“Original Blessing, Ultimate Claim”
Some things I do in ministry are truly planned. At other times I believe things have simply evolved over time. I loved the baptismal service which we used at Park Place Congregational Church in
I love the sentiment expressed in the words, “Here is what baptism means: First by it we celebrate your birth and rejoice that you have come into this world. One look at you reminds us that God has not lost faith in the human race.”
I have recited these words now for many years as I have baptized babies. I have never been able to look into the eyes of a baby and believe that an infant is sinful. This has always posed a problem for me, as I have tried to reconcile what I believe with the traditional Christian teaching that our baptism cleanses us of the sin into which we are born.
I have scrutinized the stories of Jesus’ baptism in our Gospel accounts. In each story Jesus comes up out of the water just as the spirit of God descends upon him. Then God’s voice is heard saying:
“This is my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.” Like the sometimes banned Catholic theologian Matthew Fox, I hear this passage not as proclamation of “original sin”, but rather as “original blessing”. God’s mark upon us is fundamentally a mark of blessing. God looks at us, just as he looks at the whole of creation, and is pleased with his handiwork.
As I said to Keeshana Webster last spring when we baptized her as part of our confirmation worship experience, it’s as though God were looking at her and saying, “You’re just what I’ve always wanted.”
So, if baptism is God’s blessing, if we are a delight to our maker, then what goes wrong? How is it that some of us grow up to lie, to steal, to commit adultery, to murder, to covet that which is not ours? Even I am ready to admit that while God is delighted with us, our God is the first to weep when we stray from the path of righteousness which God has in mind for each of us. Our baptism bears witness to God’s blessing and also to God’s claim upon us. As sons and daughters of the still living God, it is God who holds the ultimate claim on our lives.
My bone of contention with some of the TV preaching I have heard is that sometimes I think the Christian life is equated with a life of material success by the standards of worldly success. Sometimes I hear the Gospel of TV preachers claiming that if one gives one’s life to Christ, all practical problems will be instantly solved. Instead, I think God’s claim upon us is far more significant than this. God promises to always be with us, yet this presence does not promise that our lives will be easy.
If we are honest, I think most of us can cite a time in our lives when we felt that God was absent. The longer I live the more I believe that God’s absence is my own act of choosing to absent myself from the presence of God.
At times I find that it is the everyday challenges of living that help me to sort out what I believe. Earlier I said that I can’t look into the eyes of a baby and see that baby as sinful. I also know from many years of living and being a minister that many of you also struggle with the concept that we are sinners. But I have to say that even though I can’t see that potential in an infant, I believe after all that we all do carry the potential for evil.
I confess that sometimes when I come home from a church meeting night, I will watch an episode of NBC Dateline. While I admit that this show and others like it have become increasingly sensational in recent years, I do think that we are genuinely perplexed by human nature when it goes wrong. What makes a scorned lover turn into a savage predator capable of murder?
In the Dateline Series, “To Catch A Predator”, it is truly sobering to witness the various kinds of persons who routinely go on line seeking sex with teenage children. Chris Hanson repeatedly confronts these men, asking them, “What were you thinking?”
Even so, I suspect that most of us don’t see a connection of these predators to ourselves. I think that most of us see ourselves as good persons, law abiding persons, civic minded persons, and yes, persons of religious and moral convictions.
But the bottom line is that by virtue of our being human, we are not perfect. In our Christian teaching, the place of perfect humanity is realized only in Jesus, the son of God. I have realized little by little that we all have a tendency to be able to justify ourselves in our thoughts and actions. Most of us cannot see the harm we do.
A friend of mine has served as a court observer in juvenile court for many years. She has been saddened by the unwillingness of the juvenile offenders to take responsibility for their actions.
Here’s an example. A sixteen year old boy has been caught stealing cell phones. The judge asks him if he regrets doing so.
“No,” says the boy. “My friends did it and didn’t get caught, so I haven’t done anything wrong.” Young people often feel that what they have done isn’t wrong if some people get caught and others don’t.
A friend of mine began serving a prestigious Episcopal Church in a well off community. Week after week, the congregation sat and politely listened to his preaching. He felt that they weren’t connecting with him at all, that they sat rather stone faced, and he had no idea whether his preaching was reaching them. He couldn’t live this way and felt desperate to make some kind of connection, to get some kind of reaction.
The next week he stood in the center aisle without a manuscript and told how his priority for ministry in his life had left him cut off from one of their children. He knew in his heart that he had failed the boy by always responding first to the needs of his parish. Now he said that he deeply regretted not being able to sense what was happening. He knew what it was like to fail someone. He said that he thought that most of them sitting there that morning knew such an experience of failure and helplessness too. He invited everyone to be a bit more willing to let down their guard.
Even as he spoke, he saw heads nodding in agreement, smiles of recognition replacing that stone faced look. That was the beginning of a deep change in the temperament of the church. Word was passed that this was a place where it was acceptable to be unsure of one self, where it was permissible to have a problem that you just didn’t seem to be able to solve all on your own. Over a period of 17 years that church deepened its ministries and grew in unexpected ways.
Last week I had a long talk with a former neighbor that I ran into by chance, a woman whose youngest son got caught up in drugs and is now serving in prison for the stealing spree he carried out a few years ago. She started a ministry in that Episcopal church for parents of addicted children. She has stepped into that pulpit many times to preach on God’s love and mercy, to invite others who don’t know where to turn to seek God’s wisdom and solace. I stand in awe of her. I admire both her courage and her humility.
I grew up in an era when you hid in the shadows if a member of your family didn’t turn out well. We are not so far from a mentality of Hawthorne’s, The Scarlet Letter, in which we would just as soon brand people with a scarlet letter for their sin and never look upon them again.
So, yes, I do believe that I am capable of sin, of falling away from God and knowingly or unknowingly doing harm to myself or others. But I do not believe that this is God’s will for me or for anyone. I believe that God yearns for each of us to be restored to goodness, to be claimed by righteousness.
And that is the second part of the baptismal vow. When we are baptized, even when it is in the arms of our parents when we are not consciously making any kind of choice at all, I believe that as the church, we have a ritual enactment of God’s decisive claim upon our lives. God loves us and claims us for his very own for all time and no matter what. To God we are always “the beloved”. God’s nature is to be in covenant with us. And God never gives up on us, even in the extreme when all others have fallen away or given up in disgust.
In the movie, Dead Man Walking, Sister Helen Prejean visits a convicted murderer on death row. As a nun, a woman of God, she never gives up on the man she visits.
She believes in him no matter what and we can see that even a convicted murderer is not all bad. This movie, which is based upon a true story, gives a unique insight into both a criminal mind and the mind of a person uniquely able to see the good in every person.
I will always believe that here at Dennis Union Church, all of you have already given me far more than I can ever give to you. From the beginning of my time here, you have reminded me of what a church can be. Granted we are not perfect as individuals nor as the church. Perfection belongs to God and to his son Jesus. All of us have challenges in our lives. All of us live with some measure of regret or disappointment. But we are also a people who go beyond our own limitations. We seem to know that together we can be more than we can be alone.
If I were to try to think of the one quality in God that goes beyond those that we usually recite, I would say that our God has a wonderful sense of humor. And that is a quality I see mirrored here at church. Yes, we know how to be serious and sincere, but we also have the sense to be able to laugh at ourselves. That is a human quality that we could all stand to increase.
God loves us and if God were to speak in the language of today I am sure that he would look at each of us and exclaim: “You’re just what I always wanted!” Now the rest is up to us, to hear God’s words of affirmation, to live God’s lovely claim on us and to yearn with all our hearts to be his disciples. Let the fun begin!
Shalom and Amen
