Baptism of our Lord and Savior --January 9, 2011
When I began to wrestle with whether or not I was called to be a priest one of
the hardest things for me to reconcile was that I had not had some grandiose
supernatural manifestation in which God called me to the priesthood. What
I thought I needed to legitimize my call to the priesthood was -what
theologians sometimes call a theophany. A theophany is a physical
manifestation God1 --usually a theophany grand vision in which God shows
up or some one being able to hear the voice of God. Audibly.
For months--- I wrestled with my call wondering if I could be possibly be a
priest even though Jesus hadn’t showed up at my bedside and said “Sean- I
want you to be a priest in my church.”
This mornings Gospel gives us a great example of a theophany—Jesus’ baptism
–Jesus is coming up out of the water, the water is pouring off him as John lifts
him from river when suddenly – the sky and heavens are torn open- the Holy
Spirit drifts down through clouds as the voice of God the Father booms from
above--- “this is my son, my beloved, with him I am well pleased.”
The bible is littered with theophanies- Moses standing on holy ground at the
burning bush, Elijah hearing the still small voice of God in the wind. The call
of the prophet Isaiah – when Isaiah is transported to the doorstep of heaventransported into the presence of God where speaks and the pivots of the
threshold shake and quiver.
1
Harper Collins Bible Dictionary co. 1996 Paul Achtemeir ed. pg. 1140.
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Jesus, Peter, James and John experiencing the transfiguration, Paul being
knocked down by a blinding light on the road to Damascus.
That’s the sort of thing that I was looking, that’s what I wanted to help
legitimize my call.
And yet my discernment was without a theophany. My life has been
theophany free- I have never heard the voice of God audible, I have never
seen a vision or some other manifestation I would characterize as God. I have
friends who have heard the voice of God.
Most of us will go our entire lives without ever experiencing a theophany,
without ever having a vision or hearing the voice of God. But yet, does that
mean that we do not experience the presence of God in our lives? Does that
mean that God doesn’t speak to us? Does that mean that God is distant,
absent from our lives?
I like to share with you a little story, that some of you may have heard.
A massive flood was covering the town. A man camped out on his roof. His neighbors
who were in the process of evacuating begged and pleaded with him to get down and get
to safety. He told his neighbors, "I'm not going anywhere. God will help me."
Eventually the water got higher and higher and reached the roof.
A man in a small motor boat came by and told the man sitting on the roof that he was
there to rescue him. The man said, "No thank you. I'm staying here. God will help me."
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The man in the boat pleaded and begged the other man to get in the boat, but the man
on the roof refused.
Finally, the water reached the top of the roof, just about a foot away from washing the
man away. A helicopter came by and dropped down a rescue ladder. The pilot yelled
out, "We're here to save you! Grab on to the ladder before it is too late!" Despite the
water rushing over his feet, the man said, "No thank you. I'm staying here. I know God
will help me!" Despite the pilot's begging and pleading the man stayed put.
The water overtook the man and he drowned. He went up to Heaven and in a
bewildered state asked the Lord, "My God, I had faith that you would help me, and I
ended up dying. Why did you not help me?"
God said, "My child, I did help you! I had your neighbors try and convince you to come
to safety. I sent a man in a motor boat and a rescue helicopter to save you, but you
didn't go. I did help you, just not in the ways you expected.."
Sometimes I think we miss the boat- both literally and figuratively when it
comes to God’s presence in our lives. Often God is right under our noses,
but we fail to recognize him we fail to see him at work, we fail to hear God’s
voice. Sometimes we expect something supernatural to happen, we expect to
be teleported on the roof to safety and all we get is a man in row boat offering
to help.
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Just last week -someone came up to me after the 10 o’clock service and
thanked me for the prayer that I shared with you all. She said she had been
on the look out for a prayer for a person in her life and couldn’t find exactly
what she wanted, but when she got to church and heard Thomas Merton’s
prayer it was just what she was looking for. God’s breathing his presence into
her life through the words of Merton’s prayer
Sometimes God shows up in these grand and exciting ways-- theophaniesburning bushes, or the heavens tore open. But more often God shows up in
the ordinary coincidences of our lives- The timely note from a dear friend,
the random but much needed hug from a loved one, the seemingly well
placed song on the car radio, the perfect words that jump off the page at us
from Holy Scripture.
The Psalmist in Psalm 29 today tells us about the power of the voice of God.
The voice of the Lord that is able to strip the forests bare, the voice that is
able to split flames of the fire, the voice that is able to shake the wilderness.
Yet it is God’s voice that we so often miss, because doesn’t always bellow
from heaven, because it doesn’t always tear open the skies, but rather the
voice of God more often speaks to us in the soft whisper found in the
seemingly ordinary coincidences that dot our lives. AMEN
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