Are you prepared?

May I speak in the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Are you prepared today, prepared for coming to church? I imagine you are. You woke up, remembered it was a Sunday, got out of bed, perhaps with a curse,  and got ready for being here. You knew what to expect, and acted accordingly. Unlike those dreams where you’re doing a French exam, in your pajamas, and haven’t done your homework, and can’t remember how to say Where is the bus station. But although you prepared for coming to church today, not everyone does. Not everyone prepares themselves. And maybe we are not prepared enough generally.

There’s an interesting, quite beautiful, but also sad story, by the historian and TV presenter Kenneth Clark – the guy who made the BBC series Civilisation—not the former cabinet minister. Anyway, The TV Kenneth Clark wrote in his memoir that once when he went to an Italian church and “I can only say,” he wrote “that for a few minutes my whole being was filled by a kind of heavenly joy, far more intense than anything I had known before. This state of mind lasted for several months, and, wonderful though it was, it posed an awkward problem in terms of action. My life was far from blameless: I would have to reform. My family would think I was going mad, and perhaps after all, it was a delusion, for I was in every way unworthy of receiving such a flood of grace. Gradually the effect wore off, and I made no effort to retain it. I was too deeply embedded in the world to change course. But that I had ‘felt the finger of God’ I’m quite sure.” Here, Kenneth Clark, was unprepared. Unprepared for God. Although as he was dying in 1983 he accepted Christ and was received into the Catholic church. The story has a happy ending, and hope, but it is a lesson in not being prepared, and not being prepared for the Kingdom of God.

In our reading today we hear the story of the baptism of Jesus. And what was the baptism that John the Baptist was offering? It was a baptism of preparation, of preparation for the Kingdom of God. And indeed Jesus’ own baptism was a baptism in preparation for his ministry of the Kingdom of God. Why did Jesus need to be baptized, aged 30?

We have only a few weeks ago, celebrated the birth of Christ, and Jesus passed through infancy, boyhood, and youth before arriving at full maturity. The baby Jesus already possessed all the possibilities, all the fullness of God and man, being fully God and fully man; but these possibilities were only realized in time, through different times and seasons; in Nazareth, among the Holy Family, at Mary’s knee, amd in Joseph’s workshop, and also at Joseph’s death. But the most important of these so far, is Jesus’ baptism, in preparation for his ministry of the Kingdom of God, when the Holy Spirit descended on him, and he became the Christ, the Anointed One, the Messiah.

And Jesus himself had to come forward and accept his commission. Even Jesus had to come and be prepared.

The baptism of Christ teaches the necessity of preparing our hearts for the Kingdom of God, of looking not to the world, but beyond to the Kingdom of God coming into this world. Our future lives will not be lived in this life on earth…

Christ will come and we get to live with him, which transforms everything.

But we have to prepare ourselves by fixing that vision before us, to accustom ourselves to living with Christ here. If we do that, and leave behind the little treasures we lay up on earth, and seek and pursue whatever is true, whatever is good, whatever is right, to see what is beautiful—if we do this, we will bridge the gulf between this life and eternity, and make death merely passing from one state to another, stepping from twilight to bright, unclouded day.

If we prepare ourselves for the Kingdom of God and the life of heaven, then we live as citizens of God’s Kingdom in this life and the next, and there is continuity between earth and heaven. If we neglect this, the transition will be hard.

But, Jesus came and was baptised together with the people: “Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized”. Jesus was baptized among the people. We are meant to do this together, looking forward to the Kingdom of God, for when we are together Jesus is in our midst, through the power of the Holy Spirit. With Jesus through the Holy Spirit, may we as a church be prepared for the coming kingdom of God. For us, the life of heaven is begin here on earth.

Amen.

The Rev’d Michael Aylmer, St Mary Magdalene Enfield, 12/01/2025