A sermon for St. Paul Lutheran Church, Monona; January 15, 2023
Thank you again for having me this
morning and giving me the opportunity to share a little about Ewalu and also in
line with the Gospel text this morning to share a little about baptism. It is a
refreshing scripture for me preach on, because so often I am invited by pastors
to preach when the text is Jesus cursing a fig tree, or separating sheep and
goats, or the binding of Isaac—you know, everybody’s favorite Bible stories. It
is an AMAZING coincidence how often pastors take off those Sundays and call me
to cover for them.
So, it is with joy that I will preach today on baptism, a subject that has been on my mind quite a bit ever since my own son was baptized in November in the Maquoketa River at Camp Ewalu. My son, Wilder, who is here this morning does not know what happened that morning, or if he does, he is doing a great job hiding it behind all the dirty diapers and spit up. He does not remember that day when we loaded up the cars and drove the gravel road through camp to the pole bridge—Kate and myself and the kids along with my parents and his new godparents. He does not remember when we parked by the river, crossed the bridge, clambered down the bristly bank, and stood on a rocky inlet near the bubbling water while big, fluffy snowflakes fell, and he does not remember how we dipped our hands in the river and took turns doing the three parts—his parents in the name of the father; his siblings in the name of the son; and godparents in the name of the Holy Spirit. He remembered that cold, spring-fed, November river water for a moment, but only just a moment. He does not remember any of that and will not when he is older. But I do. We do. And, more importantly, God does.
There
are parts of the Lutheran tradition I could give or take—I am not the most
traditional Lutheran about plenty of things—but I love this understanding of
baptism that I believe to be rooted in Jesus’ baptism and the other stories around
baptism we have in scripture—from the Ethiopian eunuch to the conversion of Saul
and the theological underpinnings of grace that Paul then writes about
especially in the letter to the church in Rome. I love this baptism of babies
like Wilder because it signifies something critically important, namely that we
do not/cannot/will not ever save ourselves. We are utterly dependent on things
outside of our control—dependent on the God who created and redeems us. We
baptize Wilder as a baby not to save him but because we cannot. We baptize him
so that he may someday learn that it is God who does these things and any
following in the faith that he does happens long after his salvation. It is up
to him if he wants to live into it, but it does not change God’s promise to
him. In a world that tells us it is all about us, baptism tells us something
different: It is only ever about God’s promise to us.
When
Jesus is baptized by John it changes something fundamental about the universe.
A minute before, John was baptizing people left and right for the forgiveness
of sins. People would come to John once, twice, a hundred times, every time
they felt the need to be forgiven, and he would wash them clean, and they would
come to John because he was a big deal and the bigger and better the baptizer,
the more likely it was to be effective—makes sense in a world full of
competition in which everybody is climbing a spiritual ladder. But when John
baptizes Jesus, we see something extraordinary: the sins are washed away not
for a moment but for an eternity. No longer is it washing at all; it is a
drowning—the old self dies and the new one emerges. And, sure, for those of us
who are not Jesus, we go about our lives dragging that sinful self around for
the rest of our days, and that sinner inside of us is like an anchor
occasionally grabbing onto things, but its time will also come—like the wheat
and the chaff metaphor that I get to preach on when all the pastors take
vacation magically on the same Sunday that old sinful self will one day die in
our physical death, and what remains is only the new self revealed in baptism.
This in turn means something extraordinary for
how we do ministry to children, whether as a camp or as a church. It means that
children are not awaiting the promise; they have it already. They are saved by
the promise already; that work was done, not even on the day they were baptized
but rather thousands of years ago on a cross. If they have been baptized, it is
simply the enacting of a promise already theirs that they will discover one day
in the little death at the end of the lives. This is extraordinary because it
means that at camp (and at church) we treat children not as baby Christians but
as recipients of a promise already, no less ready than you or me to experience
the joy of God’s grace. In fact, if Jesus’ life and ministry is any indication,
children are more ready than we are. The rest of us need to retrain our
eyes to be like the eyes of children; it is kids who already see the beautiful
world we are blinded to.
At
camp, we get the joy of experiencing this every single summer. We come together
thinking we are going to teach children something or other about faith and the
children in turn show us God. We think we need to train them and they retrain
us. They demonstrate capacity for love and compassion that we do not expect,
and they ask questions we never consider, and they experience the world with
new eyes in a way we rarely can. In short, they show us what it looks like to
live as if we have been baptized—as if we are free. Because that’s what baptism
is all about—it is freedom. Not in the shallow sense that it is so often
used—to do what we want without someone else controlling us. Rather, it is
freedom for the sake of love—to love in the same way God loves us with grace
for a gift we can never repay.
To
be baptized is to be marked as a follower of Christ who has eyes to see others
only as the beloved children of God that we all are. At our best, camp is a
place where we see with these eyes opened. At our best, church too is a place
where we see with eyes opened. It does not always happen, but hey, it’s the
best we’ve got… and it ain’t bad. Grace allows us a new opportunity every day when
we inevitably fail to see the world with eyes opened in love. In communion, we
celebrate second chances and thirds and one thousand-eighty fifths.
After
all, if John did not get it, neither will we. John wanted to be baptized by
Jesus because he believed baptism was temporary and even somewhat dependent on the
righteousness of the baptizer. Jesus knows better. He knows we are all sinners
so he makes us all saints. For a time, we live as both—already saved and not
yet. It takes the eyes of a child to really see it. This is why we have places
like camp where children show the way, while the rest of us who once experienced
it spend our lives looking back and trying to remember what is was like to see
as we did when we were a child. Some days we remember, and those days are good.
But the promise in Jesus Christ is that one day we will remember fully—that big
death in baptism will be concluded with the little death at the end of our
lives—and then we will see once more, as we did in part when we were children. The
promise of salvation is a promise that we will one day see.
In
the meantime, together we will do ministry, make mistakes, try new things,
often feel like failures, and never know what on earth we are doing. That is
what it means to be human. Congrats! Because being human is the only thing
required for baptism… is the only thing required for grace… is the only thing
required for God to raise us when all seems lost. So, thanks again for inviting
me to preach on baptism, because it is the meat of our faith—what camp and
church are all about. And I give thanks for being in ministry together, because
I love doing new things and making mistakes with folks like you!
Amen.
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