Baptizatus Sum

One of the best things about the sacrament of baptism is the way it brings us back to basics. Nothing speaks quite so powerfully or so eloquently as this simple act of washing, accompanied by words of grace. Baptism, said Martin Luther, takes just a few minutes to initiate, but a lifetime to complete. Our baptism is not really finished until we die, God’s work in us complete.

The Reformers of the 16^th century were fond of saying that sacraments are "outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace." That’s a perfectly valid way of putting it, I suppose, but it doesn’t quite capture the reality, does it?

The bread of the Lord’s Supper isn’t just a dusty old "outward sign." It’s a loaf recently pulled from Kathleen Engstrom’s oven – nutty and yeasty and tasting of love. The wine isn’t just grape juice out of a jar. It’s the taste of Maundy Thursday and Easter morning -- the promise of a banquet that is yet to come.

And this sacrament, what we call "baptism" – it too is more than a mere sign. It’s our ancestors standing at the Red Sea, Pharaoh’s army at their backs, freedom on the other side, and no human way to get there. It’s a watery grave, this sacrament, where we lose all hope of saving ourselves and plunge into the sea of bottomless grace. A baptismal font is more than a piece of furniture. It’s a tomb from which we are raised. It’s a bath in which we are washed clean. It’s a womb out of which we are born to new life.

Because baptism is all these things – and more – we are right to take this sacrament very, very seriously. It’s not just a quaint custom, a rite of passage, an occasion for dressing up and taking lots of photos. There was a time in our tradition when parents spoke of "gettin’ the bairn done," as yet one item on the list of parental obligations. Surely you and I know better than that.

Last summer the rock star Rod Stewart and his fiancée Penny Lancaster brought their sixth-month-old son Alastair all the way from California to Edinburgh, Scotland, where, as the tabloids put it, they "had him christened." The rite took place on Sunday morning in the South Leith Parish Church not far from Andra’s childhood home. (Andra’s mother, Jean Walker, is an elder at North Leith Parish Church a few blocks away.)

Rod the rocker told reporters after the service that seeing the minister pour water on wee Alistair’s head was a moving sight. "It was wonderful. It bought me to tears," he said.

The sacrament of baptism brings many of us to tears, but I wonder, does it bring us to our knees? Does it lead us to the foot of the cross and to the empty tomb? Does it call to mind the promises we have made to be Christ’s faithful disciples to our life’s end? Does it remind us who we are and whose we are?

It should. Harry Potter has a lightning-bolt shaped scar on his forehead to remind him who he is. You and I are similarly branded – not with a lightning bolt but rather with the cross – the sign that Christ has made us his own forever.

If baptism were merely a sign – a symbol, an intellectual construct -- we wouldn’t bother with it. We serve the Word made flesh, the God who became one of us. In the Christian faith, matter matters. The gospel is about God’s presence in the material world. It’s about Jesus born of Mary’s hard labor, about Jesus carried on Joseph’s shoulders, about Jesus learning to walk and talk -- just like young William and young Kemp here.

The gospel is about bath time in a carpenter’s house in Nazareth and noisy meals with brothers and sisters. It’s about Jesus making sure his mother will be cared for after he dies: "Woman, here is your son." (And to the disciple he loved) "Here is your mother" (John 19:26).

The gospel is about the triune God who longs to gather us under motherly wings, the God who discards fatherly protocol and rushes to meet us in the dust of the road, the God whose love is so tender and so fierce that nothing in all creation can separate us from it.

The gospel is about God in the flesh, not God in the abstract. That’s why the sacraments are more than mere signs. They are means. They are ways of enacting the good news itself. We don’t just talk about God feeding us. We eat and drink real food. We don’t just talk about God washing us. We take real water, we pour out as much as we can, and we make as big a splash as possible.

The sacraments enact what they proclaim. Something happens in and through them. If this were not so, God would not have bothered to give them to us, and there would be no reason to keep them going.

In today’s Gospel reading Jesus looks out on the crowd and warns them that following him requires a radical shift in priorities. Christ and his kingdom must come first – before possessions, before career, even before family. Jesus says this with characteristic middle eastern hyperbole: "Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife, and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:26).

Matthew softens this saying to read, "Whoever loves father or mother . . . or son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me." (Matthew 10:37). Even in Matthew’s milder version, this saying brings us up short. Who would have thought Jesus was so opposed to "family values?"

Jesus was not, of course, encouraging his hearers to hate their families. He was challenging them to look beyond the boundaries of kith and kin, race and culture, to glimpse a world in which there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, but one household, knit together by God’s love made flesh in Jesus. "God’s kingdom is coming," Jesus is saying. "Order your lives accordingly."

Consider your baptism and act accordingly. That’s Paul’s message to Philemon in a nutshell. Paul has sent the slave Onesimus home to face his owner, Philemon. According to the law of the land, Onesimus is Philemon’s slave, his property. According to the baptism they both share, Onesimus is Philemon’s brother in Christ.

Put them on the scale, Philemon. Human law on one side, divine grace on the other. The baptism you share with Onesimus verses the culture’s definition who you are and who he is. Weigh them out and then decide.

When you and I get off track, when we try to make the Christian faith far more complicated than it need be, God brings us right back to this font, where our new life in Christ began.

My father’s name is Henry Richard Copeland, although for 86 years he has done his best to keep the "Henry" part a secret. A bit like a certain "R. Davis Thomas," Dad went by "H. Richard Copeland," but everybody called him "Dick." As a minister of the Word and Sacraments for 56 years, Dick Copeland preached more than a few sermons. Good sermons they were, too – well chosen words.

Words have always been important in our family. What else could one expect in a household with an English professor for a mother and a preacher for a father? Dick and Betty Copeland produced three children: one preacher, one lawyer, and one English teacher. Words have always been our family’s stock and trade.

Last month I spent a couple of weeks with my father and sister in Houston. I went because Dad’s own baptism is nearing completion in death. We thought he might die a month ago, but he fooled us all. I learned something in those visits – or rather I re-learned something that I tend to forget, being a person of words.

When Christians come to the end of their lives, they don’t need very many words. It’s true, people who visit sometimes feel they have to say a lot of words, but more often than not, the words they say are more about their needs than the needs of the person who is dying.

Dad himself has only a few words at his immediate command. The rest have gotten lost along the way, but will, I am sure, be waiting for him to reclaim when his baptism is complete.

Just now only a few words are required, and those he knows by heart: "I love you." "God loves you." "Peace be with you."

That’s because the most important words to my father were spoken 86 years ago by a preacher whose name I don’t know. I don’t know the preacher’s name, but I know what he said. He said, "Henry Richard, I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit."

The baptisms of William James Fordam and Kemp Allen Peoples begin today. Where their baptisms will take them and when they will be completed is in God’s hands. So it is with all of us. God has placed God’s mark on us and we belong to God.

Remember your baptism, and be thankful.