You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Today is the Feast of the Epiphany, for centuries the occasion when the early church celebrated Jesus’ birth, until someone came up with Christmas. Epiphany celebrates all the ways that Christ’s identity was made known to the nations beyond his own Jewish people – his birth, the visitation of the magi, his first miracle at the wedding in Cana, his transfiguration on the mountaintop, and his baptism, always the gospel reading for the first Sunday in the season of Epiphany. Of all the “showings” that revealed Jesus’ Messianic identity, his baptism was among the most significant. This story's inclusion in all four gospels (though “off-screen” in John’s account…) attests to its foundational importance for the early church. Indeed, Jesus’ baptism has been seen by Christians in all generations as the font from which our rite of baptism sprang, and it has shaped our understanding of this one ritual that all Christians have in common.
Instead of exploring Sunday's gospel text this week, we will reflect on baptism itself, addressing some of the different ways the Church understands this primal rite of initiation. Let's start with the new identity we receive in baptism as we are adopted into the family of God.
Our catechism and baptismal liturgy speak of baptism as a rite of adoption. What happens when someone is adopted? They don’t lose their prior identity, but are welcomed into a new family, not as a guest or servant, but as a son or daughter with equal rights and responsibilities as other family members. Baptism confers such a complete affirmation and status upon us that it’s the exact opposite of that old expression, “Blood is thicker than water.” The waters of baptism override every other form of relationship, inviting us into a vast and eternal family in which the most recent addition is as valued and precious as the eldest.
Our families of origin are wonderful and terrible and everything in between. Our spiritual family is meant to be a place of healing and growth. Does it help you in your spiritual walk to know that you have been adopted into a new family, made a true sister or brother with Jesus himself? What would help you remember that at times when you feel low?
On this day when we celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany, the showing forth of God's revelation, let’s celebrate the unseen gifts of baptism and make Christ known in the way we display his power and love. How wonderful it would be if followers of Christ went around reminding each other of our adoption as precious sons and daughters of God, treating each other as true sisters and brothers. In Christ, we are. Water is way thicker than blood!
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
Showing posts with label adoption. Show all posts
Showing posts with label adoption. Show all posts
5-11-23 - Not As Orphans
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Orphans. It’s a strong word. In 2005 I helped raise the money to build and launch a residential school for children orphaned by AIDS in Western Kenya, one of the poorest regions in that country, where at the time there were no services for the growing number of orphans. As the chief communicator drafting brochures, web pages and fundraising appeals, I used the word “orphans” as often as I could; it tugs at hearts strings more effectively than do terms like “at-risk” or “OVC” (orphans and vulnerable children).
Then I learned that our Kenyan partners avoid that word whenever possible. In an extended-family culture, to say a child is orphaned means that no one in her family or even village is prepared to care for her, a scenario which suggests the whole community is disabled. Many prospective students at the Nambale Magnet School had lost one or both parents to HIV/AIDS; few were to be labeled orphans.
”I will not leave you orphaned,” Jesus tells his disciples on his last night with them. “I am coming to you.” It’s not what a boss would say to employees, or a coach to players, a teacher to students. This language conveys that the community of Jesus followers had become a family, with ties as thick as blood. Jesus recognizes that his departure from their daily lives, and the violence with which he will be wrenched from them, is likely to be as dislocating as it is for a child to lose his father or mother.
And it is yet another hint that death will not be the end of Jesus’ story. Only death can make an orphan. Certainly Jesus’ followers were going to feel like orphans after his death, but they were not to be orphans, he says, because death was not to be his permanent condition.
How would it change us if we lived in that confidence whenever we’re facing great loss or sorrow? That we have not been left as orphans, no matter how abandoned we may feel in a given moment? It can be as difficult for me to trust that God is real and present as it is for my cats to understand, when I go on a trip, that I am indeed returning. We don’t have the capacity to truly comprehend it – so we learn to trust it little by little, strengthening our faith muscles, testing God’s love and Jesus’ promise: “In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live.”
When did you last have an experience of “seeing” Jesus? In another person, in a movement of God, in prayer, in song? I suggest this question a lot – it’s the best way I know to reinforce our faith. Keep a record of those sightings; they help encourage us when we feel orphaned.
And, as I think my cats do when I return, we can relax and rejoice whenever we do experience Jesus’ life with us again. Whatever our version of rubbing and purring, I bet it pleases our heavenly Father when we offer our praise in love.
Orphans. It’s a strong word. In 2005 I helped raise the money to build and launch a residential school for children orphaned by AIDS in Western Kenya, one of the poorest regions in that country, where at the time there were no services for the growing number of orphans. As the chief communicator drafting brochures, web pages and fundraising appeals, I used the word “orphans” as often as I could; it tugs at hearts strings more effectively than do terms like “at-risk” or “OVC” (orphans and vulnerable children).
Then I learned that our Kenyan partners avoid that word whenever possible. In an extended-family culture, to say a child is orphaned means that no one in her family or even village is prepared to care for her, a scenario which suggests the whole community is disabled. Many prospective students at the Nambale Magnet School had lost one or both parents to HIV/AIDS; few were to be labeled orphans.
”I will not leave you orphaned,” Jesus tells his disciples on his last night with them. “I am coming to you.” It’s not what a boss would say to employees, or a coach to players, a teacher to students. This language conveys that the community of Jesus followers had become a family, with ties as thick as blood. Jesus recognizes that his departure from their daily lives, and the violence with which he will be wrenched from them, is likely to be as dislocating as it is for a child to lose his father or mother.
And it is yet another hint that death will not be the end of Jesus’ story. Only death can make an orphan. Certainly Jesus’ followers were going to feel like orphans after his death, but they were not to be orphans, he says, because death was not to be his permanent condition.
How would it change us if we lived in that confidence whenever we’re facing great loss or sorrow? That we have not been left as orphans, no matter how abandoned we may feel in a given moment? It can be as difficult for me to trust that God is real and present as it is for my cats to understand, when I go on a trip, that I am indeed returning. We don’t have the capacity to truly comprehend it – so we learn to trust it little by little, strengthening our faith muscles, testing God’s love and Jesus’ promise: “In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live.”
When did you last have an experience of “seeing” Jesus? In another person, in a movement of God, in prayer, in song? I suggest this question a lot – it’s the best way I know to reinforce our faith. Keep a record of those sightings; they help encourage us when we feel orphaned.
And, as I think my cats do when I return, we can relax and rejoice whenever we do experience Jesus’ life with us again. Whatever our version of rubbing and purring, I bet it pleases our heavenly Father when we offer our praise in love.
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