The Baptism of the Lord – [Proper 1], rcl yr c, 2025
ISAIAH 43:1-7; PSALM 29; ACTS 8:14-17; LUKE 3:15-17, 21-22
keep your children, born of water and the Spirit, faithful to their calling
I’m going to take as my starting point today a tasty little morsel from the collect.
(The Collect is one of the prayers prayed by the presider at the beginning of the service, when I would say “Let us pray” and then give a bit of silence as you take a moment of silent prayer, only to collect those prayers with a set prayer that speaks to the feast and readings of the day.)
The structure of the collect is usually something close to “God we remember that you have done this thing; so now we ask, could you continue to do that thing in your name”or sometimes “now do this related thing, in your name.” Today the Collect of the Day begins “Eternal Father, who at the baptism of Jesus revealed him to be your Son, anointing him with the Holy Spirit.”
Can you hear that remembering, that reminding of what God has already done here?God you did this thing: when Jesus was baptized there was this voice and you told us that Jesus was your Son and then the Holy Spirit descended upon him. That’s a bit of a summary of the Gospel I just read; it’s what we celebrate on the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord.
But there’s an almost contractual element to the collect, not because God is anything less than free; God is free to act as God would act. But because God is faithful, and we can fairly expect that God will continue to be faithful to his people, we don’t just remember, or remind God or ourselves what God has done. Instead, what is implied in the collect (and in another way in the Eucharistic Prayer, too) is that God doesn’t only act in the past, but that God continues to act in the present.
And so what we pray today is not just “God you did this thing in the Jordan when Jesus was baptised, and you proclaimed him as your Son and gave him the Holy Spirit,” but we are reminded that the baptism of two thousand years agohas a great deal to do with us, and with our present circumstance. And today,what we ask God to do, as it relates to what God has already done? “[K]eep your children, born of water and the Spirit, faithful to their calling.” Then we say a bit about how: and it’s “through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.”
There’s a trick I learned when I was in the Episcopal Church in the US: if you don’t like the readings, preach on the collect instead. I only say this because I want to be clear that this is not what I’m aiming to do! This is not an attempt to avoid the Bible. We will get there. But for the moment it’s this central bit, where we ask God to continue doing God has already done, that I’d like to say more about today: “keep your children, born of water and the Spirit, faithful to their calling.”
And we begin with “your children.” Jesus is named as the Son of God, we are reminded today, and this is a unique title; there is only one Son of the Father. But in Romans we do hear St. Paul say that we too are children of God, but by adoption: “All who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God; the Spirit bears witness to this as we pray and call out to God; and as children of God, we are co-heirs of the Kingdom, we have a share in the future glory of God: the redemption of our bodies and the redemption of the whole of creation.
So we may not be Sons or Daughters or Children of God precisely the way Jesus is named as the Son of God; but we are God’s children by adoption, something that grants an extraordinary dignity, by the Spirit, not only to us as embodied persons (even as we may be suffering bodily in the present) but also the extraordinary dignity given to all creation (a creation that is also suffering and groaning the the present, but one that will be redeemed alongside God’s children).
To be children of God is to have faith, that is, to hope in things unseen; to look forward to the renewal of creation; and the renewal of our bodies, in Kingdom come; we the children of God, “born of water and the Spirit.”
This Kingdom Come is a whole lot wilder and woollier than we might imagine just from the collect; Jesus “will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
Judgment is part of this future in which we hope; though I’d be cautious here. To burn away the chaff is a way of imagining that what is unnecessary, that which is not the fruit of salvation, that which keeps us from thriving—this is what will be burned away. The things that we cannot set right on our own, will be set right; and this will be a kind of purification, and a judgment that is in God’s hands for the sake of the good of us all, the creation included.
But again, we are not released from where we are called to be. We ask that as Jesus was faithful in his calling, as the Father voices his confirmation of his son’s vocation to stand in for us, to suffer for us, to be resurrected for us, as Jesus was faithful in his calling so too would we be faithful in our calling. And what we are called to is to imagine the end in the now that is, as we imagine where things are heading by God’s hands: the reconciliation of us to one another, of us to God, of us reconciled to creation itself, we work at this—that we be faithful to this calling of love and reconciliation.
And I’m quite proud of us as a community—that we have been faithful to our calling. It was already clear when I arrived however many years ago what our calling is—because we were struggling to live out that calling. We knew what it was; but there were things that were keeping us from heeding that calling. I’ve summed this up over the years in a number of different ways: that we already knew that our calling was to love God and to love our neighbour; and that for us at St John’s, this looks like worshipping God in beauty and holiness, and in offering what we can for the sake of our neighbours.
Can we do more? For sure. Is this hard? Well, it ain’t easy. But are we faithful to our calling? Absolutely.
One final thing about this faithfulness. How is it that we could be faithful to this calling?The Gospel reading, and the collect, seem clear that baptism, being a member of a church like ours, is not simply a physical gesture. It’s not just about the water. Our Pentecostal friends are clearest about this, making a clear differentiation between baptism by water and baptism of the Spirit. We think they are both important too, but we do feel confident that baptism in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit confers this Spirit; and it is for this that we pray when we baptize.
And so to be faithful to our calling is a matter of God’s own faithfulness toward us: by God’s work within us, in the power of the Holy Spirit that lives within us, that prays within us, that reaches out to the Father from within us. But it isn’t just a matter of the Holy Spirit, either; and this brings us to the end of our collect, and the one with whom we are co-heirs of God’s Kingdom: We are born of water and the Spirit, we are made co-heirs of the Kingdom with Jesus, we are kept faithful to our calling not according to our own small and weak and bumbling efforts—but through Christ himself: “through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with [the Father] and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.”
The Revd Canon Preston DS Parson, PhD
Angus Sinclair was appointed Director of Music of St. John the Evangelist on February 1, 2023. Having graduated in 1981 (Honours B.Mus.) in organ performance from Wilfrid Laurier University, he went on to distinguish himself as a church musician, recitalist and accompanist touring in both Canada and the UK. For over 40 years Angus has served parishes and congregations throughout Southwestern Ontario as director of music. He experiences his present appointment to St. John’s as a welcome homecoming, both spiritually and musically.
As our parish musician, he provides both support and leadership so that a variety of parish programs can find musical expression and attract participation. When our handbell choir is in season, he is one of our ringers. At parish dinners, he provides popular piano music for the guests to dine by. For both worship services and concerts, he will rehearse and accompany vocal and instrumental soloists from our congregation on piano, organ, or even accordion.
Angus Sinclair was appointed Director of Music of St. John the Evangelist on February 1, 2023. Having graduated in 1981 (Honours B.Mus.) in organ performance from Wilfrid Laurier University, he went on to distinguish himself as a church musician, recitalist and accompanist touring in both Canada and the UK. For over 40 years Angus has served parishes and congregations throughout Southwestern Ontario as director of music. He experiences his present appointment to St. John’s as a welcome homecoming, both spiritually and musically.