"Up from the water"-Sermon for Epiphany 1, Matthew 3:13-17
During this past week, the seasons in the life of the church have turned once again. Christmas, whose 12th night was January 5th, has ended, and Epiphany, which began the following day on January 6th, has begun. The turning of the seasons of the church year, much like the four seasons of the natural world, remind us both…and at the very same time…that all things must end, as we move from one season to the next, and…and that all things begin again, as the unending circle of life returns us to the beginning of each new season from one year to the next. I am one of those people for whom letting go of Christmas is hard. It is my favorite season of the year. And, as we pull down the Christmas decorations I always feel a mix of emotions…sometimes they can be pretty big feelings…a sort of melancholy for what is ending and sort of hope for what is beginning…with a new year standing before us. Endings and beginnings…beginnings and endings.
And, today, on the first Sunday of Epiphany, we return as we do, each and every year, to the story of Jesus’ baptism. And, we often think of Jesus’ baptism as a beginning, and, indeed, it is…the beginning of his public ministry…three years of teaching and healing…of incarnating God’s love in transformative and life-giving ways…in the midst of flesh and blood…in the midst of real-life people…living within human history…on this earth…among all of its seasons of endings and beginnings. But, Jesus’ baptism is also an end…an end to the private life he previously lived before beginning his public life that would follow. And, of course, his earthly ministry will also come to an end, specifically speaking, on Good Friday and on the hard wood of the cross, where he would utter the words himself, “It is finished.” That is till Easter, when his life and the life of the world, including, each of our lives…begins again. Which is all to say that, though it has taken me many years to come to this understanding, life is a circle and never a straight line…endings and beginning…beginning and endings…are always one and the same.
Yesterday, we celebrated the funeral of Al York who was one of the chief architects who designed our new church…where we worship and pray together right now. It was particularly moving to me to celebrate Al’s life in this church and inter his earthly remains in our columbarium both of which he helped dream into life. But, even more so, I was moved, as I am at each and every such occasion, to claim, in our funeral liturgy, our great Easter proclamation that the end of Al’s earthly life was the beginning of his new life in our Lord’s nearer presence. For death is always more gate than grave…a threshold…a transition point between an end and a beginning…between a beginning and an end. And, as a part of the service, a portion of one of Al’s favorite poems was read, which happens to be one of my favorites as well. And, it comes from the poem, “Little Gidding”, composed by fellow Anglican and one of the 20th Century’s greatest poets, TS Elliot. And, the selection reads:
What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make and end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from…..
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.
We die with the dying:
See, they depart, and we go with them.
We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them.
The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree
Are of equal duration. A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails
On a winter's afternoon, in a secluded chapel
History is now….
With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always--
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one
Elliot tells us the fire and the rose are one…fire that burns and destroys and an enchanting, vulnerable flower fragrantly and beautifully budding to new life are one. For, as he says, “What we call the beginning is often the end…And to make and end is to make a beginning.” And, it is important to note that Elliot wrote this poem, which was a part of a larger collected work called “The Four Quartets”, leading up to, during and in response to the trauma of World War II. It was his attempt to find spiritual rather than political meaning in the midst of unthinkable, though very real, death and destruction on a scale the world had not previously known. Meaning unfolding in words and discovered through his faith…that the fire and the rose are one. This is much like how I described, in a sermon just a few weeks ago, the 16th century German Christmas hymn that we still sing in church today called, “Lo, How a Rose E’re Blooming”. Perhaps you recall, it reads, “It came, a flower bright. Amid the cold of winter. When half-gone was the night”. A flower coming to life in the dead of winter…or for Elliot…a flower coming to life in an all-consuming fire. Beginnings in endings…endings in beginnings.
Baptism, Jesus’ that we remember today and our own, are each intended to remind us that the fire and the rose are one as well. For we say in the singular moment of baptism that we are baptized both into the death and resurrection of Jesus…an end and a beginning. Imagine with me a full immersion baptism. In fact, in the church we will build in the coming years just to the east of this sacred space that Al also helped design and will eventually come to life, that church has in it a full immersion baptismal font…meaning those desiring it can be baptized by going entirely under the water…their whole bodies…which is an important symbol. For, when a person is submerged below the surface of the water…when they disappear from our sight…we are claiming, again, that they have died with Jesus…died to the life they have previously lived…died to sin and died to death…to death being only an end and not a beginning. And, when they reemerge from those waters and reenter our vision…we are claiming they are risen to new life with Jesus…raised to a whole new life…a new beginning sustained by the love of God alone that ushers us through all future endings and beginnings.
And, I share with you all of these, if you will, circular musing because we are just now beginning, along with a new season in the life of the church, a new year in the life of the world. And, I know further that though each new year comes to us…begins…with a sort of hope for a fresh start…a new hopeful beginning…I know it will also contain many endings. And, many of those will be…I’ll just say it…devastating and profoundly painful. Just eleven days into this new year, as your priest, I have already had conversations and prayed with and listened to many of you who are joyfully expecting and planning for all sorts of new beginnings in this year…things like weddings and baptisms and bringing a new child into the world and beginning a new job. And…and I have had conversations and prayed with and listened to many of you who have begun a new year with profound experiences of all sorts of endings…grieving a beloved one lost way to young…receiving difficult news of a loved one in deep, dire straits…losing rather than gaining a job…and suffering from the unsettling news in our world that continues to feel and, indeed, is more like it is crowned into a knot of fire of unending injustice and death…rather than like it is a field of freshly, fragrantly budding new flowers…like a rose. The truth is both beginnings and endings…are times of great vulnerability and uncertainty…and often come with confusion and pain.
And, yet…and, yet, by the grace of God and through Jesus’ death and resurrection to which we are all eternally joined in the waters of baptism, we can blessedly be assured that every ending is a beginning and every beginning an end…every threshold and every transition…a moment for God to create something entirely new in and for us…for God to bring a rose forth in the midst of the fire. And, to this end, the great poet TS Elliot, as perhaps you recognized as I read it, quotes another great, who is near and dear to this family of faith, Julian of Norwich. And, this most familiar of all her sayings that Elliot quotes, is not naïve or childish or blind to the reality of living in this sin sick and sorely divided world. It is audacious and courageous and provides us power, rooted in a living hope, to participate in God’s never-ending circle of life and love. For the fire and the rose being one…every beginning being an end and every ending being a beginning…assures us, as Julian wrote, that through God’s love and in God’s time, which is always an unending circle and not a straight line, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.” Amen.