Category Archives: Baptismal Covenant

An Invitation to Grow

Acts, Baptismal Covenant, Easter, Year B, , , , ,

Year B Easter 6
Acts 10:44-8

Sunday Sermon – May 6, 2018 from Christ Church Christiana Hundred on Vimeo.

When was the last time someone made a comment on your listening skills? Was it on a report card? Was during an argument with someone dear? To hear how God is calling us to grow, we must be good listeners: ready to hear the expected and the unexpected, the familiar and the radically new, the comfortable and the uncomfortable. The diversity in God’s Creation isn’t there to fuel one versus another; our differences are invitations to each other to grow closer to God by seeing the diversity of God.

We’re in our fifth week of our series Witness, as we work our way through the Acts of the Apostles, the band formerly known as the disciples. We’ve been following the apostles on their journey in the years following the resurrection as they spread the Good News and sow the seeds to start the Church. We are called just as they were called to witness – to proclaim our faith. When we follow their example, we know that this is not just about our words; it’s about action. In this season of Easter, we’ve heard about answering God’s call – even when it brings us back to the place of conflict, resisting temptation – especially the temptations to fear and worry, and moving forward in our call as adventurers – even when we like staying settled in one place. Our testimony of our faith to others is not just what we say to them; it’s how we live.

Our life in the Episcopal Church is shaped by two primary sacraments: Holy Eucharist, the bread we break and the cup we share around God’ table, and Holy Baptism, in which we become members of Christ’s Body, the Church and inheritors of the kingdom of God. The promises we make at our baptism govern our life together. One of these promises is “to seek and serve Christ in all people.”[1] The Main Event at the heart of today’s passage from Acts is a baptism – on an occasion where Peter is able to serve Christ in an unexpected way.

One of the great, unexpected joys of my ministry, was my year as an Episcopal missionary after college. When I was at training for my journey, one of the priests I was working with tried to teach my classmates and I about comfort; It’s a lesson that’s useful every day of our lives, and I’m really glad I listened to it. He drew an oval on the board and said, “This is your comfort zone: everything you know, everywhere you feel safe.” Then, he drew an “X” 5 inches from the oval and said; “This is one of the many experiences you’ll have when you move outside the country. Your comfort zone is going to have to grow to encompass this new item, and there will be nothing comfortable or expected about that, but you know what?” He drew a new oval on the board; once that encompassed the previous oval and the X he’d drawn. “Once your comfort zone expands, your perspective will always be bigger and what you’re capable of will be permanently altered.” It’s astounding.

At the beginning of today’s passage from Acts, Peter is preaching, something well within his comfort zone. While he knows he’s connecting with people and he can see the Holy Spirit moving through them, the people he’s connecting with are the people he’s used to connecting with, the people he expects to reach: the Jews. Peter’s seeking and serving the Christ is people who are familiar to him, whose way of life he already knows that he understands.  Suddenly, amid all this familiarity, something happens that astounds Peter: he finds his preaching is reaching people he did not expect to reach – people outside his comfort zone. Suddenly, he’s seeing that the Gentiles, too, are filled with the Holy Spirit. Peter’s suddenly found an opportunity to serve Christ in people he hadn’t even been seeking it in.

Peter had this oval that encompassed where he was comfortable seeing God, and in that moment from today’s passage from Act – that moment when we hear that he is astounded – Peter’s oval has an unexpected growth spurt, and his faith grows to encompass an unexpected way of seeing the Holy Spirit work through people. His perspective was permanently altered; his faith is permanently bigger. Because he opened himself up to listen for God in an unexpected place, in unfamiliar faces.

I’ve come to believe in my heart of hearts that the reason we’re all made so differently is because learning to understand each other helps us grow. To overcome the barriers of speaking different languages or coming from vastly distinct cultural backgrounds, we must slow down, really listen to each other, and make the effort to understand how someone who sees the world very differently than we do. This is why the experience of traveling is so important and enriching! Every new person, place, way of life, we take time to understand along our early pilgrimage brings us closer to God by helping us see Christ in our fellow humans, especially the ones most different from us. We get to know God better by exploring a new corner of God’s Creation. Whether we’re going just around a river bend like Lewis and Clark or growing deeper in relationship with another human, the richness of God’s Creation is astounding!

What Peter thought was a world of one versus another – Jew versus Gentile – was really a reminder that we’re all in this together. Encountering Christ in another person looks like a moment of tender vulnerability, a deep belly laugh, something powerful and new yet familiar, common ground: this is holy, indeed. This is living into our promise to seek and serve Christ in all people. How could Peter withhold the waters of baptism from a brother or sister after seeing Christ in them? How could we withhold that piece of the divine in each of our hearts from a neighbor, when we made a promise to seek and serve Christ in all people, no matter how short, tall, culturally foreign, politically opposing, or geographically distant?

Seeking and serving Christ is an opportunity to grow and be astounded as Peter was astounded. Don’t you just love that for all the wild and crazy places Peter’s followed God’s call we still get to Peter surprised by the Holy Spirit? It happens to all of us; it’s how comfort zones – and our faith – grow.

The Main Event in today’s sermon about Witness is our call to be good listeners, who are unafraid to be a little uncomfortable because we know that every new experience is an invitation to grow our faith comfort zone, to know God’s diversity from a grander perspective, and to be astounded at this richness of God’s Creation into which God has called us all into being and continues to call us to grow. So, slow down… and listen up!

[1] BCP 305

All Called “Good”

Baptismal Covenant, Christmas, Incarnation, John, Sermons

Christmas 1
John 1:1-18

Preached on December 31, 2017 at St Mark’s Episcopal Church in Basking Ridge, NJ.

 

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Christmas is one of the primary feasts in our church life, and it lasts twelve whole days.  I love that beautiful Christmas story we hear: It’s the story of, as we hear in John’s gospel today, the Word becoming flesh and living among us. Mary and Joseph journeyed all the way to Bethlehem to welcome the Christ Child in a barn, because that’s all our God needed, even with the same frail human flesh we have.  This is Jesus Christ: the Light of the World, who doesn’t need anything more than a humble space in our hearts to outshine the darkness of our world, even on these cold, winter nights.

Growing up, every few years my parents and I would go to visit my dad’s family in Mississippi for Christmas. I would always stay with my aunt, uncle, and cousins. When I was a teenager, they got a cat: Duke. Duke was a strawberry blonde tabby cat who liked to sneak out of the house and get in fights with other cats. He was, as many cats are, adorable, but he was also cool and aloof and neurotic…. And very proud. He did NOT like to be held. However, late at night, when we were all asleep, Duke would sneak up to someone for a visit. I vividly remember waking up in the middle of the night from deep sleep to someone tapping me on the should. I’d been lying on my side and as soon as I rolled onto my back to see what was happening, the culprit, Duke, would hope onto my chest to demand attention. I’d pet him and he’d purr, only content to be so affectionate in the middle of the night, when he thought I might not be able to see or remember. For all of his tomcat pride and prowess, Duke needed to feel a loving hand on his back sometimes, just as much as each of us does.

As Christians and people of community, we already know that none of us exist in a vacuum…although all of us came from one.

Today’s gospel passage from the first chapter of John begins “In the beginning was the Word;” John speaks of Christ much as the Book of Genesis speaks of Creation. In the beginning, the earth was a formless void, and the first thing God created was light, separating light from darkness. As we’re reminded in the poetry of today’s gospel from John, God created light to shine in the darkness. God called that light – and everything else that God lovingly made (and sometimes perfected through evolution) – GOOD. What God creates is Good. What God creates is never lacking.  What God creates is always enough. Any voice that says otherwise is not God’s voice

What God creates always enough to outshine the darkness. And God created this whole beautiful world, and then decided that this world needed each and every one of us. Because the Word was God; these four words from John’s gospel today remind us that God is part of all things God calls into being. God is part of all of us, just as we are reminded in our baptism that there is a piece of Christ in every human soul. The Word in every human heart. God’s love in every human skin.

The poetry of today’s gospel passage is beautiful, and at times confusing, but some things are made quite clear; “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” That is what happened on Christmas. Love came down, and Christ was born of a woman. God came and was born as a baby. The infant Jesus needed to be held and fed and cleaned by human hands just as we did at our birth. Because part of humanity is that we need the love and care of others in order to grow and then, accordingly, we are called to sow this love into the world, too. Sometimes, just like Duke the cat, we all need a loving hand on our back to make it through the long cold night. Through the Light of the World, love shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it.

The Christmas moment where God took on frail human flesh is the incarnation – it’s central to our faith. Jesus’ death, resurrection and ascension – aka the Easter promise that ensures forgiveness of all our sins – first required our fully divine God to also be fully human: frail, beautiful, and lovingly-made, just like each and every one of us.

In my daily journeys throughout this world we live in, I am on the receiving a lot of messages about human bodies and a few more specific ones about my own. As a society, we’re quick to label certain people’s bodies as perfect (cough only God is perfect cough), even though images these same bodies are then airbrushed before they can be published. Even our standards of beauty don’t make sense. We’ve definitely got some work to do, and we are starting to do it. On a very large scale, we’re finally starting to have some much overdue conversations about appropriate ways to talk about and engage with each other about our human bodies: their shapes, sizes, genders, colors, ages. As a society, we’re taking steps, but it’s going to take some time.  And all the messages we get about our bodies not being “good enough” go directly against what we read in Genesis; where God called humanity into being and called us “good.” Both John’s Gospel and Genesis teach us the even in this darkness, the light shines. The light shines and the darkness does not overcome it.

In our baptism and confirmation, we all promise to seek and serve Christ in all people. All people includes humans who do things like cut us off in traffic or give us the stink eye or who offer unwanted commentary on our bodies. All people includes those who incite feelings of shame in us, and therefore, all people can include ourselves. Sometimes we forget what we’ve learned from God and what we’ve read in Genesis and John. Sometimes we’re tempted to look at our imperfect human hearts and imperfect human bodies and think one or the other is not “good enough”. But seeking and serving the Christ in all people includes the Christ in ourselves, in our unique and imperfect human hearts and bodies, all shaped by God in Creation. All called “good” by God; any voice that says otherwise comes from somewhere else – somewhere dark. Lucky for us, John reminds us today that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness does not overcome it.

And the light we’re talking about – that’s the light of Christmas – That’s Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ: The Light of World, whose love will shine into every dark, sad, shame-filled corner of our hearts, if we’re open to letting Him in. Jesus Christ, fully divine and fully human, took on frail human flesh to help us love better. God believed a human body could help us learn to love each other better, and nowhere in our gospels is there a single reference to any sort of divine height, weight, or six pack. The Christmas Story is about love, a God who loved the world so much that God took on flesh and dwelt among us in a human body just like ours. Following Christ means embodying the light of this love every day. It means loving our neighbors and ourselves just as God does: one character flaw, one laugh line, and one lovingly-crafted human heart at a time.

 

 

“He lives in you”

Baptismal Covenant, Uncategorized

Year A: Epiphany VII
Leviticus 19:1-2,9-18
1 Corinthians 3:10-11,16-23
Matthew 5:38-48
Psalm 119:33-40
Preached at The Church of the Holy Cross, North Plainfield, NJ

Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.[1]

Paul reminds us today that we are temples. We are God’s people.  This is why I keep talking about the sacred spaces of our hearts being such fertile ground for the Holy Spirit to descend like a dove and fill us with as much love as we can open ourselves up to receiving. Paul’s words and our God’s unfailing presence are much-needed comfort for us in a world of rapid change, politics charged on multiple fronts, and many temptations to create division between ourselves and other humans on a daily basis.

Last week, I talked to you all a bit about the context of Paul’s letter to the still-forming Church in Corinth – a community Paul had helped to found but was not called to stay with. Last week, we heard Paul address the tension and conflict stirring within the community of Corinthians. This week, Paul builds on the importance of our unity as God’s people to remind and to teach the Corinthians what they were – and what we are still – called to build together.  While, like any skilled Lego Master Building, what we each are called to build will differ, we have a common foundation: that foundation is Jesus Christ.

What does it mean to have a foundation in Jesus Christ? Well, this week, we hear a lot about the Law. The passage we said/sang from Psalm 119 is all about praying to keep God’s law and to incline our hearts towards God’s desires for us and God’s law. Before I entered seminary, I didn’t have much use for the Psalms, but I’ve come to really, deeply, appreciate them. The beauty I found in today’s Psalm is that call for order. As someone who enjoys planning, I can relate to what the Psalmist calls for today: the prayer to God to tell me what to do, to give me rules so that I can follow them and maybe feel more in control in a chaotic world. In this plea, I find myself feeling more grateful than ever for the apostles’ teaching and fellowship – for our fellowship – figuring out how to keep our hearts open together.

Our Old Testament reading takes us back to Leviticus, a challenging, stern, and at times rather funny book, which in today’s passage covers several statements of law, including one that takes us again back to our discussion last week about how we orient our hearts. As God’s people, we can’t afford to let any hate for our human kin into our hearts, no matter how tempted we are in these days of division. Instead, we’re called to love our neighbor as we love ourselves, regardless of whether or not our neighbor loves us. Even the gospel passage from Matthew includes a list of decrees, but again, notice what they have in common? In the midst of all of this talk about keeping the Law, minding facts we learn with our heads, we are also hearing about love and about what we should be doing with our hearts: loving God, loving our neighbor as we love ourselves, loving even when it goes against what is happening around us, seeking and serving Christ in all persons, just as we promise in our baptism. Just as we work together to uphold with fellowship modeled after the apostles.

After declaring our belief in God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in the words of the Apostles’ Creed; the first promise we make in our baptismal covenant is that we will continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of the bread – our communion in communion – and in the prayers. That fellowship is especially important; it seals us together whether we’re gathering together around a table to break bread for a parish dinner or in Holy Communion. This fellowship is our commitment to working together and to loving together to live into these promises we make in our baptism, to being Christ to each other on good days and bad, to hold each other up, to love each other as best we can and in doing so proclaim by both word and deed – love – the Good News of God in Christ. It happens everywhere from adult study to those late-night conversations with our nearest and dearest where we ask each other “Is this the right thing to do? Is this the right risk, the right leap? What path is the most right? How can I be the most loving?”

When the chaotic world is too sad and too complicated. When the rules we’re trying to follow seem too many to remember or become too overwhelming. When we’re in a situation where the promises we make in our baptism are challenging us and we don’t know how to begin seeking and serving Christ or what it means in this particular instance to strive for justice and peace among all people. This is when we use the love to tie it all together. This is when we remember that the foundation we have in Jesus Christ is held together in love: love for each other, love for baby Julian, love for our family and friends, love for strangers, love for enemies. The best way we can live into our promise to respect the dignity of every human being is to be love in a world that so desperately needs it. That needs Christ and the Christ in each and every one of us. Part of what makes our baptism so beautiful is that it’s not just about making these promises for the newly baptized. In Julian’s baptism, we also renew these promises for ourselves and in doing so, we promise to help Julian and to help each other do our best to be the love in a world that so desperately needs it. From holding a door to lending an ear to saying a prayer. From offering our neighbor a coat from Betty’s Basement or a meal at Neighbors Feeding Neighbors. Today, Paul teaches us that a skilled master builder needs a foundation in Jesus Christ and all the laws and promises that make that up are cemented together in love.

In our Baptismal covenant, we find what it means to be a faith community, cemented together in love – and love isn’t just a noun. Love is a verb, something we do, an action in a world that needs it. Acting in love is what makes us alive, living as the living temples that Paul teaches us we are called to be with a firm foundation in Jesus Christ. “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?”  This is a question to the community as a whole, the entire Christian church in Corinth.  To suggest that God dwells among the gathered community was radical in first-century Corinth, because previously God was understood to dwell in the temple in Jerusalem. But God dwells here, too. In this building and in each of us and we are charged with carrying God and the Good News of Jesus Christ out into the world, whole in loving each other as our heavenly father is whole in loving us

[1] 1 Corinthians 3:16-17

The Baptism Journey: Roots, Branches, and the Beautiful Light of Christ

Baptismal Covenant, Epiphany, John, Sermons

Year A: Epiphany 2
John 1:29-42
The Church of the Holy Cross, North Plainfield, NJ
[Watch it here]

“And John testified, ‘I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove’”

Hey, wait, didn’t we just hear this last week? In the last week’s short passage from Matthew telling of Jesus’ baptism, Matthew narrates to us how, when Jesus’ was baptized, the Holy Spirit descended from heaven like a dove and onto Jesus. I told you then and I’ll tell you now just how beautiful I find that image! The Holy Spirit moving gracefully through the air like a bird and into our hearts. But in the gospel of John, John the Baptist says this and continues. Jesus is not only the one upon whom the Spirit of God descends, but also the one with whom the Spirit of God remains. I don’t know about you, but that part about the Spirit of God remaining reminds me of the words we use in our own baptism, when the Bishop or Priest marks the sign of the cross upon the head of the newly baptized, saying “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.”

While these two passages from Matthew and John depicting Jesus’ baptism do have their differences, both ultimately assert Jesus’ authority over John the Baptist and see the Holy Spirit moving through Christ in baptism. Now, in today’s gospel passage, we not only have a chance to meditate on Jesus’ baptism, but we get to go on a little further and see what happens next – what happens in Jesus’ life the day after he is baptized!

One of my favorite images to use for baptism is the image of a tree: a tree has roots that ground it, a trunk that centers it, and branches that reach out further and further into the world and closer to the sun with each passing year. And the taller and further those branches reach, the deeper the roots go too. In each of our baptisms, we find our roots which ground us in Christ. We find our trunk which keeps Christ at our core and gives us a center from which to grow. And then we find our branches, exploring new ways to take those promises at the heart of our baptismal covenant and live into them out into the world, striving to reach further and further into the big beautiful light of Christ. From roots to branches. None of us are lone trees but a closely-knit forest – all in this together.

So, today, we once again hear the Holy Spirit descend like a dove on Jesus’ in His baptism, then remain with Jesus as we see what happens to Jesus’ the day after this big awesome sacramental moments.  In this second part of the gospel passage, we hear John address Jesus as the “Lamb of God” for a second time in this gospel passage.

It is John the Baptist’s role throughout the verses where Jesus begins to call his disciples to be a witness, to proclaim as he sees Jesus approach, walk by, that Jesus is the “Lamb of God.” And in that proclamation, he is providing testimony as to who Jesus is and points the way so that others come to recognize Jesus Christ.  This was not the expected Messiah/Savior/Deliverer, the one who would be a great warrior!  John the Baptist was proclaiming him a lamb, that which the Jewish community recognized as a sacrificial offering.

So, this time, when John addresses the newly baptized Jesus as “Lamb of God,” two of John’s disciples hear John say this and so they jump ship and start following Jesus. Jesus, being the brilliant God incarnate who is both King of Jews and king of clever parables, notices that these people have started following Him and they tell him that they are looking for a rabbi, or a teacher. No wonder that first promise in the baptismal covenant is to uphold the apostles’ teaching and fellowship. That’s what’s happening here! Right after Jesus’ baptism! Today’s gospel concludes with the calling of the first disciples! One of the two disciples of John who jumped ship turns out to be Andrew, who is so moved by what he learns from following Jesus that day that he gets his brother, Simon Peter, and they sign on with Jesus to be part of the wild, roots-to-branches ride that is following Christ.

After Jesus’ baptism in the River Jordan, he goes out into the world, renewed. We come together every Sunday to renew ourselves and to renew each other in the meditation, grace, love, hope, and story of our faith in our liturgy, grounding our roots and connecting our branches before we branch out again as we are charged with carrying all of this love out into the world as Christians.

Today, we hear Jesus embark on a journey into something new; the great journey of teaching and proclaiming the Good New with His trusted disciples. How many times in our own lives have we embarked on a journey into something new in our earthly lives and ended up finding something heavenly – finding Christ in new places? When have you taken a crazy leap of faith with nothing but Grace to guide you? You know, like how Andrew and Simon Peter did today!

Let me tell you about a time I embarked on something new, other than that time i went to South Africa, that I’ve probably mentioned once or twice (or seventy times seven times) to all of you….

A year and a bit ago, in September 2015, I began my last year of seminary.  While I was used to my seminary community and taking classes and going to chapel, I was also embarking on something new. I was making the decision to now be a half-time student and a half-time intern. In addition to my student life at the seminary in New York City, I was now embarking on a 20-hour-per-week internship gig at St Mark’s Episcopal Church in Basking Ridge as a seminarian and sub-deacon. I had a new commute, relying heavily on New Jersey Transit, and a new community, a new boss and mentor, and so many new names to know.  Every Sunday, I would show up and serve in the service, lead the post-confirmation Sunday school class, maybe preach a sermon, and then shake hands at the door and work the room at coffee hour…. Then, I’d pray to retain all those names while I went through six days of pinging back and forth between my lives as student and as an intern during the week. New Jersey Transit felt like my own personal TARDIS, transporting me between worlds. Names will probably never be my strong suit, but story treasuring – both story-listening and storytelling are two of my soul’s greatest and deepest joys, integral to my call to serve as priest. So, I found that as I got to connect with all of these new people in their stories, where the heart is, I got their names right along with ‘em. And somewhere between the candlelit Silent Night of Christmas and the Great Alleluia of Easter this church full of strangers became a church full of people dear to my heart who honored me by giving me the chance to see the bright, beautiful, and completely unique ways that Christ was at work shining in each one of them. I got to see some of that piece of Christ in each one of their hearts. What wondrous love is this? One that seals us by the Holy Spirit and marks us as Christ own forever. We’ll need an eternity to sing on, indeed.

The sixteenth century Spanish mystic, Teresa of Avila, once wrote:

Christ has no body now on earth but yours,
no hands but yours,
no feet but yours,
Yours are the eyes through which to look out
Christ’s compassion to the world;
Yours are the feet with which He is to go about doing good;
Yours are the hands with which He is to bless [all] now.

This poem is one of the best examples of what this embodiment of Christ is.  It reminds us what happened at Christmas: God became incarnate – became flesh – in Jesus Christ to embody fully God’s love for the world.  And the poem takes things one step further and calls on us to incarnate Christ in our own baptized selves and to love the world as Jesus did.  We’ve got our baptismal roots in Jesus, and now we’re branching out.

Remember the WWJD bracelets?  Nice reminders to treat others as we think Christ would have.  What if, however, we changed that up just a bit?  What if instead we asked WWJBD?  What Would John the Baptist do? By challenging ourselves to be like John the Baptist, we become proclaimers of Christ.  We call attention to Christ!  We shout out to all who are within hearing distance, “Hey, look!  See!  God is alive.  God is in our midst.  The Holy Spirit is at work in us and through us and for us and even in spite of us!  Roots. Trunk. Branches. Behold!  The Lamb of God!”

As much as we are called to seek and serve Christ in others, to be the embodiment of Christ to others, we are also called just as Andrew and Simon were called  to embark fearlessly on every wild and Spirit-filled, journey that God calls to, so that in all that we say and do we may proclaim: “we have found the Messiah! We have been marked as Christ’s own forever! And each day, we’re called to search for new ways to try branch out and to stretch closer to that beautiful light of Christ!!

 

Promises on the Wings of a Dove

Baptismal Covenant, Epiphany, Matthew, Sermons

Year A: Epiphany 1
Matthew 3:13-17
at the Church of the Holy Cross, North Plainfield, NJ

“May only your word be spoken, Lord, and only your word heard.”

I pray those words every time I preach. They’re a reminder of the call I continue to choose to answer every time I step into the pulpit. In my prayer, I pause, center myself, open my heart, and invite the Holy Spirit in, that She might move through me. That every word I proclaim to you this morning may be God’s.  Along my journey towards ordination, I had several people alert me to the Grace that can happen in preaching. More than one has found that what people tell her they hear is not always the same as what she said. See this space between where I stand and where y’all are sitting? That’s more than enough for the Holy Spirit to descend like a dove and help the words you need most to reach each of you.

Today, as we celebrate the Feast of the Baptism of our Lord, we hear how the Spirit of God descends on Jesus in the waters of baptism. In the gospel account of the baptism we hear today from Matthew, Jesus comes to the Jordan River and insists that John baptize him.  John’s identity as the man who baptized Jesus is foundational to our understanding of who John I, but there are some differences in the way this story is told in Matthew, Mark and Luke. In Luke, the John doesn’t even really baptize; the Holy Spirit does, and in Mark, Jesus is baptized by John but there’s no conversation between them. As writers, Mark and Luke are focused on an audience of Gentiles for their respective gospel narratives as a whole, so when they tell the story of Christ’s baptism, they’re really trying to drive home the message of forgiveness that baptism offers. Since Matthew’s target audience is Jews who had come to follow Jesus and who focus on the fulfillment of God’s purpose for God’s people, Matthew includes the dialogue we hear where John names his call to baptize Jesus and Jesus consents. The gospel passage we hear today from Matthew acknowledges the authority John had while making sure the focus is on Jesus and Jesus’ power in being the fulfillment of a promise – you know, that promise of Christmas we talked about just two weeks ago? Jesus is the promise that we belong to God everyday. Christmas every day – even on this first Sunday after Epiphany.

Part of being the fulfillment of a promise includes Jesus being fulfillment of the law. The fulfillment of prophecy. The fulfillment of righteousness.

Now that’s a message that would help the Christian Jews to remember where they came from and to whom they belonged! Score one for Matthew for driving the love home with his target audience. He’s working hard in this text to build that bridge from the God of Israel to the God who has just called down from the heavens “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased!”

Here’s God telling the crowd that Jesus is the very fulfillment they’d been waiting for. It’s a beautiful message: “Remember where you come from. Now see where you are going. Follow Jesus’ lead.”

When I think about where I come from, it’s right here. It’s this place – this community. To preach on the baptism of our Lord, when I was baptized right over there – It’s quite a full circle moment. This is the community that raised me up and sent me out and welcomed me home over and over and over again. And it all started before I can even remember.

My journey – and each of our journeys – each of our going out and coming back in to this place –  is grounded in the promises that we made, or that were made for us, in our baptism (304):

The promise to continue in the apostles teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of the bread, and in the prayers

The promise to resist evil and then repent whenever we screw that up

The promise to proclaim the Good News of God in Christ – and proclaim not just with the words of our mouths but with the being of our whole selves

The promise to seek and serve Christ in everybody – even when they’re not willing to seek the Christ in us

And

The promise to strive for justice and peace for all and to respect everybody

Promises, promises. Like many of you, I can’t remember when they were made on my behalf by the people I love back at that font, but I do remember all the Sunday afternoons spent trying to figure out what they meant when I was sitting in a room down that hallway, preparing to be confirmed in my faith as an adult in the Church.

The roots I have in this Church in my baptism – the roots we all have in our baptism – are also our branches carrying us forward. The way we work together to fulfill our promise to continue in the apostles teaching and fellowship and in the breaking of the bread we’re about to share – The way we work together in fulfilling that promise strengthens our shared roots in this place so that we might go out and live our Baptismal Covenant in all places and truly proclaim the Good News of God in Christ in all that we do. Proofreading

In our baptism, we “are sealed by the Holy Spirit… and marked as Christ’s own forever.” (308) We aren’t just Christ’s followers; we belong to Him. These promises of our Baptismal Covenant knit us together to celebrate our greatest joys, to care for each other in times of sorrow, and to support each other when we’ve messed up and need to repent. Wherever we go and whatever we do, we are Christ’s own forever, sealed in that sacrament, and as long as we keep our hearts open, the Holy Spirit will be there ready to descend upon us like a dove.