Psalm 1,
Revelation 22:1-5
During worship one Easter
morning, a fellow pastor sat down on the chancel steps with a group of children
to offer a special message just for them.
She started their time together by asking, “What do we celebrate
today?" One of the kids happily replied,
"It's when Jesus rides around the world on a sleigh giving gifts to good
children?" "No," said the
pastor, "You are thinking about Santa Claus and Christmas." A different child piped up, "It's when
Jesus flies around shooting arrows at people so they'll fall in love?"
"No," came the reply, "You are thinking of Cupid and Valentine's
Day." The pastor was almost afraid
to call on the next child raising her hand. But this child said, "It's when Jesus
died on the cross. They buried him in the tomb. And then Jesus arose from the
dead." The pastor smiled with
enthusiasm for this faithful answer and with relief that she didn’t have to
talk about leprechauns and lucky green clovers.
“Yes, that’s the right answer to what we celebrate today! Thank you!”
But the girl’s hand shot right back up as she blurted out, "Oh, and
pastor, I forgot to say that if Jesus sees his shadow today we'll have 6 more
weeks of winter."
Oh, so close! What a shame. Especially since the fully faithful answer was
written on the forehead of every child sitting there, the answer revealing that
Easter is about being released from sin and death to be fully and newly alive
with God. It wasn’t physically written
there, of course, as if with permanent marker. Or, at least I hope not. That would lead to some serious questions
about Sunday School best practices! I
mean that if anyone of any age is seeking to answer the question about what is
celebrated on Easter, they need only look at one another’s foreheads and be
reminded. In doing so, a fresh
remembrance about the deep and practical meaning of baptism should always be found.
In our Presbyterian tradition, a
sacrament is an earthly sign associated with a promise from God (John
Calvin). There’s really nothing quite as earthly as
water. About 71% of this world’s
surface is water covered. Add to this
the water that exists in the air as water vapor, the water in the ground as
moisture, and the water that’s within each of us. About 55-60% of our bodies are made of
water. So, as a sign of God’s intimate connection
with us and this whole world, water is symbolically quite perfect.
The amount of water used in the
sacrament of baptism is not as important as understanding the spiritually symbolic
mark it leaves upon us forever. As we
just experienced a few beautiful minutes ago, I use very little water. And while I wasn’t trained to do this, it’s
a matter of personal preference that I always make the sign of the cross with
the water after naming the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. I do so while declaring the traditional
language about how the person being baptized, be they two, twenty or many
decades old, has been “signed and sealed as Christ’s own, forever.” In this way I remember, and help us all to
remember, that baptism is “the sign of the birth that is not of flesh and blood
but that comes as a gift [from Christ].”
By the sacred signpost of our
baptisms, we locate ourselves. We
identify how and where we are truly alive.
Biblically speaking, we find
ourselves living “between the river of Eden and the river of the heavenly city.”
We are not “wandering aimlessly” but
moving from one to the other” because “God has a purpose, and pursues it
relentlessly. In this assurance we have
hope and life. In the water of baptism,
God sets before us both the start and the conclusion of the divine story, thus
revealing the purpose of this movement from creation to consummation.”[i]
The purpose, of course, is the
promise of Easter. It is the almighty,
liberating, life-affirming power of our Lord in action. We who are baptized into the life and the
death of Christ share in new life with Him through His resurrection. This new life is shared on earth as it is in
heaven. Baptism is not, therefore, just
a blessed assurance of eternal life.
It’s the here and now, deeply personal, daily influence that inspires us
to live into our release from the destructive power of sin that’s been freely
gifted to us by our Lord. It’s about
constant spiritual cleansing through the Holy Spirit. It’s about being Jesus’ disciples in our
homes, in the company of friends, in our places of education and vocation, and
most especially through active participation in congregational community.
The profound and practical power
of baptism is stunningly, symbolically depicted throughout the Bible. We see it as bright, clear crystal
waters. These pristine waters stream through
the center of our lives, splashing and cleansing us all day long, all this life
long and on into eternal life. They
wash away the ash marks of our sin so we can see our common identity in Christ
indelibly imprinted upon us.
When we daily pay attention to
the flow of this crystal bright, cleansing river of life, we can’t help but delight
in the Lord. And as Psalm 1 teaches, we
then consciously choose to live into all the ways we are being deeply nourished
and sustained by the promise of Easter.
As the Holy Spirit streams this Good News through the world-wide
community of Jesus’ disciples, they cease acting hostility toward God and one
another. They grow to bear God’s good
fruit. This produces healing for all
people. As bearers, we see the radiant,
resurrected, life-restoring face of Christ everywhere.
There’s a great song about this
written and performed by a favorite Christian artist of mine named Chris
Rice. It’s called, sensibly enough, “The
Face of Christ.” His musical style is
catchy folk very similar to the style of James Taylor and David Wilcox. And most all of his lyrics and tunes are
hauntingly beautiful. In this song,
this baptized brother in the faith sings about spending time with a homeless
person and a person in prison. He does
so to illustrate the words of this chorus -- “How did I find myself in a better
place? I can’t look down on the other guy’s face, cause when I stoop down low,
look him square in the eye, I get a funny feeling, I just might be dealing,
with the face of Christ.” This
realization, of course, leads to learning to love selflessly and sacrificially,
to truly loving our neighbors as we ourselves want to be loved.
All fruit holds seed. And so “As our lives are lived out for
Christ” bearing good fruit, “the seed of the Gospel is “released into the world
so that it will land on others, prayerfully taking root.[ii] By faithfully being together as individuals
and families in worship, study and service, we keep ourselves rooted and
grounded in Christ. This is why it’s
vitally important to be part of a church community. Every congregation is a Gospel grove! And thus a place of secure spiritual growth
for many generations of family. Just
look at all the good fruit in this place!
Devotional writer Gerald Whetstone
reminds us exactly how being in a Gospel grove gives us strength for our entire
life journey. He does so in a way I can
really relate to, since I’ve been blessed to stand amidst the giant redwoods
found in Muir Woods National Park in Marin County, CA. Anyone else here been there? We would expect that these magnificent
trees would have a very deep root system.
I can’t imagine trees that are 200 to 300 plus feet tall would be
loosely anchored. Yet it turns out they
actually have a rather shallow root system.
So how do they stand so big and strong for very many years? They grow in groves – “Each tree intertwines
its roots with the others, giving them tremendous strength.”
Much the same, we should never
live a solitary life as baptized disciples of Jesus Christ. The good fruit spoken of in Psalm 1 -- the
good fruit of happiness, of not following the advice of anything hostile to God,
of meditating day and night with delight in the Lord – is best achieved within
faithful community intertwined by the common root of Christ’s love. To put
this in the more formal way I studied some twenty years ago, “Because baptism
is incorporation into Christ’s church, it is inescapably a corporate rite. Baptism without a congregation present is a
bit like a wedding at which only one of the prospective marriage partners
arrives.”[iii]
Praise God, we aren’t going to
have six more weeks of winter. It’s
going to rain a lot, I’m sure, but welcome the wet upon your foreheads. Be reminded of your baptisms. And don’t fret if you see shadows. This is actually a good thing, a sign of new
life always springing forth, for it means we are standing in our Lord’s
light. Amen!
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