John
the Baptist said, ‘I have baptised you with water;… but he will baptise you
with the Holy Spirit Luke 3:16
Why do we need the Holy Spirit?
To pray, to love, to serve, to evangelise, to be obedient, to forgive,
to heal…
Without the Holy Spirit:
God is far away,
Christ stays in the past,
the Gospel is a dead letter,
the Church is simply an organisation,
authority is a matter of domination,
mission is a matter of propaganda,
the liturgy no more than an evocation,
Christian living a slave morality.
But in the Holy Spirit:
the risen Christ is there,
the Gospel is the power of
life,
the Church shows forth the
life of the Trinity,
authority is a liberating
service,
mission is a Pentecost,
the liturgy is both
memorial and anticipation,
human action is deified.
(Words for Pentecost Sunday from the Greek
Orthodox Archbishop Athenagoras)
As baptised, confirmed - and some of us - ordained Christians we
possess the Holy Spirit!
We possess the Spirit - but does he possess us?
That is the key to a spiritual vitality!
As Our Lord says in St John Chapter 7:37-39 If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me
and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living
water will flow from within him.
Our renewal in the Holy Spirit is about the
releasing of the life of the Spirit within us.
The late Dom Ian Petit of Ampleforth wrote these
words in his book You Will Receive Power: Baptism
and Confirmation confer a supernatural gift, but ignorance or lack of
understanding of the gift, can block its full effect. In other words, while the
sacrament is valid and has been given, the effect has been blocked. When the
block is removed then the full effect floods in... baptism in the Holy
Spirit… an opportunity for awakening in (people) their sacraments of
initiation..
The New Year begins with a liturgical reminder
about our ongoing need for this unblocking and awakening to the power of the
Holy Spirit who visits us in every Eucharist. We have the possibility after the
sermon of receiving anointing on our foreheads with the oil blessed by the
Bishop for use at baptism, confirmation and ordination. We call it chrism oil
and it represents the anointing in the Holy Spirit given in baptism,
confirmation and ordination. We are allowed to use it occasionally to express
and effect the renewal of faith and baptism as this morning.
The Feast of the Baptism of the Lord is the grand reminder that Christians are
people who have woken up to Jesus and to the Gift of the Holy Spirit, to the
living God - nothing less.
An awakening to the Spirit, a releasing of the
Spirit, an unblocking of his flow – this is the invitation and challenge of
today’s Feast!
There is one
baptism for the forgiveness of sins and it confers the Holy Spirit. A gift
though is given that needs to be
received. For Christians to seek the renewing power of the Spirit – as we
do as we receive Holy Communion every Sunday - is a matter of seeking to be more fully what we are in Christ
and nothing more or less than that!
We want to be a people that live knowing their
need of grace!
The Spirit is waiting to confirm to us the same words that were spoken to
Our Lord at his baptism: You are my Son,
the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.
Christians share in the anointing of the Anointed
One – Jesus is the Christ or Anointed One so he can share his anointing with us
and speak into our hearts those words of adoption: You are my son, my daughter; with you I am well pleased.
There’s a great tale from C.S. Lewis' about a
doubting Bishop. Lewis once imagined an additional scene at the Marriage at
Cana - a sceptical bishop sitting further down the table from Our Lord and Our
Lady. There are the guests with the water turned into wine. As everyone enjoys
the new wine of the Kingdom Feast the doubting bishop is holding up his glass
and scrutinising, "How can this be? How can water become wine? How can the
philosophical difficulties about an interventionist God be overcome? Is this
some sort of conjuring trick?" All the while the rest of them at table are
drinking up the Spirit in whatever sense you like!
There are many who make an 11th Commandment Thou shalt not commit thyself! Such folk – and they are around in the Church
today – miss out on Christian basics, on the empowering promised in today’s
feast.
If you hesitate about coming forward this morning
shelve your doubts!
Be open to the touch of the Lord through his
Church.
I have baptised you with water; but he will baptise you with the Holy
Spirit. This baptism or gift of the Holy Spirit is an ongoing reality for
those who will commit themselves. The Gift is not so much a once for all thing
or commodity but rather something dynamic and ongoing.
Baptism in the Holy Spirit is a process in which
the relationship that opens up at Baptism involves an ongoing flow of love,
praise and power leading into ongoing consecration in the Truth.
It is worth recalling that though Our Lord
himself was conceived by the Holy Spirit he waited 30 years for his Baptism in
Jordan. So it can be – as it was for me and can be for you- that though I had
received the Spirit through Infant Baptism, Confirmation and Ordination the
first deep experience came many years later – and through, of all things, a
crisis of faith – and a recommitment!
I have mentioned my faith crisis before and how I
went on a retreat years back and prayed God if you’re there show yourself, give
me a vision of yourself more to your dimensions and less to mine – and he did –
but it needs refreshing!
Another way to look at it is like this: if the
Christian life is like a rose bush there are great spurts of growth from time
to time that push out new branches with new flowers. One such branch ‑ and its
some branch in its fruitfulness – is, if you like, a new opening up to the
Spirit. Yet the life of the rose bush before and after such a new spurt of
growth is the same life.
We possess the Spirit - but does he possess us?
That is the question we are being asked on this feast of the Lord’s
Baptism. There is a commitment issue
here we need to address.
As we come to receive Jesus in Holy Communion are
we really committed and open to his empowering?
Are we ready to hear and to believe those wonderful words: You are my son, my daughter; with you I am
well pleased.
After the silence you have a chance to act in
faith upon those wonderful words and come forward for the Father’s touch and
anointing expressed sacramentally through his minister’s anointing touch upon
your forehead.
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