First Sunday after Epiphany
Readings – Isaiah 43:1-7; Psalm 29; Acts 8:14-17; Luke 3:15-17,21-22
The Gospel text begins with “As the people were filled with expectation…” John, the baptizer, came out of the wilderness and shared with them his vision.
…one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.
This was a vision of division and dread, a vision of judgement and fire. This was a vision born of the wilderness.
When Jesus heard these words,
You are my Son, the Beloved;
with you, I am well pleased
he, too, headed into that same wilderness.
The text continues to tell us that Jesus was about 30 years old, and then traces his ancestry all the way back to Adam. Then we learn of the wilderness days, 40 of them, that Jesus spent wrestling with who he was, and the shape of his ministry. How was he to live in concert with the “voice from heaven” he heard?
You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.
Chapter 4, verse 14 shares with us that “filled with the power of the Spirit”, Jesus exited the wilderness, he returned to Galilee and “began to teach”. In the synagogue of Nazareth, his home town, Jesus was handed the scroll of Isaiah, and found the place where it is written:
God’s Spirit is on me;
[God] has chosen me to preach the Message of good news to the poor,
Sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind,
To set the burdened and battered free, to announce, This is God’s time to shine.
The Message
John came out the wilderness with dread, with division, with judgement, with fire.
Jesus came out of the wilderness with good news, with pardon, proclaiming recovery, proclaiming freedom, and proclaiming “this is God’s time to shine”.
Only one heard these words–
You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.
Only one ate with tax collectors and sinners.
Only one said that the rain falls on the unjust and the just; the sun arises on the evil and the good. Matthew 5:45
Only one lived the words of Isaiah 43
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; and when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.
Only one lived “Do not fear for I am with you”. Even on the Emmaus Road when the disciples were fleeing from Jerusalem and talking to the unrecognized one who walked with them, he was with them, only to be revealed in the breaking of the bread. Luke 24:13-35
As the commercial states when looking for someone to walk with you, choose wisely.
John, the baptizer, or Jesus, the Anointed One, the uniter, the healer, the Good News One.
It is Jesus we follow.
It is Jesus who walks with us.
It is Jesus who loves us, today, tomorrow, and all the days to come.
Amen
