Revelation – The Baptism of Jesus
1992 (Year C) 19 January / Epiphany 1
St Peter de Beauvoir Town
This is the story of an old man and the spittle. It is also the story of God being like an old man with two sons. One a good brave warrior, and the other a lazy herder, who ran away in disgrace. It is the story of the father going up on the hill each night to ask for the spittle of forgiveness for his wayward son (for when you get angry your mouth dries up and you cannot spit).
To be able to forgive your mouth has to be moist. It’s of the son finally returning to the village and the father running to meet him, to rub spittle on him. Finally it is the story of a father’s explanation of how the spittle of forgiveness was given him, that his son who had been an outcast, a lost sheep, a dead person and had come back to life.
I guess the story echoes another one everybody here knows. And that’s not surprising because originally the story was called the prodigal son. The story of the old man and the spittle is in a book in the library at the back of church. It’s called Christianity Rediscovered, and if I could, I would make everybody read it. For it tells most movingly of one man’s work with the Masai in Africa, and his attempts to bring Christianity to them.
It tells how Vincent Donavan, for that was the man’s name, felt free to change symbols in the gospel stories so that they could be understood by those in a very different time and culture. He rewrites the stories in the signs and symbols of the culture he is living in and, as he does, so he reveals God to those he is living with. What is more he allows those who have heard the stories to go on changing them so that they in turn can reveal God to yet more.
Now, the readings on the Sundays immediately after the feast of the Epiphany are all to do with how Jesus is revealed as the son to those about him, and it’s all done by telling stories, there’s one about the magi, another about the baptism of Jesus, the miracle of changing water into wine and so on. It’s all very cleverly done. The cast of players are all symbolic and the net gets ever wider.
It’s the Baptism of Jesus today. It’s recorded as being at the very start of his ministry. ‘I saw the spirit coming down on him from heaven like a dove and resting on him,’ says John. All very simple. Very simple yet very powerful. And all done by means of a story and symbols. And stories and symbols are things we can all relate to very easily – there were more comments for instance, about Babushka’s story over Christmas than any other sermon.
It’s the content of these stories that is interesting. Once upon a time stories about voices from the clouds and Spirits like doves would have been the accepted way in which people would talk about God. Everyone would have known that it was a perfectly reasonable way for God to make himself known. Today I’m not so sure. Very few of us would be convinced that we had seen God’s Spirit when we saw a dove even if it landed on somebody. If we told our friends the story they would soon be phoning for the men in white coats to come and collect us. We, like Vincent Donovan and the Masai have to work out what symbols are appropriate for our time and place and community. And they will be different from other cultures and other traditions – even from other places in this country.
It is the job of each Christian community to discover the symbols which will reveal the presence of God in creation. And there will be many stories for we are a very diverse group. Different traditions, experiences, friends, work, expectations. We have to tell the stories of how we came to realise that Jesus was the Son of God. And we have the freedom to invent new ways of telling old stories. They are riot stuck in the form we have them in the bible for ever. They are a means to an end. They are not the end in themselves. The end is God and his revelation.
For me this is all incredibly exciting. For you don’t have to have a degree in theology before you set to telling people a story. We start as equals. And we have to work out the stories which have affected us most profoundly. We mustn’t be worried about getting always getting it right, or understanding all the meaning. But we must re-tell them. So who would be the people in your story of the good Samaritan? How would the prodigal be forgiven and what would be the sign? How would you tell the story that Jesus was revealed as the Son of God two thousand years ago and that this brings meaning and vitality to our lives now?
May God give us grace and wisdom and insight so that we can all play our part in the continuing work of revelation. AMEN