Trinity
Sunday; Yr. C, May 26, 2013
Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31; Romans 5:1-5; Canticle 13; John 16:12-15
Sermon
preached at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church
When I lived in Lake Placid and the search committee was interviewing
for our new priest, someone asked the interviewee who she would be willing to
baptize. If someone called who wasn’t
connected to the church, would you baptize them? These are the questions of hatch, match and
dispatch … baptism, marriage and death.
If someone comes to the church looking for these “services”, the member
wanted to know, would she offer them?
It’s an interesting question because it’s both a pastoral question and a
theological one.
Death is the easiest. In the midst of suffering and grief, I’m
always swayed to do the most pastoral thing.
If I’m available, I’ll bury anyone.
I don’t care who you are, or where you came from. We’ll find a way to commend you to God, if
that’s what you and/or your family needs.
God’s love trumps everything.
Marriage, well, that gets a little more complicated. In our tradition priests have to do marriage
counseling with a couple before they can be married. So I have to ask myself, is that time I want
to spend? If you don’t belong to a
church, why do you even want to be married in a church? I don’t go out of my way to accommodate people
who aren’t from St. Stephen’s if they call to ask about a wedding here.
So what about baptism?
Well, in the Acts of the Apostles, people were frequently baptized on
the spot! If someone professed belief in
Jesus, and expressed a desire to be one of his followers, off they went to the river
for baptism. Philip met an Ethiopian eunuch
who was confused by a passage from Isaiah.
They talked about it, and Philip told him about Jesus. The Eunuch was so moved by what he heard that
he asked to be baptized right then and there.
They stopped the carriage and ran down to the water.
It
was only after the church began to institutionalize that preparation for
baptism became the norm. Within a few
hundred years, preparation had grown to a three-year process and those who were
not baptized were excused from the common worship before the Great
Thanksgiving. Over time the community
witnessed your transformation and through baptism God grafted you into the
Christian family tree. The church
gathered to witness, affirm and celebrate the event on Easter Vigil. At that moment you became a full member of
the church, washed in water and Spirit, and marked as one of Christ’s own for
ever. You received all the rights and
privileges of membership. For the first
time you were allowed to join your Christian family at the Great Thanksgiving,
the banquet feast we celebrate here each week.
Infant
baptism was a late bloomer and didn’t likely become common practice until the
third or maybe even fourth century. By
then St. Augustine’s idea of “original sin” had taken hold and those innocent
who died before baptism were said to end up in some kind of eternal Limbo, a
peaceful place – yes - but the poor souls were excluded from the great banquet
feast at the end of time. If that’s what
you believed, what parent wouldn’t want their baby baptized? Emergency baptism
is still in our prayer book, but I just can’t believe that any baby is going to
be “stuck” somewhere and left hanging for all eternity. The God I know doesn’t
work that way.
So
– why do we baptize infants today? If
it’s not to “save their souls”, what is it? Maybe because we want our kids to have a
foundation from which to make choices later in life. Maybe we know that walking “the way of
Christ” takes support and practice.
Maybe we want our kids to have the experience of a spiritual community
so they can see the benefits of it.
Maybe because we know that spiritual formation takes a lifetime, and
good role models help light the way. Maybe
it’s because we want our children to be able to share fully in a community that
supports and sustains us. There are
probably lots of other reasons as well. But
perhaps the most important one is because sacraments are mysteries. Baptism is one of those mysteries. Through it God’s grace reaches deeply into
our soul and into our lives in ways we cannot fully understand. We don’t know exactly how God works through
it, but we believe that God does.
Through
baptism, something changes in all of us, because a new member is added to the
Body. A new brother or sister is added
to our midst and we are all transformed by possibility. Today two little boys will join us in faith,
and we have no idea what uniqueness they will add to our community. But the sound of their voices will become
part of the joy of our life and worship together.
I
love the sound of little voices in our church during our service. It reminds me of the diversity God intends us
to find in the Church: those who have been here “forever”, infants crying,
toddlers fussing, young couples, empty nesters, people with light skin, people
with dark skin, people who have money and people who don’t, people with wild
and wonderful hats and those with bare heads, people who walk here and those
who drive by three other churches in order to get here. We’re all here because church is the place
where we come together to celebrate God’s presence in our lives. It’s a presence we experience in friends, in
service together, in song and in prayer; a presence that is made alive in our
conversation together, in our laughter, in our struggles and our dreams. Baptism is when we welcome someone new into
the wonder and fullness of it. But Victoria, get ready. Committing to community isn’t easy.
A priest friend of mine shared this blog post on Facebook
a few days ago.
“Dear Parents with Young Children in Church, what you do matters. You are doing something really, really important. I know it’s not
easy. I see you with your arms overflowing, and I know you came to church
already tired. Parenting is tiring. Really tiring.
I watch you bounce and sway
trying to keep the baby quiet, juggling the infant carseat and the diaper bag
as you find a seat. I see you wince as your child cries. I see you anxiously
pull things out of your bag of tricks to try to quiet them.
And I see you with
your toddler and your preschooler. I watch you cringe when your little girl
asks an innocent question in a voice that might not be an inside voice let
alone a church whisper. I hear the exasperation in your voice as you beg your child to just sit, to be
quiet as you feel everyone’s eyes on you. Not everyone is looking, but I know
it feels that way.
I know you’re wondering, is this worth it? Why do I bother?
I know you often leave church more exhausted than fulfilled. But what you are
doing is so important.
When you are here, the church is
filled with a joyful noise. When you are here, the Body of Christ is more fully
present. When you are here, we are reminded that this worship thing we do isn’t
about Bible Study or personal, quiet contemplation but coming together to
worship as a community where all are welcome, where we share in the Word and
Sacrament together. When you are here, I
have hope that these pews won’t be empty in ten years when your kids are old
enough to sit quietly and behave in worship. I know that they are learning how and why we
worship now, before it’s too late. They are learning that worship is important.”[1]
And I would add that we are learning right along with them.
There is nothing really sacred about Sunday
morning in our culture anymore. It’s
only sacred because we believe it to be so.
For businesses and sports teams and running clubs and lots of other
organizations, Sunday morning is just another morning of the week, but for us
it’s different. For years our Jewish
brothers and sisters had to fight the cultural tide to keep their Sabbath day,
Saturday, holy. They were the ones that
made the conscious decision to attend sheol instead of sports practice, or
dance lessons. Our Muslim brothers and
sisters have done the same thing on their Sabbath day, which is Friday. Now, it’s no different for us. What
will we do? Will we be able to make the
same kind of commitment that Jews and Muslims have been making for centuries?
Sunday is the day we come together, but
church isn’t ONLY about Sunday morning, it’s much more than that. Church is also about Family Time on the third
Saturday of the month. It’s the Healing Service that starts at 12:30 pm
today. It’s the Bible study on Thursdays
at 11:30 am and it’s the Sunday supper that’s being prepared right now. It’s work in the garden and croquet on the
lawn. Church happens anywhere we are
gathered in Christ’s name, and learning or encouraging or following “the way”
of Christ in community. So maybe Sunday
isn’t going to work for you, but something can.
Find something that will. That is
your challenge … because today you are making promises. Some day, your children will thank you and so
will we.
Amen.
[1] Dear Parents with Young Children in Church, Sunday, May 19, 2013. http://iamtotallythatmom.blogspot.com/2013/05/dear-parents-with-young-children-in.html.
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