Sermon: Baptism Day

Date: April 15, 2007

Dee’s Sermon:

Texts: 1 Corinthians 12:12-13; Ephesians 4:1-7, 11-16

          There’s a preacher named Fred Craddock who was baptized when he was much older than you, Day.  He was 14 on the day of his baptism.  He opens his story by saying, “When you’re raised from the dead, you’re different.”  When he was baptized, the preacher had read these words from the Bible: “Now you have been raised with Christ, you have died and now you have been raised with Christ.  Set your mind on things that are above.”

          Fred felt this was true; but still, it puzzled him.  As he walked home with his wet clothes wrapped in a wet towel under his arm, he tried to think what it meant.  If after you’re raised from the dead you don’t look the same, talk the same, do the same, what do you do?  How do you talk?  What do you sound like?  He went to school Monday morning thinking, Is anybody going to know that I’ve been raised?  Should I dress up a little better from what I’ve been dressing?  It wouldn’t hurt.  Do I talk another way?  Do I throw in a verse of scripture now and then?  What do I do at ball practice?  Are they going to say, “Well, looks like he’s been raised from the dead.”  How do you talk?  How do you walk?  How do you relate?[1]

          Pretty heavy questions for a 14-year old, to say nothing of a 4-month old such as yourself.  Are you a different baby now that you’ve been buried and raised with Christ? 

          I think you are different, but I don’t know if people are going to see it when you go out with Mom and Dad in the Baby Bjorn.  The change is not visible just yet.  I want to talk about two things that have changed whether or not they are visible to the naked eye.

          You’ve become part of the Body of Christ.  There are two sides to that.  One is that you have formally become part of a simply enormous family.  There’s a commercial running on TV right now that pictures a college girl coming home with about a thousand people behind her, representing her cell phone network.  The parents, standing on the doorstep with two or three pitiful looking people representing their phone company say, “That isn’t the network you had when you left home.”  That’s what’s happened to you, Day.  When you left home this morning, all you had was your bio-family.  Now you are attached to a lot more of us, woven together in the Body of Christ.  You have been grafted into the Body with your own unique gifts.  You will never be the same, and neither will we.  Put another way, before I was just playing at being your Grandma; now I am, in some mysterious way, along with all kinds of other relatives you may or may not have chosen for yourself.  And we are always going to be interested in how you come out.  You are now a part of us, and we are a part of you.

          The mystical side of being part of the Body of Christ is that we believe you are also now joined to Christ, that you are part of Christ’s resurrected Body roaming around the world.  A thousand years ago a theologian named Symeon wrote these words: “We awaken in Christ’s body as Christ awakens our bodies, and my poor hand is Christ, He enters my foot, and is infinitely me.  I move my hand, and wonderfully my hand becomes Christ...I move my foot, and at once He appears like a flash of lightning.  Do my words seem blasphemous?—Then open your heart to Him and let yourself receive the one who is opening to you so deeply.”[2]  We trust that what Symeon is writing about is beginning with you—you are awakening, arising in Christ’s Body as Christ awakens you.

          Our prayer for you, little brother, is that you will open yourself to Christ over the course of your lifetime.  We pray you will grow up into Christ as you grow.  All of us who are on this Path carry with us something like an invisible mold of our fullest potential as imitators of Christ.  Have you ever seen those double balloons—a shape like Mickey Mouse or someone inside a larger balloon?  That’s a little like how I picture this idea of growing up into Christ.  We’re expanding inside a mold of Christ’s image.  This invisible mold, forged in light, dwarfs us as we begin the journey—itty bitty humans, great big potential.  As we walk the Way of Christ, we grow into this mold, this potential, growing up into Christ who has shaped the mold with Christ’s likeness and ours.    

          Our bodies have growth spurts, and so do our spirits.  We do not expect your spiritual development to be without fits and starts.  There may even come a day when you reject the faith of your mother and father and the rest of us who are now a part of your faith family.  We will be distressed by this if it does happen; it will feel like rejection of something we dearly love.  We will be distressed, but not distraught.  You see, we believe God has a hold on you.  And God does not easily relinquish those whom she loves.  We will try to be patient.  We will wait and see what God has in store for you, even if the tradition in which you are baptized is not what you eventually choose.

          Meanwhile, while we’ve got you, we promise to love you.  We promise to forgive you when you get big enough to offend us.  We promise to offer you guidance, as much as we are able.  We promise to help you seek out the truth.  We promise to listen to you as you use your gifts to help us understand the truth you will come to see, even if that truth is a critique of the way we do things.  We promise to let you go when it’s time for you to spread your wings.  And we promise that although the ties that bind us—what St. Paul calls the ligaments of the Body that knit us together—although the ligaments might stretch further than we could have imagined, we will never, ever cut them off.  You are a part of us, and we are a part of you, and we are joined together in God who loves us all.

Sermon preached by Emily Tanis-Likkel

Text: 1 Peter 2:1-3

Baby Day, we have been enjoying you immensely since the moment you met the world on New Years Eve.  By now you know how mornings start in our family.  Your big sister climbs out of her bed and whispers loudly into our ears: it's morning time!  Her first priority is to snuggle next to you, grinning widely, ready for you to wake up.  Pretty soon your Dad or I will head downstairs to retrieve the morning beverages:  two coffees and, for Eva, a spill-proof cup of milk.  Then back up to make the delivery, so that we can all start our day with the drink we love, including your morning feeding nestled against me.  We are quite set in our morning ritual.  I would never be caught saying, I think I'll have Chamomile tea this morning, or Eva requesting orange juice.  I think you, too, are pretty happy with your milk.  You cry for it, yearning for it.  Feeding you is pure gift to me—it is such grace.  The text in 2 Peter speaks of the analogy of an infant yearning for milk.  This is a fitting image because a newborn baby needs milk to survive, needs it often, and grows so quickly. The need for a baby to eat is also a longing to be in the security of loving arms.  So far your days are all about feeding and changing. Some smiles in between, a car ride, a nap – but mostly the content of your life is milk and diapers.  So it's no wonder that you long for milk.  You not only long for milk when you are hungry, but when you are sleepy, dirty, over-stimulated or bored.  It's a good thing that you long for milk so often because it is milk that makes you grow. 

I think people of all ages long for something.  We all yearn for that comfort, that which sustains us and makes us grow.  None of us is fully grown, spiritually speaking.  We all need to be nourished. We all need rituals that give us life to keep from getting depleted. 

1 Peter says “Rid yourselves, therefore, of all malice, and all guile, insincerity, envy, and all slander.  Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation—if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.”

In the 1 Peter text we are asked to re-visit our baptism, to remember the new life we are given in Christ.  Remembering our baptism is like taking a long drink of warm milk – or a delicious sip of hot coffee, or enjoying a rich feast.  It is a tasting, a savoring, a knowing.  We are nurtured into life with Christ, nurtured into salvation.  1 Peter recalls Psalm 34:8, which says “O taste and see that God is good.”  Cleansed and renewed, recalling our baptism, we are to turn toward God and seek the milk of God's word –the content of which is love and grace.  When we taste what God offers, we are filled through and through.  We are given abundant life, life that is not easy, but is so full. 

My prayer for you and for all the little ones of this congregation is that you grow into faith.  You are already part of the family of God, already under grace, already loved.  You've been given the milk.  Now you just need to grow.  May your faith be nurtured by the family, friends, and church that surrounds you, now and in the years to come.  May you grow to say “yes” to God's grace.  It's not a hard thing to do, because it's natural for children to believe.  When you remember your baptism, set aside anything that separates you from God, and put on the new life that God offers.  The 1 Peter text says to rid ourselves of all our sin, and take in God's love.  You will have moments when you realize that you need to get down on your knees and say that you are sorry for what you have done or left undone.  You will have days when you realize that you need to start loving yourself a bit more like God loves you.  You will be graced with all kinds of ways to grow in faith.  You will be introduced to the Bible, to prayer, and to the stories of faithful people.  One day you will be offered Communion, to come and taste that God is good. 

Spiritual milk is what sustains us, what makes us grow into faith. Bible reading, prayer, giving, silence, fasting, cooking, walking, going away, or staying home for once.  We are all offered the gift of God's grace; we are to accept it like a child.  Children tend to believe in miracles.  Children have wonderful curiosity, imagination, and wonder. May you always have a childlike faith, always asking questions, probing, and learning.

You have many models in faith that surround you. Learn from your Grandparents—they live and breathe God's word.  Listen to stories about your Great Grandparents—they all tasted the goodness of God.  Watch the people of this church, and other faithful people, how they love one another—how they strive to live like Jesus. I wonder which Bible stories you will resonate with.  Eva likes the story of Moses hiding in a basket among the reeds, discovered by Pharaoh's daughter.  We act it out, with her as Moses' sister Miriam, with me Jochobed their Mother – and yes, now that you have come along, you are Moses instead of the doll.  Perhaps you will like the high action stories like Daniel in the Lion's Den.  Maybe you will enjoy reading about David taking out a giant with his slingshot.  The common thread through the stories in the Bible is that God is faithful.  My prayer is that you will weave your story of faith into the bigger story.

For me, spiritual milk is walking the Labyrinth at Pilgrim Firs, it's having a whole hour to write, it's taking Eva to the park and being present instead of mind-wandering, it's saying a prayer, it's opening myself to God when I don't know what to say.  I taste the goodness of God when I'm with you. 

[1] Craddock, Fred  Craddock Stories Mike Graves and Richard Ward, ed.  St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2001, p. 92-93

[2] Symeon the Theologian  quoted in The Enlightened Heart  New York: HarperPerennial, 1989, p. 38