Baptism of Jesus - Year A

It wasn’t at baptism, but in an argument over baptism that I became a Lutheran. 



As many of you know, I didn’t always follow in the righteous path of Martin Luther. “Grace alone through faith alone” was foreign to me growing up. I had no idea what the catechism was until I was 25. 



And Martin Luther was, for me, both a historical curiosity, and, as I learned in my music studies, an important musical figure. 



Well, the words may have been foreign to me, but concept wasn’t. I learned that God loved me and welcomed me into God’s family, not through any works that I do, but because of what Jesus had done for me, not in a Lutheran church, but in an Anglican Sunday School. And I was welcomed into Christ’s Church through the sacrament of Holy Baptism at Grace Anglican Church, in St. Catharines Ontario, on Pentecost Sunday, 1971.

But not everyone agreed that this was a good idea.

“You need to be baptized,” I was told 22 years after the fact.

“I already am, thank you very much,” I replied.

“But you were a baby,” he said. “You don’t remember it, do you?”

“Yes, I was a baby, and no I don’t remember it,” I replied.

“Then how can you call yourself a Christian?”

“I beg your pardon?” my eyebrows raised.

“You didn’t choose to be baptized, so you aren’t saved. You have to make a choice for Jesus or you can’t go to heaven.”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“You may have had some water poured on your head as a baby, but that doesn’t mean you’re saved. You have to make a conscious choice - a decision - to allow Jesus into your life for you to be a Christian. Baptism is a public declaration of your faith and commitment to Jesus, how could you publicly declare your faith if you hadn’t learned to talk yet? And since you haven’t done that, you can’t call yourself a ‘Christian.’”

I wasn’t sure what bible this guy had been reading but it certainly from any scripture that I recognized. But he wasn’t alone. This wasn’t the only conversation I had like this. 



Over the next three years, many well-meaning friends told me the same thing. They lent me books to read, gave me their best arguments about why they thought infant baptism was unbiblical, and even asked me to sit down with a preacher, who could lead me down the path to salvation, because clearly, as an Anglican, I was headed in the other direction.

This was the Christian group on campus at Wilfrid Laurier University where I did my music degree. Laurier Christian Fellowship (or LCF) was a haven for conservative evangelicals; Baptists, Pentecostals, Christian Missionary Alliance, and other like-minded believers who gathered regularly for prayer, worship, and fellowship. 



I had a lot of friends in the group. In fact, I’m still friends with many of them. So, I don’t share this story to slag on them. There were some wonderfully gracious Christians in that group whom I admired for their faith, and who taught me a tremendous amount about how to be a more faithful disciple of Jesus. But there came a time when I had to walk away.

From subtle (and not-so-subtle) suggestions about the state of my salvation, to guest preachers telling me who to vote for, to the intrusive fixation on our private lives, to micro-managing our moral choices, to the constant pressure about my required “re-baptism,” I decided to look elsewhere for Christian fellowship.

I was late for class one day, and as I was running through main concourse area, a sign stopped me in my boots. Well, the sign, and the stunningly attractive young woman sitting behind it. 



The sign read, “Lutheran Student Movement.” I knew who Lutherans were, and I figured these folks were closer to my Anglican roots than my friends at LCF were. But until then, I had no idea there was another Christian student group on campus. Like most Lutherans, for better or for worse, they kept a low profile.



I figured Medieval Music History class could wait. After all, I didn’t know if this attractive young woman would still be there later in the day. And so I stopped at her booth, chatted her up a bit, and inquired about who the Lutheran Student Movement was and what they did.



I signed up on their email list, got her phone number, and joined the group for supper the next day. And ended up moving into the Lutheran Student House later that year.



(All that being said, I don’t know if I would have been so hasty in signing up with them if someone else was staffing the booth that day. And, to be honest, as much as I was interested in learning about the Lutheran Student Movement, I was much MORE interested in the young woman’s phone number. I told her this story years later after we were married, and she burst out laughing because she said that she went home that day blissfully believing that she’d won a convert)

I started attending worship at the campus chapel offered by Lutheran Campus Ministry, and when I first arrived, Pastor Val Hennig greeted me at the door. When the liturgy started, I felt that I had arrived home. 



Pastor Val poured water in the font, said a prayer, and invited the congregation to “remember our baptism” by dipping our fingers in the water, and drawing a sign of the cross on our foreheads. He called us up to the font and said, “Remember your baptism, and be glad!”

I didn’t realize how much anxiety I was carrying about church until I felt it drain away that morning when I put my finger in the water, and made the sign of the cross on my forehead. 

Here my baptism was recognized and honoured. It was something to celebrate. It was a joyful acknowledgment of God’s activity in my life.

I felt that I could breathe again, and was free to explore my faith without any concerns over my salvation, and I was invited to deepen my understanding of God with people who didn’t seem to think they had all the answers to the mysteries of life and death, but were asking the same questions that I was.


And more than that, as I dipped my finger in the water, and heard the pastor’s words, it was like God’s promise to Jesus overflowed from his life and spilled into mine, when God said at Jesus’ baptism, “You are my beloved child, with whom I am well pleased.”

From that story it was was abundantly clear, that in baptism, it wasn’t MY public declaration of MY faith, but GOD’S announcement of what GOD had done in ME. It was a thundering reminder of what GOD has done in YOU. Because of what Jesus has done for US.

Upon rising from the waters of his baptism Jesus began his ministry of sharing God’s life with us, and sharing our life with God. God’s life of healing the sick and raising the dead, the declaration of forgiveness of sin, the pronouncement of justice to the oppressed, the proclamation of freedom from the chains that bind us, the good news preached to the poor and hurting.

Upon rising from the River Jordan Jesus shared OUR limitations with God. Jesus shared our worries and our hungers, the water for which we thirst, the anxieties that threaten to overwhelm us, the grief that grabs our hearts, the regrets of our past and our fear of the future, the sufferings we endure and deaths we die, so that we, joined to him in his baptism of the cross and the grave, can share in the power of his risen life. And live his resurrection today, in our lives, now, at this moment. And meet him, one day, in eternity.


When people ask me what my favourite part of my job is, I answer without hesitation: baptisms. Because my own baptism is such a vital part of my own story in God, that I feel honoured and privileged to welcome others into God’s story through the water poured out, the Word proclaimed, and the promises spoken.

It is at the font where I see God’s love flow into our lives most visibly, where we hear God’s saving story, and where God includes us in that unfolding tale. 

Baptism is the beginning of a journey that starts at that moment when the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit claim us as God’s own, and it ends in eternity. It’s a reminder that God has not given up on us and never will.

It is in baptism where God’s promise to Jesus overflows from his life and spills into ours, when God said, “You are my beloved child, with whom I am well pleased.”


May this be so among us. Amen.

Easter 6C

“I’d like you to baptize my baby,” she said, on the other end of the phone.

“I’d be glad to,” I replied.

“What’s involved?” she asked

“Well, I’d like to meet with you and we can talk about that. When can you meet?” I asked

“How’s Sunday at 1:00?” she said.

“How about you come to church and see what we’re all about then we’ll meet in my office after worship,” I suggested.


“Ummmm...no, I don’t think so,” she responded. “How about you come to my place at 1:00.”

“Umm...Okay,” I responded.

I arrived at her house armed with a hymnal marked to the baptism service, as well as a copy of Baptized We Live, a sort of comic book version of what we believe as Lutherans.

“So, why a baptism?” I asked her.

I ask this question every time I meet with a family who presents their child for baptism, not to jam parents into a corner, and I’m NOT looking for a “correct” answer. But because I’m genuinely interested in what parents believe about baptism.

“Well, I got done, my parents got done, and I should have my baby done,” she said. Her answer was pretty typical from what I get from parents. At least she was honest.

I opened the hymnal and turned to the liturgy for Holy Baptism, and I pointed out the section where she would be making some pretty heavy duty promises on behalf of her child:

“As you bring your child to receive the gift of baptism, you are entrusted with responsibilities:

to live with her among God’s faithful people,
bring her to the Word of God and the Holy Supper
teach her the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, and the Ten Commandments,
place in her hands the holy scriptures,
nurture her in faith and prayer,
so that your child may learn to trust God,
proclaim Christ through word and deed,
care for others and the world God made,
and work for justice and peace.

Do you promise to help your child grow in the Christian faith and life?”

I couldn’t get through the rest of my spiel because she immediately burst out crying.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I don’t want to do any of that,” she said.

“I don’t understand, what’s your concern?” I asked.

“I don’t want to force any religion on my baby. I’m not going to bring her to church because I want her to make her own choice when she grows up. I don’t believe in church. I don’t believe you have to go to a building to worship God,” she said.



(“Then why am I here?” I whispered to myself)

“It’s not the building that’s important, it’s where God’s people gather to worship,” I replied.

“I don’t care!” she said, and stormed out of the room.



(Awkward....)

I always find it interesting that many parents see faith and spirituality as areas where they can raise their children with little or no guidance, yet still assume their children will make good choices about these when they grow up.

And I often wonder if she told her friends about the mean ol’ pastor who wouldn’t baptize her baby. But then I realized it wasn’t me who said “No” to her child’s baptism, it was her.

At an earlier point in my ministry I would have been furious at this encounter. I would have thought “How dare she treat the sacrament of Holy Baptism with such cavalier consumerism, as if I’m in the religious service industry! This is God’s activity in her child’s life, not the Sears portrait studio!”

But after a few years into this job I realize that she’s just doing what the culture taught her to do, to define life and faith on her own terms, rather than seek the wisdom of a community who lived and breathed their faith for thousands of years.

She was making it up as she went along, dogmatically asserting the infallibility of personal choice and the inerrancy individual spiritual preferences.

She’s so deeply immersed in the waters of consumerism, believing that she is swimming upstream, against the religious current, that she can’t see that most other people are floating in the same direction.

She is not as unique and radical as she probably believes herself to be.

She was probably worried that I was trying to jam her into a religious box that was not her own making, where she would gasp for air, rather than providing a doorway into new and abundant life that God wants for her and her child, offering her and her daughter an opportunity for participate in the world’s salvation.

And she was right about one thing. You don’t have to go to a building to worship God. That much is true. But you can’t be a Christian without others. We need the support, encouragement, fellowship, and prayers of others to grow into our faith. There cannot be any individual Christians, because there is no individual God.

God is a community. Three-in-one and one-in-three. Don’t ask me how this all works because I haven’t a clue. No one really knows.

But what I do know is that God is profoundly relational. In today’s gospel Jesus talked about The Advocate - The Holy Spirit - sent from himself and the Father, the small intimate community we call “God,” so that his followers would never be alone. And that’s typical of God. God-is-with-us because that’s who God is. And that’s who God wants us to be. We can’t be Christians without each other. That’s why God calls us into the church.

Some say that such a perspective coming from a guy like me, doing what I do, is just the theological justification for keeping my job, and it’s the religious rationale for propping up the church institution.

(I won’t deny that you folks coming to church helps pay my bills and puts shoes on my kids’ feet. After all, a guy’s gotta eat. And I really like my job.

But there are easier ways to make money than being a pastor. And more of it.)

When we baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, we baptize into a community - God’s community - where we are never alone.

As I thought about what that mom said I realized that at least she had the integrity to NOT go through with a ritual that she didn’t believe in. And it could be said that her saying “No” to her child’s baptism respected the sacrament and what we as Christians believe.

But still, I never say No to a baptism because God never says No. Even when the parents clearly have no desire or intention to follow through on the promises they make on behalf of their child at baptism, I still do the baptism, because God DOES follow through on God’s promises at baptism. Right to the end.

“Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life,” John tells us in today’s second reading, “bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.”



That’s why we were brought to waters of life, and why we still bring people to these waters: to be washed clean of the curse of sin, to be fed by the tree of life, to be healed by its fruit, to live according to God’s vision of life for the world, to bask in the warmth of God’s light.

This is not our doing. This is not YOUR doing. This is God’s doing. This is future God has for you. This is the future God has for US. God’s future for the world has already been established, the future of healing and peace, the future of forgiveness and joy, a future where all will be fed by the tree of life, and we drink from the rivers of new life. The future when Jesus reigns over everything, and all people worship together in the presence of God.

And until that day comes in its fullness, our challenge - as a church - is learning how to live our promises in world that doesn’t believe in them, in a world that tries to make up faith and spirituality as it goes along, in a world that’s - rightly or wrongly - suspicious of formalized faith.

But whether we live up to that challenge or if we fail, God who is never alone will remain faithful to us and to the world, because that’s who God is.

May this be so among us. Amen.

Baptism of Jesus B

We met John the Baptist in Advent – two Sundays in a row! And we encounter him again today. And he’s in no better a mood now than he was then.

But Mark left out the juicy bits of John`s story. He took his scissors to the moments when John’s venom was most poisonous. John had a few choice words for King Herod and his wife. John didn’t like the fact that Herod married his brother’s wife. In fact, it was against Jewish law. And if Herod didn’t like John’s well-aimed preaching he should have taken it up with God, not John. John was just doing his job.

It might have been that joltingly honest preaching that drew Jesus – and everyone else - to John that morning at the Jordan River. John was refreshing. Unique. Different from other preachers who either told people what they wanted to hear, or lined their pockets with the pennies of little old ladies. John wasn’t warm and fuzzy. But you knew that he’d give you the straight goods when it came to the things of God.

That day, in the river of freedom, where thousands of years prior, God’s people crossed from slavery into the land that God promised them, was where Jesus joined himself to that saving story, where his mandate as God’s Son was given to him. Where the affirmation of the Almighty wrapped around him like sun-soaked blanket.

“You are my Son, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased...” Who wouldn’t want to hear that from God? Or from any parent for that matter.

But lying underneath this affirmation from the divine was a summons. A calling that might have made Jesus’ blood turn to ice.

If Jesus was God’s Son - Israel’s Messiah - the one to save people from their sins and create a world of justice and mercy, then that didn’t mean that he could simply bask in the warm embrace of heavenly approval. He couldn’t walk around town all Messiahy cashing in on his sacred status.

Being God’s Son meant he had to go and do things that the messiah was supposed to do. Being the messiah wasn’t a state of divine being. It was a job description. A letter of conscription from the only one in the universe who won’t take “no” for an answer.

Although, I’m sure saying “no” crossed his mind. And so, I wonder if before he dipped his toe in the water for his heavenly bath, he was tempted to take another walk around the block. Or hop on the next bus out of town.

Maybe Jesus’ temptation didn’t begin or end, like we assume, in the desert to where he ran after being dunked by John. I wonder if his temptation anxiety started well before he found himself in the Jordan River. I wonder if he was tempted to run away from his calling. From his task as God’s Son. I wonder if he was tempted to escape and hide from who he was.

If he was tempted to stay in Nazareth and take over the carpentry business from Joseph, maybe settle down, get married, and crank out a few kids, I don’t think anyone would have blamed him. After all, it wasn’t a bad life. The work was steady. He was close to family. And there were no crosses following him wherever he went.

I’m sure he had all that in the back of his mind when he followed John into the water. I’m sure he knew that, once he was dipped in the muddy river, his life was over. Everything he was and did was gone. He knew the weight that was being placed on his shoulders. It was a new beginning for Jesus. A call into God’s vision of the world that he had to follow. A path that led to the Kingdom of God - the kingdom that dwelled within his very being.

“You are my Son, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased...” The next, unspoken, sentence was “Now get to work.”

Work on healing the sick and raising the dead. Work on preaching good news to the poor and setting the captives free. Work on giving sight to blind and comforting the broken hearted.

Work on showing God’s Kingdom love to a world in pain. Work on forgiving people’s sins. Work on setting the world straight through mercy and justice.

That’s quite the job description, isn’t it?

I’m glad that’s his job and not mine. I wouldn’t want to be saddled with such a burden.

But then again, who were all those people who being baptized with Jesus? What did God want for them?

As it turns out, Jesus wasn’t the only one being called into a new life that day in those waters. God was calling them into the same life that Jesus was called into. Baptism isn’t just a ritual that we perform as an entry way into the church family. And baptism isn’t just a one-off salvation ticket.

Baptism is about being recruited - drafted - into a movement. In baptism, we are joined to Jesus’ death and resurrection, so we can live resurrection lives in a world so often more interested in death.

Baptism is about God’s light shining through us in a dark world. It’s about binding the world’s wounds. It’s about being part of a movement that is bigger than ourselves, God’s movement of renewing everything about the world, where God wipes every tear from our eyes, where crying and pain are extinguished, where the hungry are satisfied, and the dead rise breathing new life.

That’s the life into which God has called YOU. That’s the task that God has placed in front of YOU. Not to earn special favour, or gain some sort of heavenly reward, or attain special spiritual status.

But God has called you into this life because that mission who God is and that’s what God does, and you are in Jesus, and Jesus is in God.
You have been joined to Jesus’ death and resurrection. You have been drafted into Christ’s mission. You have been named and claimed as God’s own child through your baptism into Christ so that you walk the earth as a healing presence.

It’s because God looked upon you, saw everything you’ve done, looked over your pains, your weaknesses, your regrets, and your failures, God has looked you up and down and inside out, and God open the divine arms, wrapped your in divine love, and said, “You are my beloved child, with whom I am well pleased…Now, you have a job to do.”

May this be so among us. Amen.