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...

"Spiritual but not religious?" Let's be the kind of "religious" Jesus was

Sermon delivered Sunday, Jan. 31, 2016 (4th Sunday After the Epiphany, Year C), at St. Anne’s Episcopal Church, Fremont, CA (where I was filling in as a supply priest). Audio (but no video) posted below on Vimeo.

(1 Corinthians 13:1-13, Luke 4:21-30)

Our Gospel passage from Luke today describes Jesus’s return to his hometown of Nazareth after beginning his ministry in other parts of Galilee. The homecoming does not end well: while the people are initially impressed with his preaching, the story ends with them running him out of town and trying to throw him off a cliff! Jesus observes, in a now oft-quoted statement: “no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.”

But it’s not just in his hometown that Jesus is rejected; he offends lots of people and almost gets attacked in several different stories throughout the Gospels, and of course, ultimately ends up crucified. It was not just his childhood friends and neighbors who found Jesus’s teachings hard to accept or threatening, it was many, many people – and most of them highly religious people.

In reading commentaries on today’s Gospel text, I came across an article titled, “Why Religious People Reject Christ.” Why Religious People Reject Christ. The author points to the fact that today, as in the time of Jesus, “most opposition [to the work of God] comes from the religious crowd, not from those outside.”[1] It’s always the people who are the most passionate about and devoted to their faith who are the most threatened by any criticism of it, even when that criticism is well-deserved.

“Religious people” don’t fare too well in the Gospel texts. It’s the religious leaders and the highly devout who reject Jesus, and ultimately come to call for his execution. Most of the prophets throughout the Hebrew Bible are rejected and scorned by “religious people” as well. Prophets come to remind the faithful of what it truly means to follow God, but they are met with resistance from those who think they already have it all figured out. In today’s particular example, the people of Nazareth are so offended by Jesus reminding them – with stories from their own scriptures, by the way – that God can and does work outside of the people of Israel that they almost kill him. They are so sure that they alone are deserving of God’s favor that the very idea that God would neglect lepers and widows in need in Israel while blessing and healing people who would normally be considered enemies of Israel – a leper who is a commander of the Syrian army and a widow who is a Canaanite, one of the people the Israelites had been commanded to drive out of the land so they could possess it – sends them into a rage. How dare God show mercy on anyone other than us? And how dare you suggest that somehow that has something to do with the fulfillment of God’s purpose?

This kind of thinking is alive and well today, as we all know. There’s a modern “parable” that says that a public sinner was excommunicated and forbidden entry to the church. So he takes his case to God in protest: ‘They won’t let me in, Lord, because I am a sinner,’ he says. ‘What are you complaining about?’ God responds. ‘They won’t let me in either.’[2]

It’s likely because of those kinds of “religious people” that an increasing number of Americans are rejecting organized religion – the latest surveys show that up to 20% of the population now does not claim any particular religious affiliation. [3] When asked, many of them will tell you they are “spiritual but not religious.” Perhaps you’ve heard that line before; perhaps you’ve even said it yourself at some point. Because being “religious” has gotten a bad rep because the “religious” people are the ones who are so often uptight about things, the ones who draw lines around who’s in and who’s out, the ones who manage to take the fun out of everything.

People who say they are “spiritual but not religious” often point out the hypocrisy within organized religion and the ways in which it is used to control or exploit people. They take issue with any group of people thinking that God chooses or prefers them over others, and point out that when people think they have all the answers, not only do they shut out God, but they shut out other people, in the most extreme cases leading to dehumanization and violence.

This critique of religion is really nothing new – in an interesting twist, these modern religiously unaffiliated people are echoing the words of the biblical prophets!

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” Jesus says to the “religious people” of his day. “For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. For you do not go in yourselves, and when others are going in, you stop them. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cross sea and land to make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.” (Matthew 23:13-15)

Before Jesus, John the Baptist called out any within the Jewish faith who might have felt that their lineage as “sons and daughters of Abraham” entitled them to a kind of “free pass” at the last judgment, who might have thought that they were worthy just by virtue of the fact that they were part of God’s “chosen people.” He says to them (you might remember this from a few Sundays ago during Advent):

“Do not begin to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our ancestor,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.” (Luke 3:8-9)

John calls them to “bear fruits worthy of repentance,” to live an authentic life of faith that bears visible fruit in their actions. Being a son or daughter of Abraham means nothing, John says, if your life does not bear witness to God’s justice and love.

Reaching back into the Hebrew Bible, the prophet Amos brought this word of God to the people: “Because you trample on the poor and take from them levies of grain… you… afflict the righteous, … take a bribe, and push aside the needy in the gate… I hate… I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them” (Amos 5:11a, 12b, 21-22a).

Prophets always remind religious people that the correct observance of rituals means nothing if their hearts are not in the right place. You can say all your prayers and go to services every week, but if you do that while people are suffering from injustice and hunger all around you and do nothing to help, you’ve entirely missed the point. And that’s pretty much what the “spiritual but not religious” people are saying as well.

What’s frustrating to me is when people reject religion entirely when they encounter religious hypocrisy and abuses of power, when they see all the things that are wrong with “religious people.” Because what they’re rejecting isn’t actually an authentic representation of religion. It’s a twisted version, filtered through the lens of sinful humanity. The prophets rejected that kind of religion, too, and yet they were all deeply “religious!”

There’s a common misperception among many people, Christian and non-Christian alike, that Jesus’s message carried with it a rejection of “religion.” They see in Jesus’s critiques of Jewish ritual practice and his scathing rebukes of the religious leaders of his day a rejection of religion altogether. I've heard folks say, "Christianity isn't a religion -- it's a relationship." But Jesus didn’t reject religion; Jesus was a devout Jew. He followed all the rituals and traditions of his faith. As we read in last week’s Gospel, “he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom” (Luke 4:16). He knew the scriptures of his tradition well enough to quote them from memory on a regular basis. He observed the Passover. He did all the things that a “good Jewish boy” of his day would have done. He just didn’t let the observance of those rituals blind him to the meaning behind why they were set up in the first place.

Jesus didn’t reject religion, he rejected a certain kind of religiosity, one that puts ritual observance above love of neighbor, one that puts the letter of the law above the spirit of the law. He rejected the kind of religiosity that would allow someone to die on the Sabbath because it is forbidden to do “work” on the Sabbath and healing them would be considered “work.” He rejected the kind of religiosity that makes people think God owes them something, instead of acknowledging that everything is a gift from God, the kind of religiosity that talks about “birthrights” instead of gifts, about righteousness instead of grace. He rejected the same kind of religiosity that “spiritual but not religious” people reject today.

What Jesus and the prophets came to remind us is that that kind of religiosity is not really being “religious,” it’s being self-righteous. It’s not worshipping God, it’s worshipping self. And it’s condemned in all the major world religions.

“This is the fast that I choose,” God says to the people through the prophet Isaiah; this is what he tells them it means to be “religious”:

“to loose the bonds of injustice…

to let the oppressed go free…

to share your bread with the hungry,

and bring the homeless poor into your house” (Isaiah 58:6-7).

I get the critique of the “spiritual but not religious” folks. I do. It’s easy to want to walk away when you encounter hypocrisy and corruption in any institution. But let’s not let that define what it means to be “religious.” Instead of rejecting religion, let’s be the kind of religious Jesus was. The kind of religious that comes to “bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” – that passage from Isaiah that Jesus quoted in the synagogue in his hometown and said he came to fulfill (Isaiah 61:1-2, quoted in Luke 4). Let's be the kind of religious that reminds us that God can and does work through Canaanites and Syrians as well as Israelites. The kind of religious that acknowledges that “we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part” (1 Corinthians 13:9), that only God knows the full truth. The kind of religious that cultivates humility, not pride, and remembers Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians, that “if I do not love, I am nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:2).

Perhaps if we were all that kind of “religious,” people would be drawn to religion instead of repelled by it. Religion could be a part of the solution instead of part of the problem. In our collect for today, we pray for God to “hear the supplications of your people, and in our time grant us your peace” – but we have to play a part in making peace as well. Perhaps God might respond to our prayer with a prayer of his own, that might go something like this:

“O finite and limited human beings, you are indebted to me for all things both in heaven and on earth: Mercifully hear the supplications of my prophets, so that in your time I may use you to bring peace.” Amen.

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[1] Steven J. Cole, “Why Religious People Reject Christ.” From the series “Luke,” on Bible.org. Published 6 June 2013 https://bible.org/seriespage/lesson-16-why-religious-people-reject-christ-luke-414-30 Accessed Jan 28 2016.

[2] Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel.

[3] As cited by the 2014 Pew Research Forum survey of religion in American life. Article on the results of that story here: "America's Changing Religious Landscape," published May 12, 2015. http://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/ Accessed Jan 28 2016.

Bear fruits worthy of repentance

Sermon delivered Sunday, Dec. 16, 2012 (Third Sunday of Advent, Year C), at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN (Zephaniah 3:14-20, Isaiah 12:2-6, Philippians 4:4-7, Luke 3:7-18).

Although today is the Third Sunday of Advent, the Sunday of “joy,” and much of the scripture we heard today calls us to rejoice in the grace and love of God, we haven’t completely lost the Advent theme of repentance. In today’s Gospel reading, John the Baptist tells the people who come to him asking to be baptized that they must “bear fruits worthy of repentance.” His message is that all people need to repent, even those who are sure they are already part of God’s chosen people who have found favor with God.

Against any within the Jewish faith who might have felt that their lineage as sons and daughters of Abraham entitled them to a sort of “free pass” at the last judgment, who might have thought that they were worthy just by virtue of the fact that they were part of God’s “chosen people,” John reminds them that they must also live an authentic life of faith that bears visible fruit in their actions. Being a son or daughter of Abraham means nothing, John says, if your life does not bear witness to God’s justice and love.

According to John, bearing fruit is the standard by which we will be judged, not our membership within a particular religious community. We will be judged not by what we’ve said we believed, but by the testimony of our hearts and our lives.

I’m sure that at some point in your life you’ve heard someone comment on the good deeds and sound life of someone who professes no faith at all. The statement usually goes something like this: “I know some atheists who are better Christians than most Christians I know!” What they are pointing to is the issue of bearing fruit. They see many people who say they believe in Christ judging others, saying one thing and doing another, going to church on Sunday but engaging in corrupt business practices or questionable moral behavior during the week – while they see many people who say they have no religious faith feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger, visiting the sick, working for justice – the very things Christians are called to do. And so, they sigh and say with frustration, “Some atheists are better Christians than most Christians I know!”

That’s actually a very biblical statement. It’s essentially what John the Baptist was saying to the first-century Jewish community, and what Jesus would wind up saying to them as well. “Tax collectors and prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you,” Jesus says to the religious leaders of his day (Matthew 21:31). In other words, the supposedly “unfaithful” can actually be more faithful than the faithful at times. This is why the prophets continually remind us that bearing fruit is of utmost importance.

But lest we think that “bearing fruit” is simply a matter of doing the right things, the prophets also remind us that doing the right things without the right intentions is equally as empty as trusting in the fact that you were born into the “right” religious community. “Bear fruits worthy of repentance,” John the Baptist says. Repentance is a matter of the heart, of the inner orientation and intentions underlying our actions. Not only is it not enough to be children of Abraham, but it is also not enough to observe the right rituals if our hearts are not in the right place.

“For you have no delight in sacrifice,” writes the psalmist, “if I were to give a burnt offering, you would not be pleased. The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise” (Psalm 51:16-17). The prophet Amos brings this word of God to the people: “I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them… but let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:21-22, 24). The prophet Hosea said God desires mercy, not sacrifice (Hosea 6:6), and Jesus quoted this in his teachings.

In all these passages, the issue is not that the rituals themselves were bad – the people believed God had commanded them to do them – but that the people were doing them without the proper intentions in their hearts, and their lives were not bearing the proper fruit. The apostle Paul echoed this theme in his first letter to the Corinthians, when he insisted that without love – without one’s heart being in the right place – all the most praiseworthy actions on behalf of spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ were utterly worthless. “If I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing,” he wrote (1 Corinthians 13:2). This is a common theme, from the earliest of the Hebrew prophets all the way through the New Testament. Although our faith engages our heads – in our assent to certain beliefs or doctrines – and our hands and feet – in our actions in the world – at the end of the day, the life of faith is ultimately a matter of the heart.

This is why we pray the Collect for Purity at the beginning of every Eucharist: “Almighty God, to whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you, and worthily magnify your Holy Name, through Christ our Lord.” We acknowledge that, as the book of 1 Samuel puts it, “The Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7). We might appear to be doing all the “right” things here, being in church, participating in a ritual that we believe Jesus commanded his followers to continue in his name, but if our hearts are not in the right place, our actions will not please God. And so we pray for God’s assistance in orienting ourselves toward God and cleansing our hearts of any sin within them so that our worship of God may be an authentic expression of love and praise.

The word “Advent,” from which this season of the church year takes its name, means “coming,” and the early church fathers spoke of three “advents” in the Christian religion: the first coming of Christ, in his birth at Bethlehem in the first century which we will commemorate at Christmas, the second coming of Christ to judge the world at the end of time, and the daily coming of Christ into the hearts of individual believers. Without that third advent, the first and second advents won’t have much meaning to us. In the season of Advent, we do not only remember what has already been and wait for what is to come, but celebrate what currently is: the presence of Christ with us every day in the hearts of believers around the world.

“Let every heart prepare him room,” says the Christmas hymn “Joy to the World,” and that is indeed the work of Advent, the work of examining our hearts and opening them to receive the coming of Christ that is available to us every day. In this way, John the Baptist’s calls to repentance are not incongruous with our theme of joy for this Third Sunday of Advent, for it is through the heart-cleansing work of repentance that we might discover the joy of the daily coming of Christ into our lives.