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SERMONS

First Sunday after the Epiphany
January 13, 2008

By The Rev. Alston Johnson

Baptism of our Lord

“This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

These are the words that Jesus receives before setting to work.

John the Baptist goes to the river to prepare the way. John tells the world that God is on the move and something tremendous is in their midst. Although we don’t hear John use the words of Isaiah, it is clear that John speaks with the spirit and authority of a prophet. Accepting John’s baptism, Jesus accepts the spirit of Isaiah, and all the prophets. Jesus is beginning to close the circle of prophecy, of anticipation, by fulfilling all that is righteous.

It is a day for seeing the world in a new way. There will be a change. This “king,” this servant, will be gentle and just. This servant will accomplish justice without having the ends justify the means; without harming “the least of these.” “A bruised reed he will not break - a dimly burning wick he will not quench.” This is another way of saying that He will not use violence or threats or compromising the poor and the weak in order to establish his justice. Essentially, Isaiah is speaking of something miraculous, someone miraculous, and Jesus is that someone.

“Former things have come to pass - and new things I now declare.”

Notice that the voice from heaven does not say “This is my Son, the perfect, the successful, the powerful, the mighty, the clever, with whom I am well pleased.”

No. The voice says, “This is my Son, the Beloved.”

When we are baptized, when we accept the body and spirit of Christ as our food for the journey, we are hearing the very same voice speaking to us. As we celebrate our Lord’s baptism today, we celebrate with Him, that we too are the beloved. Sometimes what this means can be hard to understand, harder to live; I believe that we can see it in another man named John - Jean Vanier.

Young Jean Vanier stood aboard a British aircraft carrier that had pulled into Havana, Cuba in 1950. His brother officers were getting ready to go ashore in pre-Castro Cuba for a night of dancing and partying after weeks at sea. Young Vanier left the ship and went to church, because as he says, “ “I, like crazy, went to church because I had been attracted to something different, a new meaning to my life. It wasn't a big moment of revelation. It was a gradual consciousness that there was something deeper than just being prepared for war, machines, efficiency, competence, commanding . . it was a desire to come back into myself . . .”{interview with Talbot - Ottawa Inner-city Ministries}

Standing on the deck of that ship was something of a fork in the road for Jean Vanier. He was born the son of a Canadian military hero, a Governor General of Canada. His father and mother were dignitaries of post-war Canada. He had followed his father’s footsteps by entering a Royal Naval Academy and serving on a warship during WWII. The world of real political and financial power and privilege lay at his feet, these were not abstractions.

But Jean Vanier did not feel at home in the world or at home in himself. That is why he walked through the streets of Havana looking for a church rather than a nightclub.

“I suppose it was something about myself also. It was probably a desire to come back into myself and to find what was most important inside of myself, which was my heart.”

The journey that Jean Vanier began in Havana lead to social work in the slums of Paris with Catholic, Dominican brothers, while studying for a degree in philosophy. Vanier moved to Canada to teach in Toronto, and then went back to France to visit Father Thomas Phillippe, his mentor and teacher. On this visit, Vanier accepted an invitation from Father Phillippe to join in his work with the mentally disabled south of Paris.

So Vanier bought a dilapidated house, and accepted the Dominican’s invitation to have two men with disabilities and handicaps to live with him - he called the house “L’Arche,” the Ark, a kind of modern Noah’s Ark for anyone disabled, different, and needing shelter. It was the beginning of a new life.

What began in that ramshackle house south of Paris, was a movement to begin drawing together a community around persons who had largely been forgotten by society - the physical and mentally handicapped.

Jean Vanier tells the story of a boy named Eric. Eric was in the children’s wing of a local psychiatric hospital before coming to one of the L’Arch communities in France. Eric was blind, deaf, and mentally disabled. Eric could neither walk nor eat by himself. At sixteen he came to the community full of needs and full of fear and loneliness. Much of Eric’s life had consisted of sitting on the ground, waiting for someone to come and touch him.

When he felt someone nearby, Eric would stretch out his arms and try to clutch that person and hold onto them. Once someone was holding Eric, he would begin to lose control with excitement - struggling both to be held, as well as responding so frenetically to his need, that Eric was very hard to hold onto. Often it ended in a struggle of Eric trying to be held, as well as the other person trying to put him down, as Eric fought to remain in contact with some human touch.

With time, with love, with knowing that he belonged, that he was safe, Eric became a person who could be held; and who could hold others. “Eric was a terribly lonely young man. He needed to be loved but his needs were so great that no one person could fulfill them. It took a long time in L’Arche before Eric found some inner peace. Little by little, as he learned to trust those around him, Eric discovered he was loved.”

There is something of each of us in Eric’s story. How our loneliness, our isolation, can become so great, that it is almost impossible for others to give us the very thing we desire so much; we desire so much to be held, that we become hard to hold. It is certainly impossible for one human being to fulfill that need; and then, when we have been put down on the ground again and passed by, we sink into despair because that touch has left us.

The baptism that we share with our Lord is not a love that will eventually have to put us down; it is a love that walks with us, that holds us. Heaven calls down that Jesus is the Beloved, not the perfect, child of heaven. And when we are washed in those waters and partaking of his food, we too are beloved; created to be found, not forgotten; to be taken up and held, rather than put down and passed by.

Jean Vanier brought love and humanity to people who had received little in their lives; he sought to see the light of God in them - and that is how he found the light of God within himself. He became the captain of a ship; but rather than a warship, it was a ship call “L’Arch,” the ark, a vessel to carry those who cannot carry themselves across the waters of this world. Today there are about 130 L’Arche communities in 30 countries.

If it could be true for Jean Vanier standing on a boat in Havana - it can be true for you and me. And perhaps more profoundly - if it can be true for Eric, sitting there on the ground - it can become true for you and for me.

That is why Jesus comes. That is why we are baptized into His way, His name, His promises. To share a love which does not put us down to preserve itself; it is a love which holds us, walks with us . . . and says to us forever, “You are my child, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.”