Sermon: January 13, 2008

In a book of essays titled, “The Last Word,” now-Methodist Bishop William Willimon recalls a conversation he had with the father of a Duke University student when Willimon served as Dean of the Chapel at Duke…

This father called Willimon’s office one day, irate, he told the secretary, over what Dean Willimon had done to his daughter.

Willimon quickly picked up the phone, said hello and heard the father roar, “I hold you personally responsible!”  “For what?” Willimon asked.  “My daughter!” came the booming reply.  “We sent her there to get a good education.  She is supposed to go to medical school.  She is to be a third-generation nephrologist.  Now she has got some fool idea in her head about Haiti, and I hold you personally responsible!”

Willimon finally got the man’s name and his daughter’s name, remembering her as a delightful young woman, faithful in worship, and the one who organized the last spring break mission trip.

“She was supposed to go to medical school.  Now this!” the father continued.

Utterly baffled, Willimon asked, “Now what?”

The father shouted into the phone.  “Now she has this fool idea about going to Haiti for 3 years with that church mission program and teaching kids.  She’s supposed to be a nephrologist, not a missionary, for heaven’s sake!”

The man ranted on.  It was all Dean Willimon’s fault.  She liked his sermons.  She was at an impressionable age, and now she wanted to be a missionary!

Finally Willimon got a word in and said, “Now just a minute.  Didn’t you take her to be baptized?”

“Well, yes,” said the father, “but we are Presbyterians.”

“And didn’t you take her to Sunday School when she was little?”

“Sure we did, but we never intended for it to do any damage.”

“Well, there you have it,” said Dean Willimon.  “She was messed up before we ever got her.  Baptized, Sunday-schooled, called!  You should have thought about what you were doing when you had her baptized.”

“But we’re only Presbyterians,” the father whimpered.

“Congratulations, sir,” said Willimon.  “You just helped God make a missionary!  Have a nice day.”

You should have thought about what you were doing when you had her baptized…

Certainly one of the ways that we can rightly celebrate the Baptism of our Lord today – truly, another “epiphany,” a revealing of who Jesus is for the sake of the world – is to remember, rejoice and give thanks for the gift of our baptisms, our grace-full adoption as children of God! 

Matthew tells us that as Jesus came up from the waters of the Jordan, God’s Spirit descended and rested upon him, and God’s own voice declared, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”  Through Jesus’ ministry, that baptismal proclamation took on flesh and bone. And, finally, through the death and resurrection of this Beloved Son, we are promised that the same declaration of love and the same Spirit are given to us in our baptisms!  In the waters of baptism, God declares you “beloved,” and God’s Spirit comes to rest upon your life…

But when we ask our good, Lutheran question, “What does this mean?” it is the prophet Isaiah who – though he preached centuries before the birth and baptism of our Lord – helps us understand what it means to be a beloved, Spirit-filled community of the baptized.

In our reading from the 42^nd chapter of Isaiah, we hear a clear proclamation of baptismal theology:  “I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness.  I have taken you by the hand and kept you; I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations…”

In the waters of baptism we are called, taken, kept, and given.

·        We are called/summoned into a new life.  We are given a new name – child of God – and birthed into a new household full of God’s mercy, full of God’s hope, full to the brim, of joy. …Indeed, when a child is about to be born or adopted into a family, the most frequently asked question is “What will you call him or her?”  In other words, how will you claim this new life as a Mithelman or a Thorson or a Smith or a Knutson?  In the waters of baptism we are summoned/called “children of God,” and it is our deepest, our truest identity.

·        The next two things Isaiah says go together. .. In baptism we are taken by the hand and kept by God.  This new life is one in which we are safe from the powers of sin & death, of anything in all creation, separating us from God…Baptism is not like a protective shell that deflects pain and suffering from our lives.  No.  Yet, no matter what we encounter as children of God, God’s claim on our lives, God’s promises of forgiveness and new life, never weaken…When I was in seminary, a professor & world-renowned scholar was dying from cancer.  Yet, the president of the school told us one day in chapel, that at the end of his life, this man clung not to the books he had written nor to the theological arguments he had championed – but simply told those who visited, “I have been baptized.”       …We are called, in the waters of baptism, taken by the hand and kept by God. 

 But it is that last truth where the difficulty comes.  It is certainly the truth about baptism that the irate father who called Dean Willimon simply could not grasp…  “I have given you,” God says through the prophet, “given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations.”  …The young woman who was called child of God – her life was no longer her own, she no longer belonged to her mother and father.  She was God’s child and God gave her as the light of God’s love to others!  Just as in Jesus’ own baptism God gave him to ministry, to public witness, so in our baptisms God gives us to our public mission, our public testimony to the world.  We are not baptized into a private Christianity, to be baptized is to be given as light to a world trapped in the darkness of sin and death…This is true of us as individuals and as a community of the baptized.  We are not our own, our corporate life is not ours to control and manage, to spend and save as we desire.  We have been claimed as children of God, we are kept by God’s strong promises, and we have been and are always being given as the light of Christ to this neighborhood, this city, this world.

We are given daily…

We are given as the light of God’s deep welcome, God’s breathtaking generosity, God’s  radical justice and God’s unfailing hope…  It is entirely too late to lock the doors and wait God out.  This community has been and is being given as the light of God’s love to the world.   Dean Willimon was right when he told that irate father that he should have considered the consequences before bringing his daughter to be baptized.  She was no longer his, she was God’s, God’s to give as light to the world.    Our life is no longer ours, either.  But called, taken by the hand and kept by God, we, too, are given as the light of God’s mercy, justice and hope to the world. As my son would say, “Mother, amazing…simply amazing.”

 Thanks be to God.                                                                                   AMEN