10th January, 2021.
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My dear friends,

Much has happened since I wrote to you last week. On Monday it was announced that England was to enter a third national lock-down to try to stem the spread of Covid-19, which has mutated into a more easily transmissible form. On Friday, on the advice of the Diocese of Chelmsford, public worship was temporarily suspended in our churches. St Mary’s Church, Great Bardfield, and St Katharine’s Church, Little Bardfield, both remain open for private prayer. Gifts of food, etc, may still be left at St Mary’s for the food bank at Braintree. I shall continue to celebrate the Eucharist privately on Sundays: do please let me know if you have any special requests for prayer.

The soup kitchen at Colchester run by the Companions of the Order of Malta – our sister Roman Catholic Order – has had temporarily to close because of Coronavirus. Their London soup kitchen has managed to keep going by serving take-away soup in the open air. The weather has turned very cold over the past few days and it must be very tough to be homeless in the Winter. Please remember in your prayers the work of the soup kitchens, the homeless and all who try to help them. If you would like to make a small donation to support the work of the Order of Malta soup kitchens, I should be happy to put you in touch.

​​With my prayers and all good and warm wishes,

The Rev. Dr ROBERT BEAKEN, County Chaplain
THE BAPTISM OF CHRIST – 10th JANUARY 2021.
 
Gospel: St Mark, chapter 1, verses 4-11
I have often wondered why we keep the Feast of the Baptism of Christ today, between the birth of Christ at Christmas on 25th December, and the feast of his presentation in the Temple, known as Candlemass, on 2nd February. The sequence is all peculiar. Firstly, we have Christmas, a feast to do with Jesus Christ’s birth; secondly – today – we have the Baptism of Christ, a feast commemorating something that happened to Jesus when he was aged 33; and thirdly, we have Candlemass, a feast commemorating something that happened to him when he was just forty days old.
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            I discovered the answer to all this last week. On 6th January, the Church celebrated the feast of the Epiphany, the journey of the Wise Man to Bethlehem to worship the Christ Child. In the early Church, this feast of the Epiphany has much greater prominence that we accord it today. The Eucharist on that day fused together three events from the life of Christ: (1) the Epiphany, (2) Christ’s Baptism, and (3) his first miracle at the wedding at Cana, when he turned water into wine. With the passage of time, this rather complicated feast broke up into its component parts, and we ended up celebrating the Epiphany on 6th January and the Baptism of Christ a few days later.

            Well, worship by themes is not unknown to the Church of England, and we might do worse than ask ourselves what was the theme that ran through the original celebration on 6th January involving the Epiphany, Christ’s Baptism, and the Miracle of water into wine at Cana.

            The answer is quite simple: in all three of them God tells us that Jesus, the baby born at Bethlehem, is really His Son.

            At the Epiphany, the magi or wise men were guided by God on a long journey to Bethlehem. It must at times have seemed like a fools’ errand. These were the brightest intellectuals of their day, and God chose to lead them to His only Son. There’s a message here about us not being so clever that we ignore God. Actually, really clever people know how little they know, and are humble about it – but that is another story.

Anyway, the magi were led by the Holy Spirit to Bethlehem, where we read that they worshipped the Christ Child – interesting that they worshipped, rather than merely greeted – and they presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. With the benefit of hindsight, we may see that these gifts tell us something about Jesus. Gold indicates that he is our king. Frankincense is for a high priest, who hears our prayers and offers them to God in heaven. Myrrh is for a sacrificial victim, whose death on the cross took away the sins of the world. Remember: Jesus had nothing to do with this; he was but a babe in his mother’s arms. This was all the work of God the Father.

            When we turn to the Baptism of Jesus, we see that this, like the Epiphany, had many layers of meaning and significance. For many Christians in the early Church, what particularly struck them was the voice from heaven, proclaiming to the crowds on the river bank, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” This was understood afterwards to be God the Father, breaking into time and history, and granting to those men and women on the river bank some sort of wonderful spiritual experience. It was a clear proclamation of the divinity of Jesus Christ.

            Lastly, there is the miracle at Cana. Ordinary men and women cannot turn water into wine. Here, urged on by his Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary, Jesus performed this miracle at the wedding of a poor couple in a Galilean backwater. We rightly understand this to reflect God’s delight in holy matrimony; but this miracle is also significant in that it was the first one wrought by Jesus. It was thus the very first indication, from his own hand, of his divinity.

The thread running through all three stories is that of the true identity of Jesus Christ, namely, that he was both the carpenter from Nazareth, and also the Son of God, sent to Earth on a mission of redemption by his Heavenly Father.

These Gospel stories are all about true identity. They remind us of an important, indeed, a vital truth: that we derive our true identities from Jesus Christ. Of course, on one level, our identity on earth largely derives from who we are, what we do, where we live and go. But on another, deeper level, these things only matter because God has put a divine spark inside all human beings, and He wants it to grow into a great fire of faith, guiding, inspiring, and sustaining us. From the perspective of Heaven, it doesn’t matter whether we are a duke or a dustman on earth, so long as we love God and consciously try to carry out his will in our lives, using all the opportunities that come our way.

Once we are dead, whether we have been a duke or a dustman won’t matter a jot: the only thing that will matter is the relation of our souls to God. Have we nurtured the divine spark inside us? Has Christ been our guide and inspiration – or not?

These three stories of the Epiphany, Christ’s Baptism, and the Wedding at Cana, are really reflections of the love of God, who cares so deeply for us that He sent His only Son into the world.
When you think about it, we all have many opportunities during our time on earth to do good in a great variety of ways; but the most loving thing we can do to any man or woman, boy or girl, is to introduce them to Jesus Christ.