To listen to the 9:00 am sermon click here. To listen to the 10:45 am sermon click here.

St. Charles’ Episcopal Church – St. Charles, IL

The Baptism of our Lord – Epiphany 1 Year B

Genesis 1:1-5; Psalm 29; Acts 19:1-7; Mark 1:4-11

The Rev. Elizabeth Meade

On Thursday this week, I made my now annual visit to New Gracanica Monastery in Third Lake, Illinois. New Gracanica is the home of the Serbian Orthodox Church in America and Canada. It serves as the home and episcopal seat of the Rt. Rev. Bishop LONGIN who serves as the Bishop of the Diocese of America and Canada, under the Serbian Orthodox Church of Belgrade.

Why did I go there, you may be asking. Why not some nice Episcopal retreat house? Well, first, let me describe it. From the time you open the carved wooden front doors – doors made of cypress planks at least half a foot thick – you are assaulted sensorially. Candles burn, the aroma of incense and chrism fill your nostrils, and arches and domes slice through the open spaces, finally catapulting to a height at least 4 stories up, in a series of domes. It’s like a birthday cake gone wild. And finally, when you stand at the middle of the church and look up – up at least 4 stories – you discover an enormous icon of Christ gazing down at you. But that’s not all.

The most amazing part is that everywhere you look, every square inch of wall space is covered in icons.

The icons At New Gracanica depict images foreign and familiar. One is of the Nativity, one depicts the Flight into Egypt – another tells the story of the widow’s mite. But in between these familiar depictions of the stories from scripture, there are hundreds of icons, that depict saints, known and unknown. Some old, some contemporary. It’s a frenzy of color and intricacy, light and dark, clarity and mistiness.

And did I mentions windows? There are windows. Windows placed at odd angles, that cause sharp jags of daylight to slice through the interior and highlight the gilt haloes over all the icons bathed in it’s light.

Four stories of haloes! It is quite overwhelming. And a true testimony to the faith of the persecuted Serbians who built it.

We build great monuments to God – and they are often quite awe inspiring, but isn’t it always the little things that startle us into an awareness of God’s presence? The hand of a loved one, the smile of a stranger, the kindness of neighbors. This truth startled me on Thursday. So overwhelmed was I by the beauty of the place, I hardly noticed the one thing that was out of place. When I did, it was so incongruous that it startled me.

Amidst all this exotic beauty and sensorial influx was the floor: a magnificent marble floor.

But strewn across it was a carpet of straw, and dead oak leaves.

And it was there, in the straw and the dead leaves that I noticed God with me.

New Gracanica is an architectural testimony to the glory of God, but I was surprised by joy at the closeness of Jesus. They came, together, meeting at that mysterious point where heaven and earth collide. In all this massive glory, in all the exotically painted icons, in all the glowing haloes…… there was straw and dirt.

Simple organic matter.

And that’s what we see today in Mark’s gospel. Mark’s gospel starts with the baptism of our Lord. No birth narrative for Mark. No shepherds, no “angels we have heard on high.” Book one, chapter one opens to Jesus waiting in line with all the other people – waiting to be immersed by John in the river Jordan. Jesus, the sinless one, standing there among the sinful, waiting his turn. Jesus, the sinless one, stepping into the muddy river,

It was kind of like all the beauty of New Gracanica meeting dead leaves and straw. Christ’s baptism is one of those mysterious confluence points where Divine grace meets wholly human. And we might not even notice that – except that Mark adds this seemingly minute detail.

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

Whenever we see heavens torn apart, we need to pay particular attention.

I’m no Greek scholar, but I do remember in graduate school, when we were studying Mark’s gospel. In Matthew’s and Luke’s gospel, the heavens were merely “opened” but in Mark’s gospel, the heavens were rent apart – torn open. The Greek word is Schitzo – from where we get schism and schizophrenia. The only other time this word is used was when the temple curtain was torn apart after Jesus’ death. Not gently opened, but torn – ripped apart in a way that would not be easy to put back together.

So we have these bookends in Mark’s gospel – when Christ was baptized and when Christ died – that schism happened. That in the tearing, heaven was no longer closed, no longer separate and apart from earth. Something irreversible happened. Kind of like Humpty Dumpty: all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put the heavens together again. I think Mark is highlighting for us what we already know, but may forget. That in coming to us, and in standing shoulder to shoulder with us in baptism, Jesus is closer than we can ask or imagine. Jesus: friend, brother, savior, was and is mysteriously God Himself.

New Gracanica is for me a physical reminder of this great confluence of God and man together in the most mysterious of ways. A feeling that with all the beauty – of hundreds of icons, of all the intricately carved wooden screens, of the army of brass thuribles hanging delicately along each wall – all these things designed to evoke a sense of God’s glory and mystery – there was sun shining in from the outside, and there was straw and dead oak leaves littering the perfection of the marble floor. God crashing into the sanctuary, as God crashes into our lives.

This is what Jesus seeks to do with our hearts – and with our lives. Jesus came to tear apart the social fabric that separates black from white, rich from poor, Anglican from Serbian Orthodox. He came to tear asunder the idea that the Messiah would come riding into Jerusalem on a golden chariot and rule from a golden throne. And so it is He comes to us. In baptism, our hearts are torn open – to accept the fullness of God’s love. In his coming to be baptized, and in his crucifixion, Jesus tore apart not only the gates of heaven, but our hearts.

And so we have Jesus, the sinless one, waiting in line to be baptized. Jesus standing there among all the sinful ones, was God among us. So wanting to be among us that he would be washed in the same waters of our sinfulness. What an amazing thing that is! That in all incredible monuments we erect to an all powerful God, that Jesus is there in the straw and the dead leaves? That Jesus is there walking in the water with us – whether we notice him or not.

Today, at the 10:45 service, we will be baptizing Ella Lester. A baby, innocent and pure, yet still born into the muck of humanity. A baby being ushered into the human family, and God is there. Does the rite of baptism guarantee that Ella – or any of us – will live perfect Christian lives? Of course not – Baptism is not fire insurance, nor is it magic water. But in baptism, the Holy Spirit does her own work, opening, tearing at our hearts, like the slices of sunshine that pierced the walls of the monastery church and lit up the haloes on the icons.

As we renew our baptismal vows today, and escort Ella as she enters her place in our long standing history – we must ask, “Do we notice?” Because in Jesus’ baptism, and in every baptism, the heavens open and that voice speaks, saying, “You’re the One. You’re my child and in you I am well pleased.” Do we notice?

The heavens have been torn open, and will never be closed again. Our hearts are opened as well. Open to the possibility that our lives, filled with straw and dead leaves, provide a home for Christ. God is there.

“You’re the one. You are my child, and in you I am well pleased.”

Thanks be to God. Amen.