Baptism of our Lord

Today we celebrate the Baptism of our Lord. Below is an excerpt of today's sermon

“And just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him”

Today is the celebration of the baptism of our Lord. It is the day we walk with Jesus into those waters at the river Jordan, the day we gawk wide eyed at John as he submerges Jesus in that running water, and the day when Jesus explodes out of the water that the heavens are ripped apart. Yes, in our reading for today we hear that the heavens are ripped apart, and they are ripped in such a way that they can never fully be mended. There will always be that rip, the tear, that change that has taken place, and it means that as of that very moment, things cannot go back to the way they were.

You see, with God coming to us, with Jesus’ baptism and the rending and ripping of the heavens, with God loose in the world in a way he never has been before, things have changed, and there is no way to put that genie back in the bottle. Because the heavens are ripped, and once something is ripped, it will never go back to the exact way that it way. And honestly, once something is ripped in such a way, will be different, may even be better.

Take a moment and think about that in your own life. I think about my own health life.I have this surgery scar, a place where I was ripped apart with a scalpel, and I will never the same. But, I am better for it.

And I bet you can come up with examples in your own life. I bet you can come up with times when things were ripped apart beyond your control. But as things progressed, able to see the blessings, able to see how things were better in the long run.

That is what is happening at the baptism of Jesus. The heavens are being ripped apart and things will never be the same. For God is actively getting his hands bloody and dirty, literally, and restoring his relationship with his children, with you. And God does this by entering into the world and ripping apart boundaries to seek us out