The Baptism of Christ 2026 St Andrew’s Milngavie
Today, the 1st Sunday of Epiphany, we celebrated the Baptism of Christ.
Robert has kindly arranged a new lock for the side door entrance in Stewart Street which was faulty. If you need a key please let him know.
This Week
Tuesday 10am – Prayer Group in the Garden Room
Wednesday 7pm – NWRC meet in Church
Thursday 10am – Said Holy Communion followed by coffee in Friendship House.
Readings for next Sunday – 2nd Sunday of Epiphany – Isaiah 49:1-7 1 Corinthians 1:1-9 John 1:29-42
Today’s readings – Isaiah 42:1-9, Acts 10:34-43, Matthew 3:13-end
Cold weather has been dominant this week with icy conditions making even the simplest outing potentially hazardous. In some parts of the country journeys have been significantly curtailed. In this vein while pondering on the celebration of epiphany I came across T S Eliot’s poem “The Journey of the magi” and couldn’t help feeling a sense of resonance with it.
“A cold coming, we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.’
And the camels galled, surefooted, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet……..
All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down…..” and it goes on….
The poem was written shortly after Eliot’s conversion to Anglicanism. Though the poem is an allegorical dramatic monologue of one the Magi, one of the three wise men, it’s also generally considered to be a deeply personal poem, exploring the themes of suffering, tradition, fear, death, and religion. The Magi experience significant hardships during their journey, reflecting a challenge to their customs and an underlying sense of doom.
Last Sunday as we celebrated the great Feast of the Epiphany, the journey of the Magi, the wisemen from the East, we considered our own spiritual journeys and how we can reflect on them in a similar light.
Today we celebrate Christ’s baptism. And the key theme linking these two feasts is that of spiritual journey.
On 6th January 1859, William Chatterton Dix, as a devout Christian, knowing that it was the Feast of the Epiphany, read the Gospel for the day. Inspired by what he read, Dix wrote what has become one of the most popular Epiphany hymns,‘As with gladness men of old, did the guiding star behold’. Like many other Epiphany hymns and sermons, it takes up the theme of pilgrimage.
TS Eliot in his poem, ‘The Journey of the Magi’, spoke of the journey being at the worst time of the year, full of dangers, yet a journey on which they didn’t hesitate to set out, because they were so keen to find Christ. There they found in the infant Jesus true divinity. The God who comes among us offering love and grace to all and points us on our own human journey towards pure Divine Love.
That same theme of ‘journey’ lies at the heart of today’s feast: The Baptism of Christ. When we’re baptised, in infant baptism, our parents set the scene for our own Christian journey as they promise to bring us up in the faith of the church through their own spiritual experience.
If we begin to draw these themes together, it’s not difficult for us to see that Baptism is linked closely to the resurrection, that paschal mystery, which speaks of a movement from death to life, a journey experienced by all people. When we’re baptized, we rise with Christ and live with Christ all the way through to eternal life.
From this basis we see that baptism is a great gift from God to us, whoever we are, whatever age we are, whatever we have done, or whatever we might yet do. It relies entirely on God’s action, not ours. It is God who causes us to be born again, who fills us with his Spirit, who ignites his light of love in our hearts and who washes away our sins in the water of baptism.
Christ invites us to make a lifetime’s journey into God’s Love. Each of us here is on a spiritual journey and God intends it to be the adventure we’ve always longed for.
In the 5th century, St Augustine echoed this sentiment when he wrote, ‘Our hearts were made for you, O God, and they are restless until they find their rest in you.’
This great message tells us that God’s Son took flesh and was born among us as the Saviour Christ Jesus and through his Epiphany and his Baptism he leads us to our heart’s desire: the God who is love.
Amen