Let us pray: Guide my words O God that they may tell of your desire for us as your people. Amen.

A number of years ago I was on the board of AIDS Jasper – as it was called at that time. As our understanding of the disease increased and as we tried hard to alleviate the stigma which was so much a part of the response and resulting repression which often worked against the goals we had as an organization, the name of the organization was eventually changed to HIV West Yellowhead. This name more accurately described the virus which was causing such fear and creating such misunderstanding and the area that we tried to work with in our education, support and advocacy programs. However, it was when we were still calling our organization AIDS Jasper that we sponsored a Rural Issues conference. In our understanding, all the issues of stigmatization, misinformation and lack of support which were rampant in the field at the time were only compounded when it came to rural communities. And so we sponsored a conference to which people who lived in small communities all around Alberta were invited. I won't go into any detail about the results of this gathering of health care workers, people living with HIV and AIDS and people who were involved in organizations like ours, except to say that I recall that it was deemed a success. What I most remember, of course, are the stories people told – stories of hope and despair – stories of vicious and unrepentant homophobia and stories of communities of support and care, understanding and education, that reached out and gathered around people who had been spurned and castigated by family and community.

Those stories, despite the lasting influence they had on me and the way they helped me to define and refine my own personhood, are not the ones I want to refer to today. Instead, I want to tell you about one workshop I attended at that conference. This story really has nothing to say about the intended outcome of that workshop. I don't even remember specifically what it was about. What I do remember is how a simple choice in the order of introduction in the workshop had a transformational effect. One of the participants in the workshop was an aboriginal man from an Alberta reserve. But that's not how he introduced himself. I expect we were asked to give our names and where we were from. He went first. He gave his name and then instead of telling us the name of the community in which he lived, he told us instead what river valley his community was in. Having set the norm with this naming of a river valley, every other person after that did the same. I remember being amused as some people had to stop and think for a moment about the river that ran through or beside their community. What I also remember is how refreshing it was to have a fresh perspective. It was simple really – but in that simplicity our perspective was disrupted. You see, by naming a river valley our initiant said something about priorities. For him the river valley was more important than a name on a road sign, or the road out of where he lived – even though that is probably how he got from there to where we were meeting. For me it also hearkened to an ancient time – although not that ancient – when the rivers were the roadways in this land. It also had something to say – but unspoken – about the importance of rivers in our lives. Rivers are life-giving and it should be no surprise that communities are built next to bodies of water – rivers, lakes and oceans – for the faciity they offer to supply the water we need to drink, the water we need for cleansing and the means they still provide for getting from one place to another.

Now, you may be thinking that's a whole lot of baggage to attach to a simple decision made by one person to name a river instead of a town or village. And I quite honestly would not expect that all that thought process was invested in that decision, but my point is that this is how a change in perspective can work. Simply by changing focus, or looking through a different window or from a different angle, many of our preconceived or expected responses can change. That guy might just have jokingly decided on the spur of the moment to talk about a river valley instead of a town, but it is also possible that he was making a much different and deeper point and whatever his intention, it's not really all that important – for he didn't tell us what it was and it doesn't matter because it helped at least me, and probably all the others in the workshop to think differently.

Of course, I remembered that incident this week because I was more generally thinking about rivers. It was at the river that John baptised Jesus.

John baptised people in the Jordan River as a sign and symbol of transformation. Their lives were being lived in one direction until they came to the river. Into the river they go and when they come out their lives are changed. The same for Jesus – with yet another change – and as emphasised by the passage we heard from the book of Acts – the change that specified that the Holy Spirit was also present and necessary in Christian baptism.

Baptism is about transformation. I also think that baptism is undergoing a transformation. It used to be that baptism was an expectation. Children are baptised is how the old way of thinking and acting might have gone. It's just what was done. But in this post-modern world it is not so much an expectation. Lots of children born are never baptised, or at least I think it is undisputable that the number of parents choosing to have their children baptised is on a downward trend. While this may be cause for lament in some circles, there is also a positive in this sequence of events. It could mean that the decision to have a child baptised is a more well-formed decision – based on specific decisions about the importance of and place of a faith community in the nurturing of a child. It could mean a decision to be a participant in a choice for transformation rather than simply a rote response to societal expectation.

Lamentably, transformation itself is not necessarily a sought out goal in the way things work these days. I'm sure you've heard more than one story of how decisions made during teenage years have scuttled aspirations for a political career, or a fruitful appointment. You know those stories of how photographs taken during a university days party come back to haunt a candidate. It seems as if the decisions we make throughout our lives are supposed to be well-formed from an early age and never to be wavered from. But what about the role of transformation? Is there not a place for people to say that their minds and their lives, their goals and their priorities have changed? For me, a person who admits their past mistakes and misjudgements, and who can show how things and they have changed is more credible than someone who claims to have been on a straight path all along.

I remember early in my time as an ordained minister I received a complementary copy of The Christian Century – offered as a gift with the hope that I might become a subscriber. For a year or so the publication had a running series in which prominent preachers, professors and theologians wrote articles that had the theme: How my mind has changed. Each article told a story of how old views and ideas had changed as a result of the presence of the Holy Spirit in many different forms and fashions. It was refreshing and enlightening to know that people who are looked up to by many others had changed their minds over time and because of experiences which helped them to think about issues and ideas from a different perspective.

The gospel is all about transformation. It is about being open to having our minds and hearts changed. It offers us time and again the opportunity to see things in new ways – to make the last first, to see the other side of whatever situation appears before us.

I don't think we are too far into the new calendar year to consider the ritual in which many people engage when the calendar page is changed and the number of the year changes – the ritual of making resolutions. Isn't that about transformation – perhaps in a very minor way, but transformation just the same. I'm not necessarily advocating the making of New Years Reolutions – perhaps its too late anyway, and you've already made and broken a few them, but I'm not speaking against it either, except to say that anytime is a good time to consider things from a new perspective and let those new insights and vistas work transformation in you.

Baptism is a symbol of the transformation we proclaim and that we seek and even though we accept baptism as a once and for all sacrament in our lives, there is nothing to say that we can not continue to seek the transformation that is offered through the promises made in our baptism.

That's my story – a story that came to birth in the valley of the Thames, continued in the valleys of the Trent, Gull, Niger, Otonabee, Bow, South Saskatchewan, Beaver, Battle, Athabasca and now residing near the Yellowknife River, on the shores of Great Slave Lake and not too far from the great Deh Cho. Amen.