Striving for justice and peace means never giving up on anyone

Sermon delivered Sunday, Jan. 29, 2017 (Fourth Sunday After the Epiphany, Year A) at St. Cuthbert's Episcopal Church, Oakland, CA, as part 4 of a 7-week preaching series on baptism and the Baptismal Covenant.

Sermon Text(s): Micah 6:1-8, Matthew 5:1-12, Baptismal Covenant Question #5

The themes emerging from our collect and the lectionary readings today are related to peace and justice – we heard the Beatitudes in the Gospel reading, and our Hebrew scripture was a passage from Micah 6 often quoted in social justice work by both Christians and Jews:

“He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the LORD require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8)

So this week, as we continue our preaching series on baptism, we’ll consider the fifth and last question of our Baptismal Covenant:

“Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?”

It is interesting to note that this is the only question in our Baptismal Covenant that does not say anything about God, Jesus, or the Christian faith. It is a question that people of all faiths and none could answer affirmatively:

“Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?”

Yes, they will, and yes they do: Jews and Muslims and Sikhs and Buddhists and Baha’is and Hindus and indigenous people and agnostics and atheists – I know people who identify with all of those theological perspectives who “strive for justice and peace among all people” and “respect the dignity of every human being” in their daily lives, people for whom these values are the bedrock of their activism and their advocacy for vulnerable and marginalized communities.

But as part of our Baptismal Covenant, this question is asked of us in the context of a ceremony that marks our commitment to following in the way of Jesus. Even though the question doesn’t specifically mention God or Jesus or say anything about being a Christian, it is, in a sense, the culmination of all the questions that came before it. It is a summary of our church’s understanding of what it means to follow Jesus: to strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being.

We come to this understanding from the example and teachings of Jesus in the scriptures. Jesus consistently advocated for a peaceful ethic in the form of nonviolence, teaching his followers “not [to] resist an evildoer” (Matthew 5:39), to “turn the other cheek” (Matthew 5:39), and to “love [their] enemies” (Luke 6:28). He said, as we heard in the Beatitudes today, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”

But as the phrasing of this question in the Baptismal Covenant makes clear, the kind of peace Jesus advocated was not one that allowed the continuance of injustice. It was not a peace that stood back quietly and did nothing while God’s children and God’s creation were abused and misused, denigrated and destroyed.

Martin Luther King, Jr. is famous for saying, “There can be no justice without peace, and there can be no peace without justice.” In doing so, he was articulating a deeply biblical truth: that peace and justice are inextricably connected. You can’t have one without the other. And that’s why our Baptismal Covenant words the question this way: “Will you strive for justice and peace among all people” – it doesn’t allow us to squirm out of the hard work of justice by saying we’re advocating for peace in not stirring things up, not rocking the boat.

Last week, Mark and Tom performed a hymn during communion about the calling of the first disciples. The text is a poem by William Alexander Percy, and it describes how God called Peter, Andrew, James and John from the “peaceful” lives they had known as fishermen to a life where they knew a different kind of peace, “the peace of God that filled their hearts brimful, and broke them too,” [1]  recounting the suffering they experienced as a result, even unto death. The final verse is a powerful summary of the cost of discipleship and the type of peace to which God calls us and offers us:

“The peace of God, it is no peace, but strife cast in the sod.
Yet let us pray for but one thing: the marvelous peace of God.”

When we vow to work for “justice and peace,” we acknowledge that one does not come without the other, and that working for peace sometimes brings no peace, but “strife cast in the sod.” We will encounter conflict and sometimes even violence directed at us as we strive for justice for all God’s creation.

The second part of the question asks,
“Will you respect the dignity of every human being?”

Including this question along with the question of striving for justice and peace again reminds us that the peace we seek is a peace that comes with justice. If peace comes at the cost of the dignity of our brothers and sisters, it is not a peace we can accept as Christians.

This week, our new President signed executive orders banning citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States for the next 90 days and suspending the admission of all refugees for the next 120 days. He did this in the name of peace, in the name of making America safer. But these actions and the chaos that have resulted from them over the last several days have not brought true peace, nor will they, because they do not respect the dignity of every human being. The peace President Trump seeks comes at the cost of the dignity of our Muslim brothers and sisters, and the dignity of citizens of those countries or refugees who aren’t Muslim, but will also be denied entrance to our country by the so-called “Muslim ban.”

For me, this vow of our Baptismal Covenant is why I signed a petition against this ban and while I plan to continue to be a vocal critic of it. It’s why the Bishop’s Committee voted to accept John and Milene Rawlinson’s donation of a large banner that states, “Refugees and immigrants welcome,” with a depiction of the Holy Family fleeing into Egypt, which I’d love some help hanging up on the front of the church after the service today.

But this vow is also why I carried a sign in the Women’s March with quotes from Jesus and the Buddha about loving your enemies, and why I continue to use the lovingkindness meditation techniques I’ve learned from Buddhism to try to direct kindness and goodwill toward our new President, toward the members of ISIS, and toward any person or groups of people I have begun to nurture ill-will or hatred toward. Because respecting the dignity of every human being means EVERY human being, not just the ones I find it easy to respect. It means respecting the dignity of the oppressors as much as I respect the dignity of the oppressed.

And for me, that’s where it gets really hard. That’s where I’m reminded that it’s called “spiritual practice” for a reason – because in order to live it out, we need practice. We need training.

This week, Krista Tippet’s show On Being on NPR aired a repeat of an interview she did with Congressman John Lewis in 2013 where he talks about the training he got in nonviolent resistance during the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s:

“It’s just not something that is natural,” Lewis said. “You have to be taught the way of peace, the way of love, the way of nonviolence… We, from time to time, would discuss - if you see someone attacking you, beating you, spitting on you, you have to think of that person — years ago, that person was an innocent child, innocent little baby. And so what happened? Did something go wrong? Was it the environment? Did someone teach that person to hate, to abuse others? So you try to appeal to the goodness of every human being. And you don’t give up. You NEVER give up - on anyone.” [2]

That’s what it means to “strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being” – to never give up, on anyone. And as with all our baptismal vows, we can commit to keep them only “with God’s help.” When we find ourselves starting to give up on someone, starting to hate, starting to hold a grudge, starting to think that peace for some is ok because peace for all is impossible, we must call out for help from God – from the God who calls us to never give up on anyone because he never gives up on us.

[1] Hymn #661 from The Hymnal 1982, Words: William Alexander Percy (1885-1942), alt. Music: Georgetown, David McKinley Williams (1887-1978)

[2] Congressman John Lewis, “Love in Action,” On Being with Krista Tippet, NPR, Jan. 26, 2017, http://onbeing.org/programs/john-lewis-love-action/ Accessed Jan. 28, 2017.

Do our divisions within Christianity compromise our witness?

Sermon delivered Sunday, Jan. 22, 2017 (The Third Sunday After the Epiphany, Year A) at St. Cuthbert's Episcopal Church, Oakland, CA, as part three of a seven-week preaching series on baptism and the Baptismal Covenant.

Sermon Text(s): 1 Corinthians 1:10-18, Baptismal Covenant Question #3

As we enter week three of this preaching series on baptism, we’re going to spend another week on the third question of the Baptismal Covenant:

“Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?”

Why are we spending two weeks on this question? Well, the collect and the scriptures for today continue to focus on God’s call to us to proclaim the Good News of God in Christ. The opening collect says:

“Give us grace, O Lord, to answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ and proclaim to all people the Good News of his salvation, that we and the whole world may perceive the glory of his marvelous works…”

For our reading from the Hebrew scriptures we have that famous passage from Isaiah that we just heard during Advent and Christmas – “the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light!” – and in the Gospel passage we have a narrative about how Jesus fulfilled that scripture and called his first disciples by the Sea of Galilee. But as we continue to consider the topic of evangelism this week, we’ll look at it from a slightly different angle, from the perspective represented in our second reading from 1 Corinthians. Paul writes to the church at Corinth:

“Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose.”

This passage takes on particular meaning in light of the fact that this week is the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. So today, I’d like to think about Christian unity and in what ways our division compromises our witness.

Many people look at the mind-boggling number of different churches and denominations in Christianity, particularly in the U.S., and become disillusioned. All this infighting, all this disagreement! So much for Christians being “one body in Christ” and having “all things in common,” as the scriptures tell us the early church did. Instead, we’ve got bishops excommunicating each other, fights over whether one particular phrase is included in the Creed or not, parishioners refusing to receive communion from certain priests, arguments about predestination and free will – and that’s just a small section of our dirty laundry! For all our theology about being “one in Christ,” we seem pretty divided. How can we “proclaim the Good News of God in Christ” to the world if we can’t even agree amongst ourselves?

Our passage from Paul’s letter reminds us that the church has always had to deal with conflict and division.

“It has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there are quarrels among you, my brothers and sisters,” Paul writes to the church at Corinth.

What? Quarrels? In the church?
Oh, yes.

He continues, “What I mean is that each of you says, ‘I belong to Paul’, or ‘I belong to Apollos’, or ‘I belong to Cephas’, or ‘I belong to Christ’” (1 Corinthians 1:11-12).

He chastises those who identify with the person who baptized them rather than with Christ, who is the proper object of their faith.

“Has Christ been divided?” he asks. “Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?” (1 Cor. 1:13)

Later, in chapter 3 of the letter, he drives his point home:

“What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you came to believe, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.” (1 Cor. 3:5-7).

This critique of the Corinthians is certainly relevant to the church today, with so many denominations centered on the person who started that movement. Lutherans, Wesleyans, Calvinists… by identifying ourselves in this way, aren’t we doing the very same thing the church at Corinth was doing and saying, “I belong to Luther” or “I belong to Wesley” or “I belong to Calvin” rather than “I belong to Christ”?

It’s gotten to the point that the church is so divided that we don’t even recognize one another as being part of the same religion anymore. When I talk about interfaith dialogue in Christian contexts, inevitably someone will say, “Oh, yeah, we did some interfaith dialogue one time! We had a meeting with the Baptists!” or “We held a joint service with the Lutherans!”

But guess what, people? That’s not interfaith dialogue! Christians talking to other Christians is not interfaith dialogue! Interfaith means talking to someone of a different religion -- a Muslim, or a Sikh, or a Jain, or a Jew, or a Buddhist -- a different religion. All of these denominations of Christianity -- Baptists and Lutherans and Methodists and Presbyterians and Pentecostals and Charismatics and Evangelicals – they’re all Christians! Their denomination may be Lutheran or Baptist or Methodist, but that's not their religion. Their religion is Christianity. Unfortunately, we often talk of our denomination as if it is our religion. If someone were to ask you, "What's your religion?" We might say, “I’m an Episcopalian.” Our friends at United Lutheran might say, “I’m Lutheran.” Our friends at Church Without Walls might say, “I’m Baptist.” But really, we should all have the same answer to that question: What religion are you? “I’m CHRISTIAN!”

It’s not an accident that when we are baptized in the Episcopal Church, we don’t profess faith in the Episcopal Church or in the Presiding Bishop or the Archbishop of Canterbury. We profess faith in JESUS CHRIST. Period! Our baptismal vows don’t say anything about the Episcopal Church. We don’t vow to follow the canon law of the Episcopal Church (priests and bishops may, but lay people don't!), we vow to follow Jesus! And so do each and every one of our brothers and sisters in Christ, regardless of which denominational structure oversaw the ritual of their baptism. What unites us as Christians is our common desire and commitment to follow Jesus, regardless of our disagreements over how the church should be structured or governed or who should be allowed leadership within it, or any number of other things over which we disagree.

As the testimony of the early church shows, it’s unlikely that we will ever be “of one mind” on all things, however much our leaders may urge us to be. But we must continue to work toward the ideal of “Christian unity,” even if we never reach it, because Jesus prayed for his followers to be “one, even as [he] and the Father [were] one” (John 17:11). “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me,” Jesus prays the night before his death (John 17:20-21). Jesus believed that our oneness – with each other and with God in Christ – was key to our witness – we are to be one so that “the world may believe.”

But perhaps we’ve been thinking about “Christian unity” all wrong. Maybe unity doesn’t mean that we all become members of the same church or govern ourselves in the same way or worship in the same style. Maybe unity doesn’t mean that we share similar political opinions, similar cultures, similar backgrounds, or even similar interpretations of scripture. Maybe “Christian unity” is as simple as remembering who we were baptized into. Were we baptized into Paul or Apollos? Were we baptized into Luther or Wesley or Calvin? No, these were all merely servants of God who brought us to know Jesus. Maybe “Christian unity” is as simple as the affirmations at the beginning of our baptismal service:

"Do you turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as your Savior?

Do you put your whole trust in his grace and love?

Do you promise to follow and obey him as your Lord?"  (BCP 302-303)

Our unity as Christians comes in the form of our answer to those three questions. Those of us who answer “yes” to those questions (or “I do,” as we say in the liturgy) are united with all others who answer those three questions the same way, regardless of whether we agree on anything else!

Ronald Rolheiser, a Canadian Roman Catholic theologian, describes the essential unity of the church in this way:

"To be in apostolic community, church, is not necessarily to be with others with whom we are emotionally, ideologically, and otherwise compatible. Rather it is to stand, shoulder to shoulder and hand in hand, precisely with people who are very different from ourselves and, with them, hear a common word, say a common creed, share a common bread, and offer a mutual forgiveness so as, in that way, to bridge our differences and become a common heart. Church is not about a few like-minded persons getting together for mutual support; it is about millions and millions of different kinds of persons transcending their differences so as to become a community beyond temperament, race, ideology, gender, language, and background." [1]

If we can truly do that – if we can form the kind of community that transcends differences through our shared love of Jesus and commitment to follow in his way, if we are intentional about forming that community with people of other denominations – then our witness will not be compromised. Despite our apparent divisions, we can still “proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ” – by showing that even in the midst of the messy human diversity in the church, a sense of shared consciousness and an acknowledgement of oneness in our Lord is possible, thanks be to God.

[1] Ronald Rolheiser, The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality (New York: Doubleday, 1999): 115.

Our call to God-led evangelism

Sermon delivered Sunday, Jan. 15, 2017 (Second Sunday After the Epiphany, Year A) at St. Cuthbert's Episcopal Church, Oakland, CA, as part two of a seven-week preaching series on baptism and the Baptismal Covenant.

Sermon Text(s): Isaiah 49:1-7, Baptismal Covenant Question #3

Last week, we remembered Jesus’s baptism in the Jordan River, heard about the implications of baptism for our own lives, and renewed the vows of our Baptismal Covenant. This week, we begin exploring the Baptismal Covenant in more detail. From now through the end of the season after the Epiphany, we’ll consider one question from the Baptismal Covenant each week, digging more deeply into the meaning of it and how we are called to keep that vow in our lives as Christians. We won’t be moving through the vows in the same order that they appear in the prayer book because I structured this series so that the question we’re considering each week connects with the scriptures from the lectionary for that day. So today, because the scriptures relate to the subject of evangelism, we’ll start by looking at the third question in the Baptismal Covenant:

“Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?”

The first thing we must define with regards to that question is: what exactly is the “Good News of God in Christ?” What are we proclaiming? What is the message we are called to share with others? The passage we heard from Acts last week offers us a good summary. Peter says this to a group of Gentiles gathered in the home of Cornelius, a Roman solider:

“I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ--he is Lord of all. That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.” (Acts 10:34-43)

That is the good news we are called to share: that Jesus was raised from the dead, that all the powers of this world and even death itself could not stop the message he came to bring. That message was not so different from what all the prophets throughout the history of Israel had taught: that we should love God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind, and love our neighbors as ourselves. But the one who brought the message this time was different than those other prophets who had gone before: he was the promised Messiah of Israel, the chosen one foreseen by all the prophets, and in him the prophecies of old were fulfilled. And his message reminded the people of Israel that God’s favor and mercy are available to all people, not just the Jews.

And although Jesus’s followers took that to heart in such a way that the Jesus Movement became primarily a movement of Gentiles rather than Jews, this message of inclusiveness was not new with Jesus. In fact, the Christian concept of our call to be a “light to the nations” actually comes from the Hebrew Bible, from the scriptures of the Jews before the time of Jesus. Today’s reading from Isaiah contains that phrase, a phrase that became one of the theological underpinnings of Christianity’s worldwide missionary outreach: God says to the prophet Isaiah, “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth” (Isaiah 49:6).

"I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth."

In a context where the prevailing assumption was that each nation had their own god or gods, who were concerned only with the people of that nation, the idea that the God of Israel would care about the people of other nations was a revolutionary idea. This passage is one of several in Isaiah and in other writings dated to this period that represent a significant theological shift – from a view of salvation as being “all about us” to a view that included “them” as well – the other, the outsider, the stranger. No longer did the word “salvation” mean that our side had won, and to hell with everyone else. Isaiah – and Jesus after him – said that the goodness and mercy and blessings promised by God to Israel are available not only to Israel, but to all people. Israel’s role as a “light to the nations” is to share that goodness and mercy and blessing with everyone.

Unfortunately, the way both Jews and Christians have read and interpreted this passage has often presumed that only Israel – or in Christian thought, only the church, the “New Israel” – has the light. As we sought to be a “light to the nations,” we thought we were bringing “light” to “primitive” or “uncivilized” people who we thought were in darkness without us. I requested our opening hymn (#539 in the 1982 Hymnal; "O Zion haste; thy mission high fulfilling") because it has some of that flavor to it. That last verse:

"make known to every heart his saving grace.
Let none whom he hath ransomed fail to greet him,
through thy neglect, unfit to see his face."

-- the assumption being that without you, O Enlightened Christian, those poor peoples of the rest of the world will perish. Through our actions and our theology we asserted a belief in our superiority over other nations and peoples. We forgot the inclusive flavor that this passage had in its original context, and in many cases, instead of bringing light, we brought more darkness. Instead of inclusion, we brought rejection and condemnation.

So how can we be obedient to our baptismal covenant, to “proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ,” without falling into the same mistakes that some of our forefathers and foremothers made? How can we share the good news so that it is actually received as good news, rather than as rejection and judgment?

Well, one way to do so is to follow the example of Peter and Cornelius in last week’s passage from Acts. Both Peter and Cornelius receive visions from God telling them to seek each other out. Peter receives a message from God that sends him to Cornelius, and Cornelius receives a message from God asking him to seek out Peter. The key here is that it is God’s initiative on both sides to bring the two people together. There have been plenty of cases in which Christians have thought, “God is sending me to bring a message to those poor, backward people and tell them how to live and worship correctly!” – but when they arrived, the “poor, backward people” weren’t so interested in hearing their message. Rather than paying attention to this, the missionaries pushed on, convinced they were right, that God was “on their side,” rather than trying to discern whether or not God was indeed behind their missionary impulse by assessing the situation among the people when they arrived. In contrast to that kind of stubborn one-sidedness, in the biblical story, Peter confirms first that God has been moving among the people he’s about to speak to before he launches into his “pitch” about why Jesus is Lord of all. He asks why Cornelius sent for him, and only after he has taken the time to listen to Cornelius’s experience and hear his story does he make that great speech in Acts 10, summarizing the Christian message.

I find it interesting that although Christian theology names Jesus as the “light of the world” (John 8:12), Jesus also says that we are the light of the world! In the Sermon on the Mount, he says to those gathered to hear him teach, “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:14-16). Jesus, the very light of the world himself, did not tell his followers that he was the only light, but taught them to see the light in themselves.

The true lights of this world do not judge the darkness, because they see only light. They see the light in others, and they help others to see that light in themselves. And as they do so, the light becomes much stronger than if it were proceeding from only one person or one group. To me, that is what it means to be a “light to the nations.”

So how can we keep our vow to “proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?” We can live an authentic life of faith modeled on the teachings of Jesus, one in which our actions testify to something greater than ourselves. And when people ask us about it, when God sends them to us through God’s initiative, we can share with them the witness of scripture, passages like Peter’s speech in the book of Acts. And we can tell them our own story. We can tell them about why Jesus’s story and teachings mean so much to us, how the Gospel has touched our lives, and about any experiences we have had with Jesus directly or any moments we had when we knew God was truly with us. And rather than telling people we have the light and they don’t, we can affirm that we see light in them, too. We see it, we name it, we affirm it, and we invite them into a relationship with Jesus. And then, we wait for them to make their own decision -- and leave the rest to God.

Remember, we promise to do these things in our Baptismal Covenant only “with God’s help” – so we must take that to heart. We can’t keep these vows entirely on our own. It isn’t our job to “save” others. “Through your neglect, they will be unfit to see his face?” No. It’s not our job to save. It’s God’s job to save.

So, will we proclaim the Good News of God in Christ to the world?
Yes, we will – with God’s help.

Through baptism, we commit ourselves to God and accept God's will for our lives

Sermon delivered Sunday, Jan. 8, 2017 (The First Sunday After the Epiphany: The Baptism of Our Lord), at St. Cuthbert's Episcopal Church, Oakland, CA.

Sermon Text(s): Matthew 3:13-17

“This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

Fast-forward about 30 years from where we last left Jesus, fleeing with his parents from Herod into the desert and returning to grow up in Nazareth. This week, in an instant, Jesus is all grown up.

We begin the season after the Epiphany, the season after Christmas, with the story of Jesus’s baptism because it marked the beginning of his public ministry as a teacher and prophet. And while we might feel like we’ve gotten a little chronological whiplash from jumping so far forward in the story so quickly, we actually know very little about Jesus’s life between the time of his birth and the day of his baptism. The Gospel writers didn’t include many details about that in-between time, perhaps because from their perspective, this moment, the moment of Jesus’s baptism, is when all the really important stuff started happening. This is when he started publicly reminding Israel of God’s call to them. This is when he began to open himself to be used completely by God to the point of losing his earthly life. This is when the heavens opened a second time, as they did at his birth, and proclaimed him as the one chosen and anointed by God.

Many people in mainline churches today tend to think that baptism is primarily about washing away sin. That understanding is a product of the emphasis the church placed on original sin beginning in the 5th century. The doctrine of original sin stated that all human beings are inheritors of the original sin of Adam and Eve, and we are therefore born in a state of sinfulness, even before we have a chance to actually do anything that might be categorized as sinful. That belief combined with the high infant mortality rate at that time meant that baptizing babies was seen as a matter of life and death. If a child were to die without having been baptized, they believed that child would be condemned to hell based on that original sin with which they were born. But in the first few centuries after Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection, baptism wasn’t primarily about saving babies from hell. It was about a conversion of life, a commitment, a choice to follow God’s will.

When John the Baptist began baptizing people in the River Jordan, he called them to come and be baptized “for the forgiveness of sins,” so certainly forgiveness of sin is an important part of baptism. But neither John the Baptist nor the disciples of Jesus who later baptized people in Jesus’s name understood sin as a “thing,” a physical stain that could literally be washed off like a coating of dirt. Sin was a state of being, a way of life. It was about your actions, and forgiveness required repentance and amendment of life. John scoffs at some who come to him seeking baptism as a kind of quick fix, like a “get out of jail free” card. He tells them that it is not enough to go through the motions of a ritual; to truly connect with God, to participate in the life he is offering them, they must “bear fruits worthy of repentance.” Their lives must bear witness to their faith in their actions. Besides, if baptism was ONLY about washing away original sin, why did Jesus, whom the church teaches was “without sin,” come to be baptized?

When Jesus is baptized, he’s orienting the human part of himself completely toward God. He’s affirming all the things that have been said about him since his birth. He’s saying “yes” to God’s call. The baptism Jesus underwent wasn’t a kind of Clorox for the soul, a heavenly stain-remover. It was an expression of commitment, of pledging his life to God, of accepting God’s will for his life.

And ideally, we do this when we are baptized as well. When our Book of Common Prayer was revised in 1979, the theologians who worked on that project intentionally moved us away from the theology of baptism as washing away original sin and back to the much earlier theology of baptism as a sacrament of commitment, a sacrament of conversion. This is why the liturgy itself, the order of the service, sets out adult baptism as the “liturgical norm” for the rite – adult candidates are presented for baptism first, and the entire service is framed as one of commitment, one in which those being baptized take vows to act in a certain way, to live out the faith into which they are baptized in deed as well as in word.

Infant baptism is still the “statistical norm” in the Episcopal Church – meaning that there are more people baptized as infants than as adults in the Episcopal Church – but we do not require that infants be baptized, and the theology of our prayer book emphasizes that baptism is a sacrament of conversion, of commitment, of a public declaration of faith. This is why if we do baptize babies or younger children, we require and take very seriously the vows on the part of the parents and godparents: those people must be wholly committed to the faith themselves and raise the child to know Jesus, so that one day that child might come to affirm the faith that was chosen for them as an infant.

When we are baptized, we say “yes” to God’s call on our lives. We pledge to follow Jesus, to live the way he taught us to live. At Jesus’s baptism, he heard words from heaven that said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with him I am well pleased.” At our baptism, we hear words from the priest that say to us: “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.”

We don’t hear the words “This is my Son or Daughter, the Beloved,” because we are not THE Son in the way Jesus was the Son, but at baptism we become part of the Son. While some of our theology says baptism is the means through which we become “children of God,” I see all people, regardless of whether they are baptized or not, or even whether they are Christians or not, as “children of God.” When someone is baptized in a Christian church, they don’t just become a “child of God,” they become part of Christ, joined to his very life, death, and Resurrection. When Jesus used the term “baptism” in his own teaching, he didn’t refer to when he was washed in the river Jordan, but to his impending death. “Can you be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” he asks James and John when they are arguing over who will get to sit at his right and at his left when he comes into his glory. Jesus understands his baptism to be a baptism of suffering, which is perhaps why John the Baptist says that the one who will come after John will baptize “with fire.”

At our baptism, we are joined with Christ’s resurrected life, but we are also joined with the suffering he underwent at the Crucifixion. The commitment we make is one that may very well bring suffering into our lives, for if we live in the way Jesus lived, we will likely meet the same kind of resistance he did from the forces of this world that, as our Baptismal liturgy puts it, “rebel against God” and “destroy the creatures of God” (BCP 302).

But while we face uncertainty and danger in this life, through our baptism we are given a bond with God in Christ that is indissoluble (BCP 298). We are “sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism, and marked as Christ’s own forever.” Those are powerful words! “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.” The Apostle Paul wrote that “nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus,” and nothing reminds us of that truth like our baptism.

Baptism is about commitment, but it’s also about being given an identity. We choose to follow Christ, and we are marked as “Christ’s own forever.” We become part of that wonderful “paschal mystery;” we are joined to the mystical reality of the living, risen Christ that takes us over, indwelling us, inhabiting our very souls so that we begin to transform more and more into the likeness of him who made us.

We belong to Christ. That is the truth of who we are. And our lifelong task is to claim that identity, to keep reaffirming that identity, to say “yes” to God’s call on our lives by striving to live into the vows we made in our Baptismal Covenant.

Today, in place of the Nicene Creed, we will reaffirm our Baptismal Covenant, in the words of the Apostle’s Creed and the five vows that we took at our baptism. If you haven’t been baptized, you are still welcome to join us in reciting these words if they reflect your true belief and commitment, and we can talk later about baptism if you are interested in making that public commitment. If you have been baptized but you don’t remember making these vows and would like to make them again in an intentional, public way, there are several opportunities throughout the year when you can make a reaffirmation of faith. You can talk with me about that after the service as well.

Now, if you would turn to page 6 of your bulletin for the Renewal of the Baptismal Covenant, and please stand as you are able...