Branded: Doing Our Part in Communion

Branded: Doing Our Part in Communion
January 29, 2012
Franktown United Methodist Church

Jesus was sitting down at a table at the home of a leader of the Pharisees. Now there's something you don't see every day. Does it surprise you to hear that about Jesus? Jesus was sitting at a table to eat a meal with some Pharisees. That's a little disturbing, isn't it? I mean Jesus had some pretty harsh things to say about Pharisees. You remember that he's the one who said, "Woe unto you Pharisees, hypocrites! You shut up the kingdom of heaven against people. Woe unto you, Pharisees, you devour the houses of widows! Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness. (Matthew 23:27 KJV) You serpents, you generation of vipers, how can you escape the damnation of hell? (Matthew 23:33 KJV)" Other than that, I don't see any reason why this scene seems strange.

But there he is. Jesus and the Pharisees. Sitting around the table sharing a meal. And somebody gets a little too exuberant in the crowd. Somebody is overcome by the sight of these two parties together. This person thinks its a sign that bipartisanship is going to break out. Maybe he's had a little too much wine. At any rate, this guy yells out, "How happy are those who will sit down to feast at the kingdom of God!"

Jesus hears the man. Who couldn't? He yelled it out. But he doesn't say, "Yeah, it's going to be great." And he doesn't call him out by saying, "Hey, don't get your hopes up just because I'm breaking bread with these whited sepulchres." No, he responds with a parable, the point of which seems to be that the table is open, but you've got to want to come.

A man had a feast, a great feast. And he invited people to come. But everyone had an excuse for why they couldn't come. "Oh, you know I just bought some property and I've got to go look after it." Oh, you know, I just got married." "Oh, you know, I just bought some cows." They wouldn't come. So the man sends his servants out in the streets of the town to invite the poor, the lame, the outcasts. And they come, but there is still more room. So he sends them out into the countryside to gather whomever they can. But he is most disturbed with those who wouldn't come. Those who were invited initially will not taste the meal.

Today we're continuing our Branded series. We've been looking at things that mark us as Christians and we spent two weeks looking at baptism. Next week we'll begin to talk about ministry and the various forms of ministry God's people get involved in. But last week and this week we are talking about communion, the Lord's Supper, the Eucharist.

Last week I spent a lot of time interacting with John Wesley's sermon, "The Duty of Constant Communion." Wesley laid out the case for why we ought to come to the table. Why we ought not to neglect Jesus' command to 'do this to remember me." But today I want to talk about what our part in communion is. The meal is God's gift. But what we do with it is something else. And Jesus' story about the feast makes it clear that we can accept the invitation or not.

I mentioned last week that I had put out a question on Facebook asking for people to give me their reflections on communion and I shared one last week. Other people wrote about the great appreciation they have for the meal. Margaret Holland wrote to say that "It reminds me that God is the host of the party and all are invited to eat, reflect, and pray." It remind me of that guy at the feast. It's a party. Everyone is invited.

Skeeter Armstrong said, "For me it is a means of grace that allows us to put aside our differences and gather around the tables as the family of God knowing that, no matter how sinful we are or feel, that all is forgiven and we can begin again to become more Christ-like." It's a time to begin again. To confess our sins. To reconcile with one another. To become more Christ-like.

Debbie Bridges said something similar. She said, God's "grace and calming is transmitted to my body and soul telling me yet again - try to be, to do, to work harder and you will be a better Christian." Grace that leads to action.

There is an ethical side to communion. It is a party and it frees us and then it moves us be something for the world. Last week we talked about coming to the table, but today I want to talk about what it means to leave the table.

The other scripture that we have for today is from Paul's first letter to the Corinthian Christians. Some people will talk about this passage as the place where Paul lays out a 'theology' of communion. But really Paul is not doing that. Paul assumes that the Corinthians know what communion is. He's just trying to straighten out their practice of it. Because...as we mentioned last week...the Corinthians were taking communion unworthily.

Last week we talked about how some people will use this passage as an excuse not to receive communion because they are afraid they are not worthy to receive it. Wesley responded in his sermon that the problem for the Corinthians is not that they were unworthy. Wesley takes that as a given. We're all unworthy. The problem was the manner in which they received communion. The Corinthians, he said, were "taking the holy Sacrament in such a rude and disorderly way that one was 'hungry, and another drunken.'"*

But it was more than just a rowdy party. The community was neglecting its form, what it was supposed to look like. One New Testament scholar, Peter Lampe, says that the early Christian practice of communion was probably something akin to a potluck dinner. People would bring food and share what they had. But the problem was that the richer Corinthians, who had more food to bring, were not waiting for others before breaking into the food. So people were going hungry while others were getting out of hand.** What kind of community was this?

So Paul reminds them what the dinner is all about. He reminds them that the origin of the meal was in Christ's last meal with the disciples. Jesus was thinking about his death on the cross when he told them, "This is my body." He was thinking about his death when he said, "This is my blood." So now, Paul says, "This means that every time you eat this bread and drink from this cup you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes." (1 Corinthians 11:26 GNT)

You proclaim the Lord's death. Now there is an undeniable joy when we come to this table. We are tasting heaven. We are experiencing communion with the saints. We are entering the kingdom of heaven. We should be shouting, with that guy in the Pharisee's house, "Happy are those who feast in the kingdom of God!" But we are proclaiming Jesus' death. Our connection is not only with the risen Christ who will bring all things to final victory, but also with the Christ who knew the suffering of this world and who stood by the weak. As Paul says at the beginning of 1 Corinthians, "I proclaim Christ, and him crucified."

So the way that we eat this meal says something about what Christ is doing in the world. And how we live as people who share this meal says something about what Christ is doing in the world. As Lampe says:
"In the Eucharist, the death of Jesus Christ is not made present and 'proclaimed' (11:26) only by the sacramental acts of breaking bread and of drinking wine from one cup.  In the Eucharist, Christ's death is not proclaimed only by the liturgical words that accompany the sacramental acts.  No, in the Eucharist, Christ's death is also proclaimed and made present by means of our giving ourselves up to others.  Our love for others represents Christ's death to other human beings. Only by actively loving and caring for others does the participant in the Eucharist 'proclaim' Christ's death as something that happened for others."***

That's why I say that perhaps the most important part of communion is what happens when you leave this table. If we only come to this table to be reminded of what God has done for us...if I only come to be reminded of what God has done for me...then I have not gone far enough. This is where the Branded series takes a very important turn. While we receive God's claim on our lives...while we respond and accept God's claim on our lives...our journey does not end there. Unless we then turn out to the world and express with our own lives the other-directed love of God, then we have turned the gospel into a pat on the back, a massage at the spa, and a cozy spot by the fire. The gospel took Jesus to fishing boats and sick people. The gospel led him to sit at the table and to eat meals with Pharisees.

It's not wrong that its our neediness that leads us to church or to God. We all have deep needs. We may come to find that they're not needs worth having, as Will Willimon said, but we do have them and they open us up to God. But if the only reason we keep coming to church is to have our own needs cradled and cuddled, then we have not truly been broken open by God. We are not proclaiming the Lord's death until he comes. We are simply proclaiming our continuing need to be at the center.

The first step in gospel healing is to know that we are loved. That is absolutely true. For many of us, this is the greatest breakthrough we have to make. But that healing is only effective if we learn how to love ourselves. To have the opportunity to love another person and to love God is to become truly human. Communion opens us up so that we can go on to love.

Yesterday we celebrated the life of a remarkable woman in this sanctuary. Laura Dennis was a huge part of the life of this congregation. She was a giant, even though she only stood so high. She was a leader because she knew how to love. She loved her family. She loved her church. And she loved the world. As I mentioned in the service yesterday, she was pushing UNICEF boxes just a few years ago. She was making a list of needs for residents at Heritage Hall even when she was one of those residents.

Laura Dennis is at this table. She is able to shout today, "How happy are those who feast at the table in the kingdom of God!" But she can do that because she ate at this table in the not-quite kingdom of God and was nourished on the food that Jesus provides.

So come to the table. Let it remind you who you are. Let it form you into a servant of Christ. So that you can proclaim Christ's death and Christ's power and Christ's love. Thanks be to God.

*John Wesley, "The Duty of Constant Communion," in This Holy Mystery: A United Methodist Understanding of Holy Communion by Gayle Carlton Felton, [Discipleship Resources: Nashville, 2006], pp. 67-68.
**Peter Lampe, "The Eucharist: Identifying with Christ on the Cross," Interpretation magazine, Vol. XLVIII, No. 1, Jan. 1994, p. 41. I am grateful to Brooke Willson for putting me onto this investigation with his observations on 1 Corinthians 11.
***ibid., p. 45

Branded: The Duty of Constant Communion

So here we are in week 3 of our new worship series - entitled "Branded." In this series we are talking about the things that brand Christians as a distinctive people. Things that Christians do that nobody else does and that Christians all do - whether we are United Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, or Catholics.

We spent the last two weeks talking about baptism - what it means that God claims us from before we are born. What it means that we claim the God who claims us. What it means that "You will die" to sin when you go through the waters of baptism. And what it means to walk with Christ as a baptized sinner.

Today, though, I want to turn for two weeks to something we spent a lot of time on last year as we came out of Lent. I want to talk about communion. Now I realize that we are walking on some sensitive ground here because last year we moved from a practice of having communion on first Sundays and special Sundays to having communion just about every Sunday. And it may have been one of the biggest changes to worship that has happened here in a long, long time.

Last May, after we had been having communion for about 6 months, I asked for some responses. Many of those responses were very appreciative. “It has changed my experience of worship,” one person said. I guess that could go either way!

“I realized that it didn’t become less special but more special when we had communion every week,” said another.

Somebody else said, “For all the doctrines, dogmas, liturgies and allegories associated with Christianity, only communion is a true connection to the presence of Jesus.”

And then there's this one - “Surprisingly it has made communion more precious and helps me to remember every day we should be thankful for God’s grace – noticing the ordinary and not taking anything or anyone for granted.  I love it!”

But it wasn't all this way. Some folks said that they didn't like having it every Sunday. For some it just didn't feel right. It felt less special. They worried that other parts of the service, like the sermon, might get less attention because of time concerns. They liked the rhythm of communion once a month and felt like the words of the ritual might become too familiar, too rote, too mechanical. For some it dredged up old questions about what the clergy are here for. What exactly is Alex doing up there at the table? Why are he and Peter the only ones who break the bread? And what kind of innovation was this? Were we becoming Episcopalian? Or Catholic? How many other United Methodist churches are doing this?

I'll be honest - not a whole lot, even though our denomination as a whole has encouraged the practice of weekly communion. In 2004 we adopted an official study as United Methodists entitled This Holy Mystery which, for the first time, set down our understanding of communion. It encourages churches to move in this direction.

But we are not doing this because the United Methodist Church says to. We are not doing this because I say we have to. I want to revisit this because our feelings and questions about communion are very important. And I don't want to discount any negative feelings about the way we are doing communion because they say that something significant is going on. Something we value is being touched on. And I don't want to use fancy theology to convince you that you shouldn't feel the way that you do - or that you should. I do want you, however, to pay attention to those feelings and questions and give them serious examination.

And who better to do serious examination of our souls than John Wesley?

Now John Wesley is an important figure for Methodists because he was really the first one of us. He was a preacher, a writer, a campus minister, and a world-class organizer. When people threw the slur at him that he had a method for everything, he took it as a compliment, and when they went on to call him a Methodist, he took that as the name for his new movement.

It was a movement, not a church. Wesley was an Anglican priest in 18th century England. His father was an Anglican priest. He saw what he was doing as a renewal movement for his church, which was spiritually dead and morally bankrupt. But he gave his blessing to the American Methodists forming their own church after the American Revolution. And after he died, the British Methodists formed their own denomination, too.

O.K., O.K. - but what did John Wesley believe about communion? Well, he believed that we have a duty of constant communion. Not frequent communion. Not once a month communion. Not high holy days communion. He was a stickler for constant communion. And why did he believe that? Because Jesus said, in the gospel reading which we had from Luke for today, as he celebrated the Last Supper with his disciples, that his followers should "do this in remembrance of me." Do we have some hand motions for this?

Now remember this, because what I'm going to do now is to give you some pieces from John Wesley's sermon entitled, "The Duty of Constant Communion," and let you see how he thought about this question, because you will see that the issues have not really changed. But the theme that runs through the whole sermon is "Do this in remembrance of me."

The sermon starts with this paragraph and it's a bad opening paragraph because it's the best paragraph in the whole sermon. You really shouldn't show off your best stuff in the first paragraph. But that's what he does and what he says is:
"'Do this in remembrance of me.' It is no wonder that men who have no fear of God should never think of doing this.  But it is strange that it should be neglected by any that do fear God and desire to save their souls; yet nothing is more common.  One reason why many neglect it is, they are so much afraid of 'eating and drinking unworthily,' that they never think how much greater the danger is when they do not eat or drink it at all.'*

There are two scripture references here. One is Jesus' command from the gospel. The other is a quote from 1 Corinthians in which Paul warned the Corinthians about their conduct at the communion table. That command about "eating and drinking unworthily" gets used sometimes as a reason for not taking communion. But we'll get to that.

Harry Kennon, who is a retired pastor in our conference, quoted this on Facebook this week when I asked for some responses about communion and he said, "Ironically, some seem afraid of grace and forgiveness more than sin." Wow.

So John Wesley goes on to look at what this command to "Do this in remembrance of me" looks like. First he looks at why we should do this. And his first reason is a good one - because Jesus commands it. And secondly, he says, the mercy we experience in communion is good for us. That mercy is forgiveness of our sins and nourishment and strengthening of our souls. Why would we not want that?

Thirdly, it lets us leave our sins behind so that we are free to move on to perfection. Fourthly, the ancient Christians did it and the whole Church did it for many centuries - four times a week at least plus holy days. In fact the early church had a rule against coming to prayers and not taking communion. Fifthly, the Gospels and Paul's letters show that the practice was not just a show, but an outward sign of an invisible grace. Something really happens in communion. Something inside us.

So there are all sorts of good reasons to receive communion, not least of which is the command to "do this in remembrance of me."


Then Wesley gets into the objections to constant communion. In the first objection he imagines a person saying, "Yeah, but where does it say that I should do this constantly?" Wesley thinks this is a slippery slope. If we get into the business of determining when to selectively apply the commands of God we will have all sorts of excuses. We can say, for instance, "Well, yes, God commands me to take care of my parents but I did that once." If we have the opportunity to obey God's commands we should do that whenever we have the opportunity.

So there is the duty aspect of this thing. But there is also the mercy aspect of this thing. If God is handing out grace and mercy, why would you take advantage of it? God wants us to be happy, God knows that we can't be truly happy using our own means, so God gives us these means. Why would you refuse that offer of grace? And then Wesley goes back to his main theme - But even if you didn't get anything from it, it's still a command from God.

"O.K., O.K., but let's go back to that passage in 1 Corinthians where it says, 'whoever eats and drinks unworthily, eats and drinks damnation upon themselves.' I'm not worthy so I won't go forward."

Wesley, in effect, says to this objection, "You are always going to be unworthy, so if you are never going to reach out and receive God's mercy because you are unworthy, how will you ever be saved? Unworthiness goes with the territory when you are human beings. And on top of that - the command is to "Do this in remembrance of me" and so what you are saying is that you are going to disobey God's command because of your unworthiness which only makes you more unworthy. And on top of all this, Paul is not saying that unworthy people shouldn't go to communion. He is saying that when people go to communion they should not eat and drink unworthily. The problem was that the early Christians were getting rowdy and drunk at the communion meal. That is not an issue in most churches today.

"O.K., O.K., well, what if I have fallen into some sin lately or committed some crime?"" Well, you should repent, but don't add to your sin by failing to come to receive grace.

"O.K., O.K., well, what if I'm too busy to properly prepare to come to communion. What if my business prevents me from doing the self-examination and soul-searching I ought to do?" Wesley says, if you're too busy to do the work of your soul you are "unpreparing" yourself for heaven. Don't act like it takes an act of congress to get ready for communion. This is the way he puts it: "No business can hinder you from this, unless it be such as hinders you from being in a state of salvation.  If you resolve and design to follow Christ, you are fit to approach the Lord's table.  If you do not design this, you are only fit for the table and company of devils."

Now we get to the big objection - "Well, I don't want to take communication too often because it may 'abate my reverence' for it." 'Abate my reverence' for it is 18th century language for 'it will get to be rote and I may not get that feeling I like to get.

Wesley goes back to his theme - The command says, "Do this is in remembrance of me," not "Do this in remembrance of me unless it abates your reverence."

"But I've been going to communion constantly and I'm not experiencing the benefits I expected." I bet you can guess Wesley's response. Even if you don't experience any benefits, God commands it. And even if you don't feel it, on some unfelt level you are receiving the benefits of grace even if your don't yet see the effects. God may yet give you eyes to see what all this constant communion will bring.

Now, I admit that Wesley can be a little rigid. You can come out of a sermon like this and think that the one line summary of it is something like, "What part of 'Do this in remembrance of me' don't you understand?"

But here's why I think Wesley and Jesus ought to be heard: Because like every good mystery they have to be lived to be understood. You can't explain what parenthood is all about until you've gone through childbirth or colic or nightmares or potty training or adolescence or graduation. You can't explain what love is after the first kiss or the wedding vows or the many years of companionship and trials. You can't explain what a calling is like or a profession. You can throw words at it, but you just have to give yourself to it.

I get the nervousness about communion. I really do. I feel it myself. When I stand here I want to feel the immense mystery of it all. I don't want to let it just pass by. And does my mind sometimes wander as come back to the old familiar words that I can say in my sleep? It does. Do I sometimes feel unworthy to stand here in this place and say these words? Often. But one of the most powerful things I have even done as a pastor is to take a loaf of bread and to break it and to see your faces through the broken halves of bread. To share that bread with you. To receive that bread from you. To know that the life of Christ which was poured out for you and for me is present in some way that goes far beyond me and what's going on with me that day.

In my sermons on communion last year I said this, but I'll close with these words again today. I preside at this table so that you can preside at every other table in this whole, blessed, God-hungry world. I preside here to remind you that you dare not neglect God's presence out there. You come here because Jesus' commands you, but you go there because Jesus' commands you, too.

Your behavior out there is a testimony to what this bread here means. Don't forget that people are hungry for bread, hungry for grace, hungry for love, hungry for justice, hungry for a new day and they don't know where to find it, but you have been to the table. You know where the bread is. And you know how to give it. Don't you forget that this bread is a promise of what God is doing in this world.

You don't need an advanced degree or the bishop's hands on your head to break a loaf of bread. But unless you're feeding regularly at a table where you are reminded that the bread you hold is heaven on earth, then you will start to lose the ability to see that every other morsel of food you take in your hands is a sign of grace. My calling tells me to feed people in the name of Jesus, so that you can feed people in the name of Jesus until the kingdom comes. And the duty we respond in eating here is constant. Just like the love that brought us here. Constant. Thanks be to God.

*All quotations from Wesley's sermon are from the reprint in This Holy Mystery: A United Methodist Understanding of Holy Communion, Gayle Carlton Felton, [Discipleship Resources: Nashville, 2005], pp. 65-70.

Branded: So You're Baptized. Now What?

Branded: So You're Baptized. Now What?
Franktown UMC
January 15, 2011

Last weekend I was with the youth in Ocean City for a big retreat. It was great fun. The Renners were very gracious in offering us their condo. The weather was great. We saw some great bands. And we learned some sign language.

Reggie Kapps was the main speaker. Very dynamic. Very funny. Very powerful. And in one of his sessions he was telling the story of Genesis chapter 3 - the Adam and Eve story in which God tells them - "If you eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you will die." Reggie really wanted to emphasize this point, so he kept saying, "You will die." He got us to say it with him. "You will die."

After repeating it a few times he looked over at the sign language interpreter who was up on the stage for the whole session and he saw that she had been repeating it right along with us - "You will die." So he got us to do the sign language with her. "You will die." Try it with me - "You...will...die." We've been doing it around the house all week. Somebody does something we don't like - "You will die."

It's a good place for us to start this morning because today we're going to continue our "Branded" series and we're going to talk about baptism again and the first thing that I have to say is - "You will die." Wow. Really?

Now just a refresher on what this series is all about and why we're calling it "Branded." I talked about wearing my cowboy boots as I was praying about this and some of you were singing the theme song to the old Chuck Connors TV show last week when you heard the title: "Branded. Scorned as the one who ran. What do you do when you're branded and you know you're a man?" In the TV show Connors plays a disgraced cavalry soldier who is branded with the label of being a coward. His saber is broken in two and he carries that broken saber as a symbol of what others have come to think of him.

Some of you know what it's like to be marked like that. To have other people label you and to treat you as that label instead of as a person. Maybe you've been through a divorce and you've felt like that has marked you. After the sermon last week, somebody told me that that's how she had felt following her divorce - like some scarlet 'D' was marked on her for all to see.

What we talked about last week, however, was how the brand of our baptism marks us in the most important way. It shows us how God claims us. How God reveals to us the reality of who we are. How it gives us our identity. I showed the clip from the movie Toy Story in which Buzz Lightyear discovers that he is not a space ranger but a toy and how that was a crushing blow to his self-image. Then he looked at his foot and there was his owner's name - Andy - written right there on his boot. Then last Sunday night, Lena Gonzalez came to Bible Study and showed us that she had written 'God' on the bottom of her boot. Baptism reminds us that God has a claim on us and the love of God in baptism is a gift that gives us our identity.

Today, though, I want to talk about what it means for us to claim that gift. Why is it important that we accept the gift of baptism and what do we do with it? And the reason it is important is because - "You will die."

Let's start with another movie, though. In thinking about branding, I started to think about the ways that we brand ourselves. So I asked for some tattoo stories...

[Video clip]

Tattoos are not really about putting something on our skin. Tattoos are really about something going on inside of us. They are about an inward journey. Sometimes those journeys are about remembrance and desire and a reaching for something more. Sometimes, though, those journeys are just about pain. They're about drawing blood and letting the world see what is going on. When young people cut themselves it is often about a sense that they are not right...that the world is not right...that there is so much brokenness and hurt that they have to give it some kind of physical expression. When all we see is pain, the voice we hear is the one that says, "You will die."

So let us hear a new word from Paul. We read from Paul's letter to the Romans this morning. And Paul has a hopeful word. Did you hear it? Paul does not say, "You will die." No, what Paul says is, "You are dead." Doesn't that sound hopeful?

Paul is writing to the new Christian churches because they are all trying to get their minds wrapped around what believing in Jesus means. They didn't have youth rallies and a lot of hymns or even a New Testament to tell them about Jesus. So they often got it wrong. Especially the grace side of things. Surely we have to do something to earn God's love. Surely there is a step we have to take to get God's grace.

Paul says, 'No.' What we have, on our side of the equation, is nothing like merit. Nothing like faithfulness. Nothing we can show that gives us a claim on God's love. What we have...what is ours to offer...is brokenness and sin. And what is the fruit of sin? What does sin merit from God? Condemnation. Rejection. Repudiation. God is great. God is good. God is righteous. God is holy. God doesn't have any truck with sin. God doesn't fool around with ungodliness. That's why it's called ungodliness. And we live in an ungodly world and we lead ungodly lives. So what should we expect from God? "You will die." And what does God give us? "Jesus loves you." God gives us grace.

So when Paul says this, the immediate response is - O.K. We sin and God gives us grace. And God's grace is sufficient to cover every sin. So that means the more sin there is the more opportunity God has to offer grace. So why don't we sin more so God has more opportunity to be God? Makes sense doesn't it?

That's how Paul begins this sixth chapter of Romans - with this question hanging in the air. And his response is "Me genoito!," which is Greek for "Are you crazy?" Once you know that sin equals death you can't go back to believing that it's a harmless thing. I mean, you can. There are plenty of baptized Christians who have gone astray. Some of them are named you and me. But when we do that we are not in our right minds. Being baptized in Christ, we have been exposed to the news about who we really are and what the world really is. We have been immersed in grace. When we sin we're just being stupid - putting our fingers in our ears and pretending that God doesn't care.

We can make God out to be the big, bad authority figure when we do that. We can say, "God doesn't want us to have any fun. God is just sitting there with a willow switch waiting to whack us when we do something God doesn't like." But the reality is God is standing there watching us beat ourselves with willow switches when we sin. We can blame God, but it's always been the case that we do the greatest damage to ourselves.

Stephen Dobyns wrote a poem on the Garden of Eden story that ends with the line: "Kicked out, kicked out. Who could believe that lie? We'd begged him for a chance to make it on our own."* Dobyns is playing with the notion that perhaps being kicked out of the garden is not the best explanation for what happened. We can push the blame off on God, but it's really we who want to try to make it own, apart from God's grace.

But here's the thing that's most amusing. Dead people don't have the power to harm God and when we sin we are dead. Do you remember that this was the good news? It's not that "You will die." The truth is "You are dead."

Romans chapter 6 verse 1 - "What then should we say? Are we to persist in sin in order that grace may increase? Me genoito! Are you crazy? We are dead to sin - how can we still live in it? Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized to death?" You were baptized to death. You gave your life to Jesus, he sucked you under the waters of baptism, you drowned, you died. I know it seems all sweetness and light when we take a baby in those beautiful white gowns and douse him with water...when we lay hands on her head...but when we give that baby to Jesus...we are baptizing her to death.

Jesus did not come to walk the earth so that we could keep on playing our pretend games. Jesus did not go to the cross so that we could mess around like life doesn't matter. Jesus didn't put on a crown of thorns so that we could fritter away our potential on things that do not last. Jesus came to baptize broken people to death.

The poet Franz Wright was baptized as an adult after facing down many demons in his life. In his poem "Baptism," he writes about how the broken person he was is dead:
I drowned him
and he's not coming back.  Look
he has a new life
a new name
now
which no one knows except 
the one who gave it.**
This is the good news - that we are dead, but, look, "he has a new life, a new name now, which no one knows except the one who gave it."

Paul's way of putting this is that we were buried with Christ through baptism into his death so that we also might walk in newness of life, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father. You were baptized to death so that you can walk in newness of life. You were baptized to death so that you can live.

Then Paul says in verse 5, "If, being united with him, we are dead"...that word 'united' there is an agricultural term. "Sumphutoi" is the word. It's what you say when you're planting seeds together in the ground. They are "sumphutoi." That are united in death. The seeds go down into the earth and you cover them up and you think that they're gone for good. But something happens down there in the earth. Some mysterious power brings something forth from those dead, inert seeds. Some new life raises up from the grave. Some new shoots begin to spring up. Some new growth breaks through the earth. Something green is growing.

And it doesn't happen all at once. It's not a full grown plant. It's got a lot of growth ahead of it. It will have to brave the wind and the heat. It will have good days and bad days. It will still have to depend on having the nutrients it needs. The water it needs. The sun it needs. But those seeds that were dead. They are alive. And there is no more miraculous thing on earth than when dead things come back alive.

If you are baptized into Jesus, you are dead. Maybe you forgot that. Maybe you're acting like a zombie and wandering around in some sort of half-life where you forgot that you are dead and then all of your actions have the character of sin. But you have been baptized to death so that you can truly live. The grace that claimed you is yours for the having. You are fearfully and wonderfully made and the Love that made you is waiting for you to claim it. The evil of this world...the sin in your life...has no power over this Love.

Every day that you are alive you have this Love - not because you earned it, but because God gives it. But every day you have this Love, you have the opportunity to live it. You are branded. Thanks be to God.

*from a Facebook post by Mary Karr, 14 Dec 2011. She goes on to say, "Talk about hubris. The human arrogance of projecting onto the place where we imagine God sits all our own fear, malice, dread and loathing."
**"Baptism," Franz Wright, in Walking to Martha's Vineyard [Alfred A. Knopf: New York, 2003], pp. 44-45.

Branded - The Side Effects of Baptism

Today we begin a new worship series and I want to spend a minute explaining what it's all about. One of my favorite questions for Bible study is: If I took this Bible passage seriously, what would I have to change about the way I'm living? I use the question with groups, too, and I used it last month in the Advent Bible Study. We were talking about what it meant to live intentionally as a Christian and I asked, "If we took this seriously what would we have to change?" And someone asked, "Does that mean you don't think we are taking it seriously?"

The answer to that question is, "Yes. I don't think we have the least interest in taking God seriously." If we took God and the Bible seriously things would look different. People would behave differently. We would not be disconnected from the poor. We would not let ideologies or political stances or media narratives prevent us from seeing what is really going on around us. There would be more humility and less hostility. There would be more compassion and less callousness to life around us - human, animal and plants. We would embrace joyfully the life we know through Jesus instead of living anxiously the lives we try to create for ourselves. No, we don't take this God thing seriously.

So what keeps us connected to this story? What is it that Christians can do to re-form their lives, to re-connect their stories to the biblical story? So I started praying about that. I was wearing my cowboy boots when I was praying about this and I started thinking about this Sunday. Baptism of the Lord Sunday. What do our baptisms mean? And I looked down at my cowboy boots and started one of my periodic day dreams. Every so often I like to imagine that I could head out to West Texas and ride the ranges with a big herd of Longhorns. There I am under that great big Texas sky riding my trusty horse, Augustine. (Hey, you have your dreams and I have mine.) I pull out my harmonica and start playing and stop long enough to yodel and then sing, "Oh, give me a home, where the buffalo roam..." That's when I look down and see the brand on my cattle - the Rocking J. And that's how this series was born.

Branded! That's what we are brothers and sisters. If you have been baptized in Christ you are branded. And that brand is unique to us in the church. Nobody else goes out there claiming to be baptized. When you join the military they give you dog tags and uniforms and specialized training. When you go to college they give you school colors to wear and a silly school song to sing. When you become a Christian you are branded by being baptized. And your distinctive act is the meal of communion. And you become a minister. Those are the things that make Christians unique and that bind them together. So we're going to spend these weeks between Epiphany and Lent looking at Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry to see why they even make a difference and what it would mean to take them seriously.

To get into baptism today though, I want to introduce you to Naama Margolese. Naama is an 8-year-old girl, born in Chicago but who has immigrated to Israel. She is an Orthodox Jew and you can see from her picture that she is dressed in long sleeves and in a long skirt, the kind of modest dress that Orthodox Jews have long promoted.

Naama made the news last week because when she was on the way to her Orthodox Jewish school a group of people began to spit on her. They called her a prostitute, only they used much more vulgar language than that. And cameras caught her crying as she ran from the bullies who were attacking her just because she was going to school.

Now let me tell you who the bullies were. They were grown men. They were members of an even more conservative Jewish group who believed that the dress code for the school where Naama attends was too liberal. This group, guided by their religious beliefs, goes out every day to yell at little girls and to tell them that they are worthless, sinful, and faithless. They call 8-year-old girls prostitutes.

I'm not singling this faith group out. There are people in every world religion who do terrible things in the name of God. We hear stories in Afghanistan about the abuse of women and Christians that makes our blood boil. Within Christianity it happens and it's why, for many people who have not grown up in the church, the first word that comes to mind when you ask them about who Christians are is 'judgmental.'

But here's what this story reveals - religion becomes dangerous when it obscures the reality right in front of us. When we can no longer see the people right in front of us for who they really are because we have some misguided interpretation of what God demands, we can do monstrous things. And there have been major protests in Israel this week because of this incident.

Here is what I want to say - and really this is the whole point of this sermon. If you don't get anything else, this is it - God is fed up with our lies about the world and about ourselves. God is all about reality and telling the truth about who we are and and what the world is. And the way God shows us that truth is through baptism.

Baptism is where the gospel of Mark starts. We spent a lot of time in the weeks leading up to Christmas talking about John the Baptizer. Mark tells us that people went to him to be baptized for the forgiveness of their sins. There were rituals of cleansing and washing with Judaism, but John seemed to offer something more democratic. It wasn't just the priests being washed before they went into the holy precincts of the Temple. Everyone was coming to him. "The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem." That's a pretty successful ministry for a guy who wore camel skins and ate grasshoppers.

Jesus' baptism seems different again, though. John had said that he was coming. He said he was a servant to Jesus. Said he wasn't even worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He also said, "I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit." Water was good for getting off the dirt that was already on you. But transformation required something more. The Holy Spirit was about fire and combustibility. And fire is about chemical reactions - reducing things to their simplest elements. Jesus' baptism was not just about forgiveness. It was about identity - about who we are when you get right down to the core. About reality.

That's clear even in Jesus' own baptism. He comes down from Galilee to begin his public ministry and John sends him under the waters of the Jordan River just like he had done with all those Jerusalemites and Judeans. But when Jesus came up out of those waters something different happened. John looked up and he saw the skies split wide open and a dove descending from heaven - it was the Spirit! And a voice came from heaven and said, "You are my Son, whom I love. I am pleased, well-pleased with you."

Now, we don't know for whose benefit this voice came forth. Did Jesus really need to know that he was God's Son? Since Jesus was God and therefore didn't haven't the problem of sin that we all have, did he really need to be baptized for the forgiveness of sins? We're not even sure that anybody else but Jesus heard this. Other gospels suggest that they did. But Mark reports this as a proclamation to Jesus. "You are my Son. I love you. I am well-pleased with you." Even if nobody else heard it, Jesus could not have been under any illusions about who he was after this. God, in this baptism, is all about reality. And Jesus goes off from here to the wilderness to face down the devil.

You might be saying at this point - OK. Jesus was baptized. I was baptized, too. Maybe your folks got you the font when you were a baby because Grandma Jean insisted. Maybe you had a powerful experience at a revival and a visiting evangelist dunked you in the river. Maybe you've never been baptized. I don't know what your experience was. But the question you may be asking is: What difference does it make? Maybe you don't stay up late thinking about your baptism. Maybe it hardly ever crosses your mind. Is baptism even really necessary? I mean, after all, it's just water isn't it?

Now your preacher is on dangerous ground. Because what if I say, "Oh, no. It's not just water. It is a means of grace instituted by God and commanded by Jesus. If there is anything that is necessary for salvation, it is baptism. And if you have not been up here to get yourself wet then you are bound for hell." What if I said that?

Well, you know the consequence of that. You immediately start thinking of exceptional circumstances. I know of a woman who was a nurse in the maternity ward of a hospital. And if she knew that a child had parents who weren't religious, and especially if the baby had life-threatening symptoms, she would go around in the dark of night baptizing babies in the nursery because she did not want those children to end up in limbo or worse.

Or maybe you think - what if I'm out in the desert and I'm crawling along dying of thirst. There's no water for a hundred miles. And I'm not a Christian but I think I'm going to die and I'm converted by a talking cactus and but there is no way for me to be baptized with water. What then, huh? Huh? [I have got to stop wearing cowboy boots when I do my sermon prep.]

These are ridiculous scenarios - even though theologians through the ages have tried to deal with just these situations. When the whole baptismal thing gets reduced to some physical mechanism where the right minister says the right words with the right water - then we have made baptism into something it is not.

But, OK, let's go back to your question. "It's just water, isn't it?" What if I say, "Yes. You're right. It's just water. It's really just kind of a traditional thing that we do but really the important thing is that you change your life and live better for God." What a travesty! Do you realize what we've done then? If I say that, then what I'm saying is that there is no grace in your salvation. I'm saying that it's all about you and what you do and how well you do it and how sincerely you mean it. If you get it right then we can say that this baptism with water thing was effective.

But that is a lie. The whole problem with this messed up world that we live in is that we believe it's all about us. When we get moralistic and judgmental it's because we think we've got it and the other guy or gal doesn't. We can feel superior because we did it and they didn't. When we get depressed and self-loathing because we know we have messed up we fall into the trap the other way and we still think it's all about us and what we didn't do.

The whole point of baptism, though, is to show us that our salvation, our identity, our reality is not something we create. Did you hear where we began the scripture reading this morning? That first reading. From Genesis. There's water. It's dark. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. There are way too many days when I wake up and say, in the beginning I created every good and and every bad thing that I associate with myself. And those are the days when I am an arrogant unbeliever who may give lip service to God but who really believes that he is the source of all life.

Do you hear where I am going with all this? Baptism matters because we are a forgetful people. Baptism is necessary because we need a God who can save us from ourselves. Baptism is necessary because God wants to give it to us. Laurence Stookey, a professor at Wesley Seminary says, "In short, we are oblivious to the identity we have been given by our Creator.  God, aware of our malady and of our inability to effect a cure (or even recognize the impairment), acts to reveal our true identity to us."* And how does this happen? Through baptism.

Is it necessary? Well, how well do you think we do at remembering our identity without it? The theologian Gerhard Forde says, "To use the analogy of love, one might say that baptism has about the same necessity as that of a lover's kiss.  That is certainly not a legal necessity!  If it is, love has already flown.  But if the lover were asked, 'Is this really necessary?' what could the answer possibly be?  Most likely one would reply that the question was ridiculous!  What sort of necessity is behind an unconditional gift?"**

One of the hardest things for us to accept is that baptism is a gift. It is given because God wants to give it. Jesus told his disciples in the Great Commission to "Go into all the world making disciples and baptizing them." Baptism exists, not because we need a mechanism to express our faithfulness to God, but because God wants a way to bless the world.

O.K., but if God is letting me know who I really am...if God is able to tell me through baptism what I'm really like...then how can that be a good thing? Because who I am is a pretty broken thing.

Someone posted this picture on Facebook this week. It's a picture of a girl with her dog and it's such a wholesome picture. But the words say, "Wishing your pets could talk is fun until you remember all the things you've ever done in front of your pets." That's the danger, isn't it? My cat Whiskers knows me better than any person because I am totally unguarded in front of her. And if she could talk...

So if God knows us as we are - how can God still offer us grace in baptism? What do we do about the problem of sin?

Isaiah 49:16 talks about a branding. Speaking to the people of God in exile, God says, "Look, I have inscribed your name on the palms of my hands." Think about that for a minute. Your name is inscribed, branded into the palms of God's hands. It's a metaphor, of course. God doesn't look like a human being. God doesn't have features like a human being. God doesn't have hands to be branded.

Except God does. God's hands gripped Mary's finger in a Bethlehem stable. God's hands rubbed the wood in Joseph's carpenter shop. God's hands touched lepers and little children. God's hands broke bread. God's hands were pierced by nails. And in the piercing of those hands, God took on the sins of the world. God accepted the brokenness of the world. And when they pierced his side, it was not just blood, but water that flowed forth. Water that reminds us that we may be sinners, but that is not all that we are. Born through water, born again through the Spirit, we are free to be who we really are - children of God.

In the movie Avatar there are these ridiculous blue creatures called Na'Vi. But they greet each other with the phrase, "I see you." It's not just a visual thing like, "Hey, I see you over there." It's a recognition of the real essence of the person. "I see you. I know you. I encounter something holy in you. I am with you." It's just what God says to Moses from the burning bush. "I know the suffering of my people in Egypt," he told Moses. And that Hebrew word for 'know' has the character of experience. "I see the suffering of my people. I know the suffering of my people. I experience the suffering of my people."

Do you think the world sees Naama Margolese? Do you think the religious people who shout epithets at her and cause her tears can see who she is?

Do you think the world sees you? Do you think the sin and the hurt and the grief and shame and the burdens of your life are all that others see? Is it all that you see?

Because the God who moves across the face of the waters sees Naama and loves her. The God who descended in the form of a dove sees you and this whole sin-blasted world. And what does God say when God sees you? "You are my child, whom I love. With you I am well-pleased." How do you respond to a gift like that? Thanks be to God.

*Baptism: Christ's Act in the Church, Laurence Hull Stookey [Abingdon: Nashville, 1982], p. 13.
**"Something to Believe: A Theological Perspective on Infant Baptism," Gerhard O. Forde, Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology, Vol. XLVII No. 3, July 1993, pp. 231.