Augustus must be wondering whether he really wants to join this club after hearing that terrifying Gospel. It’s not just the initiation rite itself which threatens to be rather hotter than a splash of warm water but also a lifetime of violence and family discord. And, adding insult to injury, being accused of hypocrisy because he did not realise all this was actually a good thing. It really does not sound as if Christianity has much going for it.
In some ways that’s quite right; it’s not a bed of roses and when Augustus is a bit older, it’s unlikely that Christian will be a cool thing to be.
Take baptism itself. We are not going to burn Augustus and the worst he will feel will be a splash of candle wax, but Augustus will get off lightly in the Anglican tradition. If he was being baptised into the orthodox church he’d need to strip off and be immersed in water, because baptism is symbol of downing and emerging to new life. Perhaps for Augustus there is, or is not yet a sinful or misguided life that he needs to reject but he will be made aware, gently, I hope, that there is such a thing as sin and will be encouraged mostly by example, to follow a path of kindness and virtue- a path that very often not the immediately attractive one but uphill and stony under foot. Baptism, is not, however, just drowning and rebirth and water is not just the dangerous element which can deprive us of air, but equally the element that washes us and refreshes us, and all living things. Augustus will be baptised in the name of father, son and holy spirit, and it is that spirit which will breathe new life into him and direct and support him when he needs to trudge up that steep path.
There’s an ambiguity, however, in the holy spirit as there is in water. It is often represented as a flame and spoken of as a fire. For the ancient Hebrews fire was not only a destructive element but equally one which purified, destroying the bad or unwanted material leaving metal, especially gold, refined. And, yet, of course, fire also comforts us, cooking our food and keeping us warm.
These two facets of baptism, purifying through destruction and yet also regenerative, both by water and fire, in a way express a similar contradiction right at the centre of Christianity; the crucifixion was, obviously and necessarily a terrible event but one which we see, mysteriously (because I have heard no watertight rational explanation for it) so, mysteriously, absolves us and clears the way for the resurrection and a new creation. Will this paradox help explain the other troubling passages in our Gospel?
Looked at historically, Jesus’ statement that he brought not peace but a sword and discord, is distressingly true; Christians have suffered persecution and in parts of the world they continue to suffer. They have also been responsible for terrible persecution of others and most terribly fellow Christians who have sought to understand God in different ways. More fundamentally perhaps what Jesus means is that promoting the Christian gospel will always be challenging; there has seldom been a society which managed to live to Gospel standards; the Kingdom of God is attainable but clearly not yet attained. You do not need to look hard or far to see men and a few women in power or of influence on our own world who are resolutely opposed to the Gospel- and the worst is that many of them think the Gospel is just what they are promoting. The challenge is real and immediate but as Jeremiah tells us God is not far away, not
remote, but in our midst with hammer and fire as Jeremiah tells us, itself a challenging although finally, a comforting fact.
This may go some way to explaining the strange passage which follows; superficially there seems little to justify comparing ability to predict the weather with recognising the coming Gospel- especially, you might think as Jesus is so often secretive about his message. Secretive, he may be, but he is still as we heard followed by “multitudes” and declares at the opening of his mission in the synagogue in Capernaum that the dumb speaking, the lame leaping and the prisoner freed are all signs of the arrival of the Kingdom of God. Jesus calls those who fail to recognise those signs “hypocrites” which does not, I suggest mean those who do not practice what they preach. Jesus seems to use hypocrite in a slightly different sense; that of people who are so confident and set in their ways that they cannot-or will not- see a new slant or a more important underlying principle. So it is that the pharisees, so obsessed with rules that they cannot see the underlying law, are most commonly accused of hypocrisy. This is, however, a sort of hypocrisy to which we Christians are particularly prone; we like the way we do things; we seldom want to have our long-held beliefs, and our certainties and cosy traditions, challenged. But that is just what the God who is in our midst does.
If Augustus has been following all this, he may be thinking all this talk of ordeals and challenge is really a bit much. It’s only right that he should go through with baptism with his, or rather his sponsors’, eyes open, and the Gospel reading and Jeremiah, are certainly eye opening passages. But they are not defeatist; they recognise suffering and spiritual hardship, but equally give hope. They speak of experience that is difficult, not impossible and of achieving a great prize just as the resurrection follows the crucifixion. And as the baptism liturgy reminds us, it is our task to help each other, and especially Augustus, in the challenges ahead. And with help of that present God, we will.
Amen.