Australian Homiletics / Preaching


        Linda Anchell
        SERMON FOR EPIPHANY 1 THE BAPTISM OF OUR LORD

        St. Matthew's Anglican, Karabar, Queanbeyan, NSW January 12th 1997

        Genesis 1:1-5 , Psalm 29,Acts 19:1-7 ,Mark 1:4-11 And T. S. Eliot's poem "Journey of the Magi"



        The watery deeps and the wind have been very much the focus of attention in Australia this week, and in France and England. As two yachtsmen were plucked from the Antarctic waters and a third it seems may have disappeared, we are well placed to imagine the wind from God hovering over the waters.

        Formless and empty, darkness covering the deep. Tony Bullimore's dark night close to this void.

        What powers do these single handed sailors face? Catching this wind, surfing the face of the waves, always aware of the freak wave, the hidden menace that could overturn or damage their boats. They are by no means fragile, but in the face of these powers, such tiny, Lilliputian things.

        Sailing so close to the edge. Close to the edge that the ancient sailors knew was there. Knew they would sail over to oblivion if they came too close. Using the power of the wind and the waves to laugh at fate, to go to their limits.

        And once, there were some people who followed a star. They did not know where it was going, they knew only that they must follow it. They went, it seemed to the edge,
        they went, it seemed beyond the edge.

        "A cold coming we had of it" said Bishop Hooker in his Epiphany sermon; "Just the worst time of the year for a journey and such a long journey."
        And T. S. Eliot pushes the words further, pushes them to the edge so that we too can go on this journey. We too regret the summer palaces, chill as the fires go out, and hear the voices saying "This was all folly." This was all folly. Hard journey, pushing to the edge .

        'And $God said, "Let there be light, and there was light.
        And $God saw that the light was good.'

        No longer, the chaos and the deep and the void and the wind..
        Now, sailing to the edge meant something else, not oblivion .
        .
        Sometimes it means a birth and a growth.
        But, they asked, these Magi of Eliot's, were we lead all that way for a Birth or Death? This birth was like hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death. They return, no longer at ease.

        We hear echoes in these stories and in the readings of risk, of the risk of living close to the edge, of the risk that God took, that God takes in the incarnation.

        The risk of the stable, of the infant was one thing. Cath graphically portrayed that scene for us at Christmas. The risk of a life, any life, is another.We live always, in our lives, close to the edge, facing the wind.

        People who know this and who push the edges can be so powerful for us. There was John, in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

        Change yourself, there is someone coming after me! See yourselves differently,
        see this world as God made it, as the one coming after me will bless it. Change who you are, what you are, Be different! no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, with an alien people clutching their gods.

        Following this star is a risk, the biggest risk you could take.
        God took the risk, the risk of the stable, then the risk of the river. Orthodox icons have the gods of nature, the gods of the river, the gods of the alien people, fleeing before Jesus as he steps into the Jordan. Another authority, another order, was here.

        But then, after John had baptised him, and Jesus was coming up out of the water, the heavens were torn open. the heavens were torn open and the Spirit descended on him. There is violence in this act, violent power, there is violence in God incarnate, in God made human.

        We are no longer the same, the earth is no longer the same, God is no longer the same.

        The heavens are torn apart and the spirit descends. It takes the tearing of the veil of the temple, and the passion of the cross and the resurrection before this work is completed. But by the time of the early church they knew what John had promised.

        "One is coming after me who will baptise with the Holy Spirit." They knew the fire of baptism, the spark of God in their midst. They knew too the risk of martyrdom, and yet they took it. They knew the passion of living their lives on the edge; they knew the passion of living their lives for a God who loved passionately.

        They knew the love that God had set in our midst at Bethlehem, and they knew the agony of the risk that God took in that passionate life of love. For them, the only response was to leap and burn with the spark.
        I quote from Carter Heyward and from Kazantzakis:

          "In this same spirit and in the terribly urgent time of human need in which we live,
          may we hear well the implicit call of Nikos Kazantzakis:
          The ultimate, most holy form of theory is action.
          Not to look on passively while the spark leaps from generation to generation, but to leap and burn with it."

        A final blessing
        May your eye catch fire, that God by you be seen.
        May your ear catch fire, that God by you be heard.
        May your tongue catch fire, that God by you be named.
        May your heart catch fire, that God by you be loved.
        May your mind catch fire, that God by you be known.


        JOURNEY OF THE MAGI
        "A cold coming we had of it,
        Just the worst time of the year
        For a journey, and such a long journey:
        The ways deep and the weather sharp,
        The very dead of winter.
        "
        And the camels galled, sore footed, refractory,
        Lying down in the melting snow.

        There were times we regretted
        The summer palaces on the slopes, the terraces,
        And the silken girls bringing sherbet.

        Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
        And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
        And the night fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
        And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
        And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
        A hard time we had of it.

        At the end we preferred to travel all night,
        Sleeping in snatches,
        With the voices ringing in our ears, saying
        That this was all folly.

        Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
        Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
        With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
        And three trees on the low sky,
        And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.

        Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
        Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
        And feet kicking the empty wine skins.

        But there was no information, and so we continued
        And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
        Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory
        All this was a long time ago, I remember,
        And I would do it again, but set down
        This set down
        This: were we led all that way for
        Birth or Death?
        There was a Birth, certainly,
        We had evidence and no doubt.
        I had seen birth and death,
        But had thought they were different; this Birth was
        Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.

        We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
        But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensations,
        With an alien people clutching their gods.
        I should be glad of another death.

        T S Eliot



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