VIP (Sermon for baptism of Baby Serenity)

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.

Running on Empty

Scriptures:     Isaiah 1:12-13, 16-18, Romans 6:1-11,  I Peter 3:13-22,                   Mark 10:13-16

Those of a certain age probably remember the Jackson Browne song:

Running on empty / running blind / running into the sun/but I’m running behind…..

At the moment described in our gospel reading, I think Jesus and his disciples could have related.  Jesus’ disciples had just returned from their first mission trip.  After getting an underwhelming reception at his hometown synagogue, Jesus had sent his disciples out, two-by-two, to preach and cast out demons.  Now the disciples were returning, eager to tell Jesus about where they’d been and what they’d done.  Meanwhile, while the disciples had been away, Jesus had just gotten the devastating news of Herod’s execution of John the Baptist.  Jesus needed some quality time with his disciples, and they all needed some time away from the crowds, with their endless demands – “Teach us, heal us” – over and over.

So Jesus tells them, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourself and rest a while.” Mark’s gospel adds that “there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat.”  Sounds like a good plan.  They pile into a boat and set out for a deserted place that Jesus knew.  Problem is, the crowds saw where they were going, and got there before they did.  Jesus and his disciples pile into a boat to get away from the crowds; they get to land and the crowds say, “Here we are!”  It’s a scene that at one level is sort of comical – Jesus and his disciples literally can not get away from the crowds – and on another level touching…..the faith they had in Jesus….and on yet another level exhausting….no rest for the weary.  There’s a scene in the movie Jesus Christ Superstar, in which Jesus is slowly engulfed by a group of lepers and others seeking healing, as they sing “See my eyes I can hardly see See me stand I can hardly walk I believe you can make me whole  See my tongue I can hardly talk   See my skin I’m a mass of blood  See my legs I can hardly stand  I believe you can make me whole  See my purse I’m a poor poor man……” and at the end of it Jesus shrieks “Leave me alone!”- I think on the cast album he shrieks “Heal yourselves”.  That may very well have been what Jesus was thinking, but that’s not what Jesus did – in Mark’s gospel, we’re told that “He had compassion for them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd, and he began to teach them many things.”

Meanwhile, where does this leave the disciples?  They were really looking forward to spend some alone time with Jesus, and Jesus had offered them some time just with him.  But here they were again….the crowds, the crowds, the crowds, with their endless demands, “See my eyes I can hardly see See me stand I can hardly walk I believe you can make me whole  See my tongue I can hardly talk”  

I think we’ve all been there, in one way or another.  We’re exhausted, on low reserves, running on empty, looking forward to at least a nap, if not a vacation…..and something comes up….a family member gets sick, the dog eats something he wasn’t supposed to and needs to get rushed to the vet, a pipe breaks and we need to call the plumber right away, we get a phone call asking us to come in to work to cover someone’s shift…. so that we have to stretch ourselves still more.  What to do?

Remember Jesus’ words to his disciples:  “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest.”  We’re not machines, and even if we were, even machines need periodic maintenance.  Even your car needs to stop running and go into the shop to get an oil change every 3000 or 5000 or however many miles.  Why should we expect ourselves not to need some downtime as well.  Periodically, thoughout the gospels, we’re told that Jesus went off to a quiet place to pray.  And if Jesus needed quiet time to pray, so do we.  It doesn’t matter much what that time looks like – maybe in the morning before we start our day or some time praying and reading on the train going into work, even if we have to mentally block out the stop announcements and such.  Observant Muslims pray five times a day – before dawn, noon, afternoon, sunset, and evening.  Whatever they’re doing, when the call to prayer sounds, they stop what they’re doing and pray.  If Muslims can pray five times a day, I think we can challenge ourselves to find some quiet time at least once a day to pray, even if only for a few moments.  To use the words from an old commercial, consider it “the pause that refreshes.”  And we may be surprised how refreshing it can be.

But there are times when the demands are there and we can’t escape them…or shouldn’t escape them, even if we can.  At those moments, we can silently pray for strength – other than “thank you”, I’d say asking God “give me strength” is one of my most frequent prayers – and plunge in.  There’s always time for a snap prayer, to shoot a couple of words of prayer to God, even if it’s just “help!”.  What we may find is not only that God gives us the strength for that situation, but that God stretches us and enlarges us, so that we can handle something similar the next time, but much easier.   By God’s grace, I’ve found myself able to do things I’d have never thought possible, because I was faced with what seemed like an impossible situation, asked for God’s help, and plunged in as best I could.

And, I have to say, there are times when we get demands, and we may need to catch our breath and do some quick discernment.  Is this a real need?  If I respond, am I empowering that person, or just enabling them?......sort of like the difference between showing a child how to solve a math problem vs doing their homework for them.  And if it is a real need, am I the right person to respond, or should I be referring the person to someone else.  For example, while my seminary training included a course in pastoral counseling – and I hope to take more courses if time and finances permit – I’m not a psychologist, nor do I play one on TV.   It would be irresponsible for me to try to do long-term counseling with someone who really needs a trained therapist.  So the most loving thing I can do is to do what I can in the immediate situation, and find the best possible referral for the long-term. 

And then there are situations where it’s hard to tell what’s the right thing to do.  This past week, somebody who’s not a member of the church, but who is on the fringes of my list of contacts for folks needing assistance from time to time, asked me three times in two days to drive them to Friends Hospital.  Three times I drove them, three times Friends said they couldn’t admit him, but could he wait around…..and three times he walked away on his own, and made his way down to Kensington.  After the third walk-away, I said I wasn’t going to be available to talk to him for the next few days – if he needed help, please try to find someone else to help.  Did I do the right thing?  I don’t know.  Some would say I shouldn’t have come back a second time.  Others would say I should have made myself available regardless.  Others would say I should know the system better, so that I could get him in some other place.  In any case, I tried, and I failed.  For me, all I can do is pray for God to make up for my failures and limitations. 

Yesterday, nine of us went to Bethany Children’s Home, and I think we got to see what it looks like when our efforts at helping are based on a foundation of prayer.  We visited the Brobst cottage, a residential cottage under the leadership of a couple of houseparents. Most of the children who come to Bethany come out of difficult family circumstances and need a lot of support- and sometimes support can come down to really basic stuff, like how to bathe, how to turn off a light switch, really basic stuff.  As one with no children, it’s hard for me to imagine living with other peoples children with that level of need day in and day out.  But the houseparent who showed us around the place was on fire for Christ; he himself had made some really bad mistakes in his life, and his experience being invited to a church – an African-American church, as it happens – turned his life around.  And now he’s spending his life passing on to others what Christ had given him.

“Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves to rest awhile.”  Jesus’ invitation to those first disciples is for us, his followers, as well.  May we remember to leave room in our lives for time with Christ, so that Christ can give us room and resources to serve those he sends our way. Amen.

Dancing and Dying

Scriptures:  2 Samuel 6:1-19,  Amos 7:7-15, Ephesians 1:3-14        Mark 6:14-29

A few weeks ago, Michael W. and I went with the group Philadelphians Organized to Witness, Empower, and Rebuild (http://www.powerphiladelphia.org/) on a bus trip to Harrisburg to advocate for increased funding for Philadelphia schools.  Those who went were given yellow t-shirts for the occasion.  I was focused on the event – on the bus ride to Harrisburg, on the rally at a nearby Methodist church beforehand, on the rally and interfaith service on the steps of the state capitol.  It was only near the end of the day that somebody pointed out that – oops – I’d been wearing that yellow t-shirt backwards the whole day.  Yeah, that’s how I roll sometimes.  I’d put it on early in the morning before I was fully awake, didn’t pay attention to where the label was, and just went about the day’s events oblivious to my minor fashion faux pas, until someone pointed it out – after, of course, I’d going about all day with the shirt on backwards.

What a strange collections of Scripture readings this morning – King David dancing before the Lord, the prophet Amos being given the boot from Bethel, Israel’s primary worship center, and John the Baptist being executed by Herod – along with a reading from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians that doesn’t seem to connect to any of the other readings.  But I think all of these readings have something in common – they give us portraits of servants of God who are so caught up in what God has called them to do, that they lose all concern for themselves – their respectability, their safety, even their lives.

I want to fill in a little background on that Old Testament reading.  Some of us, of a certain age, may remember the ABBA song “Dancing Queen” “you can dance, you can jive, having the time of your life…..”, but our reading from 2 Samuel gives us a portrait of David as a Dancing King.  We normally think of royalty as being stuffy, stuck on their own dignity….think of Queen Elizabeth; about the only movement we associate with her is her little queen wave.  But King David was cutting loose; indeed, making a spectacle of himself, as his wife Michal – Saul’s daughter  - told him.   

It wasn’t something David had planned – he just got caught up in the moment.  The story follows on the very sad reading from 2 Samuel from a few weeks ago, in which Saul and Jonathan were killed in battle with the Philistines, and the Philistines had captured the ark of the Lord.  In today’s reading, the ark has been recaptured, and is being brought to Jerusalem, the city that David has designated as capitol of Judah.  He actually tried to bring up the ark to Jerusalem once before, but the ark was being jostled as it was carried, and a man named Uzzah tried to steady the ark, and for his concern was struck dead – and the whole procession came to a halt.  Three months later, David tried again, and this time was successful – and for David and those with him, the reality of having the ark – representing God’s presence – in their midst, right with them where they were, filled them with such overwhelming joy that King David just cut loose, not caring what people thought.

How do we experience God’s presence?  What does it feel like?  Christians around the world, in our various denominations, respond to God’s presence in so many ways.  In many churches, certainly German-based churches in which I and many of us grew up, God’s presence inspires awed but attentive silence.  We respond in the service at the appropriate places, sing enthusiastically, but in many places are silent, lest we miss a word from the Lord.  In other churches, God’s presence is experienced very differently – with swaying back and forth, with shouting, with the sermon consisting of an ongoing call and response between preacher and congregation, as the preacher says something and the congregation says “Amen! That’s right! Preach it!”  Or if the preacher is struggling, folks in the congregation might shout “Help him, Lord!”  I’ve visited churches where folks speak in tongues and dance in the aisles, and in one service I even saw people pass out and fall backwards during the service, as people came up behind them with a sheet to catch them.  And what a feelings of trust folks in that congregation must have to know that if they pass out, there will be someone there to catch them.  I say all this just as a way to give us, German as we are, a little more space to respond in worship as the spirit leads us.

That said, I have to say, just from me, I’m not a person that gets caught up in emotion very much….my feelings are pretty flat most of the time.  And that’s ok – while I sometimes wish I could be like the folks who shout and dance and fall out in worship, that’s just not how I’m put together – and we’re saved by faith, and not by feelings. 

But even if, like me, we’re not very emotionally expressive, we can get caught up in God’s purpose for us just the same.  We aren’t told whether the prophet Amos or whether John the Baptist ever danced before the Lord. We are told, though, that they got so caught up in their call from God that they proclaimed the message God had given them, even when it cost them unpopularity and brought on threats, as happened to Amos, and even when it costs them their lives, as happened to John the Baptist.   I’m pretty sure Amos wasn’t trying to get chased away from the king’s sanctuary in  Bethel.  Nor do I think John the Baptist had any intention of winding up with his head on a platter.  You see, what Amos and John the Baptist did wasn’t about Amos and John the Baptist.  It was about being faithful to God, totally devoted to God, and letting the chips fall where they may.  They didn’t go about their ministries second guessing themselves, “oh, if I say that, I might offend someone”.  They just proclaimed what  God had put on their hearts – just let it all hang out for everyone to see.

I’m reminded of a quote attributed to the radical anarchist Emma Goldman, who said, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be a part of your revolution.”  Or, to quote an early Christian theologian, Irenaeus, “The glory of God is man fully alive.”  Our word “enthusiasm” comes from words meaning en – in – and theos – God.  So may God grant us that holy enthusiasm that comes from living according to God’s call for us. May God’s spirit make us fully alive, as a foretaste to that day of which St. Paul spoke, when we, along with all things in heaven and in earth, will be gathered up in Christ.  Amen.