Blessing and Baptism
There
is no way to miss the fact that we are now in Epiphany, the season where we celebrate
the way in which Christ being with us,
is continually made more fully known to the Church—the meaning of Jesus being with us, is an expanding
realization, an ongoing surprise to us.
We
celebrate, on one hand, the Feast of Epiphany itself—the celebration of the
Magi showing up at the Holy Family’s Home, seeing the infant Jesus and honoring
him with those three gifts of Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh—
We celebrate this joyous day by
bringing a blessing to our own homes through the traditional practice of a Home
Blessing.
On
the other hand, we celebrate the Baptism of Our Lord, which too is a clear
Epiphany celebration—Jesus’ Baptism reveals
who he is—it’s spelled out plain “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am
well pleased.”
So,
to honor these two signs of this Epiphany Season, we will dwell on the two
practices of Blessing and Baptism.
Prayer
You
might remember that my first few years here I was blessing the heck out of
things and people. There was a back log of worship furnishings that we blessed,
and on top of that we kept inviting in groups of people—Bankers, Teachers, Council
Members, Mothers, Father, (Pets), Doctors, Construction Workers, Food Workers,
and so on—to be blessed. For that matter, we passed out home blessing kits to
the congregation, as we will do this year as well.
And,
upon reflection, I think I may have done that without a whole lot of
groundwork, without laying out a theological—or
even practical—explanation for why
we bless things.
And,
since nature abhors a vacuum, folk filled in their own meanings to what we were
doing.
So, I
want to, be clear about what I understand us to be doing when we bless things
and people.
It
should be stated clearly that we are not spiritually
up-armoring thing.
What
do I mean by that?
You
might remember during the early years of the Iraq war IEDs—Improvised Explosive
Devices—were taking out American Humvees left right and center. The solution was to up-armor them.
Early on that meant affixing cinder blocks or cement to the underside of the
carriages and modifying the windows, later it was done in much more
sophisticated ways with factory made kits.
We’re
not adding some sort of extra layer of protection to a person or thing when we
bless them.
If
you need proof of that, look no further than the Bees Randy takes care of. He
brought in a picture of the hives when we did a blessing of the Animals… and
within weeks of that blessing a bear came along and ate the bees.
Of course several people have suggested it
was in fact a table blessing…
But, the point is, we’re not weaving
some sort of magical circle of protection around the new carpet, or our
Teachers, or any of that. It’s not
spiritual scotch guard.
What
we’re doing is dedicating the thing, or person, or pet, to a particular
purpose. We’re pointing to its proper use, to it’s created intent. We’re asking that it’s goodness—the goodness
God proclaims of it in that poem that starts Scripture—in Genesis 1,
We ask that that goodness might be
manifest,
might become obvious.
We
don’t bless Carpenters in order to keep them from falling off roofs—while I
concede of course not falling off roofs or ladders is part of God’s intent for
that vocation, I believe a stable ladder may be more important than a blessed
ladder
—mainly we are praying that the
goodness of carpentry might come out more fully—that those for whom the
carpenter creates can see God’s intention in that object
—to paraphrase Luther’s explanation
of “Thou Shall Not Steal” the construction is done fairly and with good
material, so no one is cheated, but instead done well for the safety of those
who will use the structure.
Likewise—I’ll
send you off to bless your dwellings—houses,
apartments, rooms, etc, today, in order that they might become Homes—that they might be as God
intended them.
Think
on that, what makes a house a
home
—our homes are shelter from the
elements.
They’re
a place for privacy and safety—they can foster a healthy sense of self and
family.
They
can also be a guard against overwork—they can secure our Sabbaths, being a
physical barrier between our place of leisure and a place of work. (This is why working from home calls for an
extra diligence to keep the two spheres separate.)
Blessing
brings forward the purpose of the thing so blessed—it calls it to be what it is—be Good as it is declared to be by
God.
--
And
that’s a good place to start when pondering John’s Baptism as well—the Baptism
of Repentance that we read about in Mark and in Acts
—It’s
a call back to that original blessing
—calling on folk to crawl back to the
good
—to the blessing of being human
—of being created in the image of the
living God.
It’s a rededication of the person to
the task at hand.
Of
course, it’s worth asking why was Jesus then Baptized?
Did he need to repent?
Did he need to be called back to the
blessing of God?
No
Firstly,
while it’s not recorded in Mark’s account of his Baptism, it is in Matthew’s—that
the Baptism is done to fulfill all righteousness.
John’s job was to call all of Israel
to Repentance—but even for a hard working guy like him, it would be all but
impossible to chase down every one of his Kinspeople and Baptize them.
So, Jesus sort of stands in for his
whole nation. Just as Paul sees Jesus as a second righteous Adam, in Baptism Jesus is a righteous Israel.
Secondly,
this Baptism is like a blessing—it’s dedicating him for a purpose—dedicating
him as Messiah, just as Samuel dedicates—anoints king David in the Old
Testament. Further more, he’s
dedicated as the Beloved Son of God. He
is revealed as Son of God. There’s
certainly an Epiphany there…
All
that to say, John’s Baptism of Jesus
is not the same as being Baptized into
Jesus, the Baptism that Baptizes with the Holy Spirit.
Our
Baptism, the Christian Baptism, is different. It too points to creation, but
not in a way that looks back—it’s
more than a blessing. It’s a new creation—it’s looking forward.
The
voice of God is spoken through Scripture, the water is there, just as it was “In the Beginning” and in Baptism there
the Spirit sweeps down and creates—enlightens us—declares us to be Children of
God.
And
as we know from that start of Scripture, God speaks, and it is so, creation
takes place.
Creation of a new Child of God, takes place in Baptism.
The
Spirit does more than just point back to the goodness, the blessing, of
creation, but points forward and creates something new—creates a Christian.
This
is why we’re okay with Infant Baptism as Lutherans—we recognize that it’s not a
matter of repentance, of some sort of blessing, it’s God’s action for us—it’s
creating something new.
Brothers
and sisters, on this first Sunday of Epiphany, see as the Magi saw—the blessing
of a child born to be King, who lives out the goodness of creation.
But
not only that, see a Child, Jesus the Christ, through whom we find ourselves to
be part of the Family of God. A+A
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