Gathering at the River

Epiphany 1 Jan. 13, 2008/Annual Meeting St. Paul’s

Isaiah 42:1-9
Psalm 29
Acts 10:34-38
Matthew 3:13-17

I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow
of human blood in human veins.

In his poem, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” Langston Hughes evokes the power of these commonplace yet compelling bodies of water. When people like John the Baptist started dunking people in rivers like the Jordan they opened a torrent of imagery and symbolism that washes down to us even today. We humans know water. We know what rushing water can do. We know it can clean us, and if we are feeling full of sin and woe and regret, we can wash away all those troubles and get a fresh start in a flowing river. If we are frightened and oppressed, if injustice and poverty threaten to keep us enslaved, we can jump into that river and come out the other side a free person. If we dislike the world as it is, torn by strife and inequality, a world where the rich get rich and the poor get poorer, and sicker, and weaker, and lonelier, and colder, we can take power from that mighty river, plunging in and springing up again, ready to take on the forces of wrong.

We have a lot to do today at this river. We are going to renew our own baptismal vows. We are going to have our parish Annual Meeting, to recap the past year and look forward to the new. We are going to gather in friendship and fellowship – to break bread and share wine, to nibble cake and drink coffee – to do all this in communion with the One who takes all our ordinariness and blesses it, and brings us simple souls into his body, and through his body, into the very nature of God’s own self. We have a lot to do today.

But back to the river.

This story of the baptism of Jesus is found in all four gospels, and next week we’ll read the version from the Gospel of John. They are all alike, and yet a little different, and those differences can jar us a little bit. For example, don’t we think that Jesus and John are total buddies, cousins, completely on the same page in this kingdom of God proclamation thing? Apparently not, if we look closely at this text from Matthew. Jesus comes to the river, to be baptized, and look there: “John would have prevented him.”

If you remember back to the 3rd Sunday in Advent, the John the Baptist Sunday, John and Jesus are not exactly on the same wave length. John is rough, ready to take up arms – if not literally, then symbolically. Remember Jesus’ words: “What did you go out into the wilderness to look at? A reed shaken by the wind? Someone in soft robes?” In that passage, you may remember, Jesus sympathizes with John, stands in solidarity with John, and yet clearly makes the distinction that his message brings peace, healing, hope, compassion, kindness – he cites this same prophet Isaiah that we read this morning. When Jesus comes, he brings justice, healing, light to the blind, freedom to the enslaved. No wonder slaves escaping the south before the Civil War sang about gathering at the river: freedom, spiritual and physical, was on the other side.

Jesus does not denounce John, or his methods or his message. Jesus stands with John, and with all those others waiting baptism: Jesus stands with us sinners, us dirty folk, us yearning for freedom, us hoping for a better world. Jesus plunges into those same waters with us, and comes up the same way we do, the same river water pouring off him as it pours off us. When God thunders from the heavens, “This is my child, the Beloved,” God means us, too. Just as God is pleased with Jesus, God is pleased with us, too. We gather at the river, we beloved, we little band of believers, we who are pleasing to God.

Big changes are ahead for St. Paul’s.

• A new Executive Committee has been formed, which includes partners in mission from outside this worshipping congregation along with leadership from among you, the worshipping congregation.

• A budget has been drawn up to support the development of this Episcopal Church as a “new start,” plans which will depend on the financial support of our neighboring parishes in the South Shore and Taunton River Deaneries.

• The Diocese of Massachusetts will continue its base line support, and will provide other support in grants and aid for specific projects and initiatives.

• All of these partners from outside these walls challenge us, the worshipping congregation of St. Paul’s, to do our part: to continue our financial support in pledges and giving that exceed or match what we gave in 2007.

• Our partners in mission – from the Bishop on down – are depending on us -- to continue, in the words of the Baptismal Covenant, “in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers.” That means to get here every Sunday, to be part of this part of the Body of Christ.

• Our partners in mission – the guests and volunteers at St. Paul’s Table – are counting on us – to continue “to persevere in resisting evil … to seek and serve Christ in all persons, to love our neighbors as ourselves, to strive for justice and peace among all people, and to respect the dignity of every human being.” That means that people across the City of Brockton are counting on us to be here, not just to feed the hungry but to be a beacon of light and hope and compassion.

• I am counting on you – to continue “to proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ.” I am counting on you, each of you, to be part of this new venture to be this Good News in this place. I am counting on each of you to take this seriously. To act, to read, to study, to pray, to give, to show up, to give thanks, and to start all over again.

We are gathered at the river. It’s rushing by. John is there in the middle of it. He is fierce, frightening, over the top, too demanding and too bossy. It all seems too much; we can’t do it, it is too much change. If we go in that water, things won’t be like they used to be, they won’t sound the same, they won’t look the same. It will be too weird. There is no one else there in the river that we know.

Except for Jesus, who wades in even though John is not so sure about this. Jesus, who comes up out of that water with us in tow, hearing those same words, that we are beloved and pleasing to God.