Curtain
The start time on your ticket to the theater says 7:00 P.M. and there are all kinds of things you do before that. Clean up, dress, drive, park, find your seat…all leads up to a time, five to ten minutes after the hour. Then profoundly having set the mood musically, the orchestra plays the concluding notes of the overture. Then it happens. The enormous set of curtains open and the drama begins. I can count the number of big plays, operas, and musicals I have seen on my ten fingers, but we all know the beginning: the curtains part to reveal the first scene. Lighting dresses the stage and the action begins.
That is how we can sense the first Sunday after Epiphany. We should feel things are beginning. We should feel that God is acting, and pulling us into the action. This year (year B in the ABC rotation of lessons fleshing out the drama of each liturgical calendar year) we have an extraordinary set of scriptures to signal “beginnings.” As is always the case, our Gospel is the baptism of Jesus, because our worship that day, being the First Sunday after the Epiphany is called The Baptism of our Lord Sunday. The beginning noted in the Gospel, therefore, is the launching of Jesus’s public ministry, his baptism. The Holy Spirit descends upon him and the voice from heaven acclaims him as he comes up from the waters of the Jordan. The curtains open for the saving drama of his teaching, miracles, and movement towards the defeating of sin and death. Examine the Collect prayer that goes with this Day of our Lord’s baptism:
Father in heaven, who at the baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan proclaimed him your beloved Son and anointed him with the Holy Spirit: Grant that all who are baptized into his Name may keep the covenant they have made, and boldly confess him as Lord and Savior; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.
This prayer which comes near the beginning of our worship experience signals to us the day is not only about something that happened to Jesus, it is about something that is happening to us now. Soaking in the Baptism of our Lord reminds us we are the Baptized of the Lord, and that we are called to keep this covenant and “boldly confess him as Lord and Savior.”
I can see you doing that. To confess Jesus as Lord is to live with the very Spirit of Christ influencing the moments and actions of your day. It is bold when an opportunity arises to name your connection to God, the Author of life, comes through the reign of God ushered in by Jesus, and you name it unhesitatingly.
Of course, it is confessed more simply, when I have a chance, or when you have a chance to do it. We might say something like, “Any hope in life you recognize in me is there because I believe in Christ. I trust in the Spirit that resides in me and is bringing me little by little to realize a union with God.” The season after the Epiphany recalls to us we are on a mission. The Prince of Peace, Jesus, sends us out to represent his peace that the world cannot give.
We are accomplishing God’s work of restoring unity between people and the Holy One. Hear that? Restoring unity is our work. Paul puts it another way. In his second letter to the Christians in Corinth (2 Corinthians 5:18-21) he names God in Christ was reconciling the world to the very reality of God. He says Christ has reconciled us and we have now been entrusted with the ministry of reconciliation. Concerning our ministry, Paul calls Christians ambassadors for Christ.
Through this week we will consider different angles on the opening curtain we feel is happening in our mission. We will look at the opening lines of Genesis when God’s breath hovers over the dark void. Then, with the creative announcement, light floods the stage of something that came from nothing. We will look at how, in the Acts of the apostles, Paul facilitates something brand new beginning in some believers in Ephesus (Acts 19:1-7). He baptizes them in the name of Jesus such that the breath of God, the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they were vivified with spiritual life which blends with their natural human life.
There is much to consider. This Sunday we will present our “tickets,” take our seats, feel our hearts resonating with vibrations from the orchestra, then it happens. Live the reality every day that God always begins anew and begins ministry with you. Let the mission begin. Time to open: “Curtain!”