Patterns and Milestones
Patterns and milestones help establish the routines of our lives.
The pattern of seasons organizes our annual routines – fall, winter, spring, and summer, repeat.
Within the routine established by seasons, patterns of life are then arranged – vacations, reunions, the start and end of the school year, snow days, more snow days, holidays, and more.
Then there are the milestones. No matter your age milestones – baptisms and confirmations, birthdays, graduations, anniversaries, and promotions – take the annual pattern of our lives and spice it up a bit.
Without these patterns and milestones our lives would be less interesting, completely unorganized, and lack any sort of trajectory or purpose.
The Church calendar – the festivals we celebrate, the colors on the altar paraments, and the scriptures we read – shape our shared lives forming a pattern. The pattern forms the Church’s shared life, a life of ministry to and with one another following the milestones of Christ’s life. The milestones of Christ’s life set the pattern for us today.
Each year we begin with Advent – looking back and forward. We then move to Christmas and Epiphany. Then, it is onto Lent, Easter, Eastertide, Pentecost, and finally ordinary time. For generations the church has followed this pattern mirroring the pattern established by Christ’s life, death, and resurrection.
This past week we entered the season of Epiphany marking the visit of the Magi to the Christ child. This season is particularly important to us because the Church believes this was the moment when Gentiles, us, those outside of the original Abrahamic covenant were pulled into the salvific work of God, through Jesus Christ.
On this first Sunday of the season of Epiphany, continuing to follow the milestones of Christ’s life, we remember Christ’s baptism and consider what our baptism into this his life, death, and resurrection means. The gospels disagree on a lot of things. Details of events - location and timing - do not match from book to book. Entire events are contradicted or worse, omitted altogether. All four of the gospels do tell us Jesus was baptized by John alongside empire colluding tax collectors, thieves, and religious hypocrites.
The Gospel of John leaves out the Nativity and Mark leaves out Easter. Matthew and Luke add to what Mark left out while John is off doing his own thing. But all four of the gospels agree on Jesus’ baptism and crucifixion.
As Jesus entered the water, as the water streamed down his hair, onto his face, into his eyes, and off his body he assumed the sins of the world upon himself. John had been calling people to repent - to turn away from their sin and towards the righteousness of God. John’s invitation was to a human act. John’s offering of baptism in the Jordan River was a symbolic act and would not make you righteous before God. As the waters of John’s baptism washed over the recipient the weight and guilt of their sin remained. As Christ exited the waters the weight and guilt of their sin, of our sin, exited with him, eventually going with Christ to the cross.
Through the manger Jesus entered the messiness of this world and at his baptism he took that messiness upon himself to sort out on our behalf because sorting out the weight and guilt of our sin is something humanity cannot do on our own.
All of us are born into a world not of our own making. The mess I inherited from my parents is not something I sought out for myself and still, the mess is now mine. The mess my kids will inherit from their parents is not something they will seek out for themselves and still, the mess will be theirs.
Inheriting the mess, a byproduct of sin, is a pattern of our lives that we cannot outrun and as best I can tell is not something we will rid ourselves of anytime soon. And here is where we find the gospel Good News of this Sunday, as best put by retired Episcopal priest, the Reverend Fleming Rutledge. “Jesus swoops down in our miserable condition, bringing the gifts of new life. He does not ask us what we are doing to make ourselves better; he just gives us the gift. He does not ask if we are working to turn ourselves around; he does not ask for a receipt; he puts redemption into”[1] our lives.
Assuming the sin of humanity on himself Jesus does what I did not want to do and what I could not correct for my parents, what my kids will not want to do for me, and that which I will never be able to do for myself. We cannot course correct our sinful nature.
In Jesus’ baptism, in his life, death, and resurrection, a pattern no one can replicate, Jesus has secured salvation for all of creation. Every person, because believe it or not, God loves you, God has always loved you, and there is nothing you could ever do to undo the love God has for you.
Words have power. No matter if they are carefully typed out in a sermon manuscript or quickly sent out in 140 characters or less, words have more power than we can imagine. The only words spoken at Jesus’ baptism were words of affirmation and love. There were no words of institution, or a liturgy crafted by generations of clergy-theologians. "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased"[2] echoed down from the heavens, and when an echo comes from Heaven, you better look out because the patterns of our lives are about to be upended.
The psalmist wrote “The voice of the LORD is over the waters... The voice of the LORD is powerful; the voice of the LORD is full of majesty... The voice of the LORD breaks the cedars... The voice of the LORD flashes forth flames of fire... The voice of the LORD shakes the wilderness... The voice of the LORD causes the oaks to whirl, and strips the forest bare.[3]
The beloved ness of Jesus was not a lullaby coming down from above. The voice of God is a disruptor that upsets the patterns of our lives, turning over the complacency we establish for ourselves because we favor our comfort over what is unknown.
When we enter the waters of baptism we are, as the Apostle Paul wrote clothed in the righteousness of Christ and beloved children of God.[4] As the waters move across your head a voice cries down from Heaven, “You are my son, you are my daughter, you are my child, the beloved.” This holy declaration cannot be taken away. It is this holy declaration that overturns the lives, the patterns and routines we establish for ourselves, inviting us to a life of discipleship.
Discipleship is, as retired United Methodist Bishop and teacher of preachers at Duke Divinity Will Willimon puts it, “the way Christ rescues you from vain attempts to make something of your life. God gives you a job that’s more important than you. Faced with a broken world, creation out of kilter, God doesn’t ‘send in the Marines.’ God casts forth the meek, foolish, and weak. Us.”[5]
A new job. A new pattern for your life.
You are loved and through baptism you have been made clean, called to a new life, a new task. The baptized life calls us to a new way of living that may seem odd to your family, friends, and neighbors.
A life of leaving 99 in search of the 1.
A life of welcoming the stranger, the outcast, and the forgotten.
A life of seeking and finding, finding and seeking.
A life of following the Messiah who overturned the ways of the world through generosity, compassion, and grace.
We live in a time where the patterns of our lives are different. Milestones are observed differently than they were just a few years ago.
Birthdays are celebrated with smaller gatherings
Promotions are recognized in zoom calls without cake in the break room
Anniversaries are celebrated with dinners in with takeout or in my case, dinner cooked by the kids
Baptisms and confirmations have been delayed and when they do happen often, they are done differently than the community wishes they could be done
Patterns are changing whether we want them to or not.
We observe the patterns of life in the church differently. But because Jesus is lord and because what happened in the Jordan cannot be undone just like what happened at your baptism cannot be undone even though the patterns of our lives may change the call to discipleship and the pattern of following Christ’s example does not. We may gather online or at home for worship, we may have small gatherings in sanctuaries, and what we do today might shift in the weeks to come and our call to follow is the same. This is why the patterns of the church; the liturgy of our shared life is so important. These things give us an unmovable guidepost by which we can keep moving onward toward what John Wesley called Christian perfection, perfecting our lives in Christ because by Christ’s actions we have been right before God.
I do not remember my baptism. I have been told I was baptized on August 19, 1984, at Faith United Methodist Church in Rockville, Maryland. Maybe you remember yours. But if you are like me, do not worry about remembering your baptism because remembering is not the point. And if you have yet to enter the waters that is OK too. The invitation has been extended by Christ to all of creation, including you. The water is waiting for you. Because of Christ’s baptism, because of his life, death, and resurrection, we have been raised to new life. The old sinful part of our lives has been put to death, and as Bishop Willimon puts it this new pattern “takes your whole life to finish what was begun when the church doused you ‘in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit’ and called you Christian.
Professor James Torrance put it best: “But it is not the water, not the church, not the minister, not my faith, not my dying and rising, which forgives and heals. It is Christ who has done this for us and in us by the Spirit. So, we are baptized ‘in the name of Christ’ - not our own name - and we are baptized into a life of union with Christ, of dying and rising with Christ, in a life of communion.”
A new life. A new pattern. A new routine of calling the who called and continues to call today.
Amen.
