I?ve already spoken quite a bit recently about the work and life of John the Baptist, so I am not going to focus on him this morning ? instead, I am going to think about the fact that Jesus himself was baptized.

There is a lot of thinking going on in the church at the moment about baptism and what it means. I am going to explore some of those thoughts this morning, beginning by asking what your own baptism meant to you.

In celebrating the baptism of Jesus, we celebrate the baptism of each and every believer. Jesus the God of heaven became the everyman of the earth and descended into the River Jordon.
He was drenched in the water just as we are drenched in his grace. Dipped in the waters to the point of being overwhelmed. Baptism takes place in a whirlpool of life and death. Images of drowning. Images of life are intertwined.

Jesus was baptised and ever since, Christians have been invited to follow him down into the waters. In a minute or two I will try to say something about why he was baptised and what is going on when we follow him, but first, I want you to try to hold the other two readings in your minds.

Firstly, think about Isaiah?s yearning for the good life when God?s children come together from the north and the south and the east and the west and are gathered together within the loving presence of God. [Those who were here last week, remember that this was written after the Jewish Exile ? the writer has discovered that foreigners know something about God too]. The idea is that as people of different experience come together and tell of their experience of God, a bigger picture is built. There is a wider vision. There is hope as the people come together. The people come together and God?s care is known. The people come together and more of God?s love is shared. The people come together and God?s people are freed from that which harms them. The people come together and the things which were formerly frightening are no longer so.

That coming together is gospel. That coming together is grace.

Now, think about the reading from the Acts of the Apostles. The early Christians found it just as hard to describe the work of the holy spirit as any of us do. After the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, one of the images which they kept coming back to over and over again which described their experience of God was that of Baptism. When called on to express what the love of God felt like in their lives, they came back over and over again to baptism. Being plunged in water. Being plunged into God?s grace. Being plunged into God?s love. Being plunged into the very being of God.

When we baptise people ? children or adults, it is these things that they are being baptised into. Firstly the coming together of God?s people as a community who can change the world and secondly being drenched in God?s love and commitment to us.

It is that commitment which brought Jesus to earth ? the Incarnation is what we celebrate at this time of year.

? that God could be born in a manger
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? that God could walk the earth and hear and see and touch.
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? That God could know what it was like to struggle for breath under water.
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? That God himself could come to us.
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This is what we celebrate and this is what we are called to discover throughout the Epiphany season.

That ongoing discovery is a part of what the church is beginning to mean by baptism. We are now being encouraged to think of baptism as being the fundamental way of thinking about ministry. I?m a little suspicious if this is helpful ? is this the way you understand your baptism? It isn?t the way I understood my own, but it is very much the current way of thinking.

Once someone is baptised in the church, so the thinking goes, that person is then a minister for God for the rest of their lives. Thus, it is baptism that gives someone the right to be a minister in the church. That may be a new idea to you ? I would be interested in what you think about it.

It is ideas like that which are behind all kinds of new ways of thinking in the church, ranging from changing the way we think about church membership to the new emphasis on the ministry of the whole people of God.

The idea is that baptism splashes sanctity onto every ministry that a person has in life ? not just the particular things that ordained people do, but the things that all God?s people do. Ministries of medicine and healing, Ministries music and poetry. Ministries of parenting and partnership. Ministries to the poor and to the needy. Ministries of oversight and of service. Ministries of food and ministries of fun.

The idea is that, as baptized people of God, we are God?s hands and feet ? we are God?s activity in the world. And it is holy and sanctified because we do these things as baptized people.

[And that, for me is where this all falls down, for I think that kindness and goodness are holy whether they are carried out by baptized people or not].

You must decide for yourself whether this kind of thinking works for you ? I would be interested to know.

As we celebrate the baptism of the Lord, we celebrate our own baptisms ? we celebrate the fact that human life is something that is at once blessed and sanctified by God. We are a holy people and God is involved in all that we do.

In a couple of weeks time, I will be baptising a child in the Sunday morning service. When I do so, and when I baptise anyone, child or adult, I celebrate that we are, as human beings, plunged by God into a life which is interesting, special and holy. What we do with it is our ministry to the body of God ? the people of God with whom we share our latest breath.

Baptism celebrates life. Baptism celebrates grace. Baptism celebrates the fact that we cannot do or say anything to deserve God?s love.

Plunged into love. Plunged into grace. Plunged into life.

Plunged with Jesus in to the water ? we are all God?s people. People coming together with experience of God?s loving presence to build a new kind of kingdom for God?s people on earth.

Together, as a people. We have despair baptised out of us and we are submerged in grace; drenched in love. Amen

The gospel reading this morning is one of those parts of the Christmas story which can take us by surprise. Indeed, it can be very tempting to miss it out.

I had planned to use the Gospel readings for the first Sunday after Christmas instead, because I felt not a little squeamish about reading the story of Herod ordering the killing of the innocent babies in church. However, as the news of the earthquake in Iran has grown sadder and sadder by the hour over the last couple of days, it seemed more and more right to remember the innocents. To remember those whose lives are lost in ways which can seem meaningless. To try to fit that in somewhere into our notions of Christmas.

There is, of course, nothing holy in being murdered by a despot. The holiness of the innocents derives entirely from their humanity.
There are, on the days following Christmas, three feast days which come one after the other and which are always a little surprising. Boxing Day is the Feast of Stephen the first Martyr. Yesterday was the Feast of St John, the Gospel writer, and now today, we turn back to the Bethlehem story and turn to its darkest moment.

It is something of a paradox that people want to celebrate the story of Christmas at all. What we celebrate has had all kinds of paraphernalia added. Not only have we added North European traditions of Jul Logs, Christmas Elves and Father Christmas blowing in from the snowy north on a reindeer. We have also added a good deal to the basic Bethlehem tale too ? the Ox, the Ass and the Stable are hard to find in the gospels and we turn the Magi into kings at the drop of a richly embroidered hat.

If we told people what is really in the Christmas story, would it be celebrated with as much abandon? Our tale begins with a rather scandalous story about an angel and finishes up with a family running for their lives leaving murder in their wake. It is a bit odd.

There are two parts to the story ? first the flight to Egypt, secondly, Herod?s murderous rule.

If you want a different perspective on a bible story, sometimes, you need to travel. I must admit that I had never thought much about the Flight to Egypt until I had actually been to Egypt, to stay with Christians there. These are people for whom the flight to Egypt is greatly celebrated. The remember this event as being their chance to care for the Christ-Child. Pictures of the Flight to Egypt are in many of the churches and many of the Christian homes. For the presence of the child in Egypt allows them to claim that theirs is a holy land too. And the claim is that the Holy Family travelled up and down the Nile ? settling for a while in what is now Old Cairo.

And there may be some truth in this ? there was certainly a Jewish community there. There was an old synagogue ? Jewish place of worship there which I have seen.

Travelling there, and hearing the stories of the people there, brought it home to me how much the story of the refugee is a part of the Christian Story. In so many centuries people have taken flight in the middle east ? trying to get away from some ruling power or another. Taking to their heels to try to protect their children.

The Christians of Egypt remember the flight of the Holy Family as the time when their ancestors were able to do something to help God and in return they received God?s blessing. The pictures of the Holy Family on the Nile show the child blessing the waters and the earth as they go on their way.

Churches have, for ever since, tended to side with refugees. Would the asylum debate in Scotland be any different if we thought that the refugee family might be carrying the Christ-child. And he might be looking to bless the land and the waters of our country.

But back in Bethlehem, Herod rules for now.

Back in Bethlehem, the children are being killed. Mothers are weeping. The sound fills the land.

It is hard not to see some kind of resonance between Herod and whoever is the latest Middle-Eastern despot at the moment. Like Saddam Hussein and others, Herod?s regime was propped up by a Western Empire and his reign of terror was funded through his complicity with Westerners as much as through what he stole from his own people.

Hearing this, it can be a struggle to find comfort in the Gospel this morning. Yet this was the world into which Christ was born. This was the world which God came into. It was this very world ? in all its reality and pain that God loved enough. Enough to join in.

Though the gospel is a hard one this week, there is good news. Amidst all the bad news of human suffering, needless deaths and loss, comes the news that God loves us. That God has come to us. That God is in the midst of us.

When terrible things happen. We know that God is there. When we are sad and frightened. God is there. When all seems overwhelming. God is there.

The incarnation is true even when the tinsel is taken down. And recognising that, is good news in itself and allows us to join in the task in hand ? building a better kingdom for the king of kings.

God joined in our suffering world and invites us to join in the work of healing the world. Saving the lost and binding up the broken hearted. Standing up for the innocent and doing what we can to bind the wounds of the broken. That we might frustrate all evil designs and establish God?s reign of justice, love and peace, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.