Today we are having a special collection to aid the St Vincent de Paul Society in their work for the victims of the Queensland floods. This is not the same appeal as the Queensland Premier has organised. This is expressly for the practical personal help St Vinnies can provide for individuals and families. We will make a donation as a Parish as well.

The coverage of the floods on TV and radio over the past week or so has been great. The extent of the flooding and its effects is quite astonishing. One thing that impressed my when seeing people interviewed on TV is the way in which ordinary people and their lives have been revealed to the world. We see their ruined houses. We see all their ruined belonging trashed on the street to be carted away. We can almost smell the mud and disease in the water seeping through house after house. Rich or poor all are caught up in it. It is a life changing experience for them. The destructive force of the water paradoxically means a new life must begin. It truly is an epiphany.

If we were to ask where is God in all this, we could only say that Jesus would be right in the midst of it. That is where he was in the Gospel today. He was with the people who were flocking to John the Baptist seeking hope and forgiveness in their lives. Jesus says that it the appropriate thing to do to accept baptism from John even though he had nothing to repent of. He lets himself be drenched in the water of the River Jordan. He identifies himself with the ordinary people and their struggles.

It was no accident that John was baptising in the Jordan River. That great river marked the threshold of freedom in the Promised land for the Hebrew tribes who had travelled for forty years from captivity in Egypt. Through it's waters a new life was found in Canaan. The scene recalls, also the crossing of the Red Sea, another threshold event in the life of the new people that was being formed by God. They enter into a new relationship with God as they enter the Red Sea. God's presence in that episode is evident in the wind that blows over the water making a dry path through the sea. Generations before that, of course, was that other epic flood through which Noah and his family and animals were saved in the Ark. God's anger demonstrated in the destructive flood is changed to mercy as God remembers Noah and his family. Again the wind of God's presence blew over the earth to take the water away. As it was then, so it was also at the very beginning. We read in Genesis where God's Spirit moves over the water separating it into land and sea, and creating day and night.

On the Feast of Epiphany last week we saw the infant Jesus revealed to the gentiles as King of the Jews. Today we read then of another epiphany. The voice of God from heaven proclaims the now adult Jesus as God's beloved Son. For the believer as for Matthew, Jesus' Baptism marks the threshold of a new era in history. Here is a new creation at it's source. The whole of creation is made holy, so the early Fathers of the Church believed, when Jesus entered the river. So much so that in the early years the water was not blessed for baptism. It was already considered sacred. And here a new people is being born in the waters of the Jordan no differently than today when we baptise.

This new birth happens with the humility of Jesus as he accepts John's baptism. Jesus enters into the lives of the people in this way. That is what God is like. It looks forward also to that final humiliation of Jesus on Calvary where blood and water flowed from his side as he died. Even here water hints that death is not what it seems but promises new life.

The small amount of water we use when we baptise is nothing like a raging river in flood! Yet it still should suggest to us the whole wonderful story of God eternally loving and creating. Every time we dip our hands into the font as we enter the Church we are celebrating all of that and recalling the life we have with God in baptism. We hear God say to us through Christ in the Church, You are my beloved child.

Fr Graham