Year A
 Isaiah 42:1-9
 Psalm 29
 Acts 10:34-43
 Matthew 3:13-17

May the words of my mouth O God…  speak your truth…

A sacrament is an outward and visible sign…   of an inward spiritual grace…  it’s the thing you see…  which represents the bigger thing that’s going on under the surface…  the Episcopal church holds to seven sacraments…  confirmation…  reconciliation…  matrimony…  ordination…  unction…   which is anointing…  eucharist…  and baptism…  [ the Lutheran church has two…  which Martin Luther determined were the two sacred acts that Jesus himself affirmed…  eucharist…  and baptism…  ]

Now some of the things we do… we don’t do in public…  so we can be accountable to ourselves… like not praying on street corners like the Pharisees did…  and some of the things we do…  we do in public so we can be accountable to others…  like baptismal vows…  and there is mutual accountability in baptism… the person being baptized makes public vows… commits to keeping them…  with God’s help… . and their sponsors and those who witness those vows…  commit to do all they can… to support that person in their life in Christ…  and while the person being baptized…  either as an infant or an adult…   isn’t expected to become or be “a perfect Christian…”  it is hoped that at least as young adults and as adults…  they won’t take their vows lightly…  that they will strive to abide by them… 

The sacrament of baptism… is an outward and visible sign… of an inward and spiritual grace…  and part of that grace… is a Truth which clamors to be heard… that God is calling us to that which is more than we are… God is calling us to unboundedness… calling us from death to life…  but we cannot really hear that call… we don’t actually need to… if we believe that we are self-sufficient unto ourselves… ]  as Jesus said in John 5:4-5… just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine… neither can you…  unless you abide in me…

I don’t know how many of you remember your own baptism…  I know a few of you do…  I do…  I was baptized when I was thirty-seven…  and as I anticipated that morning…  I was aware of two things…  that I would become part of something much larger than myself…  and that solving all of the challenges in my life…  wasn’t up to me alone…  that God…  and community would help…  that I could depend on them…

But it can be a hard thing to accept our dependence on God…  I struggle with that sometimes… but I wonder if it’s even harder for us to accept our dependence on each other… because so many of the voices around us… tell us that we should be able to do it on our own…  that we ought to be self-made people…  that we just need to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps… ] but that is a lie… we do nothing in a vacuum… and 1Corinthians 12 reminds us that the eye cannot say to the hand… I have no need of you… and the head can’t say to the feet… neither do I need you…

Dr. Ed Wilson… who’s an entomologist…  a bug doctor…   discovered something fascinating about ants… when an ant dies… the other ants take it to the colony’s trash pile… Dr. Ed hypothesized… that the signal that an ant was dead… was the smell of the pheromone oleic acid… ] how he came up with that one I don’t know…  but to confirm his hypothesis… he dabbed a living ant with this pheromone… and immediately another worker ant grabbed the living ant… and hauled it off to the trash pile… where the ant remained while it cleaned itself… and then resumed its life in the colony…  but by remaining isolated… the living ants took on the mantle of death… and one of the researchers called them “zombie ants…”

Dr. Ed also discovered that throughout their lives… ants actually produce some pheromones associated with life…but when an ant actually dies… the smell of death overpowers the smell of life… and that’s how the other ants know when to bury their dead comrades…

And while there are no ants in today’s readings… there’s life-affirming Good News in them… the problem is… that many of us act like the zombie ants… we think we’re already dead… ] like the exiles in Isaiah… like the ostracized Gentiles in Acts… and like John the Baptizer… we doubt our place in God’s kingdom… and like the ants… we drag ourselves off to the graveyard… letting the glow… of the light…  and life… and love of God…   fade…

I wonder what it was like for John to baptize Jesus… for the one who needed to be baptized… to baptize the one through whom… baptism existed… for the complete… to allow the incomplete to do not something done in secret… but a very public thing… a sacrament which revealed something even greater… not only the affirmation of both Jesus’ humanity… and his divinity… but that the voice of God… the voice that opened the heavens… and affirmed Jesus’ beloved-ness…  affirms our beloved-ness too… and we too are drawn into the death and resurrection of Christ… the One who was both human and divine…

Some of you may have heard this Chasidic story… about a rabbi quizzing his students… He asked, “How can we determine the hour of dawn, when the night ends… and the day begins?” One of the students suggested… “Day begins when… from a distance… you can distinguish between a dog and a sheep.” “No,” answered the rabbi. Another student asked… “Is it when you can distinguish between a fig tree and a grapevine?” Again the answer was, “No.” “Please tells us the answer then,” said the students. “It is,” said the rabbi, “when you can look into the face of every other human being…  and you have enough light in you… to recognize them as your brothers and sisters. Up until then, it is night, and darkness is still with us.”

So you see… baptism is a kind of resistance to the world’s darkness… to the world’s message of self-reliance… it’s both an acknowledgment of our own vulnerability… and of the community’s acknowledgement to support us… with God’s help… and the Truth that clamors to be heard… is expressed in the words of Isaiah… and the ministry of justice that Jesus lived and breathed… a bruised reed he will not break… and a dimly burning wick he will not quench… these words convey what must be our determined willingness… to protect the weak and outcast… so let us… with God’s help… and by the light within us… recognize all other human beings as our brothers and sisters… and dispel the darkness…