Sermons
“A Do’” based on Isaiah 43:1-7 and Luke 3:15-22
A
long time ago, before I had realized the wisdom of reading novellas
to children for Children’s Time, I had prepared a Children’s Time on
baptism. This was when I was serving the Morris United Methodist
Church, and it turned out we had a baptism that day. When Children’s
Time began there were two children present: an infant and a two year
old. This wasn’t going to make my work particularly easy.
At
the Morris United Methodist Church, they do baptisms in the back of
the sanctuary. The font is in the center of aisle right in the back,
against the wall. A baptismal banner hangs above it. They do this
on purpose. Their idea is that baptism is the entrance to the church
family, so it makes sense to have it in the area they enter from.
When the time in the service came to do baptisms everyone would stand
up and turn to watch. That is, everyone who could. There was one
man in the church who couldn’t stand: the pastor emeritus who was in
a wheelchair. The space where the pew had been cut out was all the
way in the back row, so he just got turned around in his wheelchair.
As time when on, we got smart, and when babies were being baptized I
would put them in his arms while I baptized them so we got to do it
together.
In
that church I was responsible for the creation of the bulletin (which
meant that there was a game entitled “who can find one of Sara’s
typos first”) and I would pick images for the font cover of the
bulletin. That week I’d taken a picture of the front doors of the
church and made it the image on the cover of the bulletin. As
planned, I asked the kids what was on the cover of the bulletin. The
two year old cheerfully responded, “a do’”. At this point, I was
in trouble. The response “a do’” was entirely correct, but I
couldn’t do much more with it. Somehow, and it felt as amazing then
as it does now in telling it, at that point a 10 year old showed up
and joined children’s time. So I asked, “why would I have a
picture of doors on the cover of the bulletin.” The 10 old rolled
his eyes at the stupidness of my question and responded, “Because
you are doing a baptism today, and those are the church doors, and
baptism is an entrance to the church family like the doors are the
entrance to the church.” The adults responded with an enthusiastic
“oh!” and accused me of prepping the kid ahead of time. (I
didn’t! I swear. He was just that smart. And he thought it was so
obvious as to be beneath him.)
I’ve
always appreciated the wisdom of the Morris United Methodist Church,
and their understanding of baptism as an entrance. There are many
good ways to think of baptism, and that’s certainly one of them.
Martin Luther King Jr. was known to speak of the Beloved Community,
an idea that sounds like another name for the kin-dom of God to me.
According to the King Center,
“For
Dr. King, The Beloved Community was not a lofty utopian goal to be
confused with the rapturous image of the Peaceable Kingdom, in which
lions and lambs coexist in idyllic harmony. Rather, The Beloved
Community was for him a realistic, achievable goal that could be
attained by a critical mass of people committed to and trained in the
philosophy and methods of nonviolence.
Dr.
King’s Beloved Community is a global vision, in which all people
can share in the wealth of the earth. In the Beloved Community,
poverty, hunger and homelessness will not be tolerated because
international standards of human decency will not allow it. Racism
and all forms of discrimination, bigotry and prejudice will be
replaced by an all-inclusive spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood. In
the Beloved Community, international disputes will be resolved by
peaceful conflict-resolution and reconciliation of adversaries,
instead of military power. Love and trust will triumph over fear and
hatred. Peace with justice will prevail over war and military
conflict.”1
Rev.
Dr. King’s wording is a smooth fit with the gospel lesson. In Luke
the Divine message doesn’t show up until after Jesus has been
baptized and is praying. The language is similar in each of the
gospels, the Divine message says, “You
are my Child, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.“ (Luke
3:22b, NRSV) Luke is one one of the gospel writers to suggest that
Jesus had to wait in line like the rest of the crowd to be baptized.
He was one of many.
It
has always seemed to me that the words of that came at Jesus’ baptism
are the words intended for every baptism. “This is my Child, the
Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” It suggests that each
baptized person has been named as God’s beloved in that experience,
and that the community of baptized people IS the Beloved Community.
Of course, to fit King’s vision we need more training in nonviolence
and peaceful conflict-resolution, but if you keep paying attention to
the Children’s Time novella, that may count!
Now,
baptism is a sacrament. Most people agree that a sacrament is an
outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. Or, a
“sign-act” which is an action that also has words to go along
with it. The other sacrament that we acknowledge as United
Methodists is communion. I think it is important to note that God’s
love is available to us at all times in our lives. The sacraments
are simply times when it is easier for us to remember that! God
doesn’t change. We are more attentive to God in those moments.
We
accept baptism and communion as sacraments because the Bible tells us
that Jesus participated in them and instructed other to do so a well!
In baptism, the grace that is offered is the
initiating act of a covenant. Baptism is the covenantal act of
acknowledging the love of God and the way that it is expressed by
family, sponsors, clergy, and church community. The acceptance of
the covenant is an act of inclusion into the Church, the community
that is aware of God’s grace. The candidate for baptism has two
primary responsibilities. The first is to be open to the experience
of being loved, both in the ritual of baptism throughout the rest of
life. The second is to complete the covenant, to seek always to love
God and love neighbors as the response to God’s love.
God’s
grace is available at all times, and thus is available at baptism;
the ritual cannot exist without God’s grace. Baptism is a public
act of accepting God’s love, but God’s love exists for each
person with or without baptism. The
covenant is eternal, even if the person ignores it. God does not
stop loving. The water is symbolic, and as such its efficacy is not
based on its quantity. That is a baptism is real whether the water
is poured or sprinkled over a person OR they are dunked!
I
haven’t ever done a baptism where a person is dunked, although I was
trained in it in seminary. I suspect that symbolism of new life is
more tangible in those baptisms. When I was in college one of the
churches in town left the doors to its sanctuary open at all times.
I would often go there to pray, and to ponder. The entrance to that
sanctuary was though two sets of solid wooden doors. The first set
connected the church to outside. The second set connected the
entrance to the sanctuary. The space between them was pretty small,
and there were no windows or lights. (This was in New Hampshire, I’m
pretty sure the design was intended to keep the cold out.) I usually
paused in that space between the sets of doors. I didn’t yet know
the word “liminal,” but I knew that I liked the in-betweenness
of that space. Between the sets of doors I was not in the outside
world, nor was I in the sanctuary. I was in the middle, in nowhere.
Young adulthood often felt disorienting, and being in a physical
space that reflected that no-whereness brought it some peace.
I
suspect that for those who undergo full immersion baptism, the moment
under the water might be the the space between the doors. The person
is, symbolically, dead to their old life and yet not yet alive in
their new one. I’ve worried, at times, about the pressure a person
might feel under if they understood baptism that way. What happens
the first time that they are cranky, or tempted, or mean! Do they
worry that the baptism didn’t work? Do they feel unworthy?
I
hope that baptism is a reminder that we are Beloved, and that when we
participate in the baptisms of others we remember the covenant also
applies to us! God’s grace is exceptionally powerful stuff. It
counters any argument that suggests that we are not enough, that we
have to work harder or have more in order to be sufficient. It
reminds us that our bodies, minds, emotions, and spirits are beloved
JUST AS THEY ARE, and that we need not earn our way into God’s favor.
It
does occur to me at times that believing in God’s grace is much more
radical than simply believing in God. As odds would have it, I
figure that God’s existence is a 50/50. It can’t be proven either
way. (Or, perhaps, the existence of God is equivalent to Schroeder’s
cat. On a strictly logical level, God both is and isn’t! Please
take that idea lightly.) On the other hand, the premise that the God
who exists is benevolent, that the One who Created cares, that the
Energy and Connector of All that Is is by nature Grace – all of
that is much less logical.
Anyone
looking at the injustices and evils of the world could easily
conclude that a Higher Power simply doesn’t care. Because, they
would conclude, if a Higher Power exists AND cares, then why are
there such awful realities? Therefore, a logical person might
conclude, one of 3 things must be true:
God
doesn’t exist.
God
doesn’t care.
God
doesn’t have the power to change things.
To
be fair, I’ve heard people suggest that there is a 4th
option, that God’s ways are not like our ways and that what we see as
injustice is OK with God, but that’s such a lousy argument that I
refuse to work with it.
My
training has been in a theology that turns to #3, “God doesn’t have
the power to change things.” Process theology argues over whether
God CAN’T interfere with human will or simply WON’T, but admits that
if you want to understand God as existing and loving, you are forced
by logic to concede that God does not stop us from doing each other
harm. Instead, Process Theology says, God works with all of us all
the time. God “whispers” to us suggestions of how we might act
in the most loving of ways. God works with us where we are and
offers us the possibility of turning in good directions. However, we
are truly free to ignore God’s whispers, hopes, and suggestions and
do the opposite. Whether this is because God simply refuses to treat
us as slaves or because creation itself won’t allow the violation of
imposed will, we are free to do good and we are free to do harm, and
we do both.
And
yet, we are Beloved. We are Beloved when we live out God’s love to
the fullest and share love with all we meet. We are Beloved when we
are simply awful, and do profound and lasting damage to others.
God’s love comes from God’s nature, not from our earning it. It may
not be logical, the way we see things. God’s existence is fair game.
God’s GRACE, God’s LOVE, God’s desire for goodness isn’t something
we can derive from pure logic. We find it scripture. We hear about
in tradition and from those we know in the Body of Christ. We can
experience it in our bodies, and we can learn about it through a
variety of fields of research if we look with the right lenses. But
it is a matter of faith to believe in a God of love.
And
yet, the do’ is open to all.
Thanks
be to God. Amen