(Matthew 3:13-17) ­Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, "I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?" But Jesus answered him, "Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness." Then he consented. And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, "This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased."

When Jesus emerged from the water and experienced the heavens opened to him and saw the very Spirit of God descend and alight upon him and heard a voice from heaven say "This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased," any perceived gulf between heaven and earth, spirit and matter, finite and infinite, mortal and divine was bridged and brought together. And that same union is effective every time we pour water over another human being in the name of the Trinity. God's Spirit is one with that person and the voice proclaims "This is my Child, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased." That happened to you at your baptism. You are God's child. You are one with God.

The central reality of Jesus' life is the witness to a reunion between God and humanity. He reveals that we are not at an ontological distance from a faraway unapproachable God, but that God is with us, in us, among us.

But there is an implicit conflict created in this experience of new identity. When Jesus understands that his primary identity is as God's Son, the unavoidable consequence is that his identity as the child of Mary and Joseph can be only secondary. We know that this shift of identity caused some misunderstanding.

No doubt there were those in Nazareth who were critical of a first-born son who left his traditional role and obligation as the heir of Joseph's line and as the patriarch of his family. It would have been seen as a scandalous failure of his responsibility. A first-born son is supposed to manage the family's affairs. That is his role and identity. No doubt some thought he was crazy to go off like that and start traveling around as an itinerant healer and teacher. There is a poignant scene you may remember, when his family tries to retrieve him, believing him to be out of his head. In that story Jesus redefines the meaning of family. "Who is my family?" he asks. And he embraces all.

That's the perspective of someone who has fundamentally shifted his identity from being the son of his family to being the son of God. When God is our father, all people are our brothers and sisters. Think about that the next time you say the words, "Our Father." Look around you. Everyone you see is your sibling.

So at Jesus' baptism, not only does God in Christ erase the separation and distance between heaven and earth, but God also begins to dissolve the separations and distinctions between people. When the other person is my sibling, we are of one family. What happens to the other matters to me.

From the time of his baptism, Jesus lived the rest of his life not only connecting earth to heaven but also connecting people to each other. That's not easy to do. There are profound conflicts and consequences when you try to reunite that which has been divided. We're still learning how to do that.

Our story today from the Acts of the Apostles tells of the most historic event of reunion in the life of the early church. I think it is a template for the church's future history. Let's set the scene.

Jesus was Jewish. All of his apostles were Jewish. Although Jesus personally reached out with compassion, healing, care and love to people outside the Jewish tradition, through the day of Pentecost and beyond, all of those who followed him as Messiah were Jewish.

Then Peter had a dream that was so real that he called it a vision. A sheet descended from heaven, and on that sheet were all kinds of animals, clean and unclean, in violation of the holiness code of scripture. A voice said to Peter, "Get up, Peter; kill and eat." But Peter said, "By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is profane or unclean." The voice said to him, "What God has made clean, you must not call profane."

Just at that moment some men arrived at Peter's house inviting him to the home of Cornelius. Cornelius was a Roman officer, a centurion. He was not Jewish. He was a Gentile. It was unlawful according to Jewish Biblical tradition for Peter to enter his home. It would be ritually defiling for Peter to eat a meal with Cornelius or his family. Cornelius was unclean.

But Peter then understood the meaning of the dream. "God has shown me," he said, "that I should not call anyone profane or unclean." So Peter began to speak to them. That is what we read just a few moments ago from Acts. "I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who reverences him and does what is right is acceptable to him." Then Peter told them the story of Jesus in an abbreviated form.

An astonishing thing happened next. While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit descended upon Cornelius and his household and they manifested the gifts of the Spirit. Amazing. Then Peter said, "Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?" And the first Gentiles were baptized into the Christian community. We are their descendants, all of us who were not Jewish before our incorporation into the Body of Christ.

Now, the baptism of Cornelius and his family did not solve the controversy and conflict once and for all, however. No doubt, Peter was strongly criticized. Sincere and genuine scholars of the scripture would have pointed out to him the many passages in the scripture that show that Gentiles have no part in the inheritance of God's people unless they become like the rest of us, circumcised Jewish men, all followers of the laws and the statutes of Torah. Earnest Jewish Christian leaders would have warned that such a departure from tradition would separate them from the source of their identity in God. It was the church's first big internal conflict.

We know the conflict persisted. The pressure must have gotten to Peter at some time, because Paul accuses him later of having a double standard of table hospitality. When he was with the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem, he acted kosher. When he was with the Gentile Christians in Antioch, he acted Gentile. Paul gave Peter a piece of his mind about that.

An historic meeting in Jerusalem in chapter 15 of Acts independently gave the other apostles' blessing to the inclusion of the Gentiles. It was the first Apostolic Council, the first General Convention, if you will. But we know from Paul's subsequent letters to the Corinthians and Galatians that this question continued to be debated years later. An official vote rarely settles anything completely. Whether the Gentiles can become part of us without becoming just like us was a hot conflict for at least a generation.

Eventually, the early church continued the direction of human reunion that Jesus had begun. It accepted the inclusion of Gentiles into the community without their having to become like the rest of them, to be circumcised and to follow the Jewish Torah. One of the great divisions between human beings was being overcome. The church recognized that our primary identity is as a child of God, and the unavoidable consequence of that recognition is that our identity as Gentile or Jew is only secondary.

The job of human reunion is continuing, and the inevitable conflicts that it spawns continue as well. Several centuries after Peter and Paul, we recognized that if our primary identity is that of a child of God, then our identity as slave or free is only secondary, and every child of God has a right to freedom. ...If our primary identity is that of a child of God, then our identity as male and female is only secondary and each gender is to be respected equally. And at this moment in history we find ourselves asking the same questions about gay and straight and about Christian and non-Christian. Will our primary identity as children of God transcend the dividing secondary identities and bring reunion? I hope so. I believe that is the work of the Spirit. Good people disagree with me. And we all remain within the body of Christ working out our generation's issues with confidence, and respect, knowing that these kind of issues have been with the church from the beginning.

How completely can we embrace our identity? You are a child of God. That is who you are. That is your primary identity. But more than that, every human being is created in the image and likeness of God and is God's beloved child. Every human being is our brother and sister. Whatever other identities we may have are secondary. Smith or Jones, Gentile or Jew, slave or free, black or white, American or Afghan, Republican or Democrat, Episcopalian or Baptist, Christian or Muslim. If we are to live into our inheritance, we can start by expanding our vision, and letting the heavens open, and letting the Spirit of God descend and alight upon us, and we can believe with every fiber of our being the voice of God which says to each of us, "This is my Child, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased." With that divine affirmation, we can risk reunion.

_____________________________________________