Readings: Genesis
1:1-5, Psalm 29, Mark 1: 4-11
Let us pray: Creator God, we seek your word to us today –
make us open to see your vision for the world and for us, may we hear your assurance
and follow courageously your light, that all may know Christ through our
living. Amen
There was a time
when we were not. Not part of creation,
for first there was heavens and the earth, and water and light and darkness....
and we were not, yet! In this story of
creation, humankind was the last to be created.
There was a time
when we were not born into this world, where our ancestors did not imagine us
nor our communities know us.
There was a time
when we were not gathered into the community of faith, whether through baptism
or family or choice – there was a time when we were not.
It’s important to
remember this – for sometimes I feel we are so concentrating on our
story that we lose important connections with the bigger story of creation and
of the mystery that is God’s world. I
feel that our connections with the created world, what has been and is to come,
what is wider than our knowledge and beyond our understanding is often tenuous
at best and discarded at worst. We tend
to live in the now and the ‘me’ and expect to bring everything to our door or
at least to be reachable!
There is a sense,
especially in the western world (I am not sure that is any longer the right
thing to say – maybe in our globally affluent world) that creation is our
oyster, that every aspect is ours to take hold of or conquer or
experience.
What am I talking
about? I am talking about introducing a
little bit of pagan back into our lives – now that really helped explain didn’t
it?
A New York
theologian, Donna Schaper, suggests that much of our life experience today is
focussed on climbing every mountain and fording every stream to the detriment
of being connected and familiar with our own mountain and stream. And that is why she wants to retrieve the
word pagan – originally meaning of the country/village and from the latin ‘to
be fixed or anchored’. (The meaning of
being heathen or not of faith or uncivilised came later. ) She further suggests
that our lack of connectiveness with our roots in this globally affluent world
leads us to ditch one of the most important of values, that of reverence. Schaper defines reverence as a deep
understanding of human limitation. When
we believe everything is ours to know and experience, then what place God in
our lives. Reverence is the accepting
the mystery of creation and the creator - as something beyond us yet ours to be
part of. Reverence is knowing your value
as a person in God’s eyes and recognising that there much we cannot and will
not be or do – that we are beloved as we are.
You know I was
driving to the church during the week, through the Octagon, and it struck me
that on the whole I was very happy with who I was, where I was and my take on
life. You see I had a snapshot moment –
there was this young man crossing the road in front of me who was smoking a
cigarette and who in his other hand had a banana which, with the swing of his
arm, looked like a tail. I’m glad I see
silly things like that, that I can laugh and notice ludicrous connections, that
I see shapes in clouds and marvel at the beauty of buttercups and am refreshed
by the smell and sight and feel of the sea and love walking barefoot through
the lush grass of the south. And in
those moments I know and experience not just my own sense of belonging but also
the mystery of a God far beyond my ken, a Creator God who spirit swept over the
water, and whose light came to pierce the darkness of the world. And that light came into the world and was
baptised with water so that he could fully enter into the ministry of his
father. There is the sense where the
circle that is creator, water and light in Genesis is fulfilled again in the
baptism of Jesus in the Jordan.
And so to our
baptism – our invitation into the cleansing water of new life – our connection
throughout time and with all who believe to the God who knew us before we were
and who loves us as we are.
Now if you are
sitting out there thinking – crikey I’ve never been baptised so maybe I need to
quietly creep out the back door and never come back – then don’t. The act of baptism is not in itself a magic
pass but a symbol of a much deeper and public commitment to stepping into that
living water that is the body of Christ – into the living stream which has
flowed down through history and in which people come together in the name of
Christ to live in Christ’s way.
This is the place
in which we find our roots, our worth, our purpose, our beginnings and our
endings, here in the place where Christ is.
We need look no further, nor seek to be other than who we are, for the
water of life continually refreshes and cleanses us, and leads us on - in Jesus
name. Thanks be to God.
Margaret Garland
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