2023-01-09
Brooke Strong
Sermon Text...
January 8, 2023 Hamilton Coe Throckmorton
Matthew 3:13-17 The Federated Church, UCC
In the first church I served, in a small town in Vermont, one Sunday we were to baptize a little girl of maybe three or four. She was a frenetic, rambunctious child, with a huge, and, for her parents, sometimes exhausting, energy. When it came time for the baptism, Mia came forward with her parents and stood with them around the baptismal font. She looked up wide-eyed, and was still as a mouse as we baptized her. And when the sacrament was concluded, she returned quietly to her pew and not a peep was heard from her. Sometime that afternoon though, I got a call from her mother. In the background, I could hear Mia careening around the house, back to her normal self. And her mother said to me with mock indignation, “The baptism didn’t take!”
Baptism is one of only two sacraments celebrated in the Protestant church, the other being communion. Because baptism is such a core part of Christian life, and something that nearly everyone here has likely experienced, we’re going to explore it a little this morning, and remember the significance of that signal event in our lives.
Most of us probably don’t remember our own baptisms, though if you were baptized at a certain age, you may well remember it. I have no memory of my own baptism because I was baptized as an infant by my grandfather. I’m told, though, that I spit up on his clerical robe!
Whether I can remember it or not, though, is not nearly as important as what that sacrament means in our life together. Baptism, of course, can happen at any age. I once baptized a woman in her late 80s who simply knew she wanted to experience that sacrament before she died.
For many of us, though, baptism happens when we’re infants. And you might wonder why we don’t wait until the person is able to make the decision for themselves. I’ve heard parents say they intend to wait until the child can determine their own course. From my angle, though, there’s huge grace in celebrating that sacrament early in life. Baptizing an infant doesn’t predetermine a child’s life or steal their autonomy. Just as we structure fruits and vegetables into a child’s life, or we insist that they wear a helmet when riding a bike, or we expect them to attend school, so it’s entirely appropriate that we make spiritual decisions for our children before they’re able to choose for themselves. Nothing prevents these children from making different decisions about their spiritual lives when they’re older. We’re simply offering them what we trust is a blessing. Baptism is not an onerous burden. It’s a radiant gift offered by the parents, and by the church, and most of all by God.
So we celebrate the sacrament with babies as a way of saying: Here at the beginning of your life, before we know much of anything about who you are or what your character is like, before we know whether you’ll be a saint or an axe-murderer, we offer this unsurpassed gift. What God says about Jesus at Jesus’ baptism (Matthew 3:17), God says about every single one of us at ours: ‘Karen is my child, my beloved, with whom I am well pleased. Bill is my child, my beloved, with whom I am well pleased. Linda is my child, my beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’ Hearing this said about babies is a vivid reminder that God’s love is not in any way contingent on our good behavior or stellar character. That love is poured out not as a reward, but as sheer gift.
Most of us live our lives in a kind of ‘perform and you’ll be applauded’ mode. Rewards, in our world, are almost invariably merit-based: you’ll get good things if you do well. Baptism turns that model on its head. You don’t need to perform or succeed or accomplish in any way to be baptized. You don’t need to get straight As or make the all-star team or succeed in your project at work. You can let your spouse down or fail at a project that matters to you or go terribly wrong in your parenting, and God is still going to love you. As someone once said, “God loves you and there’s nothing you can do about it.” That’s just who God is. And baptism is the symbolic outpouring of that love. The baptismal waters in which we figuratively bathe are healing waters, they’re soothing waters, they’re rivers of magnificent love. The charge then to you and me is first of all just this: to receive, simply to accept and bask in a boundless love that is given to all of us at every moment of every day. Baptism is that basic. It celebrates God’s delight in us, God’s never-ending affection poured out on us all.
So given that grace offered with no strings attached, you may well ask why Federated Church, as well as so many other churches, has a policy that we baptize only people who are part of the life of this community of faith. You might well think to yourself, ‘Well that’s just totally inconsistent! If baptism is God’s free gift of undying affection, how come we limit our baptisms to just those who are part of this church? Doesn’t that just make a mockery of God’s unconditional love?’
As I look back over my ministry, I think that’s the one church policy that has made people the maddest. In that same church in Vermont that I first served, I talked one day with a couple I didn’t know about how we’d love to baptize their child once they’d become part of the life of the church. Not long after that, a letter from this couple appeared in the local newspaper, excoriating the church for what they perceived to be its narrow and exclusionary policy. The letter appeared in the Saturday edition of the paper, so I was left scrambling to totally redo my sermon for the next day and to address the issue that the couple had raised.
Because we still encounter this issue on a regular basis, it may be worth reminding ourselves again about the fullness of what happens in baptism. In a nutshell, here’s what lies behind such a church policy. In any relationship, if it’s to be vital and life-giving, there is always a mutuality. If there isn’t, as we all well know, it’s a relationship that’s not likely to thrive. In a healthy family, each member does certain chores. At a flourishing workplace, every staff member carries their share of the load.
Maybe we can see this most clearly in a marriage. If one of the marriage partners feels as though they’re carrying the whole load, there’s going to be resentment, or at least a sense of distance between the two. I heard a person say once long ago that in their marriage both of them aimed to carry what each saw as 70% of the load of the marriage, and when they did that, when they strived to do more than half, it came out to about 50% for each of them.
This is a way of saying that, in relationships that succeed, there’s invariably a kind of mutual self-giving. All of which is to say that, when God loves us with an everlasting love, if we don’t love back, something crucial is missing. Your love for me is filled out, it’s made complete, by my love for you. And the same is true for God: God’s love for us is made complete by our love for God and each other in return.
So when the church says to a family that they need to be part of the community for a baptism to have its richness, this is what the church is saying. We are patently NOT saying that they can’t be baptized here. Everybody is welcome. All people can be baptized here. That’s non-negotiable. Adulterer? Fine. Criminal? Come on in. Murderer? God holds you close, and so do we. We will do our best to make sure everybody belongs.
At the same time, though, we also say that baptism is not only about receiving love. It’s also about giving love, sharing love, offering the love we have received to a needy and hurting world. If baptism is little more than an excuse for a family party, a chance to dig an ancient baptismal gown out of mothballs, a photo-op for that perfect Instagram post, then something central and vital has been missed. Baptism inaugurates a journey with Christ. It drinks in love. And at the same time, it promises to share love, to give it away, to make it the byword of our lives.
I’m reminded of that pithy line of Winston Churchill’s: “We make a living from what we get; we make a life from what we give.” In baptism, we receive boundless love. We make a life, though, as we share that love with those around us, and with the earth itself. So when the church shapes baptism so that it asks of the recipient and their family that they make a commitment to be part of the community of faith where love is shared in return, we are simply saying that the love we offer is one of the two great poles of baptism: love received; love given.
When Jesus is baptized, the heavens are opened and a voice says to those who have witnessed that baptism, “This is my [Holy Child], chosen and marked by my love, delight of my life” (3:17, The Message). A firehose of divine love simply engulfs Jesus in its transforming beauty. AND this love inaugurates the life-changing ministry with which Jesus lives out the remainder of his days. Jesus’ baptism isn’t a thing unto itself. It’s not like a party or a graduation out of something. It’s much more like that other word we use for graduation. It’s a commencement. It’s a beginning. It starts Jesus in the work of healing and feeding and breaking down barriers and reminding disciples that, without love—God-inspired, God-empowered human love—life doesn’t mean anything at all.
Baptism, for us, is essentially an initiation into that Jesus-way of life. It may well be a cute and endearing ritual. But it’s also so much more than that. It begins what, it is hoped, is a lifelong engagement with the God who adores us, and it’s a commitment to sharing that love wherever we go, whatever we do. If we miss that dimension of baptism, we’ve missed a crucial element of the sacrament. One keen observer says about the rite of confirmation that we really should call it “Confirmation and Commissioning” (Rodger Y. Nishioka, Feasting on the Word, Year A, Volume 1, p. 238). I think we could say the same about baptism. When Jesus is baptized, it’s also Jesus’ commissioning into the ministry that forms his life’s work. When we’re baptized and confirmed, it is also our call and commission into the work of God that needs to form the backdrop of everything we do and are.
A notable part of baptism is the ritual of questions that is asked of the candidate or their parents, and of the members of the congregation. In light of God’s blessing, the family and the congregation make promises to God and to each other. There’s a close parallel in baptism to the core of a wedding ceremony. In a wedding, the heart of the service is the vows the couple speaks to each other. Vows, of course, are not just a cooing of how infatuated the couple is with each other. Vows are promises. When a couple marries, they say to each other: “I promise to love and sustain you in the covenant of marriage, from this day forward, in sickness and in health, in plenty and in want, in joy and in sorrow, as long as we both shall live.” Not just “I love you,” and certainly not “I love you if . . .” but “I promise—no matter what life circumstances come to us—to love and care for you from this moment on.” To put it bluntly, without vows there is no marriage. And just as, in a wedding, the ceremony would not be complete without vows, so in a baptism, the core of the sacrament would be eviscerated without the promises that are spoken as a part of that sacrament. The one being baptized, or their family, promises to be an active part of the church, and to live out their ministry as it’s been given to them.
What baptism acts out, in a nutshell, is the central dynamic of a life of faith: God loves us. And our lives are given fullness and joy as we spread that love to others. Both are crucial: the love that God has for us, and the love we’re called to put into practice.
Something happened this week that reminded us all how much our connection to and care for each other matter. On Monday night, in an NFL football game, Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin suffered a cardiac arrest while playing in a game against the Cincinnati Bengals. His heart stopped and he was carried off the field, his life in a tenuous balance. Shortly thereafter, the game itself was canceled. And here’s a glimpse of what happened in the immediate aftermath of that awful moment (https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS1020US1020&sxsrf=AJOqlzUqd4syaY5AAK1Uih7ZUHrsYSOJVg:1673202760823&q=tre%27davious+white+and+mitch+morse+photo&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwibssiBzrj8AhUyjokEHQhSA2IQ0pQJegQIBhAB&biw=1920&bih=969&dpr=1#imgrc=YfJ7WgU65Jr6CM). This photo of two of Hamlin’s teammates, Tre’Davious White and Mitch Morse, says sublimely what our response to baptism is all about. In the midst of a shattering blow that left them frightened and in tears, White and Morse embrace on the field as an act of support and love. It’s precisely this sort of support and care that makes our suffering bearable. Not only did Hamlin’s teammates rally around each other, but countless people throughout the community and the nation reached out to care for each other, as well. The toy drive that Hamlin had initiated, which originally had a goal of raising $2500, is now over $8 million and still growing. Everybody knew that they could only get through this both by receiving the care offered by God and by others, and also by giving something of themselves to someone else. It’s that very generosity and support and love that make life worth living. In that crisis in Cincinnati, people seemed to know that instinctively. And what we do in baptism is say: it’s that love that we are devoting ourselves to. We are Tre’Davious White. We are Mitch Morse.
God has loved us passionately, and it’s that very love that is our work in the world. So maybe today, in this moment, we will each take in God’s holy love for us. And we will renew our baptismal vows to love each other with a huge measure of that glorious devotion, and, by the grace of God, to transform the world with that love. May that be our deepest prayer. And may it be our life’s vocation.