Blessed and Beloved, Are We Able to Keep the Promise? Preached at Wollaston Congregational Church On January 14th, 2018 Scripture: Mark 1:4-11 As we heard today, Mark’s gospel introduces Jesus by way of a simple sentence: “In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.” Mark doesn’t mention Jesus as an infant. He doesn’t get involved in Jesus’ earthly parentage. Instead, Jesus is presented as making the journey from Nazareth to meet the John Baptizer at the River Jordan. In this meeting, Jesus submits to baptism, immersed beneath the waters, like the many others who have come to John. When Jesus emerges from the waters the story takes an extraordinary turn. As his head breaks the surface and his body straightens and he gulps his first breath of air, he sees the heavens torn apart … the spirit as a dove, diving from the sky to descend on him, and a voice come from heaven saying “You are my Son the beloved, with you I am well pleased.” This is the recurrent theme of the gospel of Mark, that Jesus is uniquely identified as God’s beloved Son. This moment of baptism is of cosmic consequence, anointing Jesus as blessed and beloved. The pronouncement of Jesus as Son of God is repeated several times through the gospel. As the story continues, Jesus casts out demons in a number of situations. While these events may seem strange and somewhat medieval to us, it is important to remember that they to be taken symbolically. They represent Jesus’ engagement with the forces of evil in our world. Ironically, in Mark’s gospel, it is only the demons who consistently remember that Jesus is the Son of God. I’m humbled to think that, story as a backdrop, we are invited to “remember” and give thanks for our own baptisms today. I cannot actually remember my baptism as I was only a couple of months old at the time. Even so, I have plenty of evidence that it took place. There is an antique-looking certificate, embellished with chubby cherubim stored among my papers. And there are gifts: a silver spoon, and a white leather bound, golden edged Bible, the King James version, and an embellished silver bracelet. I had three God parents: two God mothers and a God father. And I know my parents made waves at the time. They insisted that the priest changed his custom of holding private afternoon baptisms and baptize me in the presence of the gathered congregation during Sunday morning worship. While I do not remember the event itself, I know the church where it took place very well. The large stone font is at the back of the sanctuary, the first thing guests encounter as they enter from the narthex. It’s position is traditional: baptism by means of the font is every Christian’s “entrance” into the Church. I was not immersed in the water of the font, but simply sprinkled and marked with the sign of the cross. And yet I feel a powerful connection with my baptism and the baptism of others. I’m stirred by Paul’s affirmation in Ephesians 4:5, that there is only One body, One Spirit, On Lord, One faith, and One baptism, that all baptized people of history and bound together into the baptism of Jesus. We are not uniquely identified as Sons of God, but we know we are blessed and beloved as children of God because of Christ. We can rest assured that the Holy Spirit attended our baptisms and has never left our sides. And sometimes we will feel Her presence like a powerful ocean wave, practically knocking us off our feet. And other times we will not know She is there at all. While I do not remember my own baptism, I do remember many others. The baptisms of my own three children stand out, of course. They were all baptized in the springtime, when they were 6 months, 9 months and almost one year old respectively. I remember being proud that each child was quite comfortable in the church, and being held by the minister. They were not fazed by the splashes of water on their foreheads and the little promenade to be introduced to the congregation. As I pondered my call to ministry, the desire to baptize tugged me in the direction of ordination. In my sacraments class in seminary my classmates and I practiced, taking baby dolls and administering the watery threefold sign of the cross. What an indescribable honor, to hold, touch, and administer the Holy Spirit in such an intimate way. What an incredible opportunity to extend God’s blessing to the beloved. The first time I was asked to do a baptism was while I was covering for another minister’s sabbatical. The family of a baby girl needed the ceremony to be conducted privately for pastoral reasons. We settled on a baking hot Saturday afternoon in July, and I feared that the baby and I would both be baptized in perspiration. And yet it felt perfect, as she settled solemnly in my arms and I administered that threefold cross. But there is another baptism that stands out for me. It is the one that took place here in this church, last Easter. On that occasion Rhea came to the baptismal waters. This was my first adult baptism. As we prayed over Rhea that day, and invited the Holy Spirit to be upon her, I do believe She came mightily down, upon Rhea and on all of us. And I believe that I did hear here echoes of Jesus’ baptism in the voice of God proclaiming “this is my beloved child.” Baptism is birth, it is a person’s inauguration into membership of the universal church. When someone wants to participate in Christ’s baptism, here at Wollaston Congregational Church, it does not matter whether we sprinkle them with water from the font, or go down to Wollaston Beach, and submerge them under the waves. What matters is that we empower each and every new Christian we baptize to live the life Jesus modeled and ordained for them. Later in the Mark’s gospel, two young disciples, James and John, get a little ahead of themselves and ask Jesus to give them priority seating in heaven. They ask to sit at each side of Jesus in glory. Jesus tells them they do not know what they are asking. And so he asks them “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?" Perhaps James and John look back, with rose colored glasses, to the time of Jesus’ dramatic baptism as they say “we are able.” They do not know what we know, that Jesus’ baptism leads to self-denial and the cross. Perhaps, in my passion for baptism and baptizing, I also look on the practice with rose-colored glasses. I’d do well to remind myself that besides the dunking and the sprinkling, baptism involves promises. And those promises can seem quite weighty, especially when small babies are involved. The weightiest promise, for me, in the United Church of Christ liturgy of baptism asks the question: “Do you renounce the powers of evil and desire freedom of new life in Christ?” Renounce. We do not promise to protect our children from evil at their baptisms, or to avoid evil ourselves. On the contrary we promise to renounce evil, to actively engage in resisting evil in the world. Civil rights leader, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. began studying civil disobedience as a practice to resist evil while he was a freshman at Morehouse College. King read the works of Henry Thoreau and said he was “fascinated by the idea of refusing to cooperate with an evil system … [and] became convinced the noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.” [1] King’s conviction that evil must be resisted inspired many aspects of the civil rights movement, including lunch counter sit-ins, the freedom ride into Mississippi, the bus boycott in Montgomery. As we remember Dr King this weekend, we may look back on the evils of segregation and Jim Crow laws, and give thanks that he was determined to resist these evils. But, we also remember that the evil of racism is alive and well in our culture today. Yes, some people are more outwardly racist than others. Some ignorantly use the “N” word, and cruelly practice hate crimes. But, our African American siblings, under our parent God, suffer most of all from disadvantages cause by institutional racism. This begins from birth, when 20% of African-American babies have lower than normal birth weights. [2] And then students of color are more likely to attend under-resourced school, and they’re more likely to be suspended unfairly from school than other students. This begins the "school-to-prison pipeline” which pushes students out of their classrooms and into the juvenile and criminal justice systems. [3] Black Americans are eight times more likely to be murdered than white Americans. And black males aged 15-34 were nine times more likely than other Americans to be killed by law enforcement officers last year. [4] Fifty years ago, Dr King spoke to the nation from the National Cathedral saying “We must come to see that the roots of racism are very deep in our country, and there must be something positive and massive in order to get rid of all the effects of racism and the tragedies of racial injustice.” [5] My friends, there is a great deal of racist evil still to be renounced in our nation. When Rhea came to talk with me about baptism, I learned that she was already engaged in anti-racism work. And yesterday Tina, Rhea, John and I attended the MLK day of learning with City Missions. These things give me hope that members and friends here at Wollaston Congregational, bring gifts that will enable us to live into the baptismal promise of renouncing evil. I imagine that are times when we all look back on all the very special baptisms in our lives with rose colored glasses. But may we never forget that as people baptized into Jesus’ baptism, we are also called to Christ’s work in the world. Amen [1] Clayborne Carson, ed., The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2001) [2] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/01/casey-foundation-achievement-gap_n_5065959.html [3] http://www.bostonstudentrights.org/the-school-to-prison-pipeline/ [4] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/08/the-counted-police-killings-2016-young-black-men [5] https://citymissionboston.org/news-events/
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