Trinity A

I’m guessing that the folks who put the lectionary together chose the first reading from Genesis for this Trinity Sunday because of a certain word. At least that might be part of the reason.

You probably read this creation story from Genesis so often that you might have passed right over it. I know I did the first 1000 times I read this passage. But some in this past week’s bible study caught a hold of it pretty quickly.

So now, when I read this passage with Trinitarian eyes, I can’t help but lock in on the fact that God speaks of God’s self in first person plural.

“Let US make humankind in OUR image...” God says. And this is not a typo. It’s in the original Hebrew. It’s like the lectionary folks wanted to remind us that God is a tiny community - and always has been, right from the beginning, if God can ever be said to have a beginning.

Maybe I’m reading too much into this Genesis passage, but that’s what it says to me. God may be “One” but we don’t know how God self-identifies that “Oneness.” Especially when God is a relational God. God is never alone because God can’t be. That’s not who God is.

And since we’re created in God’s image, we can’t run from the fact we TOO are relational creatures. We are made to engage and interact. Our very being demands that we remain connected to others, that the path of faith and life is not supposed to be a lonely walk or solitary exercise, that we can’t be who we are without each other. No matter how much we try.

“I’d like you to baptize my baby,” the voice 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 it. When can you meet?” I asked

“How’s Sunday at 1:00?” she said.

“How about you come to church 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.”

“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 to most if not all parents I meet for the first time who present their child for baptism, not to jam parents into a corner, because 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 want to 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 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.

“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.

I always find it interesting that some 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 things 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.

Like so many others, she was making it up as she went along, dogmatically asserting the infallibility of personal choice and the inerrancy of individual spiritual preferences. She’s so deeply immersed in the waters of consumerism, that she believes 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 of her own making, where she would gasp for air, rather than seeing that God was providing a doorway into the 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. But you can’t be a Christian without others. We need the support, encouragement, fellowship, challenge, 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. A family. An intimate connection. Three-in-one and one-in-three. As you know we call this the “Trinity.” 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. God-is-with-us because that’s who God is with God and with everything that God has created in God’s image. And that’s who God wants us to be. We can’t be Christians without each other.

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.

So 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 realized she didn’t believe in. And it could be said that her saying “No” to her child’s baptism respected the church and what we believe as Christians.

But still, I never say “No” to a baptism because God never says No. Even when the parents clearly have no desire 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 made at these waters.

And God keeps the promises God made TODAY as JACK is received into the community called “Trinity” and the community called “church.” Today we are fulfilling Jesus’ commission to baptize, and to teach everything he taught the disciples; that the kingdom of God, the kingdom of peace, of justice, of forgiveness, of mercy, of grace, and of life is reigning in Jack’s life, and will guide him through his years and lead him into eternity when the time comes. Jack is now a participant in the world’s salvation, as he walks through his years, giving the world his gifts, building on what God is already doing.

And it won’t be easy for Jack because it’s not easy for us. Our challenge - as a church - is learning how to live our promises in world that doesn’t believe in them, among those who try to make up faith and spirituality as it goes along, in a culture that’s - rightly or wrongly - suspicious of formalized faith.

But whether we live up to that challenge or if we fail, God who is Trinity will remain faithful to us and to the world, because that’s who God is. That’s what God does. The Three-in-One and One-in-Three has received us into the intimate community called “God.”

May this be so among us. Amen.

Easter 4A

My phone rang. I recognized the number, so I answered it, thinking one of you were having some sort of medical emergency, since it was the number at the nurse’s station at the Stony Plain hospital that appeared on the screen.

“Pastor Kevin, we’re sorry to bother you,” said the nurse on the other end of the line.

“It’s no bother,” I said.

“We have a gentleman here who was brought in this afternoon who probably won’t last the night. The family has gathered, but we can’t get a hold of their pastor. The church doesn’t have an answering machine, and we don’t have the pastor’s cell number. The family would like someone to come and pray with them, and since we can’t reach the family’s pastor, can you come in?”

“You mean to tell me that this person’s church doesn’t have voicemail or an answering machine?”

“Yes, we tried and there was no answer.”

“And no voicemail or answering machine?”

“Correct.”

“In 2014?”

“Apparently so.”

“What kind of church doesn’t have voicemail, or even have an answering machine, with all the pertinent info on it: worship time, office hours, and emergency contact? Isn’t that common practice? This is nuts! This can’t be the first time they encountered this problem!”

I didn’t say that out loud. But that’s what I was thinking. It wasn’t the nurse’s fault that this particular church hasn’t kept up with the technology of the 1980s. The medical staff were just doing their jobs, which was much more than I could say about that church.

And what was worse, I thought, what kind of witness is that? It felt like this gave further evidence to the culture that church is outdated and irrelevant.



If their church couldn’t be there for them at their time of greatest need, then why bother with the whole religious enterprise at all? 



If this family couldn’t be wrapped in the arms of their faith community at their moment of grief and loss, surrounded by their sisters and brothers in Christ to hold them up when they are weak, then what’s the point of having a church? 



Doesn’t this just trumpet to others to stay away? That church is only in it for themselves? That church, ultimately doesn’t care about anything other than passing the plate for its institutional self-preservation?

Perhaps I was overreacting. After all, churches are made up of people, and people make dumb mistakes and poor decisions. I’ve certainly made my fair share of blunders. It could be that I was placing too much importance on the ministry value of an answering machine.

But, again, none of this was the nurse’s fault or concern. All she cared about was a dying patient, and a family who was about to lose a loved one.

“I can be there in 20 minutes,” I said.

However, if I was honest with myself, I would have to admit that I wasn’t just annoyed that I was called in to deal with someone else’s problem. I was miffed because, when the nurse called, I was just about to leave the house to go and watch football (I know...priorities, right?).

But I still thought my frustration with the church and the pastor being unreachable in a time like this was justified. Human or not, we have obligations to our people because that’s who we are together, under God’s covenant of love and community.

I arrived at the nurse’s station, and was then shown to the room. I had my tools of the trade: a prayer book with the appropriate liturgy, and a small vial of oil for anointing. 



However, I was in NO mood to be doing this. I was fully aware that my frustration with my colleague and my colleague’s church was getting the better of me. But I didn’t want to show it to the family. It had nothing to do with them, and they had their own stuff to deal with. 



So, I took a couple of VERY deep breathes, not because I was nervous, but to try to release all my negative energy so I could be completely present for the family.

It didn’t work. But I pushed the door open and went in anyways.

The scene was one I’d been in many times before. A large family gathered around the bed listening to grandpa’s laboured breathing, wondering which one will be his last.

“Good evening, I’m Kevin Powell, I’m the pastor at St. John Lutheran Church of Golden Spike,” I announced softly.

I looked around the room to figure out who was who, and I identified who I assumed was the man’s wife.

“Do you mind if I pray for ‘George’?” (not his real name) I asked her.

“Yes. Please.” she responded, not looking up at me.

I then remembered that these folks weren’t Lutheran. And I had NO idea what their tradition did a time like this. I didn’t want to guess, and then improvise. But then I figured they probably didn’t know what happened in these situations either. So this fellow was getting a Lutheran send off.

I read some scripture, prayed the Lutheran Commendation of the Dying liturgy, anointed the man with oil, gathered the group to say the Lord’s Prayer together, gave a blessing for the man and for the family, and told them to call me again if they needed me. Then left. In and out in just under five minutes.

And as I left the room, I was disappointed with myself. I was disappointed because, even though I did my job according to my job description, even though I read appropriate bible passages, even though I prayed the appropriate prayers, and even though I said the appropriate things, I felt like I phoned it in. That my mind was in a different universe than that hospital room. That I already had one foot out the door once I walked through it. I didn’t even take my jacket off. I wasn’t present for the family. I was lost in my own negative emotions that had NOTHING to do with them, but I felt like they paid the price for my frustration.

I was disappointed with myself because I didn’t know what was worse, their church not being there for them, or my being there but only in a half-hearted way. 

I have to admit, I was ashamed of myself by allowing my negative feelings to get in the way of doing my job the way it really needs to be done, or of just being a normal, caring, human being to people who are going through a terrible loss.

So, after checking back in with the nurse to tell her I was done, I went and watched football, but don’t really remember anything of the game. And I don’t even remember who was playing. I couldn’t focus on anything but what had happened in that room. I still was angry with myself and with my colleague for having let that family down. For not being the agent of grace that they needed. For failing to speak and be good news when they were going through some pretty awful news.

On the one hand it’s easy to say that all people make mistakes, that no one is perfect, and that churches are human, and that this was just one visit among hundreds were I WAS able to minister effectively to people in need. 



But on the other hand, ministry isn’t about stats. Love isn’t about percentages. Grace isn’t about numbers. It’s about bringing people and God together. And I felt like, for that family, at that moment, I missed that connection.

A week later I was in Superstore and I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around and there was a couple I didn’t recognize.

“Are you Kevin?” the woman asked.

“Yes,” I responded trying to locate the face.

“I don’t know if you remember us, but you came to the hospital last Sunday to pray with dad.”

Uh Oh...

“Oh, yes, I remember,” I said.

“We just want to thank you for being there for us. You gave us just what we needed. Your words were so meaningful, and we just wanted to tell you that. When we saw you over by the produce aisle, I had my husband run after you so you wouldn’t get away before we could talk to you. So, thank you for being there for our family.”

“I was glad to help,” I said.

She gave me a hug, and then her husband shook my hand. And they left.

I was stunned. Breathless. Unable to fully process what had happened.

I tell you this story, not to show you how awesome I am, but to show you how ministry can happen when I am decidedly NOT awesome. How God’s love and care can happen when the church is anything but awesome.

It’s those unexpected moments that remind us that God is faithful when we are not. And God is faithful when we are. That God will not be bound by our attitudes or actions. God is free to dispense love and grace wherever God wants.



Like the apostles in today’s first reading, in their brokenness and inadequacy, gathered under Christ’s canopy, sharing their lives, held together by God’s Spirit and their own mutual care, offering grace to each other when they fail to live up to expectations, adding not just numbers to those being saved, but beating hearts, generously participating in each others times of love and sorrow.

Our life with each other as a family of faith is about connecting, from one heart to another heart, bringing two hands together, so that life and healing may emerge from our collective longings, no matter what that looks like, and being surprised by what God is doing. 



Because God has drawn us together as a people joined to Jesus’ cross and empty tomb, that we can jump face first into our moments of defeat and ineptitude, trusting that something new and beautiful will rise within and among us, speaking words of abundant life in the valley of the shadow of death, expecting that goodness and mercy will follow us all the days of our lives, and knowing that we - all of us together - will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

May this be so among us. Amen.

Trinity Year C

I don't know why those in charge decided to designate one Sunday as "Trinity Sunday." Shouldn't every Sunday be "Trinity Sunday"? A celebration of the great mystery of the three-in-one, one-in-three God? 

As Christians we confess God to be Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God, three-persons, co-equal, co-eternal, one in essence, nature, power, action, and will. It's basic to what we believe as Christians.

But do we really know what that means or know why that's important? To the outsider it might look like a lot mental gymnastics. We have to become theological contortionists, in order to justify a contradiction. 1+1+1 does NOT equal One. Volumes of books have been written trying to sort out the math. How can God really be three distinct persons, yet one God? It simply doesn't add up.

Other than Christ the King Sunday, Trinity Sunday is the day when we feel most tempted to keep God at a philosophical distance. We muse about the mystery of the Trinity. We try to do make the math work. On no other Sunday do most preachers do a weaker job connecting God to peoples' lives.

I think that's because we don't really know how to talk about the Trinity without resorting to mind-numbing philosophy. As fun as that may be for some of us, it can hardly be called "proclamation" and it certainly isn't good news. At best it's a self-indulgent exercise in theological gratification. At worst, it keeps God at an unhealthy distance, unconcerned about the world God created.

We talk about the nature and so-called "Problem of God” which is theological shorthand for saying that we have NO IDEA who God is.

We confess the inner-unity of the Trinity. We debate whether the Spirit proceeds from the Father, or from the Father and the Son. We discuss the fine points of the Greek. We wrap it up air-tight.

But whatever it is that we wrap-up with suffocating efficiency, it certainly isn't God. God will not be so easily contained, no matter how hard we try. We Christians don't believe in the god of the philosophers.

We believe in the God of the bible. Be believe that the God of the bible gets up close and personal with us. We believe that God refused to be relegated to the realm of abstract thought and flighty spiritual imaginings.

As Christians we believe that God became flesh. That God has a face and a name. That God - somehow - touches us.

I think you know this already. This is not new to you. That's why you're here this morning. You’re here in church not to hear me ramble on about the philosophical problem of the Trinity. You’re here hoping to meet the Word Made Flesh. You’re here to encounter the God of creation. You’re here to be encountered by the God who knit you together in your mother’s womb, then claimed you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, in the waters of baptism. You are here to bask yourself in God’s love. You are here to truly worship.

True worship, in the name of the God we call "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" is always incarnational, personal, and embodied. True worship takes us by hand and grabs our hearts. True worship makes a home for God in our lives, because that’s where God finds rest, and we find renewal.

But in theology, oddly enough, we tend to take our lead from the ancient Greeks. The gods of the Greek philosophers were distant and aloof. God is high, lifted up, and unapproachable. That's who they believed god to be, because that's what they needed from God, that's what they valued and that’s what they aspired to.

And they're not wrong. But that's only part of who God is. The God who meets us in Jesus shows us God's nearness, approachability, and humanness. This God has sleeves rolled up and muddy boots. This God demands to get personal with us. Maybe too personal for our liking. An incarnate, embodied, God who knows us with an intimacy that we often find unsettling.

But here I go again, resorting to abstract philosophy to talk about the God who more interested in getting dirt under divine fingernails than worrying about the philosophical foundations of the sacred. 

For us, I think it's easier to talk about God in the abstract than in the personal because a personal God will actually do something with us, and we'd rather not have God intruding in our lives. We don't want God disrupting our carefully constructed existence. We want to add God to what we've already built on our own rather than have God leading the construction effort.

We want to keep thinking that we are in charge of our lives. We don't really want to consider that God is in our driver's seat. Because then God might take us to places we don't want to go.

A personal God will ask us uncomfortable questions about our politics, our business dealings, our family relationships.

A personal God asks us about how we spend our money, about that grudge we've been carrying for decades, about the gossip we shared that hurt someone.

A personal God will want us to let go of our anger, our pride, our selfishness. A personal God will want us to care for folks we don't like.

A personal God will sit us down and make us listen to the cries of people in pain and ask us to do something about it.

A personal God will confront our comfortable middle-class lifestyle built on the backs of poor children around the world.

An abstract God won't ask us to change. An abstract God won't stick it's nose where we say it doesn't belong. An abstract God will leave us alone to tend to our lofty thoughts and comfortably elevated speech.

But a personal God, the God of the bible, the God who is called Trinity, doesn't care about our comfort. The God who is called Trinity cares only about how we love each other and God. And that’s not always comfortable.

The God who is called Trinity is more interested in how we get along with each other than in what we believe about God. That's because God knows that we'll never get it just right. There will always be parts of God that we won't understand. And parts we will always get wrong.

That's why, on the one hand, God is a divine, transcendent mystery, and on the other, God is a personal, intimate being that is found in every facet of creation.

The ancient celts - early Christians in Ireland - knew what this meant. Finding God in creation was a big part of how they understood God. My favourite hymn, “I Bind Unto Myself Today” based on St. Patrick’s Breastplate (we won’t sing it today, but you can bet we’ll sing it at my installation!), has, in its third verse, a powerful expression of finding God all around us, living deep inside creation. 


I bind unto myself today
The virtues of the starlit heaven,
The glorious sun’s life giving ray,
The whiteness of the moon at even,
The flashing of the lightning free,
The whirling wind’s tempestuous shocks,
The stable earth, the deep salt sea,
Around the old eternal rocks.

The ancient celts knew that God the Trinity is everywhere in God’s unfolding creation, through God's love for everything this God has made.

Where life is being birthed, there is God the Trinity. 

Where lives are being changed from self-centred living to serving others, God the Trinity is at work. 

Where ever care for others emerges from the nastiness of human conflict, we see the Triune God in action. 

Whenever bitterness is over come by forgiveness, God the Trinity is there. 

Where ever there is love; messy, uncontrollable, transforming love, there we will find God, who is three in one, and one in three.

We know this because that's who God is. It's love that makes the math work. 1+1+1=1 only works because the love the Trinity has for itself is so strong that it glues them together as one, then that intimate, reconciling, sacrificial love spills out in the world, into EVERYTHING this God created, and continues to transform the world into the image of the lovingly One God.

God reconciles. God loves. God creates. That's who God is and who God made us to be as images of the lovingly invisible God. The God who is Trinity, whose math works in our lives.

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.