Readings:
Sermon:
I am writing this a couple of days after the United States removed the president of Venezuela. 40 or more young people died in a Swiss bar on New Year’s Eve. Several folk have drowned in the seas around the UK in the past weeks. New tragedies and challenges abound whilst the old ones - Gaza, Ukraine, Syria, Yemen, North and South Sudan… and on and on stay with us and never seem to end or heal.
Jesus once said, “The poor are always with you”. And again, “There will be wars and rumours of wars. But the end is not yet.”
“Hope” is a big word in the Church of England just now. It became very popular during the Pandemic. But it struck me then, and it still strikes me now, how easily Christians use the word “hope” to simply mean that with a bit of effort, a following wind and everybody’s good will, things can get better. Which, of course, is fair enough.
Except that’s not what Christian faith means by hope. For Christians hope is what we have in the face of death. It is the hope of the resurrection, sure and certain. It is always, for me, the most profound moment at a funeral when I say those words at the committal of the body to the ground or to cremation - in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection.
And Jesus is Baptised. John the Baptist can’t understand why… surely it should be the other way round. But Jesus says that this is what fulfils all righteousness.
Jesus simply wants to be where we are. He hasn’t come like superman to save the day. He isn’t the dispassionate leader living above all the problems. He’s here in the middle of it all. And Baptism and funerals are utterly linked. Indeed the funeral is, I suggest, the completion of Baptism., at least in this world.
When I send the newly baptised out with their lighted candle at the end of the service I like to point out that the liturgy doesn’t have a tidy end. Because it isn’t an end, it’s the beginning of a life-long journey with God which only ends, in this world, when we are laid to rest.
Jesus is baptised because he shares that journey with us. And it ended for him at his death. Except it didn’t, of course, his resurrection is our hope, sure and certain, that death is an end, but not the end. It is our hope, sure and certain of resurrection.
That is the hope we have for the world, not so much the “let’s get social conditions better for everyone” sort of hope (although I’m all for that too) . Sometimes we can make things better, sometimes we will fail. Our hope of social improvement will have varying results.
But the sure and certain hope of resurrection sustains us through all the other hopes and fears, all the other successes and failures.
We need to get this right first, then, and only then can we attempt to change society.
Jesus is Baptised.
Jesus walks with us in this life so we can walk with him in eternity.