The First Sunday after the Epiphany - The Rev. Lauren Byrd

 

C O M E   D O W N

 

The heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. (Matthew 3:16)

 

At the start of every new year, we roll up our Christmas lights and leave the Christ Child behind and head to the River Jordan — in what seems mere days later — alongside Jesus all grown up, leaping right over the slow daily growth of his childhood. It happens so soon it feels like that incoming river overtakes the light of the Epiphany.

 

It doesn’t though.  

 

Because the truth is the story of our Lord’s baptism is also Epiphany. In the Christian Tradition, the Epiphany is, at the very least, a threefold revelation. Yes, it’s the journey of the Wise Men following a star to behold the child born a savior for all the world to see. But it’s equally the descent of the Holy Dove marking the baptismal descent of Jesus into the Jordan. And, equally also, his first Miracle when, at a wedding in Cana of Galilee, he turned water into wine.

 

Each of those three moments are epiphanies, moments when the divinity of Christ is revealed. And later this morning, we’ll mark that three-fold revelation when we join the choir in singing Songs of Thankfulness and Praise, a hymn that lifts up all three epiphanies in the life of Jesus Christ: his revelation to the Magi; his baptism in the Jordan; and, finally, his turning water into wine at a wedding.

 

All three of these epiphanies illuminate the glorious come down of God from on high: of God come down from heaven to be made man revealed to the Gentiles; of God in Jesus come down into the Jordan to share our struggles and our ordinary days; 3of God come down into the intimacy of a marriage to share in, and sanctify, those moments when the wine runs out.

 

Christmas (that glorious feast of The Incarnation, that feast of God made man) is itself a come down: is the miracle of God in Christ come to dwell with us as one of us, sharing the slow stumbling growth of our days, albeit with perfect obedience to the will of his Father.   

 

It’s why artists most often mark the Incarnation with an overhead dove not rising up to heaven but descending to earth: to us.  In the rose window just over the entrace to this church, you see it: the dove descending, marking the abiding force of the Incarnation. It’s also why Matthew tells us the Spirit descends on Jesus like a dove. Descent is not only the Way of the Cross. Descent is the way of the Incarnation: the way of God in Christ, forever descending into the depths of our lives.

 

A late friend of mine over in Alabama used to say to me, “Let the river run, Lauren. Let it run.” It was Tom’s way of saying sometimes the only thing you can do is suffer an incoming tide you have no chance in hell of stopping. He was an interesting friend to have. I met him when I was a newly-formed priest in search of a mentor in Monroeville, Alabama. He was a retired Methodist pastor just down the road. He’d served the First United Methodist Church there in trying times and kept vigil with the whole town as it experienced the loss of its primary employer when the Vanity Fair Corporation decided to move its factory to Mexico.

 

Tom’s congregation knew about terrible comedowns that feel like incoming floods. And yet still, his best advice to me was always, “Let the river run.” It’s a phrase that suggests God is in the floods with us, and that we can trust God to manifest (to reveal) his love and mercy and peace surpassing all understanding, even when the waters close over us and wash away our best laid plans.

 

Tom believed in the incarnate presence of God with all his heart. He wasn’t an all-virtuous sort of minister, but he was real, and he knew that being real was often closer to God than being “good.” He knew whether rising up or going under, God was in it him. In later life, after he was long retired, he took to riding over to the casino in Atmore to play the slot machines, and one day he pulled the lever and won $2 million dollars.  His wife was at home when Tom called her to say he was sending two representatives from the casino over to their house in a limousine to drive her over to the casino.

 

As he told it, when those fellas got there, Hilda answered the door and told them to come in and have seat because she’d just put some biscuits in the oven and they would need to wait on her biscuits to bake. Hilda was in no hurry for a win, no hurry for a monied apocalypse. No, she was head-down faithful to the ordinary day.

 

And I think the people who gathered alongside the River Jordan all those many thousands of years ago knew about suffering: knew well the weight of despair; and I think when they waded into those waters, it felt right to them because they felt like they’d been drowning for a long while on their own. And they were ready to be head-down faithful to the will of God.

 

It was no apocalyptic lift-off they were hoping for, but rather the head-down hope of loving God and other people.

 

And this morning we come alongside them in a world still longing for the saving presence of God here on earth. We land in the Jordan at the start of every year through our own need for it. And it keeps us real by marking how we are often we in over our heads doing our best to get through the rising waters of life while loving God and caring about those who are in those waters with us.

 

So, I ask you to imagine falling in with that head-down crowd, drenched in your longing for salvation. I ask you to imagine Jesus entering those waters with you, as if to say, “Let the river run, my friend. I am in it with you. Right here beside you. I am come to share in your grief and your joy. In the work of all your days, I am here to share my life with you.”

 

And keep in mind: Jesus didn’t come to save us from our struggles. He came to save us in them.

 

The Epiphany of Jesus come down into the River Jordan marks God’s willing descent as one of us, come down into the troubled waters we keep trying to find the strength to overcome on own. And the glorious, good news of that descent means to tell us God in Christ is with us. Whether on those waters or under them, we are in the river: baptized members of his Body.

It’s churches keep water in their fonts: a piece of river so we’ll remember God in Christ is with us.

I close here with what seems a prayer from our hymnal:

Come down, O Love divine, 
seek thou this soul of mine, 
and visit it with thine own ardor glowing; 
O Comforter, draw near, 
within my heart appear, 
and kindle it, thy holy flame bestowing. [1.]

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, you are in God’s hands. AMEN.

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1.       Bianco da Siena, tr. Richard Frederick Littlemore, The Hymnal 1982, “Come down O Love divine, (New York: Church Publishing Incorporated, The Church Pension Fund, 1985) 516.