(Matthew 3.13-17)

Jesus then appeared, arriving at the Jordan River from Galilee. He wanted John to baptize him. John objected, "I'm the one who needs to be baptized, not you!" But Jesus insisted. "Do it. God's work, putting things right all these centuries, is coming together right now in this baptism." So John did it. The moment Jesus came up out of the baptismal waters, the skies opened up and he saw God's Spirit-it looked like a dove-descending and landing on him. And along with the Spirit, a voice: "This is my Son, chosen and marked by my love, delight of my life."

John the Baptist storms onto the scene from the wilderness, dressed in animal skins, living on a locusts and wild honey, and calling people to repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. People flock to him for baptism; he was scathing in his attack on the religious leaders, calling them a 'brood of vipers'. He ended up attacking King Herod over the fact that he had married his brothers' ex wife. He was put in prison and eventually beheaded.

We know very little about John. His parents (Zechariah and Elizabeth) were 'advanced in years' when he was born. Jesus' mother Mary was a relative. Mary visited Elizabeth in the sixth month of her pregnancy. John leapt in his mother's womb. Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed a blessing with a loud voice. Mary then broke into the Magnificat. Given their old age at the time of John's birth one possibility is that his parents died when he was a child. We know that John was a member of a strict ascetic community known as the Essenes. It may be that he was brought up within this community when his parents died. The Essenes lived out in the desert and it is from this sparse and harsh environment that he emerged. The desert was clearly a familiar place to him given his dress, diet and the fact that God's word came to him in the wilderness.

There's something of the wild man about him. He was a rugged man, his character and his message shaped by the wilderness. John is surprised that Jesus wants to be baptised because (on the basis of the fact that he was the Son of God and without sin) he had need to repent. There are different reasons why John might have wanted to put himself forward for baptism. It was the first public action of his ministry and it provided the launch pad for everything, which was to follow. The Jewish leaders would never have felt so threatened by him had he not at this point identified himself as one of them. God honours Jesus' decision and speaks from the heaven's to confirm his blessing and approval. Jesus' baptism was a proto-type of our own. This is not so much our baptism as children but the daily baptism as adults. Jesus talks about having a baptism to undergo. Jesus was an adult choosing to be baptised and so when I talk of baptism it is not the child's christening to which I refer but the decisions we take as adults. But if God's future has arrived in Jesus, how do we get in on the act? The question of baptism is: are we in God's promised future now? And the answer is, No. What are we being baptised from and into?

The mission of the church is to point to this future time. This does not simply mean us telling more and more people that if they accept Jesus they will go to heaven. That is true, as far as it goes but John is talking about both a new heaven and a new earth. The point is that God's new creation has already begun. By analogy for us, it is as if we are woken up in the middle of the night by a phone call from a country in another time zone where it is already the next day. The future has arrived in the person of Christ and the question to us is how we can be a part of this new creation. We might feel sleepy and the world might seem dark around us but John is saying that we should wake up and get busy.

We need to leave behind on the cross all the bits and pieces of the old creation that have made us sad, that have drawn us, too, down into evil, into lying and cheating and greed and selfishness, that have blighted our lives and the lives of others around us. We are given a new life, with a new purpose: to be part of God's new creation, already here and now; to be people of the light It will take a lot of prayer and work and thought and determination. But it also means becoming part of God's greater, much greater, purposes for his world. Part of the particular challenge of Baptism, is for us to pray for wisdom and vision to see where God can and will make new creation happen in our lives, in our hearts, in our homes and not least in our communities. This what the mission of the church is all about, and every baptized Christian is called to be a part of it.

We're all still asleep and we think nothing is ever going to be different. But suddenly we get - not a phone call, but a visit, from someone who is living in New Time. He is already in the new day. He, Jesus, has gone through death and out into God's new world, God's new creation, and to our astonishment he's come forwards into our world, which is still in Old Time, to tell us that the day has in fact dawned and that even though we feel sleepy and it still seems dark out there the new world has begun and we'd better wake up and get busy (Wright 2007)

The challenge to us is to be a part of this new heaven and earth. The claim of Christ in our lives is not a sense of obligation because of what Jesus has done in the past - Oh help! Jesus was crucified to show how much he loved us - what can I do to match that? It is the promise of the future that beckons us to take part in the new life in Christ and asks questions of how we live our lives from day to day. How do you use your money? How much do you give to the church? Do you give by Standing Order or simply as and when. How do you use your time? Do you say prayers or read your Bible, either alone or with other people. There is any number of ways that you can express your commitment to God's future. Is there something that we should be doing together as a gathered community (environmental issues for example)? Don't be slow to action but at the same time don't let your attempts at upright behaviour and honest morality squeeze out the promise of God's future. We are the people who have been woken up in the middle of the night by the man from the future.

Material drawn from www.durhamcathedral.co.uk The Very Reverend Michael Sadgrove (29th April 2007) The Right Reverend Tom Wright (8th April 2007) The Reverend Canon Dr David Kennedy (8th July 2007)