THE TRULY GREATEST

Sermon delivered on the 1^st Sunday after Epiphany (The Baptism of Christ) the 13th January 2008 by Fr. Nicholas J.G. Sykes at St. Alban's Church, 461 Shedden Road, George Town, Cayman Islands.

Scriptures: Isaiah 42:1-9    Acts 10:34-43    Matthew 3:13-17

Acts 10:42 "He is the one ordained by God to be judge of the living and the dead."

The Season of Epiphany, or Manifestation, reminds us that Christians are supposed to have a specific measure of what is good or true. To say such a thing seems to fly in the face of the current modern mind, because, of course, everybody knows that the specific measure of what is good that I am talking about, is the Lord Jesus Christ. I am asserting what S. John clearly asserts in his Gospel, that Jesus Christ is the Light of the world, and where there is not that Light, or where there is the rejection of that Light, there is darkness. However, the current modern mind asserts that there is good and bad in all ways of thinking, and does not in this matter differentiate between, say, Christianity and atheism. Measures of what is good, however, do exist in the modern mindset, and it is because of these measures that in some places Christmas carols, the Christmas tree, public prayer and public displays of symbols such as the cross or the Ten Commandments, are disapproved of and banned. All this too, however strange it may seem, in the name sometimes of toleration and non-discrimination, which are the new supposed measures of what is true or good in many Western societies.

 

The measure, though, of what is good and true, that we adhere to and believe in, is found from God’s revelation. "He has shown you, O man, what is good", says the prophet Micah. Indeed He has. Today’s Old Testament lesson from Isaiah points us to that good. "Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations." That pointer to the good is made specific when Jesus is baptised at the hands of John the Baptist at the beginning of the Lord’s public ministry. When the voice came from heaven with the words "Thou art my beloved Son; with Thee I am well pleased"- or in fact more literally "with Thee I was well pleased", this was not a sign of praise for what He had already achieved on earth, but a sign confirming Jesus’ Sonship and all that faithful Sonship would imply. Although Jesus was aware of His heavenly Father before this, this affirmation of His status as a Son was clearly very important for the ministry that followed. For Jesus to be the ultimate and absolute measure of what is good and true, He must be the Beloved Son of God. For us as well, the ministration of baptism and the possession of the Holy Spirit declare that we are His sons and daughters, a declaration having vast implications for our manner of life and our future, because it is a declaration of our own alignment and submission to that specific measure of what is good and true that as Christians we are bound to assert.

 

In the Old Testament too it is made abundantly plain that it is not the achievements of Israel that qualify them in the sight of God, but God’s primary declaration of His intent towards them. The Book of the Consolation of Israel in the middle of the book of Isaiah is a wonderful statement of God’s love and care for Israel and His intent to redeem her irrespective of her many past acts of unfaithfulness to Him. Today’s passage is the first of the so-called servant songs, which are to be found within the Book of the Consolation. These are the among the finest declarations of God’s intent that can be found in scripture. "I am the Lord," God says to the anointed Servant. "I have called you in righteousness, I have taken you by the hand and kept you; I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness." It is not immediately clear whether this anointed Servant is Israel as a whole, but as the Servant songs proceed, the Servant figure narrows to an individual who represents Israel, stands in her place, and finally redeems the nation. Of him God says, "He will not cry or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street; a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice. He will not fail or be discouraged till he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his law."

 

To this day orthodox Jews skip over the fourth Servant song in Isaiah 53 and don’t read it, even though it is within their own scriptures, because no man is able to deny its reference to Jesus. From the first servant song, however, it is clear to the Christian mind that here are the clearest prophetic references to Jesus Christ in all of the Old Testament. So we see that God’s kind intent to establish justice on the earth, that we find in the Old Testament, is recast as a radical Fatherliness in the New Testament. The One who comes to redeem is confirmed in the knowledge that He is the beloved Son, and those who will be baptised in His name are adopted as sons and daughters too. It is right for us, therefore, to think of Epiphany not only as the manifestation of Christ, but the manifestation of the fatherliness of God towards us as well.

 

There are of course those in the world who do not see what is manifested to the eyes of faith. "Mercifully grant," we prayed in the Epiphany Collect last week, "that we, which know thee now by faith, may after this life have the fruition of thy glorious Godhead." Almost by definition, what we see by the eyes of faith is challenged by the happenings of our present age, which can send strong signals of unfatherliness and make us doubt our faith In 2004 we probably did not find Hurricane Ivan one bit fatherly. We should remember however, that the truths that are revealed about Christ and about God through His Word are revealed not in this age to the eyes of sight but to the eyes of faith. If our faith in the fatherliness of God through His Son Jesus Christ and the possession of the Holy Spirit is strong, then we will know too that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to His purpose. Jesus Christ is the Light of the world, and where there is not that Light, or where there is the rejection of that Light, there is darkness.

 

When St. Peter preached the Good News to the Gentiles for the first time, part of the account of which formed our second Lesson today, he too asserted to them in terms they could best understand that here, in Jesus, whom he explained to them was the "Lord of all", was the measure, not for Jewish people only but for Gentiles too, of what was good and true. To give them an understanding of that measure, he described to them His baptism by John and His being anointed by God with the Holy Spirit and power, and His healings of the sick and demon-possessed, and His being crucified and raised from the dead. He was the One, he told them, that had been appointed or ordained by God to be judge of the living and the dead. How could that be if He was not Himself the measure of what was good and true? How could His work on the cross atone for us if His life had not been the full measure of what a human life ought to be? As Peter told them, the truth is that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.

 

We too like those Gentiles who begged Peter to come and tell them these things, need to escape from the Gentile mindset of our own time and hear again the revelation of God, not in our ears only but to the depths of our souls. For our continued walk in the way of salvation, we need to overthrow one set of measures of what is good in favour of another, the one referred to, also in St John’s Gospel, as the Way, the Truth, and the Life.