Online Sermons
6th Sunday in Pentecost (proper 10): July 12, Martha Rogers
Welcome to our website. You are here: The Word --> Online SermonsI’m not sure if our Bishop, Alan Scarfe, says anything personal to the people who are presented to him for confirmation. But years ago, there was a bishop who came to my church and confirmed quite a few people, including the majority of the youth group.
After the bishop laid his hands on their heads and prayed over them, he would lift their faces with his hand, stare straight into their eyes and say: “Remember your baptism”.
Remember your baptism.
You can almost picture the response from the youth group teens. “Oh Sure”, “Yup” and, “Well, if I have to.” Then they returned to their pews in the church and the worship continued.
When I next met with the youth group, I explored their reactions to the whole confirmation event. They thought it was pretty cool that they got to wear red carnation corsages, and some got cards and presents. They liked that they had prayer partners in the adults in the congregation. One teen was impressed with the bishops miter or hat. Another wondered if the Holy Spirit really had landed on them. And then the serious teen, Christine, the one that usually sat quietly and pondered everything internally, spoke up and asked,
“Why do we have to remember our baptism?”
Good question I thought. Why DO we have to remember our baptism? I wondered, too, what the bishop had meant. So we explored the meanings of baptism and the teens went home and I thought we were done. Until Christine brought the same question up on the following Sunday during our youth group guitar lesson time.
Why do we have to remember our baptism?
Christine and I had another good discussion and we parted ways. I thought we were done with this subject until the next Wed night when we met for youth group and she asked again. But this time I was more prepared. I had called the bishop during the previous day.
“Why do we have to remember our baptism?” I asked him. Well, he said, he was confirmed in the Lutheran church and he was taught that Martin Luther always said that to people in turmoil or when they acted sinfully.
I didn’t like that answer, I rebutted, since the youth group teens were not acting sinfully or coming forward in personal turmoil when they were confirmed. Later I learned that the great reformer Martin Luther also frequently said to himself: "I am baptized. I am baptized.” Luther said these words over and over when he faced any kind of crisis, temptation or turning point in his life. "I am baptized, I am baptized." Rumor has it he even splashed water on his face as he repeatedly said those words. Almost like saying that who I am in God is who I am.
Who I am in God is who I am.
I am baptized. It makes a difference. Remember that.
Remember what it means to be a Christian.
Right now, I think there is only one among us that can’t remember her baptism. That would be Savannah who will be baptized in just a few minutes. Savannah, God loves you already, but with baptism, you are being welcomed into the Christian family. A family which will ask and encourage you to grow-up into the full image of God - the image which resides in you and in which were you created.
When we ask you later in your life to remember your baptism, we will be asking you to reconnect with the precious gift that your parents and sponsors have publicly vowed for you to receive this day. We will be asking you to live out your life as a Christian, and praying for you to make a difference in the world because of that gift.
You’re being asked, Savannah, to remember that Christ already provides forgiveness for your sins and that life in faith is abundant in grace, in abundant gifts. All the time. In all places. Recognize that always, Savannah. Live it out.
For this very day we pray that you grow up with an inquiring and discerning heart, with the courage to will and to persevere, with the awareness of God knowing and loving you, and that you will live with the gift of joy and wonder in all of God’s works.
But, Savannah, that is not all you receive by the gift of baptism your parents choose for you today. St. Paul, in today’s 2nd lesson from his letter to the church in Ephesus, is encouraging the congregation there to count their blessings as Christians, as followers of Jesus. Paul wants them to realize exactly what it means to be a Christian. Asking questions like: “What has happened in your life?” and “What has God done for you?” is one way of getting in touch with the abundant blessings around us daily. But Paul’s words in this letter to the Ephesians go a bit further in his definition of being a Christian and they are as current and meaningful to us today as they were back in the days he wrote them. For Paul wants us to really know, and live into, our baptismal pledge, our baptismal covenant.
Paul tells us that God has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing and that God has chosen us to be holy, set apart in the world, in love. Paul goes on to remind us that God destined us for adoption as God’s own children through the actions of Jesus. For in Christ, we have deliverance, redemption, and forgiveness of all our shortcomings. God has made known to us, with good pleasure, the divine plan, if we would only take the time to listen to it and engage it.
And it doesn’t stop there, St. Paul says. For in Christ and his sacrifice for us, the final will & testament has been read and we’re beneficiaries, heirs. We are inheritors of all the goodness and redeeming and joy and love and forgiveness that God purposes for this world and for our living in it. Blessing upon blessing. Gift upon gift.Remember your baptism. For as the Ephesians were marked with the seal of the promise of the Holy Spirit, you have also been marked. Marked in this world as Christ’s own and sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit. That is your baptism. Washed, marked, sealed and richly blessed as God’s own people. Forever. It just can’t get any better.
My prayer for Savannah is that she may know and understand what that means. May she have the grace and power faithfully to live into this gift with every day and way of her being.
May we also come more deeply to know and understand what our being Christian means.
And may you and I have the grace and power faithfully to live into that blessing with every day and way of our being.Let us today reclaim an inquiring and discerning heart. Let us today strengthen our courage to will and to persevere. Let us today hold tight to the awareness that God knows you and that God desires and loves you. Let us leave here today with the gift of joy and wonder.
Blessed be Savannah.
Blessed be you.
And first and foremost, blessed be God: by our love, by our actions and by our taking care of each other and this world.For who you are in God, is who you are.
No other definition for you, or of you, exists. Amen.