January 9, 2000
First Sunday of Epiphany
Year B
Theme: Obedience is a response to grace, not a perquisite for grace—
grace is a response to grace, never a condition of it.
Epiphany is upon us, the time of revelation, a time when we trace the
story of Jesus from his baptism through Lent and then, finally, to Easter.
Epiphany actually means revelation—this is the time when we uncover
what God is doing through this Jesus of Nazareth from the stories in the
New Testament. It’s like watching a flower as it unfolds its petals, finally
revealing the beauty that was contained in the mystery of that small
bulb. But Epiphany begins, literally, at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry,
at his baptism by in the river Jordan, with all the other pilgrims who had
gathered to see what the fuss was all about in the desert. They came to
hear John screaming, shouting, yelling for the people to Repent of their
sins, to turn around, and lead lives that reflected God’s love for them. It
is a powerful moment, a dramatic moment, in the story of Jesus’ life.
Sometimes, though, I think people forget that the story of Christ, which,
in the end, is the revelation of God’s pursuit of us, the revelation of God’
s passion for the world, this story, this revelation began much earlier—
we sometimes forget that God’s love began the moment we humans were
created, that love has always been at heart of God’s relationship with
creation. Forgetting that grace and love have been present since the
beginning of the world makes us often forget the sequence that John the
Baptist lays out here in the desert. If we don’t observe what John is
saying here, we sometimes think that grace comes after repentance, that
grace comes after working hard at doing a lot of repenting, that it comes
when we start focusing our lives on God and began a new life grounded
in God. Sometimes we think we have to have to ask for grace before we
can receive it, that we’ve got to be obedient to the Gospel, be good
Christians, and repent and believe, and then the grace will be there.
The reality, of course, is that grace never comes after obedience, grace
never comes after repentance—grace is always there, it has always,
been there—it doesn’t require you to ask for it—grace just is, it is
everywhere and it has always been everywhere—after all, God is Love
itself, God is Grace itself, and certainly God has been present from the
beginning. Grace is not based on what you are doing, but grace is all
about what God has done and is doing and will be doing in the world.
Grace is what sends John the Baptist into the desert to call for
repentance, to call for new lives, to call for transformed lives, in the first
place. You see, repenting, which actually literally means “turning around”
—is really a response to grace—it’s never, never a prerequisite, a
condition, for grace. Even here, in this passage, we see God reaching
out to us, that it is always God asking us to respond to the grace, the
goodness, that is already present.
John is sent out into the desert—the passage in Mark quotes the
prophet Isaiah who lived centuries earlier—he says this: “Here is my
messenger whom I send on ahead of you, and he will prepare your way.
A voice crying aloud in the wilderness, ‘Prepare a way for the Lord; clear
a straight path for God.’” It is God who begins this drama, it is God who
gives John’s mother Elizabeth a child when she was well past her
childbearing years, it God who sends this John into the desert, wild-eyed,
clothed in only camel’s hair, with a strap of leather around his waist,
eating only locusts and wild honey. What a figure he must have made in
the desert—just seeing him must have been worth the trip out into the
desert from the cities! So, here we have John, crying out in the desert,
saying stuff like
“Repent, for God’s world is upon you, God dominion is within your
reach!” He’s reminding them that who and what God is about is all
around them, even now, even in the lonely, stark, desert. “Repent,
repent, turn around, go another direction, leave the past behind,” he is
saying to these pilgrims who have come out to gawk at him in the desert.
Why? Why should they do this? Because, John, says,“ Grace is here,
grace is here. What God is all about, the work of God in this world, is
here among you—the kingdom of God is upon you,” he says to the
crowds at the river Jordan. Respond to the grace that is already
present, the dominion, the kingdom of grace that is already here. Notice
that he doesn’t ask them to repent so they can get into the kingdom—he
just asks them to respond to what is already among them.
Now, I shouldn’t say “just asks them” because it probably implies that its
somehow easy to respond to what God is doing in this world, to respond
to the grace that already surrounds us. Of course, it isn’t easy—it isn’t
easy to do what John is asking his listeners to do—because repenting is
like running in one direction, having all your energy, your feet and body
going in one direction, and then hearing someone call out to you to
come the opposite direction. It takes a lot to stop going one direction, to
slow down enough to do a quick 180. No, more often than not, we spend
our lives repenting; we spend our lives making our slow turn towards
God, towards grace. But one of the things that we should see from this
passage, the truth that becomes especially evident when Jesus arrives
on the scene, is that being a Christian is the lifelong joy and struggle to
respond to grace by turning ourselves around—being a Christian is
never about turning ourselves around so that we can receive grace.
Turning around, repenting, is not a condition, a rule, a perquisite to
receiving grace and salvation—no, repentance is a response to the
grace that has enfolded and encircled and infused the world since the
beginning of time. Changing our direction, shifting the direction of our
life, is about responding to the love that is already there, to the love and
grace that is simply at the heart of God. We must recognize that we are
followers of this Jesus of Nazareth, not because we are good enough, or
because we follow some rules, but because we have been pursued by
God since the beginning of time, and that grace is here, that it surrounds
us, that it is in very air we breathe, and we have responded to that
amazing grace by changing the direction of our lives. Most of us can’t do
that quick 180, most of us spend our lives making our slow turn towards
God, but, still, the turning is happening, at whatever pace grace and us
can seem to manage at any given moment.
The turning, the repenting, calls you and I to choose love over hate,
silence over gossip, grace over judgment. You know, when John cries
out that the dominion of heaven is near, what finally comes to him in that
desert is this Jesus of Nazareth walking to towards him. Here is grace
given human flesh, here is grace given flesh and blood. Now the grace
that encircles the universe, the grace that forms the foundation of all that
is, comes to us, in this one, in this one who is about to be plunged into
the river Jordan. It is God showing us that nothing will ever separate us
from God, not even heaven and earth. Really, how could we NOT
repent, how could we NOT turn ourselves around to meet this one who
will show us the incredible depth of God’s love for us on the cross?
Repent, turn around, go another direction, John the Baptist tells us, tells
the world—grace is here, grace comes to us as one of us, grace will
never let us go. How could we not turn around when we hear this good
news and saw this one coming out of the desert towards the weary
prophet at the river Jordan? Amen
