What in the world does baptism mean...

NOTE: Here are my sermon notes for Sunday, January 10, 2010 as we reflect on the Baptism of Jesus. We will be celebrating a child's baptism this Sunday, but I think it wise for us to explore the meaning of our baptismal vows as adults. So... here we go. And if you would like to join us for worship, please stop by at 10:30 am.

The old saying, “The Lord works in mysterious ways” is NOT some verbal relic of antiquarian piety to me. Rather it gives shape and form to the fact that most of the time I can’t figure out what God is doing in my life all by myself: I need help. I am neither smart enough nor patient enough to discern the nuanced ways of the Lord on my own. And if the truth be told, more often than not, even when I think I’ve got something all figured out, there is still almost always more grace and truth to be revealed.

Do you know what I’m talking about? The ancient psalmist got it right when she says this in Peterson’s reworking of Psalm 30:

O GOD, my God, I yelled for help and you put me together. Lord, you pulled me out of the grave, gave me another chance at life when I was down-and-out. So listen up, all you saints and followers of the Lord: Sing your hearts out to GOD! Thank him to his face! Because although He gets angry once in a while, across a lifetime there is only love: the nights of crying your eyes out always give way to days of laughter.

(I remember) when things were going great and I crowed, "I've got it made. I'm GOD's favorite. God made me king of the mountain." So you looked the other way and I fell to pieces. I called out to you, my GOD; I laid my case before you: "Can you sell me for a profit when I'm dead? Auction me off at a cemetery yard sale? When I'm 'dust to dust' my songs and stories of you won't sell. So listen and be kind! Help me out of this!"

And… in God’s own time you did: you changed wild lament into whirling dance; you ripped off my black mourning band and decked me with wildflowers. And now I'm about to burst with song; I can't keep quiet about you. O GOD, my God, and I can't thank you enough.

I’ve had that kind of experience with God – haven’t you? Times when you thought you had it all together only to find the rug pulled out from under you? And then just when you thought you’d been down so long it all started to look like up to you, life began to get better? Not perfect – or complete – but better and filled with love and maybe even grace as well? That’s why I can’t help but say the LORD works in mysterious ways. It is a spiritual fact, Jack! An insight you can take it to the bank and build an adult understanding of faith around– and that’s what I want to try to do this morning when it comes to baptism – talk about God’s mysterious ways and what they might mean for you and me as adults.

I know that most of us were baptized as children – and that we just baptized another little guy this morning – but baptism is a life-long way of living into our commitment to God. It is not simply a rite of passage, as many have come to believe, or a privilege of church membership. It is a vow that we must keep renewing throughout the complexities of life’s ups and downs. I find these words from the Hebrew bible scholar, Walter Breuggemann, to be insightful when he says this about baptism: “In a rich variety of ways the Biblical writers confess that God is (about) giving (and creating) a newness (in the world.) That newness from God is the center of the Hebrew Testament faith.”

Think about that for a moment: the Bible begins in Genesis by telling us that God created a newness – in the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep – until the Lord acted to do something new and behold: there was evening and there was morning, a new day, and God called it good.

• The testimony of the Hebrew scriptures continues to build on that newness throughout the Bible. Think of Psalm 40: I waited patiently for the Lord who inclined to hear my cry, he lifted me up out of the pit, out of the miry clay so I will sing a new song – a song of hope and praise – and many will put their trust in the Lord. Or Psalm 149: Sing to the Lord a new song – and praise the Holy One with dancing and thanksgiving.

• Think of the prophets like Jeremiah who said: Behold the days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with my people… a covenant written on their hearts rather than on stone… and I will be their God and they will be my people.

• Isaiah is equally clear: Fear not, for I am doing a new thing… I have redeemed you, called you by name, and you are mine. When you come up out of the water, I will be with you… because you are beloved, precious in my sight, honored and I love you.

And never forget our brother Ezekiel who experienced the healing and transformative power of God’s newness when brought by the spirit to the valley of dry bones. “Mortal one,” asked the Lord, “can these dry bones live?” To which Ezekiel trembled a reply: “Only Thou knowest, Lord.” So God said to me: Prophesy to these bones and say to them, “Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord that is doing a new thing throughout all creation… say to these bones I will cause God’s spirit to enter you and you shall live again – sinew upon sinew and flesh upon flesh – and behold I did as the Lord commanded – I prophesied – and God did this new thing right before my eyes: these dry and dead bones in the valley of the shadow of death began to live.”

• Are you with me? Do you see Breuggemann’s point about how the testimony of the Hebrew scriptures is constructed upon this encounter with God’s newness?

• Listen carefully as he brings it all home saying:

For Christians, the life of Jesus is the quintessential exhibit of God’s newness in the world – and three things strike me about that constant assertion of God’s newness. First, it is beyond explanation and beyond our own conjuring. It depends wholly upon God. Second, the Bible is concerned with the community that receives, trusts in and embraces the miracle of newness. It knows that this community, synagogue or church is summoned to a radical way of obedience in the world, a way so radical that it evokes the hostility of the world. And third, those vexed by such a summons turn to God in hope and trust that God will overrule such hostility.

Each of those three insights – 1) that God’s grace and newness always begins with the Lord; 2) that God’s new way of living always challenges the brokenness of the status quo; and 3) that God also gives us power to live into our commitments by experiencing in community some of the ways that God’s love is stronger than the hostility of the world – these insights tell us something vital about an adult understanding of baptism.

First, baptism teaches us that we are not the center of the universe – and that is a boldly counter-cultural claim. Every day that I drive to church down Tyler Street, I pass a billboard that proclaims: It is ALL about ME! Maybe you’ve seen it, too? It is all about me – my needs and my comfort – my prejudices and my limited vision – my abiding conviction that the totality of existence can be defined by my limited perspective.

It makes me want to vomit, not only because such selfishness is so shallow, pervasive and destructive, but also because some of that selfishness lives in me. Oh, I keep it pretty well camouflaged – I think most of us do, too – but sometimes when I am really tired and cranky – cold or in a hurry and find myself standing in the check-out line at Price Chopper or Stop and Shop – that ugly, self-centered demon jumps out at me and shows everyone with eyes to see just how much I really believe life is all about me.

• Maybe somebody cuts me off when I’m homing in on the shortest check-out line. Could be that I get a really limited and painfully slow clerk who seems to willfully move like molasses in the Yukon the more agitated I become.

• Oh my God, supermarkets can bring out what is really ugly in me and I hate that about myself: hate that I am fallible, hate that I am so impatient, hate that sin still lives inside me and can be evoked so easily.

So about Thanksgiving – when it is simultaneously the best and worst of times in our supermarkets – I began an experiment where I asked God to make the check-out line my prayer closet. And the prayer that I keep saying to myself is simple: Lumsden, you could be in Afghanistan. That’s a prayer of confession for me, my friends, a prayer of repentance and perspective, too. For it grounds me in the first truth of our baptism: I am not the center of the universe. God is – and life begins with God and blessings flow from God – and my vow is to stay awake and aware of this so that I can give shape and form to God’s grace.

• Baptism for adults means that we know that we are not the center of the universe. We could be in Afghanistan – or Iraq – or South Africa – or fill in your own wake-up call.

• God has called us and blessed us and shared grace with us and we are to respond by giving shape and form to this blessing in our ordinary, supermarket lives. That’s the first insight, ok?

The second is equally challenging because it reminds us that whenever we embrace and live into God’s newness, hostility will be a con-sequence. Not so much in the check-out line of the supermarket, of course, but when we start practicing that commitment to compassion and patience out loud in the world: in our banking, in our choices about how we will use our resources, in our practice of who is welcomed at the table of Christ’s grace, who is entitled to health care, who is worthy of the benefits of marriage, who deserves life and who should only know death. When we start making the words of Christ flesh, then you can count on some push-back from the status quo.

Consider what our gospel text for today suggests in the story of Christ’s own baptism. When John the Baptist really starts living into his calling, the people start to wonder whether he might be the Messiah, right

• And what does John tell them? “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming and I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals.” John, the wild man prophet of justice and judgment, goes humble on us; he understands his place in the unfolding of God’s newness and he doesn’t try to fake it. Rather, he takes on the role of a servant – a prophetic servant, mind you, but a servant nonetheless because living in humility is one of the consequences of baptism.

• And in time this humility and commitment to living into God’s good news leads John the Baptist right into Herod’s prison, yes? He speaks truth to power. He shows how the status quo is often selfish and obsessed with greed. And violence. And fear. And when we made the words of baptism flesh long enough – and loud enough – the world Herod pushed back.

How did Breuggemann put it earlier? When our commitment to the newness of God’s way becomes an obedience that radically takes up residence in the world, it always evokes hostility. Can you say out loud some of the radically obedient saints who have evoked the hostility of the world because of their deep commitment to God’s new way of love and compassion?

Baptism, you might say, is not for babies: it is a tough and demanding commitment – and that is the third insight. We need a community of faith to help us maintain our vows and experience signs of God’s grace amidst the hostility.

U2 sing a song called, “Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own.” It’s all about being with your dad when he is dying from cancer – and how hard that is especially when you haven’t been very close most of your life. It’s hard for the dad, it’s hard for the child and it’s hard for all who love them both.

• It’s a brilliant and beautiful song and points to the heart of this third insight about baptism for adults: we can’t do this all by ourselves.

• The hostility is too great, our fears are too strong, the depth of our wounds and even sin are too deep.

So we need to see evidence that God’s way is the better way – the truer way – the way of life rather than death. And that, dear friends, is why we have a church: if you participate in it long enough, if you act in it with even a little trust and just a bit of patience in time you will begin to see the evidence that God’s way is the better way.

• You will see how forgiveness can heal hatred – how sharing by all can mean scarcity for none – how prayers are answered and faith brings healing and hope to the most broken souls.

• You will see addicts get sober – and arrogant souls made humble – you will see women and men, rich and poor, gay and straight finding common ground rather than emphasizing their differences.

• My Lord, you will see 55 people of every shape, size and background overcoming last weekend’s blizzard to come to worship and be together.

Most of the time the evidence and encouragement is very simple – it is easy to miss – and most people barely even notice. But those who are together in community discover in time that God has given them eyes to see and hearts to claim the good news.

In fact, those who are in community over time begin to know that they are God’s beloved – and they are sharing a radical commitment with others who are also the beloved – and somehow that makes all the difference in the world. When Jesus was baptized, the story tells us that heaven was opened, the Spirit came upon him like a dove and the voice of the Lord proclaimed: You are my beloved with whom I am well-pleased.

And what was true then, is true for us today as well: you are God’s beloved with whom God is well pleased. And that is what in the world baptism means for those who have ears to hear.

credits: 1) baptism of jesus @ http://tepou.wordpress.com/2009/01/19/he-iriiri/; 2) sing a new song @ www.sxc.hu/photo/1228666; 3) Ezekiel by Randall Stolzfus @http://sloweye.net/portfolio/image-archive/; 4) Gertude Mueller-Nelson @ http://www.fumcbelton.org/ calendar.htm%22%3Ewww.fumcbelton.org/calendar.htm; 5) poster @ http://christthetruth.wordpress.com/2009/01/20/good-advice-for-boasters/; 6) three cups of tea @ http://unioncitylibrary.wordpress.com/2009/01/23/one-community-one-book-reading-three-cups-of-tea-update/; 7) john the baptist icon @ http://fatherneo.com/2007/10; 8)baby @ http://grovesmedia.wordpress.com/2009/05/21/no-room-for-cry-babies-on-the-apprentice/; 9) the healing tree @ http://www.terrytheweaver.ie/pages/healing_tree_jpg.htm 10) suetin composition with a cross