What a Difference a Day Makes!
St. Paul’s United Methodist Church
Mark 1: 4-11, Rev. Marianne Niesen, January 11, 2009
The young couple thought they had prepared their child for the new arrival. They were certainly excited, but their 7-year-old son seemed unimpressed with the little sister that they had brought home one bright winter’s day. Engaged as they were with the interrupted nights, the diaper changes and the feedings, it was a week or so before they noticed their son’s indifference. It finally dawned on them that something was out of place, and they asked their son if there was anything he needed to know about the new arrival. “Well,” he said slowly, “you have to spend all your time with her. She can’t do anything for herself. You have to feed her, get up with her at night and change her smelly pants.” They patiently said that, yes, all he said was true, but that’s what life is like for a new baby. “I know that,” he said, “you told me. But you never told me . . .” He paused. The parents waited anxiously. “You never explained . . .” They waited, until at last he formed his question, “What is she for?”
What’s she for . . . what are we for? Now, there’s a question most of us spend our lives answering! Discovering the meaning of life is part of the life journey. As a little girl growing up Catholic, I learned in my catechism that the answer to the question why did God make me was God made me to know, love and serve him in this world and be happy with him in the next. I could recite that proudly. Didn’t have a clue what it meant but I knew the answer well enough to get a star every time! But, the question remains . . . why are we here? It’s a question of meaning and it is one of the most important ones we’ll ever tackle. And, quite frankly, I think the tackling of it is far more difficult - and important - than getting the catechism answer right!
One of the few events in Jesus’ life that scholars agree happened is the account I just read about the baptism of Jesus. They come to this agreement not just because the baptism is recorded or referred to in all the gospels, but because, quite frankly, the baptism of Jesus was an embarrassment to the early Christian community. They wouldn’t have told the story if they didn’t have to! After all, John’s baptism was a ‘baptism of repentance.’ As the early church came to see Jesus as the Messiah, the chosen and sinless one of God, why did he need a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins? Even today, when adults present themselves for baptism, it is understood as a moment of forgiveness, a new start, a re-birth. How did Jesus need re-birth? When we baptize children, we claim them as part of a church community - but there was no church community at the time of Jesus, so it wasn’t that for him. Was Jesus joining John’s group? Perhaps . . . but he didn’t stay there. John got killed and Jesus didn’t stay in the desert eating bugs and honey. Nor did he stay at the river baptizing the multitudes drawn to John’s strange teaching. The whole event of Jesus’ baptism caused dis-ease. What did it mean? Why did he do it? Very likely, the gospel writers and the early church would have liked to ignore it all together but they couldn’t - because it happened. It was a significant moment in the life of Jesus. Mark’s gospel reports that Jesus heard a voice from the heavens proclaim him as beloved and pleasing. Still, what was that baptism all about? What was important about that very public, very communal event for Jesus?
The answer, it seems to me, is quite simple. The event of Jesus’ baptism - even as dramatic an event as it is portrayed - only became important, as it does for us all, in the living-out-of-it. It was like all great beginnings . . . the ‘proof’ of them is in the unfolding. Whatever happened in the moment of his baptism, in the end, Jesus had to do what we all must do . . . make his baptism count . . . give it power . . . make it concrete! That’s why later in his life, Jesus asked his disciples if they could be baptized with the baptism with which he had been baptized. They wanted seats on his right and left hand in the life to come and Jesus asked can you be faithful in this life? In many ways this is frightening . . . baptism means something and it costs something. What a difference that day is meant to make in our lives! What a difference it meant for Jesus! With his baptism, he claimed his responsibility, his mission, in life. It was a claiming of his relationship to God . . .God claimed him and he claimed God. As a son of God, he had work to do!
Fred Craddock tells the story of vacationing in the Smokey Mountains area of Tennessee. He and his wife had found a lovely restaurant at a place called the Black Bear Inn. Craddock writes:
We were seated there looking out at the mountains when this old man, with shocking white hair, a Carl Sandburg-looking person came over and spoke to us. He said “You’re on vacation?”
We said “Yes” and he just kept right on talking.
“What do you do?” he asked. (“Well, I was thinking,” Craddock notes, “that it was none of his business, but I let out that I was a minister”). Then he said, “Oh, a minister, well I’ve got a story for you.” He pulled out a chair and sat down.
“Won’t you have a seat,” Craddock added. (He found out later that he was eighty years old and the former governor of Tennessee.)
He said, “I was born back there in these mountains and when I was growing up I attended Laurel Springs Church. My mother was not married and as you might expect in those days, I was embarrassed about that - at school I would hide in the weeds by a nearby river and eat my lunch alone because the other children were very cruel. And when I went to town with my courageous mother, I would see the way people looked at me trying to guess who my daddy was.
“The preacher fascinated me, but at the same time he scared me. He had a long beard, a rough-hewn face, a deep voice, but I sure liked to hear him preach. But I didn’t think I was welcome at church so I would go just for the sermon. And as soon as the sermon was over, I would rush out so nobody would say, ‘what’s a boy like you doing here in church?’
“One day though,” the old man continued, “I was trying to get out but some people had already got in the aisle so I had to remain. I was waiting, getting in a cold sweat when all of a sudden I felt a hand on my shoulder, and I looked out of the corner of my eye and realized it was the face of the preacher. And I was scared to death.”
“The preacher looked at me. He didn’t say a word, he just looked at me, and then he said ‘Well boy, you’re a child of . . .’ and he paused, and I knew he was going to try to guess not who my mother was but who my father was.”
“The preacher said, ‘You’re a child of . . . um. Why, you’re a child of God! I see a striking resemblance boy!’ He swatted me on the bottom and said, ‘Go claim your inheritance!’”
And then the old man who was telling the story said to Fred Craddock, “I was born on that day!"
What are we for? We’re for claiming our inheritance as sons and daughters of God and living like it matters. Because it does. Imagine how different the world would be if we lived as if we indeed have a striking resemblance to the face of God! In fact, that young man was baptized on that day . . . not with water but with the words Jesus himself had heard years before . . . you are my beloved son. In you I am well pleased. And those words made a difference. You’ll notice the old man said he was ‘born’ on that day . . . he didn’t say ‘that made everything right’. He said he was born. It was a beginning. Baptism is a beginning and we spend the rest of our lives living it out and figuring it out. Baptism isn’t a magic moment but it is meant to be a life-changing moment - the power of which we will only know down the road a piece! Baptism is a moment that awaits fulfillment. In a sense, our whole lives are commentaries on our baptisms. To live as a baptized person is to live recognizing God’s claim on us and God’s call to us and walking the walk daily as people of faith. And any time that happens we claim our inheritance. We live as the beloved children of God we are called to be.
Forty years ago a Philadelphia congregation watched as three 9-year-old boys were baptized and joined the church. Not long after, because they were unable to continue with its dwindling membership, the church sold the building and disbanded.
One of those boys was Tony Campolo, now author and Christian sociologist at Eastern College in Pennsylvania. Dr. Campolo remembers: "Years later when I was doing research in the archives of our denomination, I decided to look up the church report for the year of my baptism. There was my name, and Dick White's. He's now a missionary. Bert Newman, now a professor of theology at an African seminary, was also there. Then I read the church report for 'my' year: 'It has not been a good year for our church. We have lost 27 members. Three joined, and they were only children.'"
Baptism isn’t magic . . . but it does matter. Those three who were ‘only children’ were nurtured well by the remaining members of that disbanded church - and, undoubtedly, by others along the way. And at some point they did what we all must do. They claimed that baptism as their own and lived it out in remarkable ways. Not everyone will become professors of theology or missionaries - still, baptism matters. And, the mattering of it has to do with God’s claim on us and our willingness in return to claim that inheritance and our responsibility.
So, as we ponder the baptism of Jesus - and our own - it is a good time to reflect .. . what difference has that day made for you and me? As a way of doing just that, I invite us today to pray one of our creeds. In 1908, the Methodist church at that time, in response to the harshness of industrialization and the daunting social issues of the day, wrote a social creed. It was a way of helping contemporary Christians claim and live their inheritance as baptized children of God. At our General Conference in May of 2008, the one hundred year anniversary of that first creed was celebrated and part of that celebration included a litany proclaiming an updated version of a still much needed social creed. Let’s pray it together now . . . your response is simply and so shall we.
A Litany of the United Methodist Social Creed
God in the Spirit revealed in Jesus Christ calls us by grace to be renewed in the image of our Creator, that we may be one in divine love for the world.
Today is the day God cares for the integrity of creation, wills the healing and wholeness of all life, weeps at the plunder of earth’s goodness.
And so shall we.
Today is the day God embraces all hues of humanity, delights in diversity and difference, favors solidarity transforming strangers into friends.
And so shall we.
Today is the day God cries with the masses of starving people, despises growing disparity between rich and poor, demands justice for workers in the marketplace.
And so shall we.
Today is the day God deplores the violence in our homes and streets, rebukes the world’s warring madness, humbles the powerful and lifts up the lowly.
And so shall we.
Today is the day God calls for nations and peoples to live in peace, celebrates where justice and mercy embrace, exults when the wolf grazes with the lamb.
And so shall we.
Today is the day God brings good news to the poor, proclaims release to the captives, gives sight to the blind, and sets the oppressed free.
And so shall we.
Claimed and sent by baptism, we gather here as sons and daughters of God . . . from where I stand, I see a striking resemblance!
May we claim and live and share that inheritance.
