Baptism of the Lord Sunday
January 10, 2010
Celebration of Worship, Bethesda (MD) Presbyterian Church
Luke 3:15-22
Our Calling: Be-Loved
Prayer: God of all gifts, and Lord of all love,
With the Spirit-wind of our call to dream last Sunday at our backs, with your call next Sunday to three Session elders, and with your call to eight new members the Sunday following that, we pause today to acknowledge and celebrate your original, seminal call to us.
A call not to do or to become anything.
Simply, a call to hear and to be.
To be beloved – whether we like it, or not!
Dare we know – and dare we claim – that we are beloved of you?
Without my knowledge at the time, yet with my bemused if bewildered love, my lovely, longsuffering wife of ten wonderful years of marriage – we’ve been married sixteen – greeted many of you to Worship on November 22 with an invitation to celebrate my upcoming birthday. On the reverse of the invitation, she included a few words regarding the reason for my absence that weekend.
With her words about my time away, I know that Amy was simply sharing the Good News that day as she felt called to do so – a prior briefing from me or no. Guilelessness may defy yet it never demands an explanation. And, I love her for that.
After learning of her leafleting that morning, I have since sought the proper time and place to share with you a bit about that unusual witness I once made. A witness I made certain your Pastor Nominating Committee knew from the very beginning – a witness many of you may have heard about through the rumor mill – and a witness I mentioned in passing to the nine who snowshoed it here for Worship on December 20, in this transept.
As a lead-in, let me state that on that November weekend when you were greeted with the reason for my absence, I joined, as I do every year at that time, twenty thousand from around the country and dozens from the national Presbyterian Peace Fellowship at an annual rally and vigil in Georgia to close what remains known among millions of our Latin American neighbors as the School of Assassins: the U.S. Army School of the Americas.
I will save for a more propitious day and time the sordid chronicle and legacy of this school that demeans our Armed Forces by promoting the training of terrorism on our own soil. And I will save for a later date the generation-long resistance to close this school, led by countless faith communions such as our own denomination.
What I will share with you today is but a glimpse of my own faith role in the resistance, and the basis for it – as controversial as it may prove to some who hear this.
From 1989 to 1993, I worked with and even lived among countless Central American refugees seeking sanctuary in California and Arizona. During that time, I served as an intern for two years in a Presbyterian church in a Tucson barrio, where 12,000 refugees in one decade slept on and ate off the floor of a sanctuary about the size of our two transepts combined. I listened to their daytime stories, and then I overheard their nighttime screams thanks to the trauma School of America’s graduates wrought on them and their families.
Based on these life-altering experiences, and with the support of Amy, the congregation I pastored, my presbytery, and our denomination, I took a risk of faith I had never dreamed of taking. In 2001, I became one of literally thousands of witnesses to-date who committed nonviolent civil disobedience by taking part in a funeral procession that crossed onto the military reservation that still houses this school. And for the misdemeanor crime of trespassing onto that base, I eventually joined over 200 to-date who have served time in a federal prison camp. (Why only 200-plus of the thousands who have committed civil disobedience over the years have been incarcerated, perhaps no one shall never know. I suppose that because I wore a clergy collar, I posed more of a danger than most.)
My own sentence was three months – plus a $500 fine, paid immediately by my congregation. Of this prison witness, I am not ashamed. Of this prison witness – a surprise calling, really, once you hear the whole story – I give thanks to God and to the gospel giants who more than showed me the way: the apostle Paul and the John the Baptist of today’s scripture, among them.
I share this with you today not only because I think you eventually should know this about your pastor. I share this with you today as a backdrop to the following amazing story.
Anytime a person is incarcerated in a federal facility, the dehumanization process commences once they walk in the door. You are photographed and assigned a number; meet Mr. 90961-020. Everything on your person when you enter – everything – you place into a box. You are then ordered by the guard strip-searching you to expose every bodily cavity – every cavity – for possible possession of drugs or weapons.
After adorning standard prison garb, you are then grilled by law enforcement officers and medical personnel. Finally, you are escorted, at least in the case of this prison, to a place called “the bubble”: a kind of quarantine for new inmates, a highly public pen where they may observe you for a few days among several other inmates placed there because of some security infraction they have committed.
While still in the bubble, I began to receive a trickle of the correspondence that soon came to average six pieces of mail a day, most of them encouragements from former strangers. Correspondence that remains cataloged to this day in two cardboard boxes in my church study.
Friends in Christ, what I am about to share with you I fabricate not.
The very first piece of mail I received was from a woman I had not seen or heard from since the year of my baptism – the same time I was confirmed, in 1974. (I had not seen her since then because, as with all-too-many who are baptized – especially those like me entering adolescence – I was rarely seen or heard from by the church again!) This woman – a Presbyterian pastor, and my confirmation teacher – somehow had discovered where I was and mailed me a postcard. The card contained five simple words:
Dear Chuck,
Remember your baptism.
The Rev. Judy Sutherland remembered my baptism. And largely because she heard the song God had given me one day nearly 30 years before, and sang it back to me while my memory of it was fading, I was able to carry on in the most dehumanizing environment I have ever known or wish to know. I was able to carry on as the only misdemeanor inmate in a prison with over 300 felons for the next three months 360 miles from home.
“Remember your baptism.” Not literally – but seriously. Especially for the many of us who grew up Presbyterian or part of some other Christian communion that honors the tradition of infant baptism.
Infant baptism. A tradition that honors God’s claim of grace on us before we can claim God. A tradition where, as the infant is being baptized, his or her congregation makes a covenant claim to support and edify that child as he or she grows into a faith that can respond to God’s claim.
Have you listened for your covenant claim lately? If you were once baptized as an infant or even like me when I could literally remember the event, have you listened lately for the lingering, spiritual presence among you of those who were there – whether they be breathing today or not? Have you listened for this cloud of witnesses to whisper your God-marked identity back to you when your memory fades?
Have you listened for God’s grace saying to you through them, “This is my Child, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased”?
In his famous 1948 sermon “You Are Accepted”, the great theologian and philosopher Paul Tillich proclaimed,
Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley … when we feel that our separation is deeper than usual … when year after year the longed for perfection of life does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage.
Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: “You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask for the name now; perhaps you will find it later. Do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything; do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted!”1
Presbyterian affirm baptism and the Lord’s Supper as the two sacraments of the Church. As we were called last Sunday to remember Jesus through holy Communion, we are called today to remember God’s call of us through our baptismal covenant. God’s call of us by name, as Isaiah shares with us today. And to remember this call, time and time again, throughout our lives – seriously, if not literally.
We have been called to remember that we – you – are accepted.
The heavenly voice poured forth these words to Jesus on the day of his baptismal call: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
“The Beloved.” He’s not the only one, you know. He was simply the first. The one who calls us as well to lay claim to being beloved by God, with two simple words: “Follow me.”
Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.
1Paul Tillich, The Shaking of the Foundations (NYC: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1948),
p. 162.
Benediction …
Next weekend, we celebrate the birthday of the great civil rights leader who nonviolently resisted what has been called America’s original sin: racism.
As tradition has it, when Dr. King’s namesake, the great Reformer Martin Luther, felt his energy flagging – his doubt growing –his fear strengthening – he would cry out, “I am baptized!”
And so I am. And so, I trust, many of us are.
If you are: Remember your call. Remember your baptism.
But whether you are or not: The discernment of our calling as a church begins with God’s words to Jesus today – this, and only this:
“You are my Child, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
You … are accepted.
And there’s not a thing you can do about it!
Go out into the world in peace – to love and serve our servant Lord.
Our Calling: Be-Loved
Prayer: God of all gifts, and Lord of all love,
With the Spirit-wind of our call to dream last Sunday at our backs, with your call next Sunday to three Session elders, and with your call to eight new members the Sunday following that, we pause today to acknowledge and celebrate your original, seminal call to us.
A call not to do or to become anything.
Simply, a call to hear and to be.
To be beloved – whether we like it, or not!
Dare we know – and dare we claim – that we are beloved of you?
Without my knowledge at the time, yet with my bemused if bewildered love, my lovely, longsuffering wife of ten wonderful years of marriage – we’ve been married sixteen – greeted many of you to Worship on November 22 with an invitation to celebrate my upcoming birthday. On the reverse of the invitation, she included a few words regarding the reason for my absence that weekend.
With her words about my time away, I know that Amy was simply sharing the Good News that day as she felt called to do so – a prior briefing from me or no. Guilelessness may defy yet it never demands an explanation. And, I love her for that.
After learning of her leafleting that morning, I have since sought the proper time and place to share with you a bit about that unusual witness I once made. A witness I made certain your Pastor Nominating Committee knew from the very beginning – a witness many of you may have heard about through the rumor mill – and a witness I mentioned in passing to the nine who snowshoed it here for Worship on December 20, in this transept.
As a lead-in, let me state that on that November weekend when you were greeted with the reason for my absence, I joined, as I do every year at that time, twenty thousand from around the country and dozens from the national Presbyterian Peace Fellowship at an annual rally and vigil in Georgia to close what remains known among millions of our Latin American neighbors as the School of Assassins: the U.S. Army School of the Americas.
I will save for a more propitious day and time the sordid chronicle and legacy of this school that demeans our Armed Forces by promoting the training of terrorism on our own soil. And I will save for a later date the generation-long resistance to close this school, led by countless faith communions such as our own denomination.
What I will share with you today is but a glimpse of my own faith role in the resistance, and the basis for it – as controversial as it may prove to some who hear this.
From 1989 to 1993, I worked with and even lived among countless Central American refugees seeking sanctuary in California and Arizona. During that time, I served as an intern for two years in a Presbyterian church in a Tucson barrio, where 12,000 refugees in one decade slept on and ate off the floor of a sanctuary about the size of our two transepts combined. I listened to their daytime stories, and then I overheard their nighttime screams thanks to the trauma School of America’s graduates wrought on them and their families.
Based on these life-altering experiences, and with the support of Amy, the congregation I pastored, my presbytery, and our denomination, I took a risk of faith I had never dreamed of taking. In 2001, I became one of literally thousands of witnesses to-date who committed nonviolent civil disobedience by taking part in a funeral procession that crossed onto the military reservation that still houses this school. And for the misdemeanor crime of trespassing onto that base, I eventually joined over 200 to-date who have served time in a federal prison camp. (Why only 200-plus of the thousands who have committed civil disobedience over the years have been incarcerated, perhaps no one shall never know. I suppose that because I wore a clergy collar, I posed more of a danger than most.)
My own sentence was three months – plus a $500 fine, paid immediately by my congregation. Of this prison witness, I am not ashamed. Of this prison witness – a surprise calling, really, once you hear the whole story – I give thanks to God and to the gospel giants who more than showed me the way: the apostle Paul and the John the Baptist of today’s scripture, among them.
I share this with you today not only because I think you eventually should know this about your pastor. I share this with you today as a backdrop to the following amazing story.
Anytime a person is incarcerated in a federal facility, the dehumanization process commences once they walk in the door. You are photographed and assigned a number; meet Mr. 90961-020. Everything on your person when you enter – everything – you place into a box. You are then ordered by the guard strip-searching you to expose every bodily cavity – every cavity – for possible possession of drugs or weapons.
After adorning standard prison garb, you are then grilled by law enforcement officers and medical personnel. Finally, you are escorted, at least in the case of this prison, to a place called “the bubble”: a kind of quarantine for new inmates, a highly public pen where they may observe you for a few days among several other inmates placed there because of some security infraction they have committed.
While still in the bubble, I began to receive a trickle of the correspondence that soon came to average six pieces of mail a day, most of them encouragements from former strangers. Correspondence that remains cataloged to this day in two cardboard boxes in my church study.
Friends in Christ, what I am about to share with you I fabricate not.
The very first piece of mail I received was from a woman I had not seen or heard from since the year of my baptism – the same time I was confirmed, in 1974. (I had not seen her since then because, as with all-too-many who are baptized – especially those like me entering adolescence – I was rarely seen or heard from by the church again!) This woman – a Presbyterian pastor, and my confirmation teacher – somehow had discovered where I was and mailed me a postcard. The card contained five simple words:
Dear Chuck,
Remember your baptism.
The Rev. Judy Sutherland remembered my baptism. And largely because she heard the song God had given me one day nearly 30 years before, and sang it back to me while my memory of it was fading, I was able to carry on in the most dehumanizing environment I have ever known or wish to know. I was able to carry on as the only misdemeanor inmate in a prison with over 300 felons for the next three months 360 miles from home.
“Remember your baptism.” Not literally – but seriously. Especially for the many of us who grew up Presbyterian or part of some other Christian communion that honors the tradition of infant baptism.
Infant baptism. A tradition that honors God’s claim of grace on us before we can claim God. A tradition where, as the infant is being baptized, his or her congregation makes a covenant claim to support and edify that child as he or she grows into a faith that can respond to God’s claim.
Have you listened for your covenant claim lately? If you were once baptized as an infant or even like me when I could literally remember the event, have you listened lately for the lingering, spiritual presence among you of those who were there – whether they be breathing today or not? Have you listened for this cloud of witnesses to whisper your God-marked identity back to you when your memory fades?
Have you listened for God’s grace saying to you through them, “This is my Child, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased”?
In his famous 1948 sermon “You Are Accepted”, the great theologian and philosopher Paul Tillich proclaimed,
Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley … when we feel that our separation is deeper than usual … when year after year the longed for perfection of life does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage.
Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: “You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask for the name now; perhaps you will find it later. Do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything; do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted!”1
Presbyterian affirm baptism and the Lord’s Supper as the two sacraments of the Church. As we were called last Sunday to remember Jesus through holy Communion, we are called today to remember God’s call of us through our baptismal covenant. God’s call of us by name, as Isaiah shares with us today. And to remember this call, time and time again, throughout our lives – seriously, if not literally.
We have been called to remember that we – you – are accepted.
The heavenly voice poured forth these words to Jesus on the day of his baptismal call: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
“The Beloved.” He’s not the only one, you know. He was simply the first. The one who calls us as well to lay claim to being beloved by God, with two simple words: “Follow me.”
Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.
1Paul Tillich, The Shaking of the Foundations (NYC: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1948),
p. 162.
Benediction …
Next weekend, we celebrate the birthday of the great civil rights leader who nonviolently resisted what has been called America’s original sin: racism.
As tradition has it, when Dr. King’s namesake, the great Reformer Martin Luther, felt his energy flagging – his doubt growing –his fear strengthening – he would cry out, “I am baptized!”
And so I am. And so, I trust, many of us are.
If you are: Remember your call. Remember your baptism.
But whether you are or not: The discernment of our calling as a church begins with God’s words to Jesus today – this, and only this:
“You are my Child, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
You … are accepted.
And there’s not a thing you can do about it!
Go out into the world in peace – to love and serve our servant Lord.
