“Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son”.

Those of you with memories able to stretch back to the winter of 1979 may recall that the darkness and gloom of that December was brightened by a chart-topping release from the legendary Swedish group Abba, then at the very height of its popularity. Echoing Martin Luther King’s famous rhetoric from the March on Washington of 1963, they claimed, “I have a dream…”

However, unlike Dr King’s dream, which was rooted in a vision of action taken by humanity – rooted in the vision of white and black children being brave enough to join hands and proclaim justice and liberty together – unlike Dr King’s dream of humanity in action, Abba’s dream focused on different beings: “I believe in angels / something good in everything I see / I believe in angels / When I know the time is ripe for me I’ll cross the stream / I have a dream.”

I was reflecting on the difference between angels and humans, as I pondered the opening of the letter to the Hebrews a few days ago, while being driven alongside the River Jordan, journeying south through Israel and the West Bank from the Sea of Galilee to Jericho, and thence to Jerusalem. In Biblical times, the Jordan was a substantial, fast-flowing river, but the demands of agricultural irrigation in modern times has reduced its grandeur, and it can sometimes look little more than a stream – albeit a stream which still serves as the eastern border of what Joshua would have regarded as being the ‘Promised Land’.

In our first reading, of course, the ‘stream’ was so abundant, it being ‘the time of harvest’, the Jordan is actually bursting its banks, making the idea of crossing into that Promised Land something of a challenge – at least, a challenge for those who cannot face getting wet. And so, just as he did at the very start of their journey, some forty years previously, God parts the waters. And Joshua, and the Ark, and the priests, and the entire nation ‘crossed over opposite Jericho’ – crossed over on dry ground – to start a new existence – a new life,  as the People of God… and, if they had lived out that vocation properly, that might have been the end of the story.

But as you turn the pages of the Hebrew Scriptures through the books of Samuel and of the kings, and as we read the words of the great prophets, we are reminded of the sinful nature of humanity, and of the failure of the Israelites to live up to their side of God’s covenant with them – a failure which, so the writers and the prophets make clear, ultimately leads to the destruction of the kingdom of Israel, a bitter exile, and a sense of alienation between God and God’s people.

Which – to cut a long story very short – which is why our second reading begins with the words, Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son.

Because the dream had failed. The dream had been betrayed. The inherent sinfulness and self-centredness of humanity had destroyed the dream that had led to that crossing of the stream by Joshua Mark I. That is why it was time to dream again. But to dream a dream that forsook the ‘many and various ways’ of the past – a dream that no longer relied on angels or messengers. A dream in which, in effect, God said, “this time it’s personal…”

Which is why, of course, he was named Joshua. Because the Hebrew name Yeshua – which in English we say as Joshua and which simply means ‘the Lord saves’ – the Hebrew name Yeshua, when it was translated into Greek, became Iesous, and in English, of course, that becomes Jesus. But tonight, when we mark again the beginning of ‘these last days’ in which God has ‘spoken to us by a Son’, we recognise that this Son is none other than Joshua Mark II – the new Joshua, setting out to recreate a great dream, and this time, doing it properly.

Which is why Joshua Mark II makes just the same journey as Joshua Mark I. If you read the account of Jesus’ baptism in the Fourth Gospel we discover that the precise place John is baptizing is not actually in that fast-flowing river itself, but in a place called ‘Bethany beyond the Jordan’ – a tributary rather like a railway siding, connected and adjacent to the river, but just on the eastern side of it, from a Biblical perspective – just ‘beyond’ it, in what is now the Kingdom of Jordan – right across from Jericho, exactly where Joshua Mark I had come to the river so many centuries previously.

So Joshua Mark II follows the steps of Joshua Mark I to the river. But there the similarity ends. Because Joshua Mark II is not going to command the river to stop flowing in order  that he might pass through on dry land. The first people of Israel liked God to keep them dry, but Jesus founds the new Israel – the new people of God – by being plunged (the meaning of the word ‘baptize’) into the river at the hands of John. By being submerged as he crosses the stream, so that he might start afresh, and reconstitute a new Israel whose very foundational identity is tied up in a rebirth that confronts the depths, rather than avoiding them. A new Israel whose very mission – whose dream, if you like – is about a righting of the wrongs of human sinfulness and self-centredness, about proclaiming justice and reconciliation… about living out a love that is uniquely costly in its self-sacrifice.

The dream of the founder of the new Israel, the new People of God… the dream of Joshua Mark II goes beyond the ‘fairy-tale’ of Abba’s stream-crossing at the hands of angels or messengers. For in Jesus, as the author of Hebrews makes all too plain, God does this himself. And God doesn’t tip-toe around the dry edges of the stream – God wades right in, to inaugurate a new reign of justice, of mercy, of righteousness and love.

And if the body of the one we call the Christ could do that, then we, who, through our own baptism lay claim to being the Body of Christ – we, too, are called into the deep waters of God’s real purposes for God’s world – a fact that was most certainly not lost on Dr King, whose 97^th birthday would be this coming Thursday, and whose dream immersed him in the pursuit of a righteousness ‘like a mighty stream’.

Dr King knew that, while angels have their place in God’s universe, sometimes God’s mission and purpose needs the commitment of those who are not just messengers, and he entered the deep waters of that call, even at the almost inevitable cost of his life in a United States that was still deeply segregated in terms of its economics, its housing and its education policies.

Today, as we recall the baptism of the Anointed One we learn is none other than Yeshua Mark II, and therefore as we recall our own baptism, the only question is whether we can stop shillyshallying around the edges of the water and wade right in, whatever the cost.

Amen.