Luke 3.15-17, 21-23                                                                                  

“REMEMBER YOUR BAPTISM AND BE GRATEFUL”

 

Do you recall the many little rituals we had as parents to our children? There was the “now go back in the house and comb the hair on the back of your head” ritual.  There was the “let’s take turns opening our gifts and instead of ripping them open like wild animals” ritual. The point of these family rituals was their civilizing effect.

In our home, I instituted a ritual as my girls, Greta and Lise, became teenagers.  Before going out on weekends, I couldn’t warn them about potential misbehavior without them rolling their eyes. “Oh, dad,” they would groan,” like they needed no reminding.  But they did need reminding.  (Someone once defined a conservative as a liberal with teenage daughters.) Instead of lecturing, I planted a phrase to echo in their ears through their evenings. “Girls,” I said, “remember who you are.”

What that mean? I never worried they’d forget their address or full name. But I did worry they might forget those things most essential to their identity, lose sight of core values, engage in behaviors unworthy of their high calling, or even wor-ship alien gods. These are things worth worrying about. It’s funny how what we teach our kids comes back to us. Many years later, before I went to Italy, Lise stopped by to say farewell and give me a gift.  Before parting, she put her hand on my shoulder and said with a gleam in her eye, “Dad, remember who you are.”  Who knows, except for her timely admonition, I might have streaked the Vatican?

Our youth lead us in asking, “who am I?”, mostly because for them it’s a pressing question they can never escape.  The search for self dominates our teen years. And today there is no lack of causes, clusters, groups, philosophies, cults, which are willing and ready and able to define who we are.  The man who founded MTV once bragged that he doesn’t try to appeal to 14 year olds, he owns 14 year olds. 

But this isn’t just a matter of growing up. Remembering and knowing who we are in an amnesiac society is a spiritual discipline our whole life long.  For amid the profusion of conflicting claims and confusion of names, it is difficult to remember who we are.   It is all too easy to answer to some false names, to misunderstand who we are, to forget the God who named us, and to whom we ultimately belong. 

Who am I?  “You are a producer of goods and wealth,” our economy tells us.  That is one reason we fail to fully honor our elders no longer in the workplace. In a consumer universe, only those who produce are fully valued.  Who am I? “You are an absorber of facts and figures, a brain,” our schools drill into our young.  So youth are made to feel worthless if they don’t get into the “right” college or, heaven forbid, if they don’t go straight to college. Who am I? “You’re only a sexual being,” the movies and songs of popular culture tell us, advancing the lie that love is more about the union of bodies than the union of spirits, the lie that the orgasm is the only chance available to human beings for self-transcendence.

All of this is important to us on this First Sunday after Epiphany, The Baptism of Jesus, when we today as a church reaffirm our own baptism in a unique way.  It’s important because as we come to this font we can remember who we really are. Who are we, finally?  We are the baptized.  We are God’s beloved children.  We are God’s family. At this font, we pass with Jesus through death and resurrection.

Here in baptism, we are initiated, crowned, chosen, embraced, washed, adopted, gifted, dead to our old ways, and come alive to God’s new ways.  In this, we find our redemption.  Here in baptism, we are identified as God own then assigned our place within the advance of the unfolding drama of God’s reign on earth.
For many of us, our baptism happened when we were very young. So we might not remember all of this, which is why it is worth lifting up and celebrating today.
But let me take another approach with you to this font where we shall meet.

Have you ever noticed how much anxiety we feel around the rite of confirmation? Of course, what we are confirming with our adolescents are the vows of baptism. I have seen this fretfulness in every church that I have served, but less so here. Elsewhere  I have seen calm, solid church members become crabby and critical around confirmation. I have seen churches feel as though we need to retool our approach every year because it is never good enough.  I have seen youth recoil and feel like life is over if everything does not go smoothly, if they cannot affirm every last tenet of the Nicene Creed, feeling more tension than celebration.

I have a theory about this. We approach confirmation as though it’s our children’s only chance to confirm the vows of faith that parents made over them at baptism.   But this is so wrong.  And this is why we become so overwrought at this holy rite. 

Confirmation is but the first chance to affirm that God’s chooses us as his own.  We go away on our own to college, we have another chance to live out the vows.  We graduate from college, get a job and have another chance to affirm our vows of baptism.  We then get married and have our first baby in our early thirties, maybe the biggest confirmation of baptism vows over those most precious to us. In the future the church might well have confirmations at each of these passages.

I am glad that our confirmands have made extra effort to be at worship today.  But all of us might hear that the church needs more outlets to affirm our baptism. For like this we can drain nervous pressure off confirmation to be some once-and-for-all, be-all-and-end-all mountain top experience. And that is what we are about today by inviting you to approach this font, to pause contemplatively with your pastors, and to remember your baptism and be grateful to God.  For in truth, it is too easy to forget who we are and whose we are, and not just teenagers, all of us.  Today we put away the Lord’s Supper until next Sunday, and focus upon the baptismal font. Today we remind each other that we’ve been bought with the price that Jesus paid upon the Cross. That is why the font has been so visible for so long, and why I hope to keep it front and center.  So that we will never forget that someone greater than us has named us and claimed us and sought us and loves us with one consuming purpose—that this God might also love us eternally.

Friends this is the good news of God’s favor and blessing that we proclaim today.  In times of great doubt, when struggling through his dark nights of the soul, the reformer Martin Luther sometimes touched his forehead and said to himself, “Martin, be calm, you are baptized.”  So it is Kathy and I touch your foreheads to recall your original baptismal waters. Like Martin Luther, in times of doubt, turmoil, fear, and confusion we do well to have our foreheads touched like this, where the sign and seal of our baptism was made, and remember our baptism.

I close on a practical note.  Just to clarify, this is not baptism, nor is it rebaptism.  We believe in one Lord, one faith, one baptism. This is the renewal of baptismal vows.  It is the reaffirmation of our baptisms.  It is our celebration of baptism in our beloved DUC where we likely don’t get to celebrate baptisms as often as we would like.  During the singing of the hymn, as Kathy and I take our places before each aisle, we invite you forward as the Spirit moves you.  We will reach into the waters of baptism placed within these two basins, and touch your forehead. We will recall God’s claim and favor over your life. If you wish merely to observe, of course, that’s perfectly fine. If you have never been baptized before, we welcome you to come forward today, and let this be an inviting first step toward baptism.  

During the liturgy, I will also place in these waters water that a friend brought me ten years ago from the Jordan River.  Some of these same molecules could well have been splashed on Jesus by John the Baptist. Let that connect you with Jesus and the lofty places where he would take you. Let this be personal. Just think of it, there are only so many molecules of H2O in the world. These same waters were around since before the days of the dinosaurs and likely also baptized our immigrant forebears.  The first thing we do upon landing on new planet is look for signs of water. So the promises and the waters of baptism transcend time and space. They transcend any human achievement, any making something of ourselves.  They represent what God has made and will always be. 

Friends, you are a new people and a holy nation. You are royalty from above.  Come, and be washed in these primordial waters, the waters of God’s salvation. Amen.

   

God of our creation and redemption,

You give us grace through sacramental signs,

Which tell us of the wonders of your unseen powers,

Flowing in the waters above, upon, and beneath this earth.

In baptism we use your gift of water,

Which you have made a rich symbol

Of the grace you give us in this sacrament.

Lord our God, look now with love on your church,

And unseal within her and for her the fountain of baptism.

 

By the waters your Spirit swoops upon,

Give power to all who approach this font,

The power which is the gentle grace of Jesus.

 

You created us in your own likeness, O God,

Cleanse us from sin in a new birth of innocence,

By water and the spirit.

 

And let those same waters of healing move upon

            Bette White, at the loss of her sister Wanda Hartmann

            Robert Crabill, at the loss of his beloved wife Eleanor 

 

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done; on earth as it is in heaven.  Give us this day our daily bread.  And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.  And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil.  For this is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever.  Amen.