Scriptures:
Isaiah 1:12-13, 16-18 Romans
6:1-11
I
Peter 3:13-22 Mark 10:13-16
As you likely already know, the Pope will be in Philly on
Saturday and Sunday, September 26 and 27.
He’ll be in town for the World Meeting of Families….and it’s apt to seem
like the world has come to Philly. It’s
anticipated that a million people could come to Philly to see the Pope – and in
a city with a population of 1.5 million, that’s going to make it difficult to
actually see the pope. Security is going
to be very rigorous – there will be a security perimeter from Girard to South
Street, river to river. And apparently
the Pope plans to visit a prison, and I can’t even imagine how his security team
is going to pull that off! SEPTA
regional rail will be making only very limited stops, and we’ll have to buy
special passes to use it. The overall
message from planners is, if you want to see the Pope….or even if you don’t
want to see the Pope but need to get anywhere near Center City……prepare to
walk. Prepare to walk a lot. On the other hand, if you actually get there,
you can probably see the Pope on one of the many jumbo-tron screens that’ll be
on the parkway. It’s frustrating, these security precautions; so many people
want to see the Pope, but because of the numbers, it’s hard to say how many
will actually have the privilege, and those who live here may have at least as
hard a time as those who travel in from the other side of the country, or the
other side of the globe. On the other
hand, it’s understandable, these security precautions; Pope John Paul II was
shot early in his papacy and struggled with the aftereffects of the shooting for
the remainder of his papacy – a bit like St. Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” - and
we surely don’t need a repeat of that.
And, I have to say, with his consistent message of advocacy for the poor
and forgotten and his criticism of those in power, with his insistent message
that we need to do so much more to care for the environment, for God’s
creation, this Pope is beloved, inspiring feelings similar to those inspired by
Pope John XXIII, the good pope who did so much to open up the Roman church to
those of other faiths and those of no faith. I can tell you that, for me
personally, even though I’m a hard-core protestant, this pope inspires me in a
way that no other pope in my lifetime has come close to doing. I only hope and pray to God that my legs hold
up well enough so that I can shuffle my way down to the parkway somehow to see
him.
The Pope sure can draw a crowd….and in his earthly ministry,
Jesus did the same, drawing such large crowds early in his ministry that the
disciples, who after all were mostly fishermen, not security flaks, hardly knew
what to do with them all. They couldn’t
just set up a bunch of jumbotron screens and tell the crowds, “hey, go look at
Jesus on the screen.” In today’s reading, Jesus is actually trying to avoid the
crowds, not to be stand-offish, but because he was teaching his disciples and
needed to focus on them. But,
inevitably, people found him anyway. Mark’s
gospel tells us that people were bringing little children to Jesus, so that
Jesus might touch them. And the
disciples responded by trying to shoo the children and their parents away. After all, Jesus was teaching his
disciples. This was an adult
conversation, about adult topics. They
were talking about serious stuff. Squirmy
brats and their pushy parents need not apply.
Squirmy brats and their pushy parents can go sit at the kiddie table,
and maybe Jesus will take a moment to smile and pat them on the head later,
after the adults are done talking.
That was how the disciples responded, and likely how any of
us might react. But not Jesus! Mark’s gospel tells us, “But when Jesus saw
this, he was indignant.” Indignant. So angry that in expressing his anger, his
dignity went out the window. He flipped
out. Or, as Bart Simpson might put it,
“he had a cow”. Jesus flipped out, Jesus
had a cow because his disciples tried to shoo away the children. “Let the little children come to me, and do
not hinder them, for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God
belongs.” Hey, very serious adult disciples
seriously wanting to have a adult conversation about the very adult topic of
how to enter the kingdom of God – look at these children! They’re already
there. It is to them, and to those like
them, that the kingdom of God belongs.
“Oh, and by the way”, Jesus goes on to say, “whoever does not receive
the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” For the disciples, the kids and their parents
were a nuisance. But for Jesus, the
children were the VIPs in the room, at the center of his ministry, at the
center of the coming Reign of God, the new way of life that Jesus lived and
taught and opened up for all of us by his life and ministry, death and
resurrection. I can tell you that even
during my relatively short time as pastor here, I can remember when we had no
children here on Sunday morning. And now
we do. And Emanuel church is a much
different, and a much better space, for all of us, because of the children.
Today we are baptizing Baby Serenity. Serenity's parents were married in this church, and now their daughter Serenity is coming
to be baptized. Baptism is a sacrament
of the church. Baptism is the way in
which believers are incorporated into the church, become part of the body of
Christ. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime
experience – or intended to be, at least. While I could give you a very dense
theological lecture about the meaning of baptism, I’ll spare you – you’re
welcome – because really, I think today’s readings, along with the upcoming
liturgy, explain baptism best in terms of mental images. And some of these may be jarring. While our Isaiah reading isn’t about baptism
as such, it includes the command to the sinful people of Israel – and to us
“Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from
before my eyes” – as well as the promise, to the sinful people of Israel and to
us, “Though your sins are red like scarlet, they shall become like snow; though
they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.” And so the sacrament of baptism recognizes
that we are all sinful, from our earliest days, and need cleansing.
Our reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans goes further,
with these words: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized by
Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?”
You heard that right: “into his death.”
In some traditions, especially those that practice full immersion, the
image is that of going down into the water and drowning one’s sinful nature,
and then coming up out of the water clothed in Christ’s nature. Paul’s words to the church at Rome go on to
say “Therefore we have been buried with Christ by baptism into death, so that,
just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too
might walk in newness of life.”
Our reading from the first letter of Peter uses the image of
Noah’s ark to explain baptism: “God waited patently in the days of Noah, during
the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved
through water. And baptism, which this
prefigured, now saves you – not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an
appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus
Christ.” At the time of the ark, those
inside the ark were saved, and those outside drowned. In baptism, all within us that is sinful,
like those outside the ark, is put to death; and we are saved.
In baptism we are not only saved, but also called. Baptism involves promises – to renounce the
powers of evil, to receive the freedom of new life in Christ, to profess Jesus
as Lord and Savior, to follow in the way of our Savior, to resist oppression
and evil, to show love and justice, and to witness to the word and work of
Christ as best we are able. As a
clergyperson, I’ve gone through a specific call process to serve as pastor, but
we all of us, we every one of us, are called to ministry by means of our
baptismal promises.
I’ll close with some words of the old Heidelberg Catechism
which many of our longtime members studied.
The first question in the catechism reads, “What is your only comfort,
in life and in death.” And while the
answer is fairly long, it begins with these words, “That I belong, body and
soul, in life and in death, not to myself, but to my faithful Savior Jesus
Christ.” Today, as we extend this
comfort to Serenity Marie Evans, may the knowledge that we belong to Jesus
Christ be our comfort through all that life brings us. Amen.
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