10 January 2010

Isaiah 43:1-7
Psalm 29
Acts 8:14-17
Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

I do not have an extensive understanding of Eastern Orthodox Christianity beyond the fact that followers of this branch of the Christian Church put far more emphasis on January 6 -- the traditional day of the Feast of Epiphany -- than do we Lutherans who along with Roman Catholics and Anglicans are part of Western Christianity.  We also celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany, as we did here at St. Paul last Sunday, but we commemorate that day primarily as the visitation of the Magi to the Infant Christ child several days after His birth.  In contrast, Eastern Christians commemorate January 6 primarily as the Baptism of our Lord, considering this to be the first ‘epiphany’ -- the great “Aha awareness” -- that Jesus is the Son of God.

This past week, Orthodox Christians gathered twice to celebrate what is known as the “Great Blessing of the Waters.”   On the Evening before January 6, their practice is to share in a liturgy that blesses the water of the Baptismal Font inside their sanctuaries.  And then on January 6, the day of Epiphany, they gather at a body of water outside the sanctuary -- a river, a lake, or the ocean -- where the water is blessed by the priest who then throws a wooden cross into it.  If swimming is feasible, volunteers dive in and attempt to retrieve the cross; for anyone who does so receives a personal and a family blessing and the promise of good luck for the coming year.  In Tarpon Springs, Florida, this annual celebration attracts as many as 4,000 worshippers and hundreds of volunteer swimmers.  In Russia, as you might guess, the swimming part is not encourage. There, the practice is simply to cut a hole in the ice, so that the priest can grasp the cross securely while immersing it three times.

This morning, along with many other Western Christians, we celebrate the Baptism of our Lord.   We began our service with our own “Blessing of the Waters” and a remembrance of our baptism, giving thanks for the gift of water that brings life and freshness to the earth and which washes away our sins and brings us to eternal life.  In our processional hymn, we joined in singing as we felt that water fall upon our heads: “Remember and rejoice, renewed by floods of grace.   We bear the sign of Jesus Christ, that time cannot erase.”  We will not, however, for a number of reasons, follow this later today, with an outdoor swimming opportunity at Confluence Park, where Cherry Creek and the Platte River come together.

But we do this morning remember the Baptism of our Lord in the River Jordan, thinking about what that event meant for His life and ministry.  And we  remember as well, our own baptism and what that “walking wet” marked by the sign of the cross means for our life and our ministry.

Three years ago, on the Day of Epiphany, my wife and I joined a group led by professors from the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago for a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.  We flew from O’Hare by way of Paris to Amman, Jordan.  The next day we were driven to what is known as “Bethany Beyond the Jordan” -- one of sites along the Jordan River considered to be places where Jesus was baptized by his relative John.  While an increasing number of scholars and archaeologists are convinced that this is the spot where John the Baptist lived and to which people came from the city of Jerusalem to hear his fiery words and be baptized by him, it is not an impressive site.  At that point, just north of where the Jordan enters the Dead Sea, the land is desolate and sandy, and the Jordan little more than a small, muddy stream.  Near the place where people can walk down and take home a bottle of the water, is a beautiful church built in honor of John the Baptist, and all around the area are excavations of other dwellings from antiquity that point to this as the “spot” where Jesus was baptized.  Another site we visited within Israel, is located just north of where the Jordan enters the Sea of Galilee.  This sire both developed and beautiful.  There the water flows clear in a fairly wide river, past a location now used for mass baptisms, equipped with showers and changing rooms and a series of wide stone steps leading to the river itself -- where there is, by the way, a large sign warning people not to go into the water.

Christians did not begin to make pilgrimages to the Holy Land until several centuries after the time of Christ.  The places we now visit on modern pilgrimages to this tense and divided land, may or may not be the actual places where events recorded in the New Testament took place, so again and again our tour leaders reminded us that what is ultimately important is not where these events might have occurred, but what events like the Baptism of our Lord meant and what they continue to mean for us.