This space is devoted to sharing the sermons preached at Park View Mennonite Church, in Harrisonburg, Virginia. Please feel free to read, listen to, or watch any of these sermons, and then offer your comments, questions, or reflections, using the "comment" link at the end of each sermon. May these sermons challenge you to think and to act in new ways, and to grow in grace and in faithfulness to God's call.
Micah 6:1-8; Psalm 15; 1 Corinthians 1:18-31; Matthew 5:1-12
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In conjunction with the "Week of Prayer for Christian Unity," Park View Mennonite Church participated in a community "pulpit exchange" with Otterbein United Methodist Church in downtown Harrisonburg. Today Otterbein pastor Adam Blagg preaches at Park View on the subject of Christian unity, drawing on today's lectionary texts, especially 1 Corinthians 1:18-31 and Matthew 5:1-12.
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Epiphany 3: Mennonite World Fellowship Sunday - “My cry is heard”
Psalm 28
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I woke up on Friday morning to read the first post in my news feed saying: “stay safe people”. As I kept reading, I saw that a man had driven into a pedestrian mall in the middle of Melbourne, the city I used to live in, killing 4 people and injuring over 20 others. As I continued to scroll I saw that some of my friends were there witnessing this tragedy that happened just blocks away from where I used to live. This is just one story among so many of violence and pain in our world today. On this World Fellowship Sunday we recognize that at least 875 people have risked their lives to reach Europe by sea so far in 2017. The numbers of drowned or those who are dead or are missing from attempting this crossing, range in numbers from 11 to possibly 230. The UNHCR (the UN Refugee Agency) says “Increasing numbers of refugees and migrants take their chances aboard unseaworthy boats and dinghies in a desperate bid to reach Europe. The vast majority of those attempting this dangerous crossing are in need of international protection, fleeing war, violence and persecution in their country of origin. “The simple truth is that refugees would not risk their lives on a journey so dangerous if they could thrive where they are.” http://data.unhcr.org/mediterranean/regional.php#_ga=1.40114603.86130248.1484917995 Like the Psalmist we call out to God. We join with the world lifting our hands and calling out for help. On the UNHCR’s website there are 6 regions or countries listed as emergencies: Europe, Iraq, South Sudan, Syria, Yemen and the Central African Republic. Refugees are fleeing in massive numbers and flooding into countries around them putting pressure on places that might not have been stable in the first place before receiving thousands of desperate, frightened people. http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/emergencies.html The theme for Mennonite World Fellowship Sunday is: My Cry is Heard. The problem is we don’t hear them, don’t see them, we don’t feel connected, we are so far away and there is so much pain. Or we hear their cry but it fills our ears along with the cries of so many others and we cover our ears and duck our heads because we are overwhelmed and want to silence the shouts of pain. Then there are natural disasters: Earthquakes, avalanches, winter storm warnings, floods, bushfires – the clamor of disaster and devastation sweeps over us in a cloud. How can we possibly hear God’s still small voice in all of this? In the USA already this year there have been 16 mass shootings, that means a shooting where 4 or more people were involved, these shooting have resulted in 23 deaths. With 795 people killed already this year by gun violence in the USA. That’s just in the 22 days we’ve had in 2017. And this may seem brutal but to bring those numbers home that would be like all the people in our church and those attending Community Mennonite Church being killed in gun violence in 22 days. http://www.gunviolencearchive.org At this point our eyes glaze over and we start to zone out and think about what we are having for lunch or the cleaning that needs done at home, or anything that numbs us from the flood of pain and cries that our systems can’t handle. It is overwhelming. Where is God’s peace? The psalmist called it a pit that we need to be saved from– well I think we’ve worked up to a gigantic gapping cavernous hole. How can we continue to be present when we see and hear these heart wrenching stories and statistics. So many of us feel compassion fatigue and withdraw to be able to cope. What does it mean to be in world fellowship when this is our world? Oh Lord, you are our rock – do not refuse to hear us.
Let’s bring this closer to home. Our politicians like to tell us that we need to work at our economy, get out of debt and make America great again. But most of us in this room are in the top 5% of richest people in the world. “Unless you are homeless, you are far wealthier than the average person, and you live in the richest time period in history.” http://www.worldwealthcalculator.org At least 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day. http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats#src1 We also have the status that comes with the color of our skin, the country on our passport and the education we have been provided. But we don’t always feel that privilege and power. In this election season and two days after inauguration many of us are feeling scared, maybe not for our selves, but for our communities and the vulnerable or marginalized around us. Hundreds of thousands of people reacted to this fear and resisted this marginalization yesterday by taking to the streets and giving voice to those that our society has too often silenced. In these next days, months and years can we see our new president as both an opportunity and a challenge? Will we respond to ugly public rhetoric by retreating into ourselves, will we react with attacks on others or can we find ways forward that draw people together in a world that so quickly moves towards division? We are fearful. Fearful about what will happen after inauguration. Fearful of people with Trump or Hillary signs. There is fear of walking to the grocery store, of deportation, of losing health care, of being assaulted, of being stopped and searched because of your race. How do we trust in God in the middle of this fear? When we first read this Psalms passage in our worship planning meeting Ken said, “That could be ok minus all the vitriol in the middle bit where people will just blame the other or everyone else who doesn’t agree with them.” But I kept it in. Because we need to hear this bit. Need to face the fact that we have come out of a season of finger pointing. We know who the bad guys in the Psalms are…You, you out there, not me, you, you are wrong. We want to read the enemy in the Psalms as those other people that we don’t agree with who are making the world a bad place. But we need to know that there are Christians who read these Psalms and are pointing at us too, Ouch! And all of us follow a Jesus who told us to love our enemy and to pray for those who persecute us, not to finger point and condemn the other who stand in front of our pointing finger. The psalms invite us to confess our own baggage and admit that not all brokenness is just out there. Our own Mennonite conference in Virginia is struggling, people wanting to leave on different sides of an issue that we don’t want to talk about. Petitions being signed. A report coming out this week names work that needs to be done around abuse that was perpetrated in a church community and our denominational school. We are not sheltered from the pain of the world, it is present here, we have it in the stories of our lives. We cry with the Psalmist: Do not drag us away with the wicked, with those who are workers of evil. In some of the bleakness in our world the psalms are raw and itchy in our throats.
What holds us together with our fellow finger pointers? Who are we as this international body of Christ? What are we called to in these times? While the church is struggling to find relevance and is shrinking in North America and Europe, the church in Latin America, Africa and Asia is growing. We are one body but hold different understandings. “We all read the same Bible, but we interpret it differently and find differing degrees of relevance in its various parts. We all claim the presence of the Holy Spirit among us, but experience very different manifestations of that same Spirit. We have all joined the same peace church tradition, but military service or policing roles are alternatively tolerated or resisted. We have all received the good news, but some are much more likely to evangelize than others.” https://www.mwc-cmm.org/sites/default/files/website_files/wfs_2017_final_-_en-small.pdf We believe in things together – Jesus, God, the bible, and that God’s Spirit is with us. We believe that we are not alone. God is in and through all, goes before and behind all – never leaving or forsaking. We are part of rituals and actions that my non-Christian friends find weirdly wonderful. Singing together and hearing stories from an old book. Finding deep meaning in a loaf of bread and some juice. Dipping people in a river or splashing them with water. Closing our eye and reaching out to something beyond ourselves. These are things that help to hold us together in this broken body of Christ. When relating to the international church we in the West need to be mindful. Christena Cleveland a social psychologist and theologian spoke at the seminary this week. Cleveland reminded leaders of the church that we do have a place at the table in this upside-down kingdom of God. And our place is uncomfortably clear, the first shall be last and the last shall be first – we who live lives of privilege are welcome at the table but we will be last.
The Psalms are great at not leaving us in this place of fear. And we move with this Psalm to a place of good news and praise. God hears and helps. God is a saving refuge. How do we deal with the flood of stories about our broken world? How do we connect our lives and experiences to the lives of so many others without drowning in the vastness and false connection that globalization and social media invites us into? When teaching about organizing over the last few years we used to ask our students – “How do you eat an elephant, how do you tackle something that seems that big and impossible?” You eat an elephant one bite at a time, you have to break it down into small pieces. We have to attend to one story at a time, truly hearing and letting ourselves care. On this World Fellowship Sunday we can look to other Anabaptist brothers and sisters around the world. To a church in the Netherlands that sheltered Armenians and Tamils in the back rooms of their church in the mid 80s. Even though they didn’t get everything right or agree on how they should do this, they worked through their fear and with other churches to hide these people from deportation and the police. They even celebrated orthodox Christmas with their guests. One member told of the experience “Our normally simple Mennonite Church got a metamorphosis that (Christmas) morning for the two-hour- long service with many rituals (water, oil, candles, icons, painting). Afterwards, we celebrated with a big meal.” Just as they were finishing the service they received word that their guest would be allowed to stay. Another Mennonite church in Germany was founded by refugees after WWII. Then they integrated Christians from Croatia and South America in the 1960. In the 1970s they worked to include Mennonites from the former Soviet Union even though their traditions were different and this changed the culture of the church. Then a few years ago they were asked to start a youth club for 12-17 year olds from immigrant backgrounds. 30 young people from Muslim and Yazidi background found a home in (their) church building.” The youth claimed the building as their own and would show up whenever the church was open and hang out in the space no matter what activity was going on. This caused some conflict that they had to work through. Eventually they started welcoming more refugees and asylum seekers and started a Bible study group in Farsi and later another in Arabic. When a brother from Iran was baptised these orderly German Mennonites were a bit surprised by the jubilant response from his friends and have since learned to integrate spontaneity and a deeper hospitality into their church. A group of plain dressing Hutterites in Manitoba, Canada have welcomed a Syrian refugee family and found that they have surprising similarities and common ground. The mother in the Syrian family “Najwa, who wears a hijab and felt nervous about arriving in a new country with unknown customs, was relieved when her sponsors came into view. “When I saw their dress – preserving their heritage and their origins – this made me happy,” she says. She loved that the Hutterites still spoke German as their first language and that minorities in a large country could keep their identity and traditions.” http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/news/stories/2017/1/5857bcef4.html In our own church there are families that have opened their homes and their lives to the stranger in so many ways. Inviting someone in for a meal, for Christmas day, helping them learn English, helping them shop for school supplies, teaching about dressing for cold weather, playing soccer with new immigrants and partying together in new ways. I’ve been asked multiple times over the last few months if we have been having Sanctuary Church conversations here at Park View. Are we ready for those conversations? We don’t know what the weeks and years ahead might hold. Are we ready to extend radical welcome and to act out our faith even if it contradicts the leaders of our land? One thing I have started saying we have to do is to start a kids club here at Park View. A kids club will help us to learn to know our neighbors and learn who lives in the streets around us. Welcoming kids from the community into our church will open a space for the spirit to make connections in us and with them. I look forward to learning about hospitality in this new way as we think globally and act locally. Maybe we will find additional ways of moving towards the other, maybe even the other in our own church? This may feel awkward or be disorienting, like coming in a different door to church and sitting next to different people. I believe God goes with us as we take one small step towards the other – that God guides us in being brave as we take the time to listen. How do we work against the de-personalization of our world? We take a step towards the other. We unstop our ears long enough to hear another's story. We stand up with a million other women or with one person experiencing abuse, and we say no, not in my name. I will stand with you, hear your story and together we will ask for a better way forward for us all. As you hear statistics and stories of our world and global church family, may we not be shut down by our own guilt but may these stories lead us into an openness to listen, lead us to curiosity, and to an ability to welcome the other. Jesus often asked questions that created space for marginalized people to tell their own stories. Jesus used his power to empower their voices and elevate their lives. May you use your privilege to elevate the voices of others. God is our Shepherd showing the way. May we know God as our strength and our saving refuge.
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We live in a complicated world, where we are called to “follow Jesus.” But our world— 6000 miles and 2000 years away from the world of Jesus of Nazareth— is just . . . so . . . different. When we set out to follow Jesus in our world we have to do some translation . . . a lot of translation. It makes following Jesus a complicated task. So when we are faced with a complicated task, we do what comes natural—try to simplify. We take what seems un-manageable, and try to make it manageable. Naturally so. Of course, the ever-present danger in this, is over-simplifying. And we are all prone to this danger. I mention this at the outset, because I think today’s Gospel reading can help us. In this ancient Gospel text, we can find some clues for living today, in our chaotic and complicated and globalized world. We get these clues directly from Jesus and those who walked with him in his relatively contained (and maybe . . . simpler?) world— a world of Palestinian Jews congregated on the eastern edge of the Roman Empire. These clues come from the dialogue in this story— or more precisely, series of short stories. This narrative from John 1 takes place over a three-day period, in four different scenes. And if you look at the dialogue— between John the Baptist and the crowds, between John’s disciples and Jesus, between Andrew and Simon, Jesus and Philip, Philip and Nathaniel— they all have a common thread running through them, summed up in three words, “Come and see.” So here is my sermon in a nutshell: the way to navigate the complexities of a life of following Jesus today, is to stubbornly commit ourselves to always “Come and see.” To show up. See for ourselves. To look. Take in. Observe. To explore. Dig deeper. And at the same time, to stubbornly refuse to come to conclusions from a distance, to resist, with all our might, the temptation to oversimplify, and take the quick and easy path to reaching judgement. That’s my singular point. Now, let me try to flesh it out. And this is my take on it. You’ll need to tell me if you have a different take. _____________________ So how many times has someone run up to you wide-eyed, talking a mile-a-minute, trying to tell you something amazing . . . or scary or funny that they saw happen with their own eyes. And you don’t quite get it, your face registers confusion, they’re disappointed, and say, “I guess you had to be there!” It’s a cliche, but it’s true. There is no substitute for “being there.” You only get the full impact of something when you’re right there, where it’s happening, when it’s happening— seeing, hearing, participating. Second-hand, and third and fourth-hand accounts, don’t have enough emotional holding-power, typically, to keep our attention for more than a few minutes. It’s the reason TV stations label their news shows Eye-Witness News. Action News. News Now. It’s why camera crews find any excuse to come to you live, from the scene of the action, even for weather reports. An NBC report on the California flooding last week, showed a close up of the face of the reporter holding his mike, talking about the high water. Then the camera zoomed out, you saw the reporter in that water, up to his waist. It zoomed out more, and you saw the whole street full of water, and his small figure in the middle of it all. The producers know, news is only partly about communicating facts. A big part of it, is grabbing your emotional attention, pulling you in, making you feel like you’re there. In less time, with less money, and less risk to their personnel, they could easily give us more detailed and accurate data. They could tell us the water on Main St. is 37 inches at the center, flowing 5 miles an hour, and rising a foot every six hours. They could get that data from local authorities, and report it from a dry studio. But no, they have to have someone wade out in the middle of it, and come to us live, for no good reason, except they want that information to grab us emotionally, and stay with us tomorrow and the next day. John the Baptist had already told the crowds about Jesus, many times. He told them someone would soon appear who was the anointed one, the promised Messiah. But when Jesus finally showed up, was there in the flesh, then John said, with excitement, “Here he is. Look! Behold the Lamb of God!” This is the one I meant, when I said, “I saw the Spirit descend on him as a dove. I have seen and give witness that this is the one.” John the Baptist, reporting live for Eye-Witness News. The next day again, Jesus passed by, and John said to two of his disciples, “Look! Behold! The lamb of God.” That’s Part 1 of this scripture reading from John 1— the Gospel writer has John the Baptist urging us to look, to observe, to see. And John describes what he himself saw. Then the narrative shifts to Scene 2. John’s disciples, full of curiosity, start to follow after Jesus. They want to learn more. They ask where Jesus is staying. And Jesus replies, simply, cryptically, “Come and see.” They went. They saw. They stayed. They interacted with Jesus. Scene 3. One of those disciples was Andrew. He goes off and fetches his brother Simon. “We have found the Messiah,” Andrew tells Simon. So Simon comes. Sees. Observes first hand. And Jesus gives him a new name, Cephas. Peter. The Rock. Scene 4. Next day, Jesus invites Philip to follow him into Galilee. And Philip goes and finds Nathaniel, tells him basically the same thing Andrew told Peter. “We have found him; the promised one.” Jesus of Nazareth, son of Joseph. Nathaniel is skeptical. Nazareth? Really? A Messiah from a backwoods place like that? And Philip answered, with these now familiar words, thick with meaning, “Come and see.” Come and see. Be there. Disciples don’t learn to follow their master by memorizing data, by ensuring they digested the key points of their master’s teaching. They learn to follow by showing up, by observing, by noticing, by paying attention, by asking questions, by experimenting, by asking more questions, by trying again, by listening to their master, by replicating what they see their master doing. Being a true disciple begins with showing up. In person. Learning the truth about anyone, really, especially about a group of people, requires real presence, requires us to Come and See. If we disciples today— trying to navigate a complicated world, and be faithful followers of Jesus— if we make a stubborn commitment to always Come and See, before we Decide and Declare, we will be in a minority position in our 21st century American society. That is true especially now, in this anxious and fearful social climate, where we are both hyper-connected and deeply divided, where technology allows for, and social patterns encourage, immediate judgement, and immediate response to that judgement, delivered from a safe distance. We are besieged by a rapid rise of outright Fake News, and . . . news that gets leaked and broadcast and reacted to before any normal, common-sense standards of verification and balance and nuance gets applied to it, only to find out later it was either entirely false, or wrongly interpreted. Now, we could write this off as political tricks and gamesmanship, par for the course these days, when people get passionate about one ideology or another. Or . . . as disciples of Jesus, as people of Judeo-Christian faith, we could see it as part of a larger moral crisis we participate in, in which one of the Ten Commandments, “Thou shalt not bear false witness against your neighbor,” is routinely ignored, and laughed into irrelevance. But that’s just one small example of how we all continually fail to “come and see.” The seeds of our short attention span and distraction, as individuals, and collectively, those seeds were planted long ago, and they are bearing fruit in nearly every part of our lives. We are getting out of practice, in one of the core spiritual disciplines: showing up. Our culture certainly doesn’t encourage us to practice it. Life isn’t structured in a way that pushes us very often, toward active direct engagement, toward patient listening and observing, toward thoughtful analysis, toward hands-on collaboration, toward face-to-face dialogue with our neighbors, much less our opponents. Technology has done wonders at making certain tasks easier. So we can also get away with paying less attention. It’s not just distracted driving that’s a problem. It’s distracted walking. It’s distracted talking. It’s distracted living. Maybe it started with the infrared remote control. Some of you are too young to remember not having a remote. I recall, in one of my very early sermons, back in the mid-80's, actually making light of TV remotes. We had a TV with a turn-knob and rabbit-ear antennas, which was good enough for anybody. To refuse to walk across the living room, to change the channel or adjust the volume, was the height of laziness, it seemed to me. We were being sucked in by one of the 7 deadly sins—sloth. Today, we’ve gone from zero, to an indeterminate number of remotes in our household. We recently replaced a car radio, and the new one came with a remote. Really? I’ll draw the line there. The remote, to me, is not the epitome of evil. But it is symbolic of how we approach life. We want to remain at a distance. We want to remain at ease. We want to maintain control of our environment, without actually engaging it very directly. With as little effort expended as possible—the push of a button— we’d like to turn down, or mute, that which disturbs us, we’d like to switch channels, turn aside from, anything that doesn’t immediately grab us. We have developed . . . to perfection . . . the art of impatience. Remember the theme at our church retreat three years ago— “Slow Church,”—the planter from that retreat is still thriving in our foyer. What I’m talking about here— our addiction to remote control of life and relationships— that is the opposite of Slow Church. Slow Church is about patiently cultivating community in the Body of Christ. It’s about not even wanting to rush to judgement or make a quick decision, but to enter into the process of listening and relationship-building, of long conversations, of choosing to live with tension, rather than rushing to resolve it, of moving toward those who are different, and sitting with them, over time, of allowing time for the Holy Spirit to grow the fruit naturally, instead of us trying to mass-produce it. Speaking now in metaphor, the remote control is an addiction from which we need to break ourselves free. We need to put down the remote. We need to swear off using this device to take the easy route, the push-button approach to changing the world around us. Maybe we should even lock it away in a cabinet, along with other dangerous devices, that we pull out only in the event of a true emergency. Maybe, instead of deciding based on ideology— who we ought to condemn and disassociate from, and who we can embrace as part of our tribe— maybe we should “come and see.” Maybe, like Philip of Bethsaida, we should invite the Nathanaels in our lives— those who can’t believe anything good can come from Nazareth— and gently, without argument or condemnation, invite them to “come and see.” Or maybe, if we are Nathanael, we should listen to the brothers and sisters in our lives whose witness we find it hard to believe, and invest the time and energy required to truly “come and see,” to observe up close, and carefully, and over time, to ask the questions, and listen to the answers, to open our heart and mind to what the Spirit may be saying. That kind of openness is needed, in all sectors of our society, and . . . on all sides of virtually every debate going on in the church today. I think very little good will come from depending on remote control, to manage the tensions and discord in our environment. We cannot mute or channel surf our way around them. We must come and see and touch and interact. We must learn from our master Jesus, who sat at table with both tax collectors and Pharisees. We must attend to what Jesus may be doing and saying today, in our midst. Where is Jesus, the Christ, at work in our world today? In more places than we might imagine. Let’s come and see. And let’s sing from STS, #39, a wonderful song by John Bell. There is nothing resembling a remote control in this invitation, “will you come and follow me?” It’s direct. It’s intimate. It’s interactive. It takes us places.
Will you come and follow me if I but call your name?Will you go where you don't know and never be the same?Will you let my love be shown? Will you let my name be known,will you let my life be grown in you and you in me? Will you use the faith you’ve found to reshape the world around,through my sight and touch and sound in you and you in me?
—Phil Kniss, January 15, 2017 [To leave a comment, click on "comments" link below and write your comment in the box. When finished, click on "Other" as your identity, and type in your real name. Then click "Publish your comment."]
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Every year, the first Sunday following Epiphany Day, January 6 is “Baptism of the Lord” Sunday in the Christian calendar. There are a lot of Christian feast days in the calendar we Mennos never observe— like the Nativity of John the Baptist Saint Joseph’s Day, Candlemas, Feast of Holy Innocents. There are others we always observe, at least here at Park View— Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, All Saints Day, and more. Then we have the hit-and-miss Feast Days— Christ the King Sunday, Ascension Day, the Baptism of the Lord. Depending what else is going on at the time, we might, or might not, mark the day. We celebrate Baptism of the Lord Sunday, probably half the time. Which . . . I’ve decided . . . is not enough. _____________________ I usually have two thoughts when I think about setting aside a whole Sunday to focus on Jesus’ baptism. The first, and usually fleeting, thought, is why bother with this one brief moment in the Jesus story? No miracle performed. No sick person healed. No profound lesson taught. No doctrine established. Just a vague description of a mystical experience— a voice from heaven (and maybe a vision, depending on which Gospel you read), dove descending, sound of thunder, or a deep voice saying, “This is my Son, the Beloved.” Establishing this as a Christian Feast sounds a little like the church fathers seizing on an opportunity to reinforce the doctrine of the Trinity— Jesus is proclaimed God’s Son, the Spirit-Dove descends, and the Father speaks from heaven. All three, right there! But those dismissive thoughts don’t stay with me long, because I remember what follows this in the Jesus story, and how crucial this moment really is, and how relevant it is for our ordinary day-to-day lives as followers of Jesus in the 21st century. Yes . . . that’s what I said. This mystical and slightly “woo-woo” biblical scene, I am saying is practical, contemporary, and relevant to Mennonites who generally focus on more down-to-earth matters of being Jesus’ disciples. And, I would add, even more so at the beginning of 2017, this is relevant to our lives, when our way of being in the world is challenged on many fronts. When our wider church is facing fractious conflict, when our culture is more polarized than ever, when our national politics is in disarray, when broad swathes of our culture operate on high anxiety, and fear, almost constantly, when violence is around every corner, when the health of our planet is in serious jeopardy, now is the time, and urgent is the need, to get clear about who we are as the people of God. No better place to look for help in that, than Jesus’ baptism by John in the Jordan River. Why would I make such an odd claim? Because of what I believe about baptism. This ancient practice is, to my thinking, the most important one in the life of the church, and it’s the one we get most confused about. There have been all kinds of debates about baptism over the years. More than debates. Wars. Violence. We Anabaptists know this. My 11th-great grandfather, Hans Landis, was beheaded in Zurich Switzerland, over what he believed about baptism. Churches have split over when to baptize, what words to speak when baptizing, how much water is needed, and on and on. Most of those fights and splits and executions are old history. That’s not the kind of confusion about baptism that worries me. The most common problem today is that we gut baptism of its real, and thick meaning, and make it into something thin, and sentimental. We had some beautiful baptisms here at Park View this past September. Beautiful, on many levels! It was a cool, clear Sunday on the North River in Bridgewater. The four young women being baptized were full of joy, they were surrounded by loving family, supportive friends. A little disappointed there was no voice from heaven or descending doves. But there were ducks in the river. And birds were singing. The water was invigorating. The towels wrapped around them on shore brought warmth and comfort. Many pictures were taken to mark the occasion. Facebook was abuzz when some of them were posted, people far and wide offering their love and prayers and congratulations. That was all great. All beautiful. All memorable. But it wasn’t the most significant part of that day. I’ll get to that in a moment. _____________________ But let me say, first, I think many contemporary Christians misunderstand baptism to be just a personal rite of passage. Something we carefully stage to make memorable and picturesque. I don’t mean that’s what we did in September. But I am saying it’s a pretty common view among American Christians— that a beautiful and memorable baptism is somehow better, more effective, than an ordinary one. This is the same kind of thinking that says a big beautiful wedding is more significant than a small and simple one. Now, I am a genuine lover of beauty, who is willing to pay extra for things with aesthetic value, who goes out of the way to find and appreciate beauty. Let me say I love beautiful weddings and beautiful baptisms. I support efforts to make them beautiful. I love to see people getting into the moment, and extracting from those moments all the goodness and beauty they can. But while a baptism can be aesthetically beautiful, it is so so much more than that. In terms of what it actually means, and what it does, it doesn’t make one whit of difference if you were immersed in the Jordan River, under a rainbow, and have a DVD to remember it by . . . with harp music on the soundtrack . . . or if you had some water poured on you from a plastic pitcher, kneeling in the front of a drab Mennonite sanctuary with no worship arts, and cinder-block walls, and barely remember it because you were 12 years old. I’ll make you guess which of those two scenarios was mine. The fact of the matter is baptism is not about a personalized, individualized experience. It’s about your identity as an individual in community. It’s not about where your baptism is located. It’s about where your baptism locates you. Take Jesus’ baptism as a prototype. His baptism and ours share important elements. So, “Why was Jesus baptized?” Why was it necessary? Even John the Baptist wondered, and objected at first to doing it. It was not to have his sins washed away, or to be cleansed and forgiven of his wretched human nature. No, it was the day Jesus took on a new name. He was re-Christened. At the moment he came up from the water, a voice from heaven pronounced his new name: “You are my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” God spoke a resounding “YES” to Jesus, and, in submitting to baptism, Jesus spoke a resounding “yes” to the beckoning of the Spirit. It was at that moment Jesus threw in his lot with his God and God’s people and God’s purposes. And he was re-christened, re-named. There was only one who had the right to name him, the one who gave him life. His heavenly parent. _____________________ The most important sentence a parent can speak to a child, begins with the words, “You are . . .” Not you should, you oughtta, you will, but you are. The words that come after “you are,” can build up or tear down. They can create life or destroy life. But words that articulate our identity are the most powerful and important words a parent can speak. In baptism, God is the first one speaking. It was true for Jesus. It was true for me in that cinder-block sanctuary. It was true for our young women in the North River. In baptism, God says to us, “You are loved. You are mine. You are worthy, because I have made you worthy. I am with you. I am for you. And I have an intention for you.” It is not an accident that in the Gospels the first event recorded after Jesus’ baptism was an agonizing trial in the desert, where Jesus new identity would be put to the test. The way the Gospel story unfolds is intentional. Jesus is told by God, “This is who you really are.” And the next moment he is told by the great adversary, “You can be whoever you want to be.” And the rest of his ministry journey, Jesus was pulled this way and that way, by well-meaning friends who thought he should behave in a certain way, to out-and-out enemies who tried to make him behave in another way. He had to keep going back to what he was told by the only one who had a right to lay claim to his identity. No . . . this is who I am. And this is how I am intended to live. That’s the function baptism should have for us. It is foundational to understanding who we are. We start by hearing God’s “Yes! You are my beloved. You belong to me and my family. I am with you. I am for you. And I have a purpose for you.” And in baptism, we offer back our “Yes! I am your child. I am an integral part of your family. I am all in with your will and purposes for me, and for the world.” Once we hear God’s yes, and respond with our yes, we have a basis on which to act, and do, and behave. We have a foundation for ethics, for deciding between a right and wrong course for our lives. I have to wonder whether all the chaos and conflict and confusion, that seems to have the upper hand in the church, in our community, in our political processes, in our national and global state of affairs, is because most of us are missing that essential grounding in life— hearing and believing those defining words from our Creator, “You are . . . You are my son, my daughter. I have given life to you. You belong to me, and I love you with an everlasting love.” So many other things try to shape our identity— our national citizenship, our religious affiliation, our political convictions, our jobs, our money, our vehicles, our clothes, our body image, our sexual persona, And all these identities are foisted on us by a culture that makes idols out of these various identities and affiliations, and are reinforced by slick marketing of products that promise to give us these markers of worthiness. When our life choices are influenced more by these thin and fleeting identities, than by our God-given identity as a beloved child of God, then we are not living the whole life we were created for. And all kinds of dysfunction results— we lash out in anger toward the other, toward those who are different. Since we’re not fundamentally clear and comfortable with who we are, that insecurity shows up in all kinds of unhealthy ways. In the most extreme cases, it results in violent behavior, and even mass attacks like we see regularly. It’s easy to write off attacks like the one that took place in Fort Lauderdale Friday, as isolated incidents, by one poor deranged individual whose wires got crossed in his brain. It’s a little harder when we recognize those acts, as an extreme expression, that sits at one far end of the same continuum, that includes everyday patterns of behavior that I too engage in, rooted in insecurity about my identity— Like when I separate myself from, or disparage, the other. Baptism is the best thing the church has going, to set us on a different course. It locates us in a community on a journey with God in the world. In times of chaos and uncertainty, it reminds us who we are, and to accept and love who we are, that we might love others with more courage and more integrity. _____________________ I said I would come back to our baptism service in September, to something more significant than the picturesque moment in North River. A few hours earlier those four women stood in front of you at Camp Brethren Woods— whether you were actually there or not doesn’t matter, that gathering of people represented and included you.They stood in front of you and gave voice to what was at the heart of this ritual. They said to you, in essence, “By this act we are saying yes to God, and we are locating our lives, our faith journey, here, with you, our sisters and brothers.” So I leave you today, with some of their words . . . I am directly quoting Asha, Genevieve, Jackie, and Lily. I want to publicly declare my love and trust in Jesus. I am ready to fully commit to being part of this faith community. I invite you to challenge me and love me, just as you already have been, and I will accept each challenge and return the love. When I find myself with more questions than answers, I will wrestle with them, and struggle with them, and explore them . . . here . . . with you. I’m not saying that I know all the answers. I’m saying that I want to join in community with this family of believers. I can’t wait for this journey forward. Now, in response, let’s sing together #443 in the Hymnal. A great sturdy baptism hymn, locating this ritual of the church in the death and resurrection of Jesus, and in the living body of Christ, the Church. —Phil Kniss, January 8, 2017 [To leave a comment, click on "comments" link below and write your comment in the box. When finished, click on "Other" as your identity, and type in your real name. Then click "Publish your comment."]
