This One is Mine

Baptism of Jesus: "Gymnos Aquatic Saints"

Isaiah 42:1-9

Matthew 3:13-17

Two weeks ago I was invited to preside over a baptism at a nearby congregation. My friend Tricia adopted a little girl from Haiti. She had gone down there several times a year for several years, to volunteer in an orphanage, and when she adopted Saraphina as a baby, it took over a year for the red tape to allow her to bring her home. 

We gathered around the font, Tricia, her parents, siblings, aunt and uncle, and nephews and nearly two year old Saraphina, toddling happily between them.  

Before the baptism, I prayed a blessing on Tricia; I anointed her and called her mother, and Saraphina, daughter. We were witnesses to God’s blessing of this little family on that day.  As Jesus himself was adopted into the family and line of David his adopted father, Joseph, I said, today we remember our own adoption as we are brought into the family of God.  And today, in her baptism surrounded by a community of love making promises to her, Saraphina’s adoption is made complete.

And then I made the sign of the cross on Tricia’s head, the sign of her own baptism, while Saraphina, in Tricia’s arms, leaned in watching closely.  When I finished, she gently reached up to touch Tricia’s forehead, and she said, “Mama!” 

Then, I poured handfuls of water on Saraphina’s head in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and it ran down her cheeks, and she traced the drips with her fingers, and gazed at me as I spoke the words to her,

For you, little one, the Spirit of God

moved over the waters at creation,


and the Lord God made covenants with the people.


It was for you that the Word of God became flesh


and lived among us, full of grace and truth.


For you, Saraphina, Jesus Christ suffered death


crying out at the end, "It is finished!"


For you Christ triumphed over death,


rose in newness of life,


and ascended to rule over all.


All of this was done for you, little one,


though you do not know any of this yet.


But we will continue to tell you this good news


until it becomes your own.


And so the promise of the gospel is fulfilled:


"We love because God first loved us." 

When we bowed our heads to pray, Saraphina leaned down from my arms and scooped a handful of water. She reached up and dropped it on top of her own head, and then she leaned down again and got another handful of water, and reached next to her and patted her dripping hands onto her mama’s forehead.

The sign of belonging.

When Jesus is baptized, in front of all the onlookers his ministry is begun. 

We jump awkwardly from his toddlerhood and the visiting magi from far off lands to this big grown up man Jesus with almost nothing filling in the gap; he’s been virtually hiding in a super ordinary, pretty typical childhood. But at this moment something changes – as his ministry is kicked off not with anything spectacular that he does, but with God claiming him outloud in front of people. This one belongs to me.

When Jesus argued with his cousin that indeed he did wish to be baptized, Jesus didn’t know what was coming next. Or maybe he did, but it wasn’t rosy. He didn’t go from there into teaching and preaching, didn’t punch his Messiah timecard, eager and ready to get started.  From his baptism, he is led, driven it says, by the Holy Spirit, right into the wilderness.  After he is claimed by God in front of everyone, he finds himself in temptation and doubt, hunger and struggle in the wilderness. Being God with us doesn’t spare him from life’s pain and hardship.  Perhaps being God with us means that’s right where he needs to begin… but we will join him there in Lent to ponder these things.

Right now, standing in the water, defying his cousin’s whole picture of how this was supposed to go down, this is Jesus’ chance to say yes to his calling.  And so he does.

He walks into those waters and submits. Come what may, I am in, he says. 

Godwithus said yes to the human journey, and everything it involves.

I am in this with you.

Look everyone! Here is the light of the world! Right here in the waters of repentence!

It is lovely to me that the Christian church encompasses the practice of infant baptism and adult baptism.  Infant baptism highlights that it is God who does the choosing and the naming and the claiming, that it is God’s work, and even before we can respond we are drawn into God’s love and adopted into God’s family, and the promise is spoken over us that we will spend a lifetime learning to receive.

In Mark and Luke’s version of this scene, God speaks right to Jesus, You are my beloved, and I delight in you!

Adult baptism highlights that we say yes to God, that we submit to the journey whatever may come, that Jesus’ life defines our life and we want that to be spoken outloud and claimed over us, as it was that day over Jesus, as Matthew’s version highlights, when God’s tells everyone there, This One is mine! This is my beloved child! Have I got plans for this one!

I was baptized at the age of twelve. In my tradition, we spoke of baptism as “an outward sign of an inward reality” – meaning, I had given my life to Jesus; I had chosen to accept Christ into my heart, to let God lead me instead of me leading me. And being baptized was the seal of that reality, a sign to the community and affirmation by them that God was my strength and my salvation, and I was putting my trust in God.

 I remember being lowered under the water, the symbol of death as it rushed over my head and the sounds muffled around me and I felt it fill my ears and pool over my eyes as the room disappeared into watery darkness.  Vulnerable, both held up and plunged under – the old is gone, the new has come, and then I was raised up, gasping into the air, water streaming off me and people applauding, into resurrection, a life defined by the resurrection of Jesus.

Jesus doesn’t trust in the baptism to save him or prepare him or fill him for the job ahead of him. He comes to it only with his Yes to the ministry that comes along with being chosen and called by God. His yes, his utter need, his humanity. His willingness. His Yes.

Like Mary before him, and Joseph, and the Shepherds heeding the angels' call, and the magi setting out on their journey, and every scared and wondering king and nomad and giant-slayer and sea-parter and child-bearer and prophet and journeyer before them. He says yes to God.

Jesus comes to baptism to accept grace as grace, and calling as calling – to accept that these things come from God and not from us, that God offers them and we simply say YES.  Jesus says yes to God; and by the divebombing Spirit like a dove and the voice from heaven, God says yes to Jesus.

And no wonder, then, that it is where it all begins.  For Jesus, and for us.  

We submit to - and we hand our children over to - God’s care, God’s calling, and God’s vision for the world that we're now invited to share.

We say, we don’t know what this life will bring, but in it, we say yes to you.

We say yes to not being in it alone.

We say yes to life and light and hope.

We say yes to suffering and struggling and living fully.

We say yes, to grace, and yes to calling, not because we deserve it, but because God wants to share it with us.

We say yes to what God is doing to love and save the world and the astonishing truth that God wants to involve us in it. 

And so our journey begins, and it ends when our baptism is complete in our death.

Throughout the next several weeks in this season of Epiphany we will see Jesus revealed – the light of the world walking among us, and we will also hear the invitation, again and again, the proclamation spoken over us as the covenant people chosen and claimed and named by God’s Spirit as beloved, children of God: you will be light as well! 

The light of Christ lives in us, the life of Christ lives through us. It just does – God does this, not us. How might we keep saying yes? How will we keep watching for the light and welcoming the life?

Tonight, I invite you to hear the dual message of your baptism:

First, that You are God’s beloved child.  God says yes to you.

Second, that You are part of God’s promise, God’s love and hope, given to the world.  You get to say yes to God.

No matter what life brings, or where it brings us, the first and final word over you and me is this:

This One is mine! This is my beloved child! Have I got plans for this one!

And so the promise of the gospel is fulfilled:
 "We love because God first loved us."  

 LNPC Worship practice: Communal Celebration of Baptism

 Tonight we shared a blessing over one another.  With water from the font, we stood in a circle.  

In turn, I stood in front of each one and announced God's blessing, as they dipped their fingers in the bowl and touched their forehead in remembrance of their baptism. 

Leader: (Name) is God’s beloved child. 
All Respond: In (name), God is well pleased!

We closed this time with a prayer of gratitude and sending.

Body Talk

Preached January 23, 2010 at Lake Nokomis Presbyterian Church

1 Corinthians 12:12-31

Which part of your body don’t you like? This was a real conversation I heard the other night between twenty year olds.  “My legs are too big,” one said, “I don’t like my stomach, it’s not flat enough.”  said the other. And while we probably have outgrown having these conversations outloud with others, we could each immediately answer the question in our heads: I’ve never liked my ears, they stick out too much, my nose is too big, that flabby part under the arms, or the neck area…I’ll give you a moment to answer the question inside for yourself.

 I once had a massage from a nun at a retreat center run by nuns. It was the chattiest massage I had ever had – the woman did not stop talking the entire hour.  But as she rubbed each limb she talked about how strong and healthy it was, my fingers, how nimble, how they move and lift and grip and point.  She rubbed my back and spoke blessings into me, raving about how every part fit together and the systems were all working as they were created to – the blood flowing and the muscles contracting and relaxing, and how my neck held my head on so well, and my face muscles helped me communicate emotion, and my knees carried me where I wanted to go, and I left there feeling unprecedented gratitude for my body.

I left there feeling so thankful for the life I had been given and I felt ashamed for ever not liking parts or wishing I could trade up for a cuter model that looked better in a swimsuit, or had enough coordination to master ice skating and rollerblading.  I had awe for my creator, how intricate and sturdy, how vulnerable but strong, moldable and enduring our bodies are.  And I thought of my friend whose cancer means her body is fighting inside, all of it against this invader, and her fatigue and her pain, and how this cancer, in this one place in her body, had changed how she lived in her body, all the parts affected.

Paul says the we are part of the body of Christ –we are, no getting around that. We are not out there on our own, an amputated limb with no life in it, we are connected, we only make sense alongside each other, part of the same whole, unified by belonging to each other.

But how easy is it to begin criticizing parts of our own Body, because certainly there are parts of this body that we like better than others, and parts we sort of think we could do without.  Pastor Debbie Blue says, “I like parts of the body of Christ. I like the brain and the ears and the eyes and the breasts. But do we really need the testosterone? The loudmouths? The aggressive superegos?”

I preached this text once at a presbytery meeting – where we gather together, the church, in different expressions, all around the region each little congregation living out its unique calling, purpose and mission, but all connected because Jesus Christ is the Lord of us all, because we are all baptized into one Body and the same Spirit works in all of us. 

But, often, instead of being able to look at some of these congregations, radically different than us and say, “Wow. I could never be a foot, look what a great job they are doing, all walking and jumping and kicking.  I am SO mouth.  I would be TERRIBLE at walking. I could never hold up an ankle.  Where would we be without that foot?  Thank God for the foot!” 

Instead we would make ourselves a big pile of disembodied,useless mouths, because it is often more important to us to be right – by our own definition of right- than to be faithful, or unified. 

Or we think unity means agreeing and if not being the same than looking the same, and sacrificing what we believe in or who we are for the good of the whole.  And our little presbytery is nothing, if I can’t make room for my Midwestern, Presbyterian, white, middle class fellow body parts, but what about those a little farther, a little more foreign, a little more misunderstood?  Or conversely what about the ones right up close, where you have to live next to them, chafing, day in and day out?

Paul’s wonderful imagery of the Body of Christ is saying two basic things:

First - We are different. And we are meant to be.  It would make no sense for us all to be the same, not people, not churches, not denominations, not cultures, not expressions of faith or practices of worship  – The image of a Trinune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, One God in three persons, is reflected in unity in diversity, and there is simply not enough diversity in this room to do it justice.

We need those radically different than we are.  We are our differences, and we only make sense if we are not the same.  The body would be a useless pile of parts if we were not all different. Being the Church is not about everyone looking, acting, or believing the same way.  In fact, that would make this NOT the Body of Christ, but something else altogether.

That means that we each need to be who we are.  How much time and energy is wasted in the Body of Christ by looking at someone else and wishing we were more like them, or better, wishing they were more like us, while all the time not fully living out who we were called to be? 

The way we play our role is to fully embody our own calling and identity, to live with joy and fullness who each one of us is distinctly called to be.  Individuals and congregations.  Parker Palmer has said, “The deepest vocational question is not ‘What ought I to do with my life?’ It is the more elemental and demanding, ‘Who am I? What is my nature?’ True vocation joins self and service in the deep joy of knowing that we are here on earth to be the gifts that God created.”

So who are you? What is your nature? 

Who is this congregation? What is our distinct purpose?

We are different, and we are supposed to be.

The second thing Paul is saying is that we are part of the whole. We are One Body.  This is not your body, or my body, it’s God’s body, and you and I are a part of it whether we like it or not.  You don’t gain entrance into the body by what you choose or don’t choose, or say or embrace or reject or who you agree with or who you disown.  You are part of the body of Christ because God has chosen you, because God had put this body together as God sees fit and God sees fit to include you and me, as we are, who we are, and has a way we are meant to participate, we were born to participate, we were made for this, and God should know.

So God has chosen to connect us to each other and we are connected, period. Even when we don’t act like it, even if we pretend we aren’t, even if we disown one another, we cannot truly detach parts of the body and decide they don’t belong or contribute, or that they don’t impact us and that we are not in some way dependent upon each other.  We are.

Whether we like it or not we are inseparably attached. Even when we feel desperately isolated, or treat others that way, we are not alone.  We are part of the same body, connected as tissue and blood, suffering when others suffer, carrying the shame of dehumanizing words or actions done to or by another, bearing each other’s sadness and grief, celebrating when there is joy in each other’s lives.  We are connected to one another. Because we are part of the One Body.

It’s no big secret that this body is pretty broken. The whole Church, not just congregations or presbyteries – but Southern Baptists and East Coast Presbyterians, Conservative Evangelicals and Mainline Liberals and African Episcopalians and Haitian Catholics and Korean Protestants Egyptian Coptic Orthodox Christians.  We seem fractured, dismembered, separated from one another, at odds with each other, or simply not in touch at all. 

And sometimes we have trouble lifting our gaze and our attention from our own narcissistic infighting, where the truly ridiculous happens – the eye tells the nose the face would be better off without it, and the hand suggests removing the speen.

And we indulge in plenty of self-absorbed naval gazing, wishing parts of the Body were just a little different than they are (or a lot), ignoring some and overworking others, idolizing some and despising others.

We are broken, like the rest of the world, we are selfish and self-righteous and broken. 

But Christ enters our brokenness: the places where we are torn apart, paralyzed by fear or failure, divided from each other and our own selves. Christ enters our brokenness, and becomes the body broken for us, so that we may be whole.

Jesus makes us One with God and each other, forgiven, reconciled, connected, so that we may be the Body of Christ for the world.  And we are – there is no getting out of it, we already are.

Even when we forget.

There is great joy in realizing, or remembering, how the body works, and what it is capable of. A child figuring out how to walk, how each leg moves in sync and the shoulders keep the body steady, or learning to talk, to form wither her mouth the words she is just beginning to understand and put them out into the world. An athlete discovering new levels of coordination, speed, possibility when all the systems are working together in unison, radically diverse, but directed towards the same purpose. 

And Paul is saying that the potential exists – and one day will be fully realized – for our differences to strengthen the body, for the image of God to be lived in fullness, fully embodied, and for the body to function at its peak: alive, healthy, vital, each part singing its own contribution, in the harmony of the Spirit of God. 

We were meant to live as the Body of Christ in a way that brings joy and fulfillment to each part, in a way that fully participates in the purposes of the whole – which are always directed outward, to creation and the cosmos and the world that God loves.  We are to live out our differences in Body made one in Christ.

May we grow ever more open to this.

I think the way we begin to remember this, the way become more open to one another in the body of Christ, is by sharing each other’s suffering and joy, connecting at a human level.  Letting the pain and the joy of others touch us.  So as we come to our prayer time we will take the puzzle pieces we picked up on the way in.  We’ve each put our own name on one, and had them to jot things throughout the service, and now we’ll take one more moment to write on them with the Sharpies in the pews, names, situations, prayers for others.  We can write the names of those we feel disconnected from, people with whom we disagree strongly who are nevertheless fellow members of the same Body (I have one piece that says, “Pat Robertson”), those we wish we could do more for that are so far away and suffering (I have another piece that says, “Haiti”), and we can also use these pieces to pray for those we love and feel connected to as well, whose lives impact our own in visible ways.  Whatever you would like to put on the pieces, we’ll do that now.  Then in a few minutes we will bring our pieces forward and place them in this shape of a body.  Then we will lift all of them up in prayer.

We are working on starting up a data base and compiling worship practices and liturgies that come out of our worship.  This is an example of an interactive element of liturgy we've incorporated into our worship. 

Baptized Beloved

We are finding, in our new way of being church, that we want to get better at understanding and telling our story.  We have these wonderful experiences of worship - or awkward choppy ones - and wish we did a better job of recording and sharing what they were so we can learn and grow from them.  And there is no way to capture the spirit of the other night.  But for the sake of growing in our ability to tell our story, here is a picture of our worship on Saturday, Jan. 9.

Last night we held our Sabbath service around the theme of baptism.  We used Isaiah 43:1-7, God’s words to a hopeless and abandoned Israel, and Luke’s version of Jesus’ baptism. Before Jesus can begin his public ministry, just before he is sent into the wilderness and struggles against temptation, and in his first appearance since his childhood disappearing act in the temple while his frantic parents searched for him is this moment: this moment that defines him, that sets the trajectory, starts his vocation, affirms his calling, defines his ministry, this moment when God says, “This is my Son, the beloved, I am so pleased in him.”

Before we talk about what you will do, or not do, or what you will see or feel or fear or fail at or stand firm against, before we talk about your worthiness or your powerful message or your calling or your contribution – before all of it is this – you are my beloved. I love you, I choose you. I delight in you.

What would it be like to live from a place of being loved? we wondered together. Who are you? I am beloved, I am loved by someone. I belong to someone. That is first and foremost who I am, everything else comes from that place and returns to that place, that I am loved.  Love makes us brave, it makes us strong.  It makes us generous.  Being loved makes us about to love other people.

We pondered the power of the funeral ritual declaring that the person’s “baptism is now complete.”  Our beginning and our end is tied up in this – that we are chosen and loved by God.  We come from God and return to God.  And at death this one is now fully one with God, in Christ, where they belong, in the arms of the one who calls them beloved. 

We spent some time asking questions about baptism, grappling with the variety of traditions and approaches, the meaning behind such things as being baptized just once, the differences between adult and infant baptisms and the theological significance of baptism, what it truly means and does to us that we are baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and claimed by the One who spoke creation into being, the one who says, "I act, and who can reverse it?" (Is. 43)

Then we share the story of Fayette, written about this week in Jan Richardson’s blog, (and originally told by Janet Wolf in Upper Room Disciplines), a powerful story about baptism’s declaration that you are “Beloved, precious child of God, and beautiful to behold.”  And we pondered again, What would it mean to live as beloved?  To live from a place of being "named by God’s grace with such power that it wont come undone?"  What would it mean for us to see others as Beloved?

Our reflection ended with the words spoken over a child at baptism in our congregation (adapted from the Church of Scotland Book of Common Worship by the PCUSA Office of Theology and Worship)

“For you, little one, 
the Spirit of God moved over the waters at creation,


and the Lord God made covenants with his people.


It was for you that the Word of God became flesh 
and lived among us, full of grace and truth.


For you, Beloved child of God, Jesus Christ suffered death
crying out at the end, "It is finished!"


For you Christ triumphed over death,
 rose in newness of life,


and ascended to rule over all.


All of this was done for you, little one,


though you do not know any of this yet.


But we will continue to tell you this good news 
until it becomes your own.
 

And so the promise of the gospel is fulfilled:
"We love because God first loved us." 

Our prayer time, usually done with candles in sand, was this week done with stones, and a 3 foot tall, wide-mouthed vase, filled with water.  As we shared our prayer with the gathered community, we dropped a stone, heard it break the surface of the water and watched it plummet to the depths, sending up bubbles as it fell, finally landing with a tink on the bottom of the vessel like the ring of a chime.  Our own spoken prayers, fears, needs, wants, joys – taken into Christ’s death and resurrection just as we ourselves are. 

God, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

The rest of the service surrounded us with songs, harp music, silence and prayer, and we ended with a blessing ceremony.  Gathered in a circle in the center of the sanctuary, we watched as water was scooped up out of the vessel where it cradled our prayers, carried in the communion chalice, and poured into the baptismal font.  Then we took turns, dipping our fingers into the water and tracing the invisible mark made on another’s forehead at their own baptism, looking into their eyes and declaring, “You are beloved, precious child of God, and beautiful to behold.”  And the blessing was shared and passed, person to person, the truth spoken aloud over each one, until the whole gathered group embodied the blessing for and with one another.

From the sanctuary our worship didn’t end, but continued with our “Table Fellowship,” an evolving development of our Saturday services, where we sat, with table cloth, candlelight and good china, around a large single table, a Thanksgiving meal, at a warm feast of soup and salad and cookies, and enjoyed one another’s company before departing into what we’ve set aside as “sacred space and time” – our Day of Rest.