Sunday 12 January 2020

This Time Tomorrow: Baptism of Christ & Plough Sunday

Audio Version Here


Isaiah 42.1-9, Psalm 29, Acts 10.34-43, Matthew3.13-17

Today is the feast of the Baptism of Christ, but it’s also known as Plough Sunday, because according to very ancient tradition, going right back into the Middle Ages, tomorrow is Plough Monday. Plough Monday is the first Monday after Epiphany, January 6, and it was the start of the agricultural year, the moment when ploughing started to prepare the ground for the coming year’s crops. At a time when people were much more aware of their dependence on the soil, it was a very important moment. Agricultural labourers would be touting for work, desperate for an income in the dark months of winter. Farmers would be hoping for good weather to get the preparation for seed-sowing done.

So prayers would be said in church on this Sunday for the coming agricultural year. Some churches even kept a parish plough in the back of the church for those who didn’t have their own to use, and candles would be lit in front of it.

And on Plough Monday itself, ploughs would be dragged around the village, accompanied by singing and dancing. The villagers might dress up, disguising themselves, and appeal not only for work, but for money to help tide them over through bad weather when ploughing couldn’t be done.

My guess is that most of us won’t be trying to do any ploughing tomorrow, but this time of year is definitely a “back to work” time for many, or a time of getting back to a more normal routine if you aren’t out at work. How you feel about that depends on what your work or your “normal” day to day life feels like. If you have a job, and it’s a job you enjoy, work is a blessing, but work can also be tough and challenging, precarious and insecure, consuming every waking moment, or not paying well enough to live on. The worst of the winter weather is often still ahead of us, and there are no Christmas lights to brighten the dark nights that still lie ahead. This is it.

That’s why it seems a good idea to me to mark this day, even if most of us have never laid a hand on a plough. Plough Sunday proclaims that daily life matters, our work, our everyday routine matters. If our faith doesn’t impinge on that, then it isn’t a faith work having. Faith is not just about what happens in an hour on a Sunday morning in church. What we do here on a Sunday morning is meant to strengthen us for the calling we all have Monday to Saturday. To help us think about that, the C of E has launched some resources called “Everyday Faith” – there’s a series of 21 daily reflections you can sign up for on the Church of EnglandWebsite,  in an app or by email, starting tomorrow, and a booklet available too – I’ll put a copy on the Red Table to look at. They are all designed to help us think about where we find God, and show his love day by day wherever we are.

Our readings today are a great way to set us off on those reflections on everyday faith.  Today’s Psalm invited us to listen for the voice of God in the world around us, to see God at work in the forests and oceans, not just in the sacred space we have carefully roped off for him.

Isaiah, in the Old Testament reading, talks about the servant of God who brings good news to others by his patient care – not breaking bruised reeds or quenching dimly burning flames.  Biblical scholars argue about who or what he had in mind when he wrote this, though of course, Christians have seen Jesus as the perfect example of it. But towards the end of the reading, it is clear that God is calling the whole nation, all his people, to be “a light to the nations” setting people free from oppression, living the faith they profess.

In the reading we heard from Acts, Peter, an ordinary fisherman, does just that. He proclaims the message of God to a Roman Centurion, Cornelius, and his household. He doesn’t leave it to some religious professional – this is his story, and he is going to tell it. He hasn’t been to theological  college or got any academic qualifications, but his life has been shaped by walking with Jesus, day by day, learning to see himself as Jesus sees him, getting it wrong and being forgiven, falling down and being picked up again. It’s the fruit of spending three years close to Jesus, learning from him, being changed by him. Cornelius and his household can see that he knows what he is talking about because he’s lived it.

But it is the Gospel reading which gives us the most powerful demonstration of what it looks like to have a God who is with us where we are, in every situation, 24/7.

Jesus comes to John the Baptist at the River Jordan, to be baptized. John can’t understand why. His baptism is a baptism of repentance, based very closely on the kind of ritual washing which would have been a regular part of everyone’s religious practice, and still is in both the Jewish and Muslim faiths. Ritual washing was a way of symbolically purifying yourself before you worshipped, having your sins washed away. But John couldn’t see why Jesus needed it. He hadn’t done anything wrong. ”I need to be baptised by you, and do you come to me?”, he says.

But Jesus wouldn’t be put off. This needs to happen he says, “to fulfil all righteousness.” What on earth does that mean?

Righteousness is a clumsy word. We easily confuse it with self-righteousness, that “holier-than-thou” attitude which looks down on others, in an attempt artificially to bolster our own sense of self-esteem. But righteousness isn’t that at all. Righteousness is how things are when everything is as it ought to be – relationships, attitudes, body, mind, soul, spirit. It is about the whole of life, the whole of creation.  It often goes with peace in the Bible, because it’s the only route to real peace. (e.g. Ps 85.10) We can paper over cracks and hope for the best, we can negotiate cease-fires in the trouble spots in our world, or in our neighbourhoods and families, but unless we put things right at the root level, the trouble will all be there waiting to break out again afresh.

Jesus comes to “fulfil all righteousness”, to do what is right, to put right what is wrong, to mend what is broken, to heal what is hurting, to bring together what we have divided through our prejudice and suspicion of one another.  To do that, he needs to get at the root of the problem, in the depths of human hearts and human experiences, and that means being where we are, not just when we are on our Sunday-best behaviour, but when we are feeling exhausted and fractious trying to spread ourselves too thinly in a job that’s impossible to do, or at loggerheads with our boss, or feeling worthless because we can’t find a job at all. It means being where we are when we are anxious about our loved ones, or feel we have let them down. It means being where we are when we are succeeding too, because sometimes it’s the good times which are most damaging to our faith, when we start to believe that we can go it alone without God and others, that our success is all down to our own brilliance.

Throughout his life Jesus, shows this commitment to being where we are. It starts with his birth, a tiny child laid in a manger in a world that has no room for him, just as it has so often got no room for the vulnerable and the weak. It is seen throughout his ministry in his friendship with those who are outcast. Ultimately it will lead him to the cross, where he’ll die the death of a criminal, entering into the worst of human experience. But his baptism is a significant moment in his identification with us too. Jesus goes down into the waters of the Jordan just like any of those lost, battered, guilty, confused people who have flocked to John hoping he can wash away the mess of their lives. He identifies with us so that we can identify with him, so that we can hear the words God speaks to him, “This is my Son, the beloved” so that we can know that he means to include us in those words too. Just as Jesus is God’s beloved son, so are we all his beloved children.

I spoke earlier about the Church of England’s Everyday Faith initiative, and I’d like to finish by inviting you to share in a little activity inspired by their resources. It’s called “This Time Tomorrow”. I’ve given you all two post-it notes. If you haven’t got any, there are spares in the pews. I’d like to invite you to take one and think about what you will be doing this time tomorrow. Maybe you’ll be at work, doing whatever you do – happily or unhappily. Maybe you’ll be caring for a family member, or doing the housework or on a journey. I will probably be hovering around the church, in case I’m needed to sort anything out with the plasterers who are starting work on the North Aisle tomorrow.  I’d like you to write on the first note whatever it is you’ll be doing, and stick it on this noticeboard as you come up for communion. Let it be a way of giving that Monday morning activity to God, and sharing it with all the rest of us too, so we can pray for each other.

The second post-it is for you to take away. I’d like you to write on it – perhaps at the end of the service - something which you want to recall and hold onto from this morning’s worship – a word, a thought, an experience, a feeling. And then, “this time tomorrow”, I’d like you, if you can, to look at it again. Let it be a reminder that the God you meet in church is still with you then, wherever you are. Let it be a reminder to you that you are still his beloved child, whatever you are doing, treasured, valued, called, with a job to do for him, with love to share, and good news to proclaim.
Amen






No comments:

Post a Comment