A Sermon for the Third Sunday in Advent
The Rev. Richard J. Bormes
Baptism of Joseph Lindmeier
Isaiah 65: 17-25
I Thessalonians 5: 16-18
John 1: 6-8, 19-28
The second year that I was at St. Charles, I was in charge of the Christmas pageant, assisting Jan Nelson who was chair of the Sunday School that year. We decided at our first meeting that it would be a very traditional pageant, one that told the story of the birth of Jesus according to the Gospel of St. Luke. The Children would be in traditional costumes and sing traditional Christmas Hymns, and every child would be in the pageant.
The preparation for the pageant is what would make it unique, or at least a good experience. The Pageant, itself, would be the whole curriculum for Advent. The children would learn the lesson of Advent, preparation and renewal, from learning the pageant.
Four weeks of preparation for the pageant taught them well, indeed, one aspect of Advent: Expectation. The expected Baby Jesus to be born on Christmas. And their expectation reached a fever pitch on the 4th Sunday of Advent as we got them into their costumes for the pageant.
Jan had planned to bring a doll that Mary would hold as Baby Jesus, but forgot to bring it that busy morning. She coached Mandy Gantt, the pretty sixth grader who was playing Mary how to cradle her arms and pull her shawl around her, so that it would look to the congregation as though she was holding a baby.
The pageant began and went pretty well. Mary sat demurely holding her imaginary baby. Joseph stood stoically beside her. Shy shepherds and embarrassed angels entered at the appointed times, and said their lines in barely audible voices. When the second wise man, Henry Reddich III, had walked down the center isle and laid his gift at Mary’s feet, he said in the loudest voice of the pageant, “But there is no baby Jesus.” The congregation laughed uncomfortably, and the children were embarrassed. But in fact, Henry Reddich III had told the truth. He was our John the Baptist. There was no Baby Jesus.
When we come to church on Sunday mornings I think what we want most is to be reassured. I think we want to be reassured about two things: One is God. The other is ourselves.
About God: I think we want to be reassured that God is very predictable. That god is present in the ways that we expect: Baby born in a manger / Benevolent Father in heaven / in the breaking of bread. About ourselves:I think we expect to be reassured that what we think about God is true pretty much the way we understand them to be.
I think that is pretty much reflected in what we do here on Sunday mornings, in our emphasis on order and tradition. It’s as though by saying these words each week we can make them so -- all the things we want to be true about God and ourselves.
And now we’re in the middle of the season of Advent, and John the Baptist, the great prophet of Advent is with us again, the one who prepared the way for our God is here. As prophets do, he spoke about those two great things: God and us. But as prophets do, he said what we did not expect.
First, about God. John said that God was not in a manger in Bethlehem and not sitting on a throne in the sky. God, John the Baptist said, is right here with us. Right now, in our midst. One of us. But unrecognized. “Among you stands one you do not know,” he said. That must have made the people as uncomfortable as we were when Henry Reddich III told us there was no Baby Jesus. Who wants a God like that after all --right down here among us.
They were equally disturbed by what he said to them on that other subject on which we want to be reassured:ourselves. He told the priests and Levites that they didn’t know what they were talking about. They wanted to know just where John fit into their God story. What was he doing baptizing? Was he the Christ, the Messiah? John said “no”.
“Well, who are you, they insisted? What do you say about yourself. And his reply was nothing about himself. It was about God Emmanuel, this Christ who he was preparing for was God who stood among them and they didn’t recognize. The very same God Emmanuel who stands amongs us.
John was asking them to let go, to change all that they knew to be secure and self protecting without having any idea of what was ahead. It is terrifying to have to give up the old without being able to test the new. And that is the basic dynamic of Christian life: we have to let go of the very things that give our life security in order to enter into the Kingdom of god.
There is something very strange about this story of John the Baptist. John baptized all those people. And yet John himself put down his baptizing. He said I only baptize with water. One is coming who will baptize with the Holy Spirit. John thought his baptism was incomplete. And yet Jesus stood in line with all those others, and when his turn came, he stepped into the muddy water of the Jordan River and was baptized by John.
Why in the world do you think he did that? I think he did that to teach us something, something that is central to what we believe as Episcopalians. And it is this: that Baptism isn’t something that we do to people and by some kind of magic they are saved. Baptism is something that we live into. Baptism is an invitation to come into the family of God so that we can grow as new people into the people of god. In a sense, then, all Baptism is incomplete.
And so this morning we Baptize Joseph Lindmeier into this family of God that we call St. John’s.
We baptize infants in our church because we love them, and we care about the way they grow up. We want their faith to be based in more than some vague impressions. And so, we invite them in Baptism into the deepest level of faith that we know: full membership in the church.
We have to, of course carry them up. We have to make their responses for them. They do not ask to be Baptized. We make that decision for them - just as we make all of the other important decisions of life for them as infants. We do that because we don’t think people can grow up neutral. We all grow up in a community, in an environment. And, we want to make sure it is within this family of God that they grow. As far as making an adult decision? Don't we all have to do just that eventually about everything in life.
So, today we invite you, Joseph Lindmeier, into the family of God, our family. And today we give you another name: Joseph Lindmeier, Christian. The invitation is to grow up among and become a person of God. The name Christian is to assure us of the mystery of our faith that John the Baptist told us so long ago: that Christ is right here among us.
Welcome Joseph Lindmeier Christian to the rest of your life in the Family of God.