Sermon notes? outline? sketch? yes that’s it, a sketch.
For the best read, take in the next blog post first, then this one.
Quick sermon outline for Baptism of Our Lord 13 Jan 2019
John is wild and calls for the chaff to be burned up.
Jesus will come to judge, and purify.
We need all that.
But Christ comes and graciously gives us life.
Where’s the hellfire and brimstone in that?!
Well…
Given free choice so that we can love
we can also choose ( and continually do) to hate, or to be deceptive and dishonest, disloyal, or even just plain BAD. Call that EVIL.
If we have choice, we will somehow, sometime still choose against love, against God, against living well.
God wants us to love, so we all get to put up with Evil, and suffer it too.
But
When
Jesus
comes
and
judges us!
Well then all that which brings us to sin and turn from God, to turn from loving our neighbour as ourselves and our enemies , and our God with all our heart mind and soul, then and only then Jesus will remove that from us …
But
it
is
not
going
to
be
feeling good.
That’s having the dross burned right out of ya.
And it is like having the chaff burned up in one big hot fire.
It will not be fun,
But it is what we most need, and we are going to get it!
To we are baptized, in the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, always trinitarian, or it is not a complete baptism.
The water drowns out the sinfulness, and yet it remains as potential, inevitable potential, so that we can choose love.
The oil prepares us for God’s presence in us.
The sign of the Cross prepares us for sacrifice, even of our lives, so that others will know Grace upon Grace and God’s love, Christ’s forgiveness and the Holy Spirit’s wild ride down the white water of life with wind, flame, breath, and beauty all everywhere.
Then for the rest of our lives we anticipate the life eternal, in the resurrection with Christ.
There
Freedom promised comes to be, after the dross is burned right out of us, so that we can enter Christ’s freedom in eternity.
This we look forward to.
But we do it, well … we do everything we do, as one of a crowd of witnesses, a crowd of saints, all in light,
specular light, diffused and reflected into beautiful images of God, as we are made.
It may be cold out there in that cruel world of dishonesty, deception and scapegoating,
but in here, where the natural fuels are burned,
the fuel of urgency until in God’s time there is patience,
the fuel of hurt (could become anger) until forgiveness flows freely like milk with ginger snap cookies,
the fuel of pride (that discounts others) until gratefulness abounds at each breath though one has nothing left,
These fuels are burned and burned well, until
in this mind, heart and soul
its as toasty comfortably warm as a great wood stove on a cold winter’s day.
Which it is that, too.