew our commitment to Jesus Christ. We say, “yes” once again to what is true and good, and we say “no” to everything that draws us away from God. Then, in the next three questions, we say the Apostles Creed, one of the oldest creedal statements of the church. Yes, we believe in God the Father. Yes, we believe in God made flesh, in Jesus, the Christ. Yes, we believe in God the Holy Spirit, who is with us in the church, in the communion of saints, and in all of life. And yes, we will celebrate this every week, by continuing to teach what the followers of Jesus have always taught, and by having weekly fellowship just as the church has always gathered, to break bread and to pray. And even though we won’t get this right every time, we will keep trying, never giving up. These promises are why we can say, “Go in Peace.” We have peace because we believe in a God who loves us, who came among us as one of us, and who sustains us even now, in word and sacrament, in fellowship and teaching. This is our peace. And what will we do, in response to this good news? Well, we will tell about this good news. We proclaim this good news by how we live our lives, and by the stories we tell. We can do this because God is with us, and we know God’s peace. We can do this because God never stops loving us, never stops reaching out to us, never stops feeding us and sustaining us. So whenever you hear our dismissal – “go in peace to love and serve the Lord” – remember the promises of your baptism. Amen.