January 10, 2010
Grace Church
Rev. Robert E. Hensley

Isaiah 43:1-7; Psalm 29; Acts 8:14-17; Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

Let us pray.  O God of stars and journeys, you lead us day by day to the joyful vision of your light.  Move us by the power of your word that we too might open our gifts for others and so receive in our hearts the child of Bethlehem.  So may you be praised and adored, this season of your Epiphany, both now and forever.  Amen. 

      Billy Strayhorn, who is a United Methodist pastor in Texas, tells the story of a Sunday school teacher who taught her class to recite the Apostles Creed by giving each child one phrase to learn.  And the Sunday of the class presentation, her class was asked to give their recitation.  They began the Creed perfectly:  

     "I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth,' said the first child. 

     "I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son our Lord", said the next.   

      And so it beautifully just as rehearsed until they came to the child who said: 

"He ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty: from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead". 

      At that point an embarrassed silence fell until a little girl spoke up and said, "Uh, the little boy who believes in the Holy Spirit is absent today." 

      There is a certain aspect of our faith that goes beyond us; goes beyond what we say that we believe and what we do.  That is the dimension of our faith in which God dwells.  It is the dimension of the Holy Spirit, and our acts, and our rituals, and our beliefs and all of the good works that we do in the name of Jesus, all of our works of love and faithfulness, remain strangely empty until that dimension is encountered, until that dimension overwhelms us and sets us afire with its own peculiar flame and helps us to remember who we are and whose we are. 

      I want to share with you this morning a story about remembering…and how you might in fact come to remember some things that you have in fact never really forgotten. 

      Hopefully it is a story that will help all of us remember our own baptism because most of us think we can’t…or in fact cannot because most of you were baptized as infants.  I can remember when I was baptized, because I was thirteen.  But I suspect that most of you either slept or dreamed your way through it in the arms of a grown-up, either parent or godparent, who carried you until you were hit by a stream of cold water that woke you up suddenly and perhaps made you scream at the indignity of it all.  But if you touch your forehead now, and trace the cross that was made upon you that day, and perhaps again on the day of your Confirmation, you just may be able to still feel it there, burning bright and true. 

      Many of you who are familiar with the story will remember the lightning scar on Harry Potter’s forehead that marked him forever as the “boy who lived”?  Close your eyes for a moment, and see if your eyes can visualize, and your heart feel, the glowing, the burning, of your own indelible cross. 

      That is what remembering can do.  At Passover, the Jewish people are to remember the story of their escape from Egypt.  The story is to be told over and over, year to year, so carefully and richly, that each and every member of the Jewish faith knows that he or she was there that night, he, himself, and she, herself, passing from death to life. 

      At the Seder, the children ask, “Why is this night different from all other nights?  Why do we eat bitter herbs dipped in salt water?  Why do we eat matzos and charoset?  Why do we eat reclining?”  And the adults answer, “It is because of what was done for me, when God rescued me with a mighty hand, and brought me through the Red Sea waters, leading me out of slavery in Egypt, into freedom.  It was for me.” 

      To be a member of the Jewish faith is to remember how those great waters stood up to let you pass and came crashing down over your enemies, just in time.  It is to taste and feel for yourself how the waters gushed out of the rock at Meribah, when Moses struck the rock and your dry tongue was stuck to the roof of your mouth and you were about to die of thirst even though you had plenty of breath in your body for complaining and whining…!  It is to feel the muddy waters of the Jordan River on your hot, tired body as you finally waded home into the land of promise, all green, fertile, and moist.  It is to remember how you languished in exile, and sat down by the waters of Babylon and wept because you had forgotten the Lord’s songs. 

      A Jew could not tell her story without water – the watery chaos at creation where the Spirit hovered just before she began to make the world, and the watery death of the world in the great flood from which Noah was saved in the ark, and the waters of the river of God that Ezekiel could see, even from exile, looking toward home, bursting out of the temple doors.  Even today, when a person wants to become a Jew, he or she must learn the stories and then be baptized, going under the sacred waters three times.

      If you are born a Jew, the waters of God’s saving love are already running through your veins, but to become a Jew, you must go to the waters and bathe in them.  It has always been this way. 

      But there was a time, back in Jesus’ day, when, to a man named John, it seemed the water in the veins was not enough, and that the Jewish people had lost their Jewishness through sin.  He said, “Your blood, your birth, your history:  none of that matters anymore because of your cold hearts.  You need to come back to the water and get reborn, born again, and get new, warm hearts, hearts of flesh. 

      And the people did.  They were so hungry and thirsty for God, so sin-sick and lost, that they came in great crowds.  We don’t know why, but Jesus was with them.  Maybe he just wanted to be with the people, near the people, on their side. 

      Just like all the others, he lay himself down in his cousin John’s arms and let happen what would happen.  And, as he came up out of the waters, God’s Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove.  And a voice come from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”  You. 

      And the truth of who he was came pouring into Jesus.  In an instant he knew, unshakably, that he was loved by God with a fierce, forever love, and he knew what he had to do with that love.  In those few, brief, dripping seconds, everything was changed in him forever. 

      And since that day, a Christian cannot tell her or his own story without water – the waters of Jesus’ baptism which were, in fact, the waters of the Red Sea, and are the water in our baptismal font even now. 

      In some wonderful, amazing, mysterious way, stories get all mixed up together in our hearts and minds.  So that Jesus remembered the Red Sea and we can remember his day in the Jordan, and he and Noah and Moses can be with us at our baptism and today we can remember, and feel, and taste all those waters.  When you come by the font, today, touch the water, the water that has been blessed for this occasion, touch the water and see what you can remember. 

      Can you feel creation’s waters, and the water in Jacob’s well, and the water that Peter walked on when Jesus told him simply, “Come”?  Can you feel Jesus’ arm around your waist leading you down into Jordan’s waters, walking at your side, urging you on, going under with you, breaking death’s hold over you, lifting you up to new life? 

      And you might have forgotten, until just now, but see if you can remember and hear again how, on the day you were baptized, the heavens opened up to rejoice, and God reached down and ever so gently touched your shoulder…your forehead…and said, “You are my beloved child.  You are my chosen one.  You are my delight.  You.” 

      In Baptism, each of us became, like Jesus, the Chosen One of God, the Beloved One of God, the Light of Christ, the Releaser of the captives, the Healer of the blind, the Preacher of the Good News, the Servant Minister that our weary world is waiting for. 

      And when you have trouble believing it, or trusting it, close our eyes, touch your forehead, trace the cross, and remember.  You are the beloved, the chosen, the delighted in.  You.  The waters have made it so. 

      Do you remember? 

      Amen. 

Source:  

“Liturgy for the Whole Church:  Multigenerational Resources for Worship,” Susan K. Bock, ed., Church Publishing, Inc., New York, NY, 2008.