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Photo: Art and Linda Tinker, by Kevin Jacob Photography

Today’s sermon is about seniors. It’s about celebrating seniors and the contributions they make to faith communities. It’s also about recognizing the very real fear of isolation and dependence that seniors and those who care for them experience as these mortal bodies of ours get older and need more care. 

October 1 every year is National Seniors Day. It’s “an occasion for all Canadians to join in celebrating older adults—whether a parent, a co-worker, a neighbour or a friend.” It’s a day “to acknowledge the contributions that older adults have made and continue to make to our families, communities and society.”*

Today isn’t National Seniors Day; it’s January 12th, the Baptism of the Lord. But, Jesus’s baptism and the example of seniors in faith communities have something really special in common.

A senior friend of mine once said to me, “In the Anglican Church, every day is seniors day!” 

They were celebrating, on the one hand, church as a place where seniors find each other and a place to offer their time and their gifts. There was also a bit of dark humour to my friend’s comment, I think, a fear that having a majority population of seniors in churches was somehow a disappointment, especially to “younger” people, younger priests such as myself. 

To be sure, there are some priests who look around a congregation and, seeing a majority of older people, think, “Oh no!”

I want to tell you that I’m not one of them. I look around and see a good number of older people and think, “Oh good!” 

Look at all of the volunteer hours! The depth of wisdom and experience! Young priests benefit an awful lot from the contributions seniors make to the church.

You’re maybe aware that social isolation is the #1 contributor to depression among seniors. Knowing this, I also look out at our congregation and think, thank God you’re here. Thank God you got up this morning and chose to come to church, whether in person or online. As I understand from many of you, coming to church is a decision to move from what you sometimes experience as places of isolation into community. 

I’ve been reading a book called Being Mortal by Atul Gawande. He’s a doctor who’s written about aging, namely about transitioning from living independently to living with assistance. He writes this (and I wonder if this resonates with some of you): “The terror of sickness and old age is not merely the terror of the losses one is forced to endure but also the terror of the isolation. As people become aware of the finitude of their life, they do not ask for much. They do not seek more riches. They do not seek more power. They ask only to be permitted, insofar as possible, to keep shaping the story of their life in the world—to make choices and sustain connections to others according to their own priorities.”**

The terror of the isolation and the desire to keep sharing in shaping the story of our lives. 

Of course, we know that isolation isn’t all bad. God dwells profoundly in places of isolation. There can be something appealing, even, about isolation when we think of it in terms of solitude. Having time to really let sink in those thoughts or dreams or prayers that we can’t get to without dedicated time to ourselves—hmm. There’s even a word for the joy that seniors experience from time spent alone: the word is ‘gerotranscendence.’ I have no doubt that God is alongside people in isolation—whether of our own choosing, or otherwise.

The last thing I’d like to say about seniors today is this: when I look around our congregation, I see many of you who are caring for seniors, whether as adult children of aging parents, or as healthcare workers, or as friends and peers. I see you who are keenly aware of the value that elders add to society. I see you who wish you could do more, wish you could be more for the people who have done and been so much for you. I see you who maybe haven’t had the best relationship with the elders in your life, and nevertheless find a way to be there for them. 

Today isn’t National Seniors Day; it’s January 12th, the Baptism of the Lord. But, today has an awful lot to do with that space that seniors and those who care for seniors know well. I’m speaking of that move from isolation into community, the desire to keep sharing in shaping the story of our lives that so many of us long for, whether for ourselves, or for the people we care deeply about. 

Up until Jesus’ baptism, we might have safely assumed that God dwells only in isolation. That up until now, God has been made known through angels and messengers, through voices behind clouds or in burning bushes, voices which speak briefly to individuals and then disappear. We could have safely assumed that God appears far off, in the form of a star, that God is a divine being who lives somewhere up there. We might have safely assumed that God is transcendent and holy other, to be sure, but not something or someone we have access to in our own flesh and bone, sharing in the shaping of our lives in the world.

That is until Jesus is waist deep in a river, with about a hundred other people who have just been baptised, and the sky opens up, and the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove comes down from heaven and rests upon him, upon Jesus’ body. And that divine voice, which we were so sure dwelled only in heaven, only in isolation, reminds the people there, reminds the people here, that God dwells also in community: “You are my Son, the Beloved” the voice from heaven says, and says about Jesus amongst other people. 

Because God who became human wasn’t born out of nothing, but born of a woman. God who became human wasn’t born in a social vacuum, but to a specific culture in a specific place and time—born and baptised into a community, a community of faith, for that matter. 

What the baptism of Jesus tells us is that the God who acts universally, also acts particularly, the God who acts globally, also acts locally, the God who exists transcendently also exists immanently. I don’t know what that means for you, or for me, on this day. Maybe it’s a reminder that the problems that exist right here in front of us, the day-day crises of our lives that feel all consuming—isolating, that these aren’t the whole story or even the forever story. Maybe it means that there’s something really special that takes place when we move from our places of isolation into community, at whatever age, to gather at this Eucharist table to receive the body of our Lord, a body which was and is and ever shall be of our very own beloved flesh and bone. Amen. 

Works referenced:

*Government of Canada, “National Seniors Day,” accessed online on 12 January 2025

**Atul Gawande, Being Mortal (Metropolitan Books: 2014)