Sermon preached by The Rev'd Susan Kraus

St. Paul’s on the Green, Norwalk, Connecticut

The First Sunday after Epiphany - 8:00 a.m.

You may remember that during Advent we heard the story of John the Baptist, the man who called people to acknowledge their sinfulness before God, to repent, and to be baptized in the Jordan River as a sign of being cleansed from their sin. A great man with great spiritual charism, John was preparing the way for Jesus, the Christ, the one whom John knew was far greater than himself.

In today’s reading from Matthew’s gospel Jesus has come to John to be baptized by him. Knowing who Jesus is, John says, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” Jesus has no sin for which to repent, no uncleanness to be washed away. Nevertheless, he was willing to be baptized. Jesus’ willingness to be baptized may be seen as further testimony of his willingness to enter fully into the human condition. As we emphasized during the Christmas season, the incarnation of God in Christ shows us that God is willing to be one of us, to enter fully into our human life, so that we might know God, see God’s love in action, and follow.

After Jesus was baptized by John, something extraordinary happened. “Suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’” Can you imagine how wonderful that must have been for Jesus, to hear God call him “my beloved son” and to know that God was pleased with him? Such an experience of affirmation!

According to Matthew’s gospel, however, the very next thing that happens in Jesus’ life is that he is led into the wilderness where he is tempted by Satan for forty long days and nights. We might wonder how much Jesus felt God’s love and affirmation during those days of temptation. We don’t know. We only know that he withstood Satan.

Many people who have followed Jesus have had both extraordinary experiences of God’s love for them and extraordinary periods of feeling God’s absence, even God’s rejection. One such person is Mother Teresa of Calcutta. The book, Come Be My Light, is a very interesting account of Mother Teresa’s spiritual life and the origin and development of her work among the poorest of the poor and of the order she founded, the Missionaries of Charity. This amazing woman had a profound love for Jesus from childhood. As a young woman she became a nun and enjoyed years of feeling union with Jesus. Mother Teresa heard a clear call from God to begin her work among the poor in India, and she willingly gave up much to follow that call.

Then she lost the sense of God’s presence in her life, and she lost her feeling of union with her beloved Jesus. For decades she went on in her work without the consolation of feeling God’s love for her. She even came to feel rejected by God. Yet she went on loving God with all her heart, mind and strength. Her only goal was to love Jesus, to give herself completely to God, and to do God’s work. And in spite of feeling inner darkness and emptiness, she radiated the joy and love of God to others – the poor whom she served, the sisters of the Missionaries of Charity, and all who met her. And God’s work, as we know, grew and thrived through her.

To have moments or long stretches of time of feeling God’s love for oneself is a rich blessing. But it is likely that such feeling will not last always. The lives of Christian mystics and saints and the experience of Jesus – remember his words from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” – teach us to expect that we will have our times in the wilderness, when we must go on in faith, trusting in God’s love even when we do not feel it. The wilderness experience is a hard one. Many people, wise in the spiritual life, say that in the wilderness our faith may deepen and grow as it cannot elsewhere. I believe that is true. But the wilderness is very difficult.

God does not ask us to “feel good” when we are in the wilderness. God asks us only to be faithful – to keep on trusting God, especially trusting that God is love, love higher and broader and deeper than any love we know. This love is known to us most clearly in Jesus, the one who became a helpless and vulnerable infant born in a stable and laid in a manger, the man without sin who was willing to be baptized that others might be led to repentance, the one who reaches out to us with arms once nailed to a cross, and the one who calls to us, by name, from the place of the empty tomb.

Jesus has come to show us God’s love and to call us, in love, to follow him. May we love God in every experience of our lives, as Jesus did. And may we also hear God say to us, “You are my beloved.” Amen.