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.

Who is He? Who are We?

Who Is He? Who Are We?
January 9, 2011
Franktown United Methodist Church

I'm guessing that this week you probably got to know Ted Williams. This was the week that Williams went viral, as they say. He was standing by an intersection in Columbus, Ohio holding up a sign that said "I have a God given gift of voice. I'm an ex-radio announcer who has fallen on hard times. Please! Any help will be great fully appreciated. Thank you and God bless you. Happy holidays."

A reporter with the Columbus Dispatch was passing by and thought he might have a human interest story. So he asked Williams to say a few words into his video camera. Sure enough he did have a gift. He slipped right into his old radio announcer persona and thanked the reporter for giving him a dollar.

The reporter was the multimedia producer for the paper and he didn't rush to get the story out. Five weeks later, during a slow news week, he pulled out the video and the rest is history. Williams went from being homeless to getting multiple job offers, including doing voiceovers for the Cleveland Cavaliers basketball team. He also was given an offer of a home. And he was reunited with his 92-year-old mother whom he had not seen in twenty years. Everybody knows Ted Williams now.

The story worries me a little. The media has made Williams into something of a sideshow act and it doesn't seem right, even if he's willing, to exploit him as the media darling of the week. I also wonder how this sudden change in circumstance will affect him, especially since he has struggled with alcohol and drug addiction in the past. But really, who can begrudge him this? He now has a little bit of security and a new opportunity. I pray that for every person living on the edge.

Did you hear about the reporter, though? Doral Chenoweth the 3rd has a habit of stopping to talk to homeless people he sees on the street. It's not part of his job, it's part of his faith. Chenoweth says, "You may not be able to help someone with money, but you can at least say hello, how you doing, and look at them." Doral Chenoweth joined New Life United Methodist Church in Columbus, Ohio because of its outreach to the homeless and he has participated in mission trips and the homeless mission with his wife and two children. So when he saw Ted Williams he didn't see a homeless guy, he saw a child of God. And he stopped.

That's the backstory on Ted Williams. Now let me give you some backstory on Peter. No, not Peter Surran, the apostle Peter. Jesus' number one disciple. He's the one who delivers the sermon that was in our reading from the book of Acts today. But what we didn't read was the context for that sermon and the context makes all the difference in the world.

I mean, part of the context is that this is the prelude to a baptism. Peter is speaking to the household of Cornelius, a Roman centurion who had become a believer. Peter tells them about Jesus and then the whole household is baptized in Jesus' name. But nobody is more surprised than Peter that this is all happening.

You see, Peter had been under the impression that his ministry was going to be with his people, the Jews. Jesus had made reference to going out to the world, but Peter hadn't grasped what Jesus was saying. So there he was at the house of Simon the tanner in the coastal city of Joppa, going about his ministry with his people.

He went up on the roof of Simon's house to pray, which isn't as strange as it sounds. The roofs were flat and it was a common practice to go up on the roof. Peter is up there praying and he begins to get hungry. He falls into a trance-like state and he has a vision. Out of heaven comes a huge sheet, like the sail of a boat. And on the sheet are all kinds of creatures.

A voice comes from heaven and says, "Peter, slaughter something and eat it."

Peter looks at the animals and sees that they are all unclean animals that a good Jewish boy would not eat. So Peter protests and says, "No, these are unclean."

The voice comes again and says, "Peter, who are you to call something unclean when God has made it clean?" Three times this happens and Peter is puzzled by what it all means.

Then some men show up from Cornelius' house. He has also had a vision and his vision told him to send for Peter. So Peter goes and suddenly it all becomes clear to him. God was doing a new thing. This good news that Jesus brought was not just for the disciples, not just for the Jews. This good news was for all the world - even Roman centurions.

So that is what has just happened when Peter begins his sermon with the statement, "Now I know that God truly has no favorites. In every nation, whoever fears God and does what is right is welcomed." Then Peter goes on to give witness to what he has seen. He tells the story of Jesus' life and ministry and he starts with Jesus' baptism.

That is the launching pad for everything that is to come. Jesus comes up from the water and is sent forth in the power of the Holy Spirit. He goes about the land doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil. Then he was crucified and rose again. That's the gospel in shorthand for Peter. And that's the message that Cornelius and his house hear as they are baptized. But Peter is also converted because what happens is that he is now able to look at these Romans and see, not foreigners, strangers, unclean, but children of God.

Do you know people who are oppressed by the devil? I know we don't use that language to talk about it very often, but I bet you do. There are people who are caught in the grip of evils they can't control. There are people who are enslaved to temptation. There are people who have cancer and other serious illnesses that rob them of life. And there are people who have a deadly kind of blindness - the kind of blindness Peter had. They can't see the people right around them who are children of God.

Every day we meet the Ted Williamses of this world. They are people with lots of flaws whom we might size up and offer a quick judgement about when we see them. We might see their problems as too big for us to make a difference. We might worry, as I did about Ted, that they might misuse whatever they get. We might label them so that we don't see them as individuals. We might call them homeless or illegal or unemployed or unchurched. But if we fail to see them as people whom God has made and whom God loves...if we never stop to appreciate their humanity...if we do not love our brother or sister whom we can see, how can we say that we love God, whom we can't see?

The baptism of Jesus was the moment at which the heavens split open and the Holy Spirit was unleashed - not just on Jesus, but on everyone whom he touched. His baptism meant that he was launched into a ministry that had him doing good and healing those who were oppressed by the devil. The Holy Spirit still does these things. The Holy Spirit still empowers us to do good and to heal the oppressed. How do I know this? Because Christians who have gone through the waters of baptism are still doing these things.

For those of you who have been baptized, I can tell you that there was a moment. You may have been an infant. Maybe you were older. But there was a moment when you were touched by water and by the hands of a preacher. A congregation of folks watched and welcomed you as part of their family. And all of those people knew that you were not just some unclaimed person. You were not a mistake, no matter how you got here. You were not a castoff or someone who was left behind. When you were baptized everyone in the room knew that you were a child of God with your own unique gifts for the world.

I hope Ted Williams knows that. I hope every person on the Eastern Shore who goes to bed without enough to eat or enough warmth knows that. I hope every child who lingers in an abusive home hears that. I hope every sinner hears that. I hope you hear that. And feel that. And share that. Because Jesus has gone under the waters, a whole new world is flooding in. For all God's children. Thanks be to God.

Acts 10:34-43
http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/01/06/golden.voice.homeless/index.html?hpt=C1