Plough Sunday 2008 and the Baptism of Christ

I wonder if you are as confused as I am by the lectionary choices around this season. At Christmas we had the birth of Christ, and the Shepherds, last week Epiphany we had wise men – fine. On Candlemas (February 2 nd ) we see Christ being presented in the temple for Simeon to recognise him as the baby, who is the fulfilment of all their hopes as the Messiah. But today we have Jesus, aged 30, being baptised by his cousin, John, and we also have a plough at the back of the church, which has been blessed. Most confusing – or is it?

If we consider Plough Sunday first. This has been celebrated on the first Sunday after Epiphany certainly since the 19 th century and possibly even earlier. Especially in rural parishes and country towns, the farmers would bring the plough, in many small villages the only plough, to church, decked with ribbons to be blessed. It would then be paraded around the village and on Plough Monday the new season's ploughing would start, turning the ground so that it could be broken down by the winter frosts so that it was fine for sowing in the early Spring. A good harvest was not just a luxury; it was the difference between life or starvation for many in a country parish, where poor families relied on gleaning the grain to get enough to feed their families. Reliant on frost, rain and sun at due times, the harvest needed all the help it could get, divine as well as human, and no farmer would dare to miss church on Plough Sunday!

We are tonight to be treated to yet another costume drama on TV, this time an adaptation of one of my favourite trilogies ‘Lark Rise to Candleford'; its author Flora Thompson describes the life of ploughmen and boys in the 1890s. Just before this extract she has been explaining the difficulties mothers had to get their 10 and 11 year old sons who were ploughboys out of their warm beds at 4 o'clock in the morning to go to work. You choristers think you are hard done by!! (My husband, Dave, went out at four this morning to milk.)

She continues: -

When the men and boys from the hamlet reached the farmyard in the morning, the carter and his boy had already been at work for an hour, feeding and getting the horses ready. The men and boys would harness and lead out the teams to the fields. If it rained, they donned sacks, split up one side to form a hood and cloak combined. I it was frosty, they blew on their nails and thumped their arms across their chests to warm them. If they felt hungry after their bread and lard breakfast, they would pare a turnip and munch it…

There were usually three or four ploughs to a field, each of them drawn by a team of three horses, with a boy at the head of the leader and the ploughman behind at the shafts. All day long, up and down they would go, ribbing the pale stubble with stripes of dark furrows, which, as the day advanced, would get wider and nearer together, until, at length, the whole field lay a rich velvety plum colour.

But is this ceremony today just a pleasant hark back to times that have disappeared long ago, to be fondly considered with maypole dancing, morris dancing, Mummers plays and the Helston floral dance as part of our quaint past, useful for impressing foreign tourists, or does Plough Sunday still have relevance today. Well the ploughs may look very different with 8 or even 12 shares, which can be reversed for continuous ploughing. The ploughing teams of Lark Rise, ploughing all the daylight hours could plough an acre a day, each team, ploughman and boy walking 11 miles to do so. Today's monsters are pulled behind huge air-conditioned tractors driven by one man and will plough 50 acres upwards in a day; but really farming and care of the land does not change. Crops are still reliant on clement weather for their yields and dramatic disasters still occur – no doubt the yields were well down in Gloucestershire and other counties that were flooded this year. Farmers and farmworkers still have to get up at 4 to start milking by 5. It is a life to which they have to be dedicated. They are still out in all weathers, working the land to get the most yield, even if their tractors have cabs on them.

Plough Sunday provides an opportunity to bring farming and farmers before God for a special blessing, as well as giving us all an opportunity to think about our own stewardship of God's world. We personally may not work with the land or care for farm animals, but we can all do our own bit to protect God's fragile but balanced world. This is a year where all our churches are challenged to think ‘green', to look at our lighting, recycling, heating etc to see if we can take a lead in slowing climate change for the sake of future generations.

So that is Plough Sunday – maybe ploughing goes on virtually all year round now, but this is one of the times when we can centre on the farming life and its needs and put them before God.

But back to the Gospel, why do we suddenly have Christ aged 30 being baptised in our gospel reading today? Think about it.

First at Christmas we have the Messiah shown by Mum and Dad to the locals – the shepherds encouraged by the angels – then we have the star and the Wise Men – this time Jesus being shown to the gentiles – as well as indirectly to the Jewish authorities in the guise of Herod and his minions who are aware of the infant king.

Then today we have a different kind of Epiphany or showing forth – Christ as a man ready to be baptised into a life of healing and teaching. For a moment John protests, saying that it is he, John, who should be baptised by Jesus. Indeed we might question, as so many have done, why should one who is without sin need to be baptised by John so that his sins would be forgiven. It doesn't seem to make sense. Jesus is quite clear, it must happen just as the prophets had foretold. He needs to be publicly dedicated to his father's will and baptism is where it happens. This time it is not his parents showing him to the world. As he resurfaces from the total immersion, it is God the Father who shows his Son to John and the world with the descent of the Holy Spirit as a dove and the words – This is my son, in whom I am well pleased.

Most of us cannot remember our own baptism. We were too small to know what was going on. Hopefully as we were prepared for Confirmation it was explained to us just what a commitment being a baptised Christian should be. We are committed to ‘shine as lights in the world', to spread the good news far and wide, to love our neighbours as ourselves, and to be known for our compassion and hospitality to all. Not an easy commitment at all, our dedication to the Christian life needs to be just as focused as any farmer or farmworker to his lifestyle, perhaps even more so.

At this time of the year, the Methodists hold what they call a covenant service, where everyone renews their commitment to God's will. Perhaps this would be a good Sunday for us to do the same in memory of our own baptisms.

As you sit, concentrate on what your baptism should mean to you, and I will offer the modern words of Wesley's covenant prayer:

" I am no longer my own, but yours.
Put me to what you will, rank me with whom you will;
put me to doing, put me to suffering;
let me be employed for you or laid aside for you,
exalted for you or brought low for you;
let me be full, let me be empty,
let me have all things, let me have nothing;
I freely and wholeheartedly yield all things to your pleasure and disposal.
And now, glorious and blessed God,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit, you are mine and I am yours.
So be it.
And the covenant now made on earth, let it be ratified in heaven."

Amen.

Thanks be to God.