Matthew 4:17-23
Presbyterian pastor Rodger Nishioka recalls watching a Nova documentary about elephant seals when he was a child. The cameras followed one particular female seal who had just given birth on the shores off the coast of Argentina. Soon after, the famished mother abandoned her newborn pup to go find food. The pup stayed on the shore while the mother fed in the waters off the coast.
But when the mother came out of the water, she was on a different part of the beach than her baby. Not only that, but because elephant seals all breed and give birth around the same time, there was a multitude of mothers and babies on the same beach, all searching for one another. The cameras stayed on this one mother seal, who kept calling to her baby, and listening for her pup who called back with cries of its own. Using their senses of hearing and smell, the mother and baby were finally reunited. The host explained that, from the moment of birth, the sound and scent of the pup are imprinted on the mother’s memory, so that there is no question in her mind which baby seal is hers. Eventually, she will find her baby.
At this, Nishioka’s father, also a Presbyterian minister, remarked, “You know, that’s how it is with God. We are imprinted with a memory of God, and God is imprinted with a memory of us, and even if it takes a lifetime, we will find each other.” (1)
Even if it takes a lifetime, God will find us.
In Matthew’s story of the call of the first disciples, it is as if nothing less than an imprinted memory of God is sparked in the minds of Jesus’ first followers. “Follow me,” Jesus says as he walks along the beach and sees Peter and Andrew fishing in the sea. And “immediately they left their nets and followed him.” What could possibly have compelled these hardworking fishermen to leave behind their livelihood, their stability, everything familiar, to follow this man they had never seen before?
It is as if Peter and Andrew recognize in Jesus the answer to the deepest longings of their hearts, the longings that nothing else in their lives had been able to fill, not their work or their family life or their hobbies or even their faith. Matthew doesn’t tell us what Jesus says next to James and his brother John, but whatever it is, their response is as dramatic as Peter and Andrew’s: “Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him.”
It wasn’t so different then as it is for us now. You simply don’t turn your back on a decent job or on the family that job supports to follow after some guy who happens to walk past your office and invite you to follow him. And besides, no teacher worth his salt has to go out and recruit his own students -- teachers, then and now, are supposed to be sought out by students who have heard of their reputations, not the other way around.
But clearly, that’s not how Jesus works. He doesn’t find a place to settle down, join the faculty of the local seminary, build a reputation, and sit back and wait for students to come to him. He goes out, preaching the same short message we heard from John the Baptist: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” Or, as Dale Bruner puts it, “Turn your lives around, because here comes the kingdom of the heavens!” (2)
It’s as if this gospel, this good news, is simply too good for Jesus to sit around and wait for people to discover for themselves. He has to go out and tell people about it. And when he does, there is just something about him -- whether it’s the man himself, or the words he speaks -- there is something about Jesus that compels people -- immediately! -- to leave behind everything and follow him.
Tom Brady is the quarterback for the New England Patriots and the winner of three Super Bowls. Until last Sunday’s upset, the Patriots appeared to be well on their way to another Super Bowl victory. Regardless, Tom Brady is considered to be one of the best to ever play the game. He’s well liked by fans and teammates, and he's been named one of People Magazine’s Most Beautiful People - more than once. He’s also married to a supermodel.
By all our society’s measures of success, Tom Brady should be happy and content and at peace. But a few years ago, during his team’s quest for a perfect season, Brady was interviewed on 60 Minutes.
He told the interviewer: “Why do I have three Super Bowl rings and still think there's something greater out there for me? I mean, maybe a lot of people would say, ‘Hey man, this is what it is.’ I reached my goal, my dream, my life. Me, I think, ‘God, it's got to be more than this.’ I mean this isn't, this can't be, what it's all cracked up to be?”
“What's the answer?” the interviewer asked him.
“I wish I knew. I wish I knew,” Brady answered.
Three Super Bowl rings.
Married to a supermodel.
And he’s convinced there’s something more, something else, something different. (3)
We all feel it at some point in our lives. Some of us feel it most of our lives. That persistent ache. That restlessness. We too are convinced there is something deeper, something more.
It is almost as if God created us that way, with a God-shaped hole in our souls that nothing but God can ever fill. More than sixteen centuries ago, Augustine of Hippo put it this way: “Thou hast made us for thyself, so that our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee.” Even longer ago than that, the psalmist wrote, “For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb...In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed.”
It’s as if there is something innate in all of us that is primed to respond to what was imprinted in our memories at birth, something primed to recognize God and to know that only with God can the deepest longings of our heart be satisfied.
The problem is, there are so many things in our lives and in our world that we mistake for the something more we’re longing for. Sometimes we think all we need to finally be satisfied is more knowledge -- more awareness of how the world works. We see this tendency all too often now in elementary schools, which keep cutting out time for play and creativity in favor of more time for instruction, when the science clearly shows that kids learn more and concentrate better when they have had time for physical and imaginative play. Or we think that we could fill the emptiness by perfecting our physical selves with the right diet or exercise plan...which is precisely why every year there is a new fad for how to eat or how to exercise. Or maybe we’re like Tom Brady on a smaller scale, we know that we have everything we could want -- food, shelter, work, family, resources -- and yet still we cannot shake the feeling that “there’s got to be more than this.”
“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near,” Jesus says. “Turn your lives around, because here comes the kingdom of the heavens!”...”Follow me!” God finds them, God invites them to follow, and Andrew and Peter and James and John drop their nets and wave goodbye to their father and follow after Jesus like people in a trance.
God finds us, and we show up at church Sunday after Sunday and give our time and energy and money toward this institution that certainly has its flaws. Why? With all the options we have for self-improvement or even for entertainment on a Sunday morning, why are we here?
The answer might just be in the last verse of today’s reading. What happened after the first disciples followed Jesus? Well, we don’t know what happened to the disciples, at least not right away. Matthew tells us instead what Jesus did: “Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people.” Teaching...proclaiming the good news...curing every disease. Later, these very tasks are the ones Jesus will call his disciples to do. These are the tasks Jesus calls us to do.
And isn’t that why we are here today? Because at some point we discovered that the only true satisfaction in life is found in following the one who shows us that the most important thing is being a part of something bigger than ourselves, finding meaning in something beyond our insulated circle of work and family and friends. We are here because we follow the One who shows us that the most important thing is love in action, love that teaches and proclaims and heals. We are here because at some point, that love found us, perhaps just when we needed it the most, and that memory compels us to do what we can to share that love with others.
Nishioka tells another story that happened when he was a speaker at a youth conference in California. One night, after preaching a sermon on discerning God’s call, an adult leader of a youth group came to see him with a teenage boy, asking if Nishioka would talk to the young man. Nishioka agreed. The young man told Nishioka and his youth group leader that for some time he had been hearing God speak to him. And what this voice -- which he was sure was the voice of God -- kept telling him was that he should end his life, that the world would be better off if he were dead. At this, the young man broke down sobbing. Nishioka and the leader held onto the young man and prayed with him and for him.
Then, after a few moments, Nishioka told that man that although he believed he had heard God telling him to kill himself, there was simply no way that voice was God’s. “Are you sure?” the young man asked. “I am absolutely certain,” Nishioka responded. “But how do you know?”
“I know because the Bible says that we are made in God’s own image. I know because Psalm 139 promises that God knit you together in your mother’s womb, that you are fearfully and wonderfully made. I know because God sent Jesus that you might have life. I know that those voices you are hearing are not coming from God.” (4)
“Follow me,” says Jesus, “and I will make you fish for people.” When we follow Jesus, we follow the one who calls us to turn around and turn away from all the voices in our lives and in our culture that make false promises and false accusations. When we follow Jesus, we receive the privileges but also the responsibilities of discipleship, for to follow him means to imitate him...teaching, proclaiming the good news, curing disease, sharing God’s love with all people. It can be as drastic as Nishioka’s encounter with a suicidal teenager or as ordinary as sharing a meal at the annual meeting with someone you don’t already know. When we follow Jesus, we discover the truth: from the first disciples to the ones who will be baptized today, we are all created, loved, found, and called by the God...to share God’s love with all. Amen.
Endnotes:
1. Rodger Nishioka in Feasting on the Word, Year A, Volume 1, WJK Press, 2010, p. 284, 286.
2. Dale Bruner, Matthew, A Commentary, Vol 1: The Christ Book, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2004.
3. From a sermon by the Rev. Amy Miracle, “Asking the Right Questions,” Westminster Presbyterian Church, Des Moines, Iowa, January 20, 2008.
4. Rodger Nishioka in Feasting on the Word, Year A, Volume 1, WJK Press, 2010, p. 288.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Beginnings (sermon on Baptism of the Lord Sunday, January 9, 2011)
Matthew 3:13-17
The first Sunday Kyle didn’t show up to church no one thought much about it. After a year of participating in classes, retreats, and mission work with the confirmation class, Kyle had been baptized and confirmed the week before. But then another week went by and Kyle and his family weren’t in church...then another week...then another. Worried that something was wrong, the pastor finally called Kyle’s house and spoke to his mother. “I just wanted to make sure everything was okay,” he said to her. “We’ve really missed having Kyle at church.”
His mother sounded genuinely surprised when she responded, “Oh, well, I guess I thought Kyle was all done. I mean, he was baptized and confirmed and everything. Doesn’t that mean he’s done?”
That’s when the pastor realized that somewhere along the way the confirmation teachers and mentors, the pastors, and the membership of the church itself had somehow failed to communicate a fundamental truth about baptism and confirmation: it’s not an end, it’s a beginning. (1)
If there is any lingering question in our minds whether that is really so, we need to look no further than Matthew’s account of Jesus’ baptism. So far, all that’s happened in Matthew’s gospel is that Jesus is born, visited by the magi, flees to Egypt, then returns to Nazareth. At this point, Matthew focuses his story on John the Baptist, who appears in the desert preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sin and predicting that one more powerful than he is coming.
And sure enough, Jesus does come, but he doesn’t exactly live up to John’s fiery predictions. Instead, he gets in line with all the sinners waiting to be baptized by John in the river Jordan. And when it’s his turn, he steps up to John for his dunking. “No way,” John says. “No. Way. I can’t baptize you -- I need you to baptize me.” But Jesus insists: this is the way it is supposed to happen. This is part of what it means for God to become human. Jesus needs to be baptized so that his ministry and mission can begin.
The original Toy Story movie is the story of the toys belonging to a boy named Andy. The opening of the movie clearly establishes that one toy, a floppy cowboy named Woody, is Andy’s favorite, most-beloved toy. But then, for his birthday, Andy receives a spaceman named Buzz Lightyear. Buzz is a toy with all the latest bells and whistles. Where Andy has a pull string on his back that causes him to say one of a few cowboy phrases in a staticy voice, Buzz has a digital voice box activated at the touch of a button. Where Andy has an empty holster where his toy gun used to be before it was lost, Buzz has a pulsating red “laser” on his arm. While Woody could only pretend to ride a toy horse, Buzz has wings that sprout out of his back, allowing him to “fly” around the room.
Woody, is of course, insanely jealous of Buzz, especially when the rest of Andy’s toys are in awe of him. Buzz quickly becomes the most popular toy in the room, not just among the other toys, but for Andy too, who replaces his cowboy-themed sheets and pajamas with Buzz Lightyear ones, and begins sleeping with Buzz in his bed while Woody is relegated to the toy box.
Then something happens that reveals to Woody just how far things have gone: Andy writes his name on the bottom of Buzz’s foot with permanent marker. Woody’s foot has the very same mark and Woody knows exactly what this means: Andy is claiming Buzz as his own, marking him, giving him a new identity. He’s not just one of a million other Buzz Lightyears; he is now Andy’s Buzz Lightyear.
In baptism, God writes God’s name on our hearts in the permanent marker of the Holy Spirit. But notice what happens in Jesus’ baptism. The heavens open, the dove comes down, and God speaks: “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” The problem is, we tend to read back into this event all that we know about the rest of Jesus’ journey -- his ministry and teachings, miracles and healings, the Last Supper and his betrayal, the cross and the empty tomb. But remember what has happened to Jesus so far in this story: he was born, he went to Egypt, he returned to Nazareth, he came to John to be baptized. That’s it. That’s all Jesus has done in his life. And yet listen to what God says: “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” God claims Jesus, God favors Jesus, God pours out his love on Jesus, not because he has proven himself more special than all the other sinners waiting in line, but before Jesus has done anything to earn or deserve God’s love and favor. Baptism marks the beginning of Jesus’ ministry and mission, not the end.
And so it is with us. God doesn’t write God’s name on our hearts in baptism because God looks at all the other toys in the toy box and decides we are the best; God does it because from the very beginning, we are God’s, beloved before we are even capable of earning or deserving God’s love. Baptism is not the result of something we have done; it is the beginning of a new phase in our journey with God. On this journey our circumstances will change, even our relationship with God and our understanding of what it means to follow Jesus will change. What stays the same is the truth we proclaim in baptism: we are God’s beloved.
For the next two Sundays we will have the distinct privilege of celebrating the sacrament of baptism, of setting two people on the path of discipleship where they are guided and claimed and loved by God. Next week we will have an infant baptism for Kellan and the week after we will have an adult baptism for Scott. These two celebrations will certainly have similarities -- both will involve water and vows -- but they will also have distinct differences.
Obviously, as a baby, Kellan will not be able to take vows for himself. Theologically speaking, we Presbyterians have no problem with this. The whole reason we baptize infants is not to extend to them some magical protection, but because we believe that God loves us and claims us before we have done anything to deserve it -- in fact before we are even capable of comprehending what God, the church, or baptism even is. In infant baptism, the parents take vows on behalf of the child, which means the parents take on a whole new responsibility -- they are no longer just responsible for making sure he eats, sleeps, dresses warmly, and learns his ABC’s; they now pledge to bring him up with the awareness that he is first and foremost God’s beloved child, even before he is theirs. Baptism marks the beginning of Kellan’s journey of faith and it is a beginning for which his parents take responsibility.
In Scott’s baptism, things are a little different. When an adult is baptized we refer to it as a “believer’s baptism,” since, unlike an infant, an adult chooses baptism as a public proclamation that Jesus Christ is his Lord and Savior and that he knows himself to be, first and foremost, God’s beloved child. We believe that God has been intimately involved in Scott’s life for years, but baptism still marks a turning point and a new beginning. What Kellan and Scott’s baptisms have in common is that they both set the baptized on a new beginning in the lifelong journey of faith.
The movie “Tender Mercies” tells the story of Mac Sledge, a one-time country-western singing star whose life dissolves into a fog of alcohol and shiftlessness. Divorced from his wife and estranged from his only daughter, Mac staggers through life until one night he collapses onto the porch of a small, lonely motel out in the middle of nowhere on the Texas prairie. The motel is run by Rosa Lee, a young widow who is raising her boy, Sonny, and trying to make ends meet. Even though Mac is a shipwreck of a human being, grizzled, drunk, and despairing, Rosa Lee takes him in, sets him to work for her, and through this, transformation comes to Mac’s life. He kicks his drinking habit, becomes a kind of father figure to young Sonny, ends up marrying Rosa Lee, and begins to attend the Baptist church in which Rosa Lee is a member of the choir.
In one scene, both Mac and Sonny are baptized one Sunday morning. After the pastor dunks him into the waters of baptism, Mac stands back up, blinking and drenched, water dripping down off his balding head and glistening on his grizzled beard. It’s a portrait of grace. But after the service, Sonny and Mac are sitting outside the motel and Sonny says, “Well, we done it. We got baptized.” “Yup, we sure did,” Mac replies. “You feel any different?” the boy asks. Mac laughs and says, “I can’t say I do, not really.” (2)
Baptism doesn’t suddenly turn us into holy people. As Tom Long puts it, “baptism is a call to set out on a moral adventure in the name of Christ, but all Christians travel this path of discipleship hobbling and stumbling.” (3) If we were baptized as infants, we probably don’t even remember it. But even for Kyle, the teenager who was baptized on the day of his confirmation, it is sometimes an event that feels more like an ending, a culmination of a special year in his faith journey rather than the sign that a new phase of this journey has begun. His life may not look or feel much different, but we know the truth: everything has changed. Kyle’s identity, his life, is no longer defined by being a son or brother or friend or football player; what matters most now is that he is God’s beloved, and nothing he has done or will do can change that. No matter how much Kyle might hobble and stumble on this new path, nothing can change the fundamental truth of his existence: he is God’s beloved. With him, God is well pleased.
What is true for Jesus, and for Kyle, and for Kellan and for Scott is also true for you. God is well pleased with you.
Not because you are good, or smart, or beautiful, which you very well may be. No, God loves you because you belong to God, who made you and claimed you, who has written God’s name on your heart, in indelible ink.
God is well pleased with you, right now, at this very moment.
These are the first words that Jesus hears from God before he beings his ministry, and surely this is no accident. If Jesus thought he had to earn God’s love, he would have found it impossible be intimate with God on his journey, and the same is true for us. The only way that we -- mortal, frail, and broken as we are -- can have an intimate relationship with the divine is if God first claims us, as we are, whether we are helpless infants, or full-fledged adults with whole lists of regrets and mistakes.
Over the next two weeks we have the wonderful opportunity to witness two of God’s beloved children embark on a new beginning, a new journey of faith. As we watch and take our vows to support them as fellow saints on the journey, may we also remember that no matter when or where or by whom we were baptized, we too have been claimed by God, named as God’s beloved, placed on this path. Sometimes we have strayed but just as we did nothing to earn the gift of baptism, there is nothing we -- or anyone else -- can do that can take that gift away. Amen.
Endnotes:
1. from Rodger Nishioka’s commentary in Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol. 1, WJK Press, 2010, pp. 236-240.
2. Thanks to Scott Hoezee for this illustration idea on the Center for Excellence in Preaching website, online here.
The first Sunday Kyle didn’t show up to church no one thought much about it. After a year of participating in classes, retreats, and mission work with the confirmation class, Kyle had been baptized and confirmed the week before. But then another week went by and Kyle and his family weren’t in church...then another week...then another. Worried that something was wrong, the pastor finally called Kyle’s house and spoke to his mother. “I just wanted to make sure everything was okay,” he said to her. “We’ve really missed having Kyle at church.”
His mother sounded genuinely surprised when she responded, “Oh, well, I guess I thought Kyle was all done. I mean, he was baptized and confirmed and everything. Doesn’t that mean he’s done?”
That’s when the pastor realized that somewhere along the way the confirmation teachers and mentors, the pastors, and the membership of the church itself had somehow failed to communicate a fundamental truth about baptism and confirmation: it’s not an end, it’s a beginning. (1)
If there is any lingering question in our minds whether that is really so, we need to look no further than Matthew’s account of Jesus’ baptism. So far, all that’s happened in Matthew’s gospel is that Jesus is born, visited by the magi, flees to Egypt, then returns to Nazareth. At this point, Matthew focuses his story on John the Baptist, who appears in the desert preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sin and predicting that one more powerful than he is coming.
And sure enough, Jesus does come, but he doesn’t exactly live up to John’s fiery predictions. Instead, he gets in line with all the sinners waiting to be baptized by John in the river Jordan. And when it’s his turn, he steps up to John for his dunking. “No way,” John says. “No. Way. I can’t baptize you -- I need you to baptize me.” But Jesus insists: this is the way it is supposed to happen. This is part of what it means for God to become human. Jesus needs to be baptized so that his ministry and mission can begin.
The original Toy Story movie is the story of the toys belonging to a boy named Andy. The opening of the movie clearly establishes that one toy, a floppy cowboy named Woody, is Andy’s favorite, most-beloved toy. But then, for his birthday, Andy receives a spaceman named Buzz Lightyear. Buzz is a toy with all the latest bells and whistles. Where Andy has a pull string on his back that causes him to say one of a few cowboy phrases in a staticy voice, Buzz has a digital voice box activated at the touch of a button. Where Andy has an empty holster where his toy gun used to be before it was lost, Buzz has a pulsating red “laser” on his arm. While Woody could only pretend to ride a toy horse, Buzz has wings that sprout out of his back, allowing him to “fly” around the room.
Woody, is of course, insanely jealous of Buzz, especially when the rest of Andy’s toys are in awe of him. Buzz quickly becomes the most popular toy in the room, not just among the other toys, but for Andy too, who replaces his cowboy-themed sheets and pajamas with Buzz Lightyear ones, and begins sleeping with Buzz in his bed while Woody is relegated to the toy box.
Then something happens that reveals to Woody just how far things have gone: Andy writes his name on the bottom of Buzz’s foot with permanent marker. Woody’s foot has the very same mark and Woody knows exactly what this means: Andy is claiming Buzz as his own, marking him, giving him a new identity. He’s not just one of a million other Buzz Lightyears; he is now Andy’s Buzz Lightyear.
In baptism, God writes God’s name on our hearts in the permanent marker of the Holy Spirit. But notice what happens in Jesus’ baptism. The heavens open, the dove comes down, and God speaks: “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” The problem is, we tend to read back into this event all that we know about the rest of Jesus’ journey -- his ministry and teachings, miracles and healings, the Last Supper and his betrayal, the cross and the empty tomb. But remember what has happened to Jesus so far in this story: he was born, he went to Egypt, he returned to Nazareth, he came to John to be baptized. That’s it. That’s all Jesus has done in his life. And yet listen to what God says: “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” God claims Jesus, God favors Jesus, God pours out his love on Jesus, not because he has proven himself more special than all the other sinners waiting in line, but before Jesus has done anything to earn or deserve God’s love and favor. Baptism marks the beginning of Jesus’ ministry and mission, not the end.
And so it is with us. God doesn’t write God’s name on our hearts in baptism because God looks at all the other toys in the toy box and decides we are the best; God does it because from the very beginning, we are God’s, beloved before we are even capable of earning or deserving God’s love. Baptism is not the result of something we have done; it is the beginning of a new phase in our journey with God. On this journey our circumstances will change, even our relationship with God and our understanding of what it means to follow Jesus will change. What stays the same is the truth we proclaim in baptism: we are God’s beloved.
For the next two Sundays we will have the distinct privilege of celebrating the sacrament of baptism, of setting two people on the path of discipleship where they are guided and claimed and loved by God. Next week we will have an infant baptism for Kellan and the week after we will have an adult baptism for Scott. These two celebrations will certainly have similarities -- both will involve water and vows -- but they will also have distinct differences.
Obviously, as a baby, Kellan will not be able to take vows for himself. Theologically speaking, we Presbyterians have no problem with this. The whole reason we baptize infants is not to extend to them some magical protection, but because we believe that God loves us and claims us before we have done anything to deserve it -- in fact before we are even capable of comprehending what God, the church, or baptism even is. In infant baptism, the parents take vows on behalf of the child, which means the parents take on a whole new responsibility -- they are no longer just responsible for making sure he eats, sleeps, dresses warmly, and learns his ABC’s; they now pledge to bring him up with the awareness that he is first and foremost God’s beloved child, even before he is theirs. Baptism marks the beginning of Kellan’s journey of faith and it is a beginning for which his parents take responsibility.
In Scott’s baptism, things are a little different. When an adult is baptized we refer to it as a “believer’s baptism,” since, unlike an infant, an adult chooses baptism as a public proclamation that Jesus Christ is his Lord and Savior and that he knows himself to be, first and foremost, God’s beloved child. We believe that God has been intimately involved in Scott’s life for years, but baptism still marks a turning point and a new beginning. What Kellan and Scott’s baptisms have in common is that they both set the baptized on a new beginning in the lifelong journey of faith.
The movie “Tender Mercies” tells the story of Mac Sledge, a one-time country-western singing star whose life dissolves into a fog of alcohol and shiftlessness. Divorced from his wife and estranged from his only daughter, Mac staggers through life until one night he collapses onto the porch of a small, lonely motel out in the middle of nowhere on the Texas prairie. The motel is run by Rosa Lee, a young widow who is raising her boy, Sonny, and trying to make ends meet. Even though Mac is a shipwreck of a human being, grizzled, drunk, and despairing, Rosa Lee takes him in, sets him to work for her, and through this, transformation comes to Mac’s life. He kicks his drinking habit, becomes a kind of father figure to young Sonny, ends up marrying Rosa Lee, and begins to attend the Baptist church in which Rosa Lee is a member of the choir.
In one scene, both Mac and Sonny are baptized one Sunday morning. After the pastor dunks him into the waters of baptism, Mac stands back up, blinking and drenched, water dripping down off his balding head and glistening on his grizzled beard. It’s a portrait of grace. But after the service, Sonny and Mac are sitting outside the motel and Sonny says, “Well, we done it. We got baptized.” “Yup, we sure did,” Mac replies. “You feel any different?” the boy asks. Mac laughs and says, “I can’t say I do, not really.” (2)
Baptism doesn’t suddenly turn us into holy people. As Tom Long puts it, “baptism is a call to set out on a moral adventure in the name of Christ, but all Christians travel this path of discipleship hobbling and stumbling.” (3) If we were baptized as infants, we probably don’t even remember it. But even for Kyle, the teenager who was baptized on the day of his confirmation, it is sometimes an event that feels more like an ending, a culmination of a special year in his faith journey rather than the sign that a new phase of this journey has begun. His life may not look or feel much different, but we know the truth: everything has changed. Kyle’s identity, his life, is no longer defined by being a son or brother or friend or football player; what matters most now is that he is God’s beloved, and nothing he has done or will do can change that. No matter how much Kyle might hobble and stumble on this new path, nothing can change the fundamental truth of his existence: he is God’s beloved. With him, God is well pleased.
What is true for Jesus, and for Kyle, and for Kellan and for Scott is also true for you. God is well pleased with you.
Not because you are good, or smart, or beautiful, which you very well may be. No, God loves you because you belong to God, who made you and claimed you, who has written God’s name on your heart, in indelible ink.
God is well pleased with you, right now, at this very moment.
These are the first words that Jesus hears from God before he beings his ministry, and surely this is no accident. If Jesus thought he had to earn God’s love, he would have found it impossible be intimate with God on his journey, and the same is true for us. The only way that we -- mortal, frail, and broken as we are -- can have an intimate relationship with the divine is if God first claims us, as we are, whether we are helpless infants, or full-fledged adults with whole lists of regrets and mistakes.
Over the next two weeks we have the wonderful opportunity to witness two of God’s beloved children embark on a new beginning, a new journey of faith. As we watch and take our vows to support them as fellow saints on the journey, may we also remember that no matter when or where or by whom we were baptized, we too have been claimed by God, named as God’s beloved, placed on this path. Sometimes we have strayed but just as we did nothing to earn the gift of baptism, there is nothing we -- or anyone else -- can do that can take that gift away. Amen.
Endnotes:
1. from Rodger Nishioka’s commentary in Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol. 1, WJK Press, 2010, pp. 236-240.
2. Thanks to Scott Hoezee for this illustration idea on the Center for Excellence in Preaching website, online here.
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