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"You are mine, you are loved,
you are good enough"
Reflections on the lessons
for the First Sunday after Epiphany, 9 Jan 2000
By The Rev. Mark A. Lewis, Vicar
Isaiah 42:1-9
Psalm 89:20-29
Acts 10:34-38
Mark
1:7-11
Most of you
know that I love to do baptisms.
I've never seen a baby that I didn't like.
And who could not love being a part of a once-in-a-lifetime
event.
The families are happy.
Usually the babies are happy.
In spite
of a few close calls, I am still batting 1000
when it comes to never having baptized a screaming, crying
baby.
Among the
satisfactions of my job,
one of the nicest is thinking about how I appear
in family photo albums all over the country,
standing in the middle of the clan,
holding the little one who had not yet ever misbehaved or
disappointed anyone.
It's a lot like immortality in my mind.
But, baptism
confuses me, too.
Now at the very end of Bishop Spong's time with us,
I'm reminded of how many things
Christianity is going to have to re-think for a new century.
A parishioner
asked me after the last baptism here
what I believe about evil and Satan.
I was confused.
Well, she said, the baptism liturgy talks all about casting
out evil
and turning against Satan.
And it does.
The question has haunted me ever since.
I have never
once thought about babies being stained with sin before
baptism
and magically pure only afterwards.
I have never thought that God loves babies (or adults)
one whit less or more with or without a half-cup of water on
their heads.
So what does
it mean?
And why do we do it?
And why do I
keep looking forward to baptisms,
hoping that the church will keep on doing baptisms
regardless of whatever changes must be made to make the
faith real
for a third millennium of believers?
Looking back
at the Bible,
readers can find enough material
to understand how a fairly negative notion of baptism got
started.
There are passages that talk about being freed from sin by
baptism.
And parts about how baptism is a bottom line necessity
for what the writers call "eternal life".
But, you only find those passages in the later writings.
And it's never Jesus talking about such things.
In fact, at
no point does Jesus ever say that people who hear him
have to do anything ceremonial at all.
The gospels all tell a simple story of Jesus going from
place to place
and telling anyone who'll listen that the Kingdom of God is
here
and available to anyone who wants to live in it.
The only response Jesus seems to have expected
is that people who heard his good news and "got it"
would go back home and live a new life based on what they
heard.
Baptism was
invented,
or
actually borrowed from Judaism and several other ancient
religions ,
by the young church as an initiation rite.
As the apostles started building an institution around
Jesus' teachings
it became necessary to determine
who was "in" and who was "out" for several reasons.
So, baptism
became the gateway, the credentials.
Time moved on.
Things got complicated -
- persecutions, power, wealth, over-intellectualizing -
- and it wasn't too many generations
until people were convinced that inside the Christian
church
was a monopoly on God's love
and outside it lay only damnation.
Voila!
Baptism was seen as the moment one enters holiness
and leaves evil behind.
But I'm not
sure that works anymore -
- or that it should work anymore.
You can look back at the Bible
and find plenty of other foundations for looking at baptism
in new ways.
In particular,
today's gospel and the three other gospel accounts of Jesus'
own baptism.
In my
Baptist Sunday School it was a staple of schoolboy
mischief
to ask the Sunday School teacher if Jesus ever sinned.
And when she'd insist of course not, we'd ask her then
why
he had to be baptized at all.
The teachers never really had an answer.
Maybe they'd say that Jesus just wanted to set a good
example
for the rest of us. Or maybe they'd just tell us not to be
smart alecks.
But they also never really looked at the passage
in today's Gospel reading (Mark
1:7-11).
The
importance of the baptism of Jesus is very great -
- even if you forget about original sin altogether.
It's always
the opening scene in Jesus' new ministry.
Before it, he was pretty much like everyone else.
But afterwards, he takes off in a new direction
and lives his life very clearly for others and not for
himself -
- his new purpose is to show people how different the real
God is
from their misconceptions about God.
And in all
four accounts of the event,
the Bible has God speaking to Jesus in a mystical way.
He says "You are my Son
but
God said , "You are my daughter,"
at half the baptisms ever performed
And I love you.
And I'm pleased with you."
That's a
better picture of baptism for me.
Ceremonies and rituals are ways of marking time,
putting up milestones in our lives.
And everyone who has ever been baptized -
- even those who don't remember it
or don't care about it anymore -
- has a moment in life when family, friends,
and the community of God's people
gathered together at one time and in one place
all symbolically stopped and listened to God tell that
baby
"You are mine, you are loved, you are good enough."
And the people said "Amen to that".
It's a good
stone in the foundation of any life.
One that I for one have remembered more than once
when I look in the bathroom mirror and say to myself
"Who are you? And what are you doing with your life?"
When I'm fortunate enough (in those moments)
to remember that I am loved and that I am good enough,
I can go ahead and splash some water on my face and -
- born again yet again -
- get on with the business of telling other people that same
good news.
-- Mark Lewis
Your comments or questions are welcome MLewis@secaucus.org.
Links to additional "Reflections on Lessons" may be found at the bottom of the Sunday web page.
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