Baptism of Christ Yr C 2022: Disruption is the backbone of our faith.

 The Baptism of Christ is a day when God anoints Jesus, John the Baptist steps aside and we all have a little bit of whiplash as it was just a couple of weeks ago that we were proclaiming Jesus’s birth and today he’s  a 30 year old adult. For those who like chronological order, this day is going to mess with your zen.
All that said, there’s something glorious and terrifying about this day because there’s something glorious and terrifying about Baptism.
The BCP states: “The bond which God establishes in Baptism is indissoluble.”
There isn’t any grey area here folks. The bond we make with God and the bond God makes with us at baptism is forever. NOTHING can diminish, dissolve or destroy it. Nothing we think, do, fail to do. It’s indissoluble. Forever. And it comes with great responsibility.
    Jesus wasn’t baptized to be washed of sin, He wasn’t baptized so he could wear a handsome white suit and folks could eat cake afterwards.
He was baptized because Jesus was fulfilling the act of the incarnation…he was being submerged in the muddy waters of the Jordan River to emerge reborn, renewed and ready for his ministry. A ministry that would threaten the status quo, tick off the authorities and turn the world on its ear. .He was dying to his life as a regular young man and being born into his life as our Savior, our Teacher, our Lord. A life as a Holy Disruptor. A life of never stopping until all people—ALL people—were treated with respect and dignity. No matter what.
Jesus’ baptism strengthened him, readied him, oriented him to his life of Faith, his life of Holy Disruption.
Baptism—Jesus’s and our own-- provides the blueprint for living a life of faithful and holy heck raising for disruption.
It equips us to do what others know they should do, but don’t. It equips us to be unpopular, counter cultural and a pain in the patoot of those who long for power and prestige over equity and love.
    Why do we commemorate Jesus’ baptism so soon after the celebration of his birth? Because Jesus’s birth served as the inaugural act of forming the Body of Christ here on earth. God took on a human body in order to establish an impenetrable indissoluble Body of Love and Light, of Hope and Joy right here, right now.
And that Body grows, its reach lengthens, its impact increases, each and every-time a person is baptized.
The goal of our faith is to spread the Body of Christ, by being the Body of Christ…but remember, being the Body of Christ isn’t always sweetness and light. As a matter of fact it’s often challenging, messy and upsetting. But we’re equipped through the promises we make to God and God makes to us in baptism to stand up, speak out and be unpopular.
    Why do we have this disrupted chronology of celebrating the birth of the baby Jesus one week and commemorating Jesus’s adult profession of faith 2 weeks later?  Because Disruption is the backbone of our faith. The status quo isn’t following God, risking, trying, and changing is.  This is what we’ve been baptized into—-a life of holy disruption.
Let me close by sharing this new take on the familiar Prayer of St Francis, author unknown:
Lord, make me a channel of disturbance.
Where there is apathy, let me provoke;
Where there is compliance, let me bring questioning;
Where there is silence, may I be a voice.
Where there is too much comfort and too little
action, grant disruption;
Where there are doors closed and hearts locked.
Grant the willingness to listen.
When laws dictate and pain is overlooked..
When tradition speaks louder than need..
Grant that I may seek rather to do justice than to
talk about it:
Disturb us, O Lord.
To be with, as well as for, the alienated;
To love the unlovable as well as the lovely;
Lord, make me a channel of disturbance.
(~ Author unknown)
Thanks be to God , Amen and Alleluia.