 Dr. Carl Price |
The
Starting Place
Sermon:
Scripture: |
|
Have
you ever read the fine print on travel brochures? Most of them
that I have read seem to have one factor in common—they
never seem to start from where you live. You find one that
seems to have a great price and include everything....meals,
rooms with beds in them, airport taxes, tips, maybe even throw
in some use of an automobile, and you are especially careful
to note that it says “air fare included”….and then you
read more carefully and discover that what it says is that the
air fare is included “from New York” or “from Los
Angeles.” Oh, I understand the reasons they need to
advertise that way, but the fact remains that while the trip
may be great, you first have to get to the starting place. There
are times when life itself seems a bit like that—that is,
when the advice you are offered seems to assume that you are
starting from someplace else. There are all kinds of ways to
get rich if you already have a lot of money; there are jobs
available if you have a lot of experience, or as you get
older, if they don’t think you have too much experience. And
have you watched any of the commercials for exercise equipment
they are running on television? Ever notice how many of the
people they show using BowFlex or whatever look like they must
have started from someplace else? Someplace other than where I
am, at least! A lot of great opportunities out there, but
first you have to get to the starting place! Sometimes
it even seems that way about Christian discipleship. Jesus
spoke rather sternly to some who spoke too glibly of their
intentions of following him. He told several parables that
pointed to the importance of recognizing cost and
preparation—a parable of the tower that was left unfinished,
one about a house that was cleansed of demons but then left
empty, one of the King who went to war without considering the
strength of the force that opposed him. He talked about
forgiving one another, and turning the other cheek, and loving
our enemies. Let’s face it, much of that sounds a lot like
someplace else. We
need some of those sayings to balance some offerings of the
Gospel that sound as if discipleship had no expectations at
all. But having said that, the Gospel does not contain any
fine print that says that we have to start
the journey from someplace other than where we are. We
are not required to become perfect before we can be accepted
by God. It is not necessary that we become experts in the art
of prayer before we begin to pray. We do not have to pass an
examination on the Bible before we can find strength and
comfort in its message. We are not expected to possess the
spiritual depth or awareness of forty years of Christian
living in order to claim the name of Christ. All those things
that seemed so unattainable? What if we understand them as
places we are invited to travel to, not where we have to start
from? You say, “I can’t live like that!” Ah, but the
question is, “Would you like to go there?” Those actions
and attitudes are not the starting place of the Christian
life, they are the destination. Doing those things is not what
makes us Christian; becoming Christian is what enables us to
do those things. There
may be any number of challenges and calls and invitations
beyond the beginning, but there is no fine print that says we
have to start from someplace else. We do have to start,
however. Make no mistake about that. Reading the brochure will
never take you on the trip. The Christian life is not a
fantasy trip; it is not a life that can be lived in daydreams
and literature. We do have to start. There
will be some who will tell you that you have to start from the
altar of some church or from a religious experience like their
own, or from a particular way of expressing or experiencing
the grace of God. But that is not true. There are no spiritual
Los Angeles or New Yorks. You can start from those places, and
multitudes have, but you can also start from where you are.
Whether it is a journey of deeper commitment or of more
intentional participation in the life of the church or of
improved relationships with loved ones or conquering some
long-standing habit or weakness or a brand new, first step
decision for Christ and the Christian life, this is a journey
that starts where we are. The
Scripture lesson this morning is about one of those starting
places in the life of Simon Peter.
We encounter him standing by a fire in Galilee where
Jesus asks him three times if
he loves him. The number of those questions is
significant. It doesn’t take a Ph.D. in biblical scholarship
to figure that John is reminding his readers that just a few
days before, Peter had stood beside another fire—this one in
Jerusalem, outside the home of the High Priest, while Jesus
was on trial inside—and denied that he even knew Jesus. How
more unlikely a place could you start from to profess your
love than the shadow of abandonment and outright denial? But
it is against this backdrop that Jesus invites Peter’s
answer. There were no recriminations for the abandonment in
his time of need, no mention of the earlier denials, no
reminder that he had told him it was going to be that way,
just the question about where he wanted to go from there. That
is the sort of invitation that comes to us in baptism. Baptism
is about where we want to go.
Virginia Cary Hudson was a ten-year-old girl in a
boarding school at the turn of the century when she wrote a
series of essays for a very understanding teacher. The essays
were discovered in an attic trunk and published in a little
book entitled O Ye Jigs
and Juleps. In one of the essays, Virginia gives her
description of baptism this way: “When you are little and
ugly, somebody carries you into church on a pillow and you
come out a child of God and inheritor of the Kingdom of
Heaven. They put water on your head and that’s a
Sacrament.” Ugly
on a pillow? That obviously wasn’t written by a mother or a
grandmother! And like descriptions of many things religious,
there is a blend of accuracy and misunderstanding in
Virginia’s account. The United Methodist Church does not
regard baptism as something that of
itself changes the child and makes him or her somehow
more acceptable in the eyes of God than they were before.
Baptism is not to be regarded as the spiritual equivalent of
getting your smallpox vaccine or eating your polio sugar cube.
There is plenty of evidence that it doesn’t work that way.
Hitler was baptized. So was Al Capone. And Joseph Stalin is
said to have attended school in a seminary and been baptized
in the Russian Orthodox Church. You obviously don’t have to
go that far back or that far away—just watch the news. But
baptism is something
that is done to us, not something we do for ourselves.
Virginia was right about that. It is a gift, a symbol of
grace. It represents God’s doing, not ours. By whatever
method and at whatever age, there is more in our baptism than
a naming ceremony or a bit of red tape prerequisite for
joining the church. Baptism is the sign of the favor of God
resting upon his people. Martin
Luther, acclaimed as the founder of Protestantism, was a man
at times subject to deep depression—so much so that his wife
is said to have once come into his study dressed in funeral
clothes. When Martin asked her who had died, she replied that
from the way he had been acting, she assumed that God had.
Luther wrote in his journal that in the depth of one of his
darkest moods, he preserved his sanity and his life by
reminding himself of one thing: “I have been baptized!” He
remembered that he belonged to God and that God would not
forsake his own. In
a moment we are going to share in the service of remembrance
and renewal in our hymnal, and you will have an opportunity to
come forward and touch your fingers in the water in the basin
that Rod/Dwight and I will be holding as we invite you to
remember your baptism. You may want to then touch your
foreheads or your heart or whisper a prayer as a part of that
remembrance. We are not baptizing anyone; we are inviting you
to remember. As
you wait for your time, you are invited to sing the hymns that
are printed in the order of worship and
remember that day when you walked forward—or try to
imagine that day when you
were carried in, ugly on a pillow or not—and recall
those who were a part of that day. If you have not been
baptized and want to do this as a act of devotion, feel free
to do that as well. As
you return to your seat by the side aisles, you will be given
a shell as a reminder of this day. Pat and I gathered many of
these while we were in Florida one year. As we walked the
beach and collected them for a time like this, we noted how
the washing of the waves enriched the color and brought out
beauty we had not seen before. It occurred to me that baptism
is a bit like that— it acknowledges a beauty within us that
we had not known was there. As the shells accumulated, we
noted how there are many of some kinds and few of others. Some
were chipped and broken, some had rough edges or defects or
tiny holes in them, some had bits of barnacles or other
growths attached. But all came out of the same great ocean.
All had been washed in the same great water. I thought of how
that described the church, as well. Take
the shell home with you. Put it someplace where you will see
it now and then and be reminded of who you are and to Whom you
belong, and remember your baptism—your starting place—and
give thanks.
|