1st Sunday After Advent

From Water to Fire
By Rev Steven R Mitchell
1st Sunday after Epiphany, 1/10/10
Isaiah 43: 1-7; Acts 8:14-17; Luke 3: 15-17, 21-22
1st Congregational UCC, Rock Springs, WY


Today is the First Sunday after Epiphany. This year, Epiphany came on Wednesday. Traditionally, Epiphany is the day that we would read the story about the three wise men from the East who traveled to Bethlehem, looking for the new King of the Jews! The definition of the word Epiphany can mean: manifestation or revelation or showing and suggests a shining light; thus the story of three foreigners traveling to find a new king being lead by a bright shining star. This story also speaks to the revealing of the Messiah not just to the Jews, which came with the telling of shepherds on a hillside, but to the world beyond the Jewish Kingdom, or rather to the greater world as depicted by these three men coming from the East.
All through the Advent season, we were constantly reading where God was speaking through Angels to various people such as Joseph and Mary, as well as Zechariah in preparation to the birth of Jesus. Then of the news of Jesus’ birth being delivered to the shepherds by not just one angel but through a host of angels! There was a constant phrase of re-assurance being given to ever one who was encountering these celestial beings with the words, “do not be afraid!” Angels through the first three chapters of Luke come at the bidding of God’s Spirit as it intertwined with life here on earth.
Yet angels are not the only reference within the Bible that is used in the descriptions of God’s Spirit moving among humanity. All through its pages, you can read that people interpreted God’s Spirit moving among them in the form of “water, wind and fire.” All three of these elements can bring terror to the hearts of those who experience them. One only needs to think about being on I-80 between Rock Springs and Rawlins in the middle of a blizzard to understand the feeling of fear about the possibility of being stranded; or during a good old Kansas storm as you huddle in the corner of your basement, and hear the roar of what sounds like a freight train going through your house, as a tornado sweeps clean everything in its path; or that sinking feeling as one watching on T.V. and sees Yellowstone National Park, one of our national treasures being consumed by a rushing wall of fire that was started by a bolt of lightning.
And yet all three of these have a mystical quality, too: water is the stuff of life – beginning with birth, we thirst for it all our days; fire brings light in the darkest night and heat in the coldest winter; and wind – wind is the most evocative sign of the Spirit moving among us; in fact, the word Spirit in this week’s reading from the Gospel of Luke can be translated also as “wind”, and when the heaven was opened, the Spirit descended like a dove upon Jesus, standing there in the River Jordan. One can imagine that it felt like a great wind blowing through. Reflection by Kate Huey
Epiphany’s in one’s life generally do not happen with occurring frequencies. For me, the last epiphany that I can point to occurred in 1989, at 32,000 feet above the earth on a return flight to Kittitas, WA after attending 4 day convocation on ministering to those people living with AIDS. Although a dove didn’t descend from heaven and land on my head, I did hear God speak words that at that time of my life were very much needed; that I was loved by God and She was well pleased with who I am. These were life changing words to me, words that not only brought a true sense of peace, but also the courage that I needed to face life openly.
I am not sure how many of you here this morning can recall your baptism; if you were raised as a Congregationalist or Methodist, Catholic, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, or Lutheran, you were most likely baptized as an infant and not able to recall that experience. For those of us who come from the more so called “Evangelical” side of the Church, where “believers baptism” is practiced, probably do recall your baptism. I don’t know about you, but I had grown up in Sunday school hearing year after year about how when Jesus was baptized a voice boomed from Heaven saying “you are my son, of whom I am well pleased” and then a white dove came out of the clouds and descended upon Jesus’ head. So, when I was ready to be baptized at age 14, I had a pretty good idea of what to expect at my baptism.
I was being baptized in the tradition of Baptists, which meant that when you were baptized you were dunked totally under water. Now I wasn’t naïve enough to think that God’s voice was going to be booming out about how proud he was of me as I came up out of the water, or even that a dove would mysteriously appear in the church and land on my head. I mean, I wasn’t born yesterday and I had seen plenty of baptism and nothing like that had ever happened to any of those people. But I did expect as I was coming up out of the water, to see the clouds part and would be able to see the gates of Heaven. You can imagine my disappointment when that didn’t happen. I instantly thought that I hadn’t been baptized correctly or worse, that it didn’t take. So, I did experience the water, but I didn’t experience any wind or abnormal lighting effects. Those words that I was hoping to hear at age 14 didn’t occur until for 22 more years when I was 36; not in a baptismal tank but jetting through the air at 32,000 feet at 630+ mile per hour; for Jesus it was with a dove descending, for me it was in mid air.
In the book of Acts, we read that: the apostles in Jerusalem had learned that Samaria had accepted the word of God, and they sent Peter and John to them. When they arrived, they prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit had not yet come upon any of them; they had simply been baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus. Then Peter and John placed their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit. Acts 8:14-17
I realize that this is one of those selections of scripture that the Charismatic Christians and Pentecostals use to fortify their understanding of being able to speak in tongues, or in a language that is foreign to them as prove that they have been “baptized” by the Holy Spirit and somehow hold a higher ranking on the spiritual ladder in this life. I don’t wish to say that “speaking in tongues” isn’t a valid gift from God. But when I read this particular scripture, what I understand it to say doesn’t pertain to “speaking in tongues.”
What I see in this selection of scripture speaks to the growth that comes out of one’s baptism. You see, our Spirituality isn’t something that becomes “mature” with the act of being Baptized. Our spirituality is something that comes with growth. In Luke, we read where the dove didn’t descend upon Jesus until after He prayed. Throughout the entire Gospel of Luke we will read where “prayer” is the center of Jesus’ life. I believe that we are never truly mature spiritually until we die and join God in our spiritual bodies, but through our baptism we start that journey of growing, through studying God’s word, reading and reflecting upon inspirational writings outside of the Bible, and through the act of prayer, lots and lots of prayer. If baptism is the foundation of our awareness of God, then prayer is the corner stone to that building of a relationship with God. Paul likens our bodies to being the Temples of God; it is through prayer that we allow the Holy Spirit to thrive within these temples.
I wish to close with a story that comes from Marilynne Robinson’s book, Gilead:
The narrator of the book is an elderly minister who knows he’s about to die after a long and steady but fairly quiet life as a pastor. He is writing to his young son, the child of a late-in-life marriage to a much younger woman. One of the story’s he is relating comes from his own childhood, being a son of a minister himself. It was a story of him and another preacher’s kid who decided to baptize a litter of kittens. The boys took this all very seriously, he says, but the mother cat didn’t, and she interrupted their little service and took the kittens away right in mid-baptism. When the boy asked his father the pastor “in the most offhand way imaginable what exactly would happen to a cat if one were to, say, baptize it,” his father gave him a stern response that the sacraments must always be treated and regarded with the greatest respect. The narrator remembers, “That wasn’t really an answer to my question. We did respect the sacraments, but we thought the whole world of those cats. I got his meaning, though, and I did no more baptizing until I was ordained.”
Now, at the end of his life and after many years of baptizing the faithful of his flock, the old pastor looks back on the day he baptized the cats: “I still remember,” he says, “how those warm little brows felt under the palm of my hand. Everyone has petted a cat, but to touch one like that, with the pure intention of blessing it, is a very different thing. It stays in the mind. For years we would wonder what, from a cosmic viewpoint, we had done to them. It still seems to me to be a real question. There is a reality in blessing, which I take baptism to be, primarily. It doesn’t enhance sacredness, but it acknowledges it, and there is a power in that. I have felt it pass through me, so to speak. The sensation is of really knowing a creature; I mean really feeling its mysterious life and your own mysterious life at the same time.”
Baptism, it is an acknowledgement of God’s blessing upon the life of the person being baptized. It is the starting point in which the stir of the Holy Spirit begins. It is the coming from water to fire. It is prayer that nurtures and strengthens the spirit within us. Today we have the opportunity to acknowledge and re-affirm our beginning, our baptism, our blessing! Amen