The Baptism of Our Lord - January 10, 2016

I imagine that once upon a time, celebrating the Baptism of Our Lord and talking about baptism was easy. In Luther’s day, for instance, baptism was a wonderful thing to talk about that Luther could, and did, go on for hours about. He *loved* to talk about baptism - about how it’s God’s gift to us, how it’s the promise of God’s everlasting covenant with us, how it is forgiveness and salvation tied in with something as everyday as water, how it strengthens us in our doubts, and how it is the greatest weapon against the devil that God has ever given us. In a time when everybody was baptized - and I mean everybody - and when everybody went to church, baptism was a simple topic to preach on.

And all of what Luther said is still true, but it’s no longer quite so easy to talk about baptism. We live in a time when not everyone is baptized, even if their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents were. We live in a time when those who *are* baptized as children don’t necessarily go to church anymore. We live in a time when baptism is no longer a given - we can no longer assume that everyone is baptized, that everyone wants to be, or that everyone who is is a life-long church-goer. And the particular thing that makes talking about baptism hard - emotionally hard, I mean - is that these people who aren’t baptized or who are baptized but don’t go to church - are people that we love. They’re not strangers out there. They are our children, or grandchildren, or great-grandchildren. Our family. Our dear friends. And so when it comes time to talk about baptism, we feel anxiety and sorrow and maybe even a sense of failure that those whom we love dearly aren’t baptized or aren’t part of the church anymore. We worry that we have failed them somehow, and we particularly worry that since they have turned away from God, God will turn away from them. And so, even though we want to hear all the wonderful things about baptism, we nevertheless feel uncomfortable and even sad thinking of those who aren’t here.

When it comes to those we love who have been baptized but don’t go to church anymore, we can find comfort in the proclamation that baptism is always and entirely God’s act, and not our own. Sure, our hands pour the water and our voice says the words, “I baptize you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,” but it is God who makes the water holy, and God who uses the words and the water to bring us into God’s covenant. And because it is God who is doing all of this, we can be confident that baptism is always proper and always effective, as it were. For instance, the reason that I say “our hands” and “our voice” is because baptism is not something reserved only for pastors to perform. No doubt you’ve heard this before, but I will remind you: you, too, can perform baptisms in an emergency. You, too, can take some water from a tap, wash someone’s head with it, make the sign of the cross on their forehead, and say, “I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” There are many stories within our tradition of mothers or grandmothers or aunts secretly baptizing little babies in their families when they suspected the babies wouldn’t be baptized, either because it was forbidden in their country or they were worried the family wouldn’t do it. I don’t advise secrecy, of course, but in an emergency, anyone can baptize. And that is because baptism is God’s work. It is not our work. It has nothing to do with the worthiness or holiness or “Christian-ness” of the person doing the baptism. That’s why baptism in one denomination is now accepted in another. That didn’t used to be the case in the Catholic church, and it may not be the case in other denominations, but in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada, we accept baptism no matter who did it or where it was done. I once had to look up whether baptism in the Mormon church was considered acceptable in the Lutheran church, and, since they use water and those words, yes - it is. Baptism, no matter who does it, is God’s work, and therefore brings us into God’s covenant and establishes God’s relationship with us, forever.

Forever. This is another comfort for us. Baptism is forever. There’s no taking it back. There’s no rejecting it. There’s no revoking it. Baptism is God’s act, and in baptism, God makes us brothers and sisters with Christ, and children of God forever. God makes us God’s beloved forever, and that means God will never take that back. You know, I was baptized at Shepherd of the Hills by Pastor Ted Becker, and I always joke with him that you should be careful who you baptize, because you never know how they’ll turn out - look at me, after all! And we laugh, but it is true. When we baptize babies, as we do in the oldest Christian denominations, we do it because it’s a sign of trust in God’s promise that God will love us forever, no matter what. We believe that God encourages us to baptize babies, and that is truly remarkable. Because God knows how we’re going to turn out, and God baptizes us anyway. God knows whether we will grow up to be people who go to church, or people who play golf Sunday morning. God knows whether we will be faithful church members, or whether we will jump from congregation to congregation. God knows whether we will say our prayers every night or turn away from prayer altogether. God knows whether we will stay with the church or reject it outright, and God baptizes us anyway. 

I don’t know if you remember the horrible shooting in Charleston last year, where a man walked into a church Bible study and sat with everybody for an hour, and then pulled out a gun and shot everyone there, including three pastors (two of whom graduated from a Lutheran seminary) and a number of church members. Nine people died that day. Dylann Storm Roof, age 21, was later arrested for those murders, and people were outraged that he could sit with these church people and then shoot them in cold blood. What is little-known about Dylann, though, is that he was a member of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in South Carolina. He was a baptized Lutheran. He is, actually, a baptized Lutheran. That can never be taken away from him. God baptized him, and he is God’s child forever. The depth of God’s love for us is that God baptized Dylann, knowing what he would do as an adult, and God nevertheless made a commitment to Dylann forever. No matter what. Dylann will always be God’s child, a brother of Jesus Christ. It seems shocking to us––unacceptable––but this is the depth of God’s grace and forgiveness through Christ. That no matter what we do as Christians, God will continue to call us and continue to bring us back to God, whether that happens while we’re still alive or after we die. God will continue to call those you love and continue to bring them back. They may leave God, but God will never leave them. Their baptism cannot be taken away from them, no matter what.

But what about those we love who aren’t baptized? One of the worst developments in the Christian religion, and the most unbiblical, is this idea that Christians have a monopoly on God, and that God cares only about Christians. For many reasons, and I won’t go into them here but you can ask me later if you’re interested, Christians have to come to believe that because we are God’s chosen people, that means we are God’s only people. We have come to believe that God separates us from the rest of the world and that God’s saving relationship is with us and only us. Now, there *is* Scripture to back some of this up. The Gospel of John has a lot of it, and some of the letters of the New Testament. *But* there is also Scripture that tells a different story. Our Bible is incredibly complex, and incredibly deep, and so there are contradictions when we take everything at face value. But God is deeper than our interpretations of Scripture, deeper even than the Bible itself, and God is deeper than our idea that God’s commitment is only to Christians. And we know this, it’s just that sometimes we forget. Or prefer to forget. But, remember Noah? God made a covenant with Noah - the rainbow became a sign of “the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” (Gen 8:16) God is committed to creation as a whole - God is no longer going to separate out some people from others, and destine some for saving and others for death. Remember Abraham? God made a covenant with Abraham that all of his descendants - those who descended from Isaac *and* those who descended from Ishmael - would be blessed by God. God said to him, “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” God made an everlasting promise with all the families of the earth before there was ever such a thing as Christians. 

God brings Christians into a particular relationship with God through baptism, and that is what we celebrate today. But God is not trapped by that. Just because Christians can only come to God through water and the Word doesn’t mean that God cannot love and call others. The relationship God has with those who are not baptized, and the covenant that God makes with them is not the same relationship or the same covenant God makes with us. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t one. It just means that we must trust God a little more, and have faith that God truly is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.

This doesn’t make our own baptism meaningless. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t encourage others to be baptized or to baptize their children. Baptism is and will always be the way God brings Christians into God’s family. As followers of Christ, we do as Christ did, and we turn to baptism to hear that we are God’s beloved children. We cling to our baptism as proof that we really do belong to God, and to help us to follow Jesus, and receive to the strength of his Spirit. We look to our baptism as that which marks us as Christians and makes us brothers and sisters with one another in this particular community of faith. We rely on our baptism to make us worthy to receive the Lord’s Supper. And we turn to our baptism in the face of death––of ourselves and of others––because we know that, through baptism, God promises us new life. Baptism is, for Christians, the way to God, or rather, the way that God establishes and keeps an everlasting relationship with us. We trust that God relates to others in their own ways, but we know that God offers us the wonderful, life-giving, everlasting gift of baptism, through which the Holy Spirit comes on us, like it did with Jesus, and we hear the words that cannot be unspoken, that we, too, are God’s beloved, with whom God is well pleased. Thanks be to God. Amen.

The Word that Brings Light - Christmas 2 - January 3, 2016

From Genesis: “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.” Or, as it is translated in the Torah, “In the beginning, when God was about to create heaven and earth, the earth was a chaos, unformed, and on the chaotic waters’ face there was darkness. Then God’s spirit glided over the face of the waters, and God said, “Let there be light!” ––and there was light.”

In the beginning, God spoke, and there was light. In the beginning was the Word ... and what has come into being in the Word was life, and the life was the light of all people. What a wonderful way to begin the New Year, with this proclamation that the Word of God, God’s speech, brings light and life to all of creation! God’s Word *does* something - it makes happen what it speaks! God’s Word says, “Light!” and there is light! Imagine if our speech worked that way - I might say, “chocolate!” And there would appear chocolate! It would be awesome! God’s speech has the power to actually do things. God’s Words have the power to change our world.

And the world doesn’t change in just any old way. When God speaks the Word, both in Genesis and in John, the Word brings light and life. You see, the beginning of the Gospel of John is really a commentary, what we call a Jewish midrash, like Bible Study notes, on the opening of Genesis. Remember that in Genesis, first God speaks, “Light,” and there is light. There are the sun and the moon and the stars. And then, using a variety of words, God speaks, “Life,” and there is life. Plants, animals, sea creatures, birds, humans. So, in the Gospel of John we have this commentary on Genesis: “In the beginning was the Word,” and, “All things came into being,” through the Word, and, “what has come into being,” through the Word, “was life.”

But how can this be? What is the connection between God’s Word - the one from Genesis, which gave life, and the same Word from John, and us? Well, John didn’t invent this image of the Word, or Logos, as it says in the original Greek. John most likely got it from the Jewish idea of Memra. Memra is that which connects heaven and earth. That which brings together God’s realm with the human realm. We see it very clearly in Genesis - the wind from God (the NRSV translation really lets us down here - the King James, which I usually think is pretty inaccurate, says the Spirit of God, which is better), or in the Hebrew, the breath of God - comes from God to the earth and does things. The Word of God, the Memra, the Logos, forges a connection between heaven and earth. The Word of God issues from God’s mouth, as it were, and creates something here on earth. That’s why we say in the Lord’s Prayer, “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Whatever God speaks in heaven is done here on earth. There is a connection between our world and God’s kingdom, and so we pray aloud, we say words, and we call to mind Genesis and John and God’s Word creating light on earth, just as it brings light in heaven.

This connection isn’t just a thing of the past. God’s Word continues to act in the world today because God has given us the immense power of God’s Word. Martin Luther was very emphatic about this point, actually. Luther believed that when we proclaim the Word, by which he meant proclaiming the Good News, the Gospel, that it would happen. It would manifest. It would take place. In other words, when I say, “As a called and ordained minister of the church of Christ and by his authority, I therefore declare to you the entire forgiveness of all your sins,” in that moment, in the speaking of those words, your sins are forgiven. I say, “God forgives your sins,” and they are forgiven. What I say isn’t just a reminder that your sins are forgiven, it’s a declaration. Any sins that you’ve committed between the last time you heard the words and this, they are forgiven. And it’s not just me - if you proclaim those words to someone else, “God forgives you,” that person is forgiven! It’s a weird thing, isn’t it? That God has given us the power of God’s Word? That we can tell someone they’re forgiven, no matter what they’ve done, and God forgives them? But that’s what it is to be made in God’s image. We go back to Genesis again, to see that God’s light and life have come into the world - into us, and that as we are made in the image of God, God gives us the power of God’s speech. And we return again to the miracle of the Incarnation of Christmas, to the Word taking on human flesh, and see that God once again God’s power is with humankind - with us. And we see that God gives our words the power to change the world.

So imagine that every word you speak comes true. Every word makes things happen. Imagine that you say to someone, “You’re so generous,” and they become generous. Or you say to someone, “You can do it!” and they do. Or, imagine that you say to someone, “You’re lazy,” and they become lazy. Or you say to someone, “You’ll never make it,” and they can’t. Our words, like God’s Word, make things happen. Not quite literally, but we have seen the way someone’s face lights up when we say something life-giving to them, and how someone’s face falls when we say something critical or disparaging. As the New Year is upon us, and as this is typically a time to reflect on the past year and on ourselves, we might ask ourselves, how do we speak to the people in our life? To our spouse? To our children? To our friends? To our parents? Do we speak God’s Word to them that brings them life and light? Or do our words come out as darkness? If you’re like me, I’m guessing that you’re wishing that there were many more words of life and light this past year than there actually were.

So what words shall we speak, then? “There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light.” To testify means to see something and then to speak to it. To use words to talk about it. John the Baptist was specifically sent to speak about the light of God, about the Word of God that gives us light and life. God sends us, like John, to testify to the light. God sends us to speak God’s Word, to proclaim that Christ came to bring us new light and new life, to proclaim that God created the world, and every single person, to have life, and that God declared it all to be “very good.” God sends us to speak God’s Word that God is a god of forgiveness and mercy and steadfast love. God sends us to speak God’s Word that lifts people up and tells them they are children of God. God sends us to speak God’s Word so that people love God in return, and so that they can recognize the light and life they have already been given. 

And so if you were to make any New Year’s Resolutions this year, I might suggest that you make one about your words. That you allow yourself to be the image of God you have been created as, and that you allow yourself to speak more Words that bring life and light to those around you. Of course, this is hard. We get in the habit of speaking words of darkness and death about people, words that are mean or judgmental or cutting or dismissive. But we are made in the image of God, and God has sent us to testify to the light. And so, since the Word of God does what it says, I will end by speaking Words to you. God has chosen and sent you to testify to the light that brings life to the world. Your words, as God’s words, change the world, so that God’s will be done on earth as in heaven. You are made in the image of God; you are a child of God. You are forgiven and made holy. You will speak great things. Thanks be to God. Amen.