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Welcome to Hillsboro United Methodist Church! If you are searching for deeper meaning in your life that includes lasting relationships, spiritual growth and service to the world you have come to the right place. We offer a safe place in which to ponder important life questions within an atmosphere of support. Our hearts, our minds and our doors are open. We hope that as you visit with us that you will find a place to call home.
Sermon - July 18th, 2010
Encounters of the Baptismal Kind
Rev. Gwen Drake
Luke 9:46-48 and Exodus 2:1-10
Prayer of Preparation: We give thanks, O God of sacred stories, for the witness of your word today. Through Scripture you challenge our assumptions, increase our awareness, nurture our imaginations, and touch our feelings. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our creator and redeemer. Amen.
Remember the movie, A River Runs Through It, in the early 90’s? If you haven’t seen it, it is worth watching for the fly fishing scenes in it are incredible. I don’t fish. My family did. My grandparents on the Drake side loved fishing—bait fishing. Now, what I understand about fly fishing is it is a form of a dance, with the river as a partner. It is a matter of rhythm, balance, skill, technique, grace, all done in harmony with the wind, the water, the sun, and the shadows. It is an art form.
In the movie, fly fishing is a metaphor for life and A River Runs Through It is about life at its most elementary level. It is the story of a father and two sons. It’s a story about family. It’s a story about estrangement and reconciliation—something all of us experience—separation and return. In the movie, whenever reconciliation, return, and rebirth happen, it happens at the river, fly fishing. Whenever the sons go to the river with their father, they are reconciled and life is the way it is supposed to be. There is something elemental about the river, something like the source, or the beginning, back to which, if we could return, we would be renewed.
Maclean, the author of the original story wrote, “I am haunted by the waters.” They are the last words of the story. They are the last words in the movie. Maclean wrote, “The river runs over the rocks in the basement of time….under the rocks are the words.” “In the beginning was the word.” “I am haunted by the waters.” There is something elemental, something deep, something mysterious about water. A river runs through it…a river runs through the stories in the Bible.
In the Sacrament of Baptism, we prayed a prayer called the “Thanksgiving Over the Water.” Going through it backwards, there is the water we used in the font this morning, back to the waters in the Jordan where Jesus was baptized, back to the waters of the Red Sea through which the Hebrew people walked to freedom, back to the flood and the rainbow God placed in the sky as a promise God made to us, and back to the basement of time when nothing existed but water, back to the word of creation. We are a people haunted by waters. We are a people connected by water.
Water is important in all the religions of the world. Water is life. Christianity uses water as a sacrament in baptism. United Methodist have two sacraments—Baptism and Communion. Sacraments are a means of grace. We believe God offers us the sacraments to offer us grace. We know God is not limited to the sacraments. God gives us grace in many ways, all the time. The sacraments are called the “ordinary” means of grace. What this means is, at the sacrament it is more likely grace will happen.
Kind of like fly fishing on the river. The fish are wild and elusive in the river. We are present at the right time, we wait, we go through the motions, the rhythm, the dance, the art form, and maybe, it will happen. Maybe the fish will jump and catch the dancing fly above the water.
It is like that with grace. Our being here doesn’t guarantee anything. However, if you want to experience the mystery of grace, we believe through the sacrament of baptism and communion it “ordinarily” happens. So, this is where you need to be. Here is where it is likely to happen. It is not guaranteed. Not by just being here, and certainly not by anything I do, or any other pastor. It is a gift. Grace is pure gift.
There is nothing we can do to earn it. We can only receive it. John Wesley, our Methodist founder, lived in a time when many in the church were saying grace is free, therefore nothing is required, so don’t do anything. Just receive the grace in the sacrament, and you will be saved. Wesley saw in the church, many receiving this gift and not doing anything afterwards to change their behavior. So, Wesley concluded, they may have been given grace in their baptism, but they had obviously lost it. So he taught the Methodists, use the grace that is given to you. You acknowledge it, you accept it, you appropriate it into your life by living Christ-like lives.
That is why in our church, and others, where we practice infant baptism, there is also a time when the child grows up and confirms his or her baptism, acknowledges it, accepts it. We call it confirmation. Barbara and Ben, and all of us, have promised to do everything we can to teach little Darrell about being a Christian, about what it means to be grace-filled, loved by God, taught by Jesus. There will be a time when Darrell decides for himself. He has been baptized today, because his parents wanted him to know at a very basic, intuitive, spiritual level, and all of us to know that he is already full of grace and the love of God before he has done anything. This is what John Wesley called prevenient grace. “Pre” meaning before. God’s grace is a gift, freely given. God reaches out to Darrell first. We promise with his parents to raise Darrell in our midst with the kind of self-understanding so that some day, when he comes of age, he will be able to say for himself, “I know I am a child of God. I am certain I am a child of God, and I commit my life to living the kind of life that shows the world I am a child of God and a follower of Jesus.”
That is what it means for us to remember our baptism, when I walked down the aisle sprinkling a little water amongst you. It’s not about remember your baptism, literally. I don’t remember my baptism, because like Darrell, I was a baby held in the arms of my parents when I was baptized. Baptism runs much deeper than our intellect. It goes back to the water in the font, back to the water Jesus was baptized in, back to the water the Israelites passed through into freedom, when Moses life was saved by being set afloat on the waters as a baby, back to the rainbow in the sky after the flood, back to the basement of time, to Creation, when all was water, and the Spirit hovered over the waters like a dove, just the way the Spirit hovered over Jesus at his baptism, And the word of creation was spoken, “You are my son, my beloved.”
Baptism is connected to creation. Baptism says every human being is precious in the sight of God. Every human being is made in the image of God. Every human being is of divine worth. Baptism is a sign that Darrell is a child of God, just as all of us are children of God. This is a gift and there is nothing we can do about that because that is simply and profoundly who we are. Remembering our baptism is remembering who we are as beloved children of God. Re-affirming our baptism, as we do at every baptism is re-affirming who we really are. We are children of God. We are loved by a love that will never let us go. The water is a sign of that love and grace that is already present in us. It is a grace and love that will never let Darrell go for the rest of his life.
Also, baptism is something God does. It declares that God has chosen Darrell. God loves Darrell. Nothing proclaims this more profoundly and eloquently than when a baby is baptized, before they know God in any theological sense, before they are able to choose for themselves. Baptism says to Darrell, “God has already chosen you. You already belong to God.”
So, remember your baptism in this way… God loves you and chooses you. You belong to God.” This is profoundly mysterious and spiritual. It is to be acknowledged, accepted, and appropriated into our lives for we have in our church family a great opportunity and responsibility to little Darrell. We are all haunted by the waters. Amen.