First Sunday After Epiphany: You Are Mine, With You I am Well Pleased!

Luke 3:21 to 22 (NRSV)

Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form. And a voice came from heaven, "You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.

In the Catechism for The Episcopal Church in the Book of Common Prayer on page 858 in the section about Holy Baptism we read the following:

Q. What is Holy Baptism?
A. Holy Baptism is the sacrament by which God adopts us as God's children and makes us members of Christ's Body, the Church, and inheritors of the kingdom of God.

When Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, God made a huge impact upon our humanity through God's Incarnation. In the Old Testament when Israel passed through the Red Sea, the waters parted in two so that the Nation could pass through to the other side so that they were free from the Egyptians. Jesus Christ who was God's perfect revelation was without sin. He was free, and had all the world at his command. In Jesus Christ, God takes on the limitations of our humanity so that Jesus could draw us closer to God to be free of our sins. Jesus enters the waters of baptism that prefigures his death on the Cross and rising again from the tomb as he rises up from the waters of the Jordan.

I have an image on my wall of the Baptism of Christ. Below the image the words of the Hymn of Patriarch Sophronius of Jerusalem at Great Blessings of the Waters reads:

Today the nature of water is sanctified. And the Jordan is parted in two; It holds back the stream of its own waters seeing the Master wash Himself.

At the Sacrament of Baptism, God reaches out to us through the death and resurrection of Christ and makes us God's own. In Isaiah 41: 1b to 3 we read:

Do not fear, for I have redeemed
you;
I have called you by name, you
are mine.
When you pass through the waters,
I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they
shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you
shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not
consume you.
For I am the Lord your God,
the Holy One of Israel, your
Savior.

God has chosen and adopted us through Jesus Christ, and God says that we are God's Beloved, and with us God is well-pleased. God has demonstrated God's unconditional and all-inclusive love. In Jesus, God has claimed us as God's very own, and God has promised to lead us "beside still waters, to restore our souls. God leads us in right paths for God's name sake." (Psalm 23:2-3). As we are given new life through the waters of Baptism, so we are given a share in Christ's death and resurrection. (See Romans 6).

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people are among those whom God has claimed as God's own, as among God's beloved. Yet, many conservative Christians claim that LGBT people have followed the wrong path due to our sexual orientations and/or gender identities/expressions. Or religious conservatives say that we have left being God's beloved because we live in same-sex relationships or alter our gender. Our relationships are seen as sinful, because of some Christians belief in Almighty God. They swear on the Holy Scriptures as their proof that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people are people who are sick, disordered or prisoners to sexual disorders. Organizations like Exodus International and Courage claim to "compassionately" change our attractions so that they can be "healed." Yet, what many right wing Christians fail to see is the lack of total charity they do to LGBT individuals through their Spiritual violence.

God has given us the gift of loving other people in a unique and holy way. God has validated who we are through Jesus Christ and our relationship to God by our common Baptism as Christians. God has called us God's beloved, and has told us that God is pleased with us. If we listen too much to the Roman Catholic church, and organizations like the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), and "ex-gay" ministries, they can cause us to look at our gifts of being able to love someone of the same sex in a negative way. God has told us in Jesus Christ that with us, God is well-pleased. Jesus came up out of those waters with a mission to bring those who were unique and outcasts of society into God's communion of unconditional and all inclusive love. LGBT people are among God's precious and beloved as created beings. God came to us in Jesus Christ to save us from our sins and to call us to the service of God and our neighbor. To recognize in those whom society considers unlovable, God's desire to be loved and to love us as God's beloved with whom God is well-pleased. We do not have to be slaves to prejudice and injustice, but through Baptism we are given the mission of creating a new world of equality where all are known as God's beloved children, with whom God is well-pleased.

How do we as LGBT Christians live out our calling as Baptized people? How do we invite others who experience prejudice and marginalization into the company of God's Church? How do we confront our own attitudes towards others who are not similar to how we think they should be? How do we as LGBT Christians help followers of Christ who have attitudes of prejudice towards LGBT people know that God has come for us, as much as anyone else?

Today, as we celebrate God saving us from sin through Jesus Christ, may we remember that we are also called to participate in God's work of salvation. All of us are beloved of God, and with us God is well-pleased. Do we see ourselves that way? Do we live as if we are beloved of God, and as if God is well-pleased? Do we love our partners, our friends, family, church families, as people beloved of God, with whom God is well-pleased?

Father in heaven, who at the baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan proclaimedhim as your beloved Son and anointed him with the Holy Spirit: Grant that all who are baptized into his Name may keep the covenant they have made, and boldly confess him as Lord and Savior; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.
(Collect for the First Sunday after the Epiphany: The Baptism of the Lord, Book of Common Prayer, Page 214).