Sunday, January 9, 2022
/The First Sunday after Epiphany
Isaiah 43: 1-7; Psalm 29; Acts 8: 14 - 17, Luke 3: 15-17, 21-22
The Rev. James M.L. Grace
In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. AMEN.
Twenty-five years ago, my brother Randall and I travelled to the Middle East. Our trip took about a month, and along the way we visited Athens, Istanbul, Jerusalem, Amman, Petra, and Jericho. With only a few days of our trip left, we crossed the border from Israel into Egypt.
We crossed over from Israel into Egypt and began our drive across the Sinai peninsula to Cairo. At some point during our journey, the car broke down. We all climbed out of it, and I scanned the desert horizon around me, and it was miles and miles of endless desert As the deep red sun began to set in the west, I knew that as long as we followed the sun west, we would eventually arrive at Cairo. Eventually a kind person driving along the road picked us up and brought us to our destination in Cairo.
Thousands of years before, a group of travelers also came from the east, following a star in the nighttime sky. These travelers were presumably astrologers, people who studied the stars. The stars have helped people travel for centuries, whether a sailor at sea, or those who travelled the Underground Railroad alongside Harriet Tubman. Today, we don’t know what star these astrologers followed, or what it looked like. Some think it was a comet, or maybe the joining of two planets in the sky, or even a supernova. We don’t know.
We do know that they left their homeland because they believed that astrological phenomena, like a bright star, indicated that something important had happened on earth. We know the star, whatever it was, led them to meet God’s child, Jesus of Nazareth.
That story marks the beginning of the season Epiphany, which we celebrated on January 6 and Epiphany is the season we are in now. The word “epiphany” means a “manifestation of a divine being.” This morning we hear another story of an Epiphany - the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River. He is an infant no longer, the visiting astrologers have long since left. Jesus is now a man, and his baptism in the Jordan River by John the Baptist is one of the few moments in the entire Bible where all three persons of the Trinity are present: God the Son, emerging from the waters, God the Father, whose voice proclaims “this is my son, with whom I am well pleased” and God the Holy Spirit, who rests upon Christ as a dove.
Today is typically a Sunday for baptism, and we were going to have them today, but those who were to be baptized had a Covid exposure, and…you all know the rest of the story. Such is our life today. In place of baptism, in a short moment, we will turn to page 292 of our prayer books to renew our baptismal vows – to remind ourselves of the promises we made (or were made for us) at our baptism.
All of us are on a journey. Some of us are on literal journeys, going places, following stars, or jobs or what have you. Christ also was on a journey – but a different one – a journey of inner discovery. That is the journey we are called to.
You might think of our renewal of baptismal vows today like a map for you. A map helping each of us to do the next right thing. Travel light. Keep following your true star. It will lead you to the greatest discovery imaginable – God, living within you. AMEN.