"Enough for him": a sermon for the Feast of the Baptism of Christ

There is always a strange pleasure in discovering something unexpected and new in the deeply familiar. This happened to me over these weeks of Christmas. Inspired by a Christmas book, which tells the story of the formation of some of most well-known Christmas carols, I found myself listening with newly attuned ears to the words which were seemingly so familiar to me. In particular to the words of In the bleak midwinter.

Often listed in public votes as the nation's favourite Christmas carol, Christina Rossetti’s beautifully simple carol, which she entitled A Christmas Carol, is a masterpiece of simple elegance and meaning. The author of my carolling guidebook says of it:

It stands as a perfect example of her almost uncanny ability to distil complex thoughts and emotions into a language of almost childlike directness.

We can all look at those words and been drawn in by the simple imagery which captures the impossible majesty of the Christmas season. Like all great poetry we have our breath taken away by the final line’s injunction for the simple gift of our heart. But for me the word which has captured my imagination for the first time in the thousands of times listening and singing these famous words is the simple word which frames the third verse: "Enough". Here is that verse in full.

Enough for him, whom Cherubim

Worship night and day,

A breastful of milk,

And a mangerful of hay:

Enough for him, whom angels

Fall down before,

The ox and ass and camel

Which adore.

Here this one word captures much of the mystery and depth of the doctrine of the incarnation. That the God who, as we heard in our reading from the opening of Genesis, made the heavens and the earth, was content with the enough of his mother’s milk and a simple bed. That the creator of all things. as St Paul says elsewhere:

emptied himself,

   taking the form of a slave,

   being born in human likeness.

And being found in human form,

   he humbled himself

   and became obedient to the point of death—

   even death on a cross.

The God we know in Jesus is a God who comes to us, who communicates his grace to us, in those things which are enough for him. This profound truth is not simply limited to our sentimental images of the Christmas story.

Today’s feast – the Feast of the Baptism of Christ – carries within it that theme of humility, the sense of “enough-ness” which characterises the deep meaning of the incarnation. As we heard in our Gospel reading, Jesus inaugurates his public ministry not with the Judean equivalent of the showy declarations of power which will accompany the political campaigning of this coming year. No. Jesus begins his public ministry alongside the multitudes from Judea and Jerusalem seeking out John the Baptist and his baptism of repentance. It is in this place, alongside people seeking to remake and reform their ordinary lives, that Jesus is baptised and the truth of the incarnation is heard in the voice from heaven. In this place of “enough” we discover who Jesus truly is:

You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.

As we continue through this season we will hear how God reveals Gods-self to us in Jesus in the ordinary things of life: in a celebration of life and marriage at the wedding at Cana; in the religious patterns and ceremonies of his time as Jesus is proclaimed as the Light of the World by Simeon and Anna; and today in the gift and cleansing power of that most simple and elemental thing, in water.

This season of Epiphany, this season of revelation and manifestation, frames who God is for us in Jesus. Developing the poetic frame of Rosetti’s words: we will be shown that for Jesus five loaves and two fish were enough for him to feed thousands; that sharing a table with prostitutes and tax collectors was enough for him to open a vision of the kingdom of heaven, and that the public humiliation of a slave’s death was enough for him to show the breadth and length and the depth and the height of God’s love. As we come to the end of the opulence and generosity of the Christmas season the idea of “enough” is one which should not only frame our understanding of who God is for us in Jesus, but also challenge how we relate to the world created by that same God who saw that it was good.

Another book I have been reading over the last few weeks is called How much is enough? Money and the Good Life by the father/son partnership of economic historian Robert and philosopher Edward Skidelsky. In it they argue that one of the main problems for us, particularly living in the developed world, is that we have lost sight of a true sense of enough. Too much of our life is built not on “enough” but on “more”. Now the authors do acknowledge that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with “more”.  The economic development encouraged by a sense of “more” has brought about huge benefits in many people’s material conditions. But this is a two-edged sword exalting with it, particularly in its modern form “some of the most reviled human characteristics, such as greed, envy and avarice.”

The constant desire for “more”, they argue, has not made us happier. Far from it. Rather the constant searching for “more” has made our modern societies unable to recognise what can make for the balance of work and leisure which characterises, in the authors mind, a truly good life. More than this the corrosive power of “more” has deeper and lasting effects. Growth for its own sake, they argue, “is not only failing to make us happier, it is also environmentally disastrous”.

Through their book the authors make a series of practical suggestions for how we could reorder our lives and world around the principle of “enough” and not simple “more”. Particularly for those of us who live comfortable lives it asks “how might a society which already has 'enough' think about the organisation of its collective life”.

We have, in a short time, travelled a long distance from my Christmas musings on a favourite carol to the structures and building blocks of modern society. But what ties this all together is a sense that unless we can capture the liberating power of “enough” we are in danger of being pulled into the siren calls of “more” with all the corrosive and destructive tendencies that brings. Tantalisingly as they conclude their book the Skidelskys’ ponder whether it is possible to pursue a vision of the common good build on a real and practical sense of “enough” without a religious impulse to stir and inspire us.

In this Epiphany season, in this time of revelation and manifestation, we find that God in Jesus presents us God’s transforming promise through those small things, those simple things which were enough for him. As we emerge blinking from the warmth of Christmas into the light and reality of the new year, particularly as we look ahead to the choices that we will be called to make not least in a General Election, we might be wise to remember again the deep wisdom and power of that simple word “enough”. 

Not simply as a way of discovering again the deep and transforming truth of who God is for us in Jesus. But also how, transformed by that truth, we might change our lives and transform our world if we had the courage to turn away from the siren calls of “more” and live and work and rejoice, as Jesus did, with those things which were enough for him.