"Called Together" - January 15, 2012

Texts: I Samuel 3:1-10, John 1:43-51

Samuel was young.  He was just a boy.  And Samuel did not have what you would think of as the typical living arrangement.  Samuel did not live at home with his parents, he did not live with his grandparents, he didn’t live with any family at all.  Samuel lived in the temple with the old priest Eli.

The way this came about was that Samuel’s mother, Hannah, was well advanced in years and still childless.  She had prayed and prayed for a child when God heard her prayers and gave her a son whom she named Samuel and dedicated to God.  So when Samuel was old enough, he went to live at the temple with the priest Eli, learning to work in God’s service at the temple.  It doesn’t sound like that fun of a boarding school, but that’s the way it happened.

One night, lying in bed, Samuel hears a voice.  “Samuel, Samuel,” the voice calls out.  Samuel goes to see what the old priest needs.  But Eli has not called Samuel.  He tells him to go back to bed.  It must have just been a dream or something.  But Samuel hears the voice again, and again tells Eli, “Here I am.”  But again, Eli says that he has not called Samuel.  So Samuel is sent back to bed.

And then it happens yet a third time.  And this time, Eli perceives that God must be the one speaking to Samuel.  He tells Samuel that when he hears the voice again, to say, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”  Samuel does as Eli instructs, and God speaks to him.  This is the call of the prophet Samuel.

To be real honest, it’s kind of a scary story.  As a child, I would hear this story in Sunday School and feel bad for Samuel, this little boy living what sounded like a sad and lonely life in this cold, dark temple where his mother visited him once a year, to bring him a new coat.  There were pictures of his mother bringing him a coat and Samuel was smiling and looked happy, which didn’t seem quite right to me.  Even though it involved a little boy, it wasn’t really that cheery a story for a kid to hear.

As I have grown older, I have come to appreciate it as a great story, because it turns the tables on what we would expect.  To whom would God speak – a veteran priest, or a little kid?  Samuel wasn’t even a Levite, which meant that he was not eligible to ever become a priest.  Yet God spoke to Samuel.

Although, when we read the whole story, God was really speaking to both of them, and both needed the other in order to hear God.  On his own, Samuel did not comprehend that God was speaking to him.  But the message God had for Samuel was a message of judgment on Eli’s family.  His sons were corrupt and blasphemous and made a mockery of the priesthood, and Eli had sat idly by and let it continue – he was complicit in it.  God had a message for Eli, but he needed Samuel to hear it.  God had a message for Samuel, but Samuel needed Eli to hear it.  Both Eli and Samuel needed the other.

That is often the way it works.  We can have a hard time hearing God all by ourselves – we need each other.  Young Samuel needed the experience and maturity of Eli, who perceived that God was speaking.  But somehow, Eli wasn’t hearing God himself - maybe he wasn’t really listening – and it was the boy Samuel who gave him God’s message.

No matter what our age, we all need some help in hearing and responding to God and we all need support and encouragement in living our faith.  Our New Testament scripture is about Nathaniel, one of the lesser-known disciples.  Nathaniel is only mentioned in John’s gospel. 

Jesus has gone to Galilee and found Philip, and asks Philip to follow him.  For Philip, following Jesus means inviting his friends to follow too, and so he goes to his friend Nathaniel and says, “Come and see the one the prophets spoke of – Jesus of Nazareth.”

And Nathaniel says, “Are you kidding me?  Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

Nazareth was not exactly the cultural center of the universe.  It was not known for producing important leaders, and certainly not messiahs.  Imagine somebody saying, “Come and see the long-awaited messiah, Bernie from McCallsburg,” and you get the idea.  Yet Nathaniel learns that he has indeed come face to face with the kingdom of God in Jesus of Nazareth.  And it’s because of Philip.  Without Philip, Nathaniel doesn’t come to Jesus.

Most of us need help hearing God’s call.  Most of us need someone walking alongside us as we follow Jesus.

John Robert McFarland was an acquaintance, pastor of the Methodist church in a neighboring town when I was a pastor in Illinois.  Sometime after losing track of him, I read a wonderful article that he wrote.

John Robert grew up very poor, on a farm in southern Indiana.  He had an older sister named Mary Virginia – everybody called her Mary V.  She got a job in the city 30 miles away.  Mary V. had been away from home a couple of months when the phone rang—it was 2 long and 2 short rings on the party line – and a voice said that Mary V. was in Deaconess Hospital, her kidneys were failing, there was fluid building up in her lungs, and she had from 3 hours to 3 days to live.  The family did not have a car, and so Uncle Harvey drove up from Evansville and took the family to the hospital--all except for John Robert.  Somebody had to stay to feed the animals, milk the cow, and take care of farm, and that somebody was him.

Secretly, he was glad.  He wouldn’t have to watch his sister die.  John Robert sat on the stool to milk the cow and he prayed.  If only God would save his sister, he’d work out a deal.  He didn’t really have any bargaining chips; all he could offer was himself.  He knew that God wanted people to be preachers.  If God would save her, then he would become a minister.  He would preach.

Lo and behold, word came that Mary V. was getting better.  It was totally unexpected.  And she recovered completely.  The doctors didn’t know what had happened – they had only given her painkillers, as there was nothing else they could do.  Yet the illness disappeared as mysteriously as it came.  And the doctors used that word – they said it was a miracle.

John Robert felt like he had been tricked!  Mary V. wasn’t supposed to live.  He had never thought he would actually have to keep his end of the bargain.

He didn’t want to ask the preacher about it, so he asked Aunt Nora.  She was the only real theologian he knew – she played the organ at Francisco, 6 miles away.  John Robert explained to her why Mary V. got well.  And he asked her questions.  “Did God make Mary V. sick to get me to go into the ministry?”  Yes.  “Would he have let her die if I hadn’t said I’d be a preacher?”  Yes.  “Will he come back and get her if I don’t?”  Yes.

John Robert said that he didn’t really believe Aunt Nora - even a 14 year old farm boy knew better than that.  But somehow in all of this, he was called.

We don’t have the advantage of seeing Jesus face to face as Nathaniel did, and not many of us are called in such dramatic a fashion as Samuel or John Robert McFarland.  But something they all shared was that it took another person to help them sort out the call.  Philip invites Nathaniel with this wonderful invitation.  “Come and see,” he says.  Philip doesn’t have it all figured out, he isn’t condescending, he doesn’t tell Nathaniel, “This is the way it is.”  He simply tells him about Jesus, Nathaniel expresses skepticism – Jesus is from Nazareth, after all – and Philip says, “Come and see.”  Decide for yourself.  Nathaniel does – Philip is his friend, after all - and as he learns about Jesus, Nathaniel follows.

Old Eli helps Samuel to understand that God is speaking to him.  He points Samuel towards God and helps him receive the call.  And even if Aunt Nora’s theology was suspect, she was there for John Robert McFarland.  That’s the way it is for most of us.  We aren’t called all by ourselves, we are called together. 

In the church, we need one another and we depend upon one another.  The church is to be a family, a community of faith, and we are to welcome others as brothers and sisters and love one another and care for one another as a family.

We are called together – that is, we discern God’s call to us with the help of others, as part of a community.  Together, we hear our call.  But we are also called together in the sense that we are called to be together.  We are called to community.  We are called to care for all of humanity.

Today is Martin Luther King’s birthday.  If you ask somebody who Martin Luther King, Jr. was, or if you go by what you might hear or read in the media, you will probably be told that Martin Luther King, Jr. was a great civil rights leader and social activist.  And this is certainly true.  But at the heart of it, Martin Luther King was a Christian pastor.  We take pride in the fact that he was a Baptist pastor, and in fact was an American Baptist pastor. 

King popularized the term “Beloved Community.”  As he fought for justice, the goal was not to defeat his opponents, not to bring down the oppressors, but to bring about reconciliation.  King loved and prayed for his enemies.

The church is certainly called to be a Beloved Community, where there is peace and welcome and reconciliation are freely offered, but King extended that idea to all of humanity.  Our concern is not simply to be for ourselves and those close to us.  King understood that we are indeed “called together.”

King wrote an essay called “The World House.”  He wrote,

“Some years ago a famous novelist died. Among his papers was found a list of suggested plots for future stories, the most prominently underscored being this one: “A widely separated family inherits a house in which they have to live together.” This is the great new problem of [humankind]. We have inherited a large house, a great ‘world house’ in which we have to live together—black and white, Easterner and Westerner, Gentile and Jew, Catholic and Protestant, Moslem and Hindu—a family unduly separated in ideas, culture and interest, who, because we can never again live apart, must learn somehow to live with each other in peace. . . All inhabitants of the globe are now neighbors.”

Dr. King’s Beloved Community is a global vision, in which all people share in the wealth and goodness of the earth.  In the Beloved Community, poverty, hunger and homelessness will not be tolerated because human decency will not allow it. Racism, bigotry and prejudice will be replaced by an all-inclusive spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood.  In the Beloved Community, disputes will be resolved by peaceful conflict-resolution and reconciliation of adversaries, instead of military power.  Love and trust will triumph over fear and hatred. Peace with justice will prevail over war and military conflict.

What King said about those considered his enemies was very powerful.  As early as 1956, Dr. King spoke of The Beloved Community as the end goal of nonviolent action.  At a victory rally following the announcement of Supreme Court decision desegregating the seats on Montgomery’s buses he said, “The end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the Beloved Community.  It is this type of spirit and this type of love that can transform opposers into friends.  It is this type of understanding goodwill that will transform the deep gloom of the old age into the exuberant gladness of the new age.  It is this love which will bring about miracles in the hearts of [people].”  King actually followed Jesus’ admonition to “pray for your enemies.”

Eli and Samuel needed one another.  Nathaniel needed Philip, and there were no doubt times when Philip needed Nathaniel.  In the church, we all need one another.  We are a family.  And Dr. King would tell us that we are part of a World House, a Beloved Community, and our goal is to bring even enemies into the Beloved Community.

Peter Arnett was a CNN commentator and reporter.  He tells of a time he was in Israel, in a small town on the West Bank, when a bomb exploded.  Bloodied people were everywhere.  A man came running up to Peter holding a little girl in his arms.  He pleaded with Peter to take her to a hospital.  As a member of the press he would be able to get through the security cordon that had been thrown around the explosion scene.  Peter, the man and the girl jumped into his car and rushed to the hospital.  The whole time the man was pleading with him to hurry, to go faster, heartbroken at the thought the little girl might die.

Sadly the little girl’s injuries were too great and she died on the operating table. When the doctor came out to give them the news the man collapsed in tears.  Peter Arnett was lost for words.  “I don't know what to say.  I can’t imagine what you must be going through.  I’ve never lost a child.”

But the man said, “Oh, no! That girl was not my daughter.  I’m an Israeli settler.  She was a Palestinian.  But there comes a time when each of us must realize that every child, regardless of that child’s background, is a daughter or a son.  There must come a time when we realize that we are all family.” (told by Tony Campolo in Let Me Tell You A Story.)

We are all part of a great family.  We are called together.  Called to follow together, called to serve together, called to live together.  May it be so.  Amen. 

"The River of Life" - January 8, 2012

Text: Mark 1:4-11

Last semester I received an email from a student who was taking a religion course. The class had been assigned to visit a place of worship in a tradition different from their own. They were to interview a religious leader, and especially pay attention to the sacred space. What was important about the building, about the structure, about the symbols, why had the group chosen this location, why had they chosen to gather in this place?

It is not unusual to be contacted by a student who wants to talk to me about a religion class assignment. Students call me because our church is nearby or because they want to investigate this strange group called Baptists. Well, we made arrangements and at the appointed time this young man showed up. His tradition was Roman Catholic, and he asked some good questions. I enjoyed visiting with him and we looked around the building, especially the sanctuary. I talked a little about the New England meetinghouse style of our church building. The New England Puritans believed in a simple, unadorned worship space that was free of worldly distractions so that people might worship God. They didn’t even have crosses, they certainly wouldn’t have banners, and would have been mortified at the thought of pew cushions. (I didn’t mention to this student that the Puritans adopted this very plain style because they rejected anything that smacked of Catholicism).

We don’t have a lot of ornamentation in our sanctuary, no fancy stained windows, but we do have something that a person looking at the architecture of sacred spaces might be interested in: I showed him the baptistry and talked about our tradition of baptism. We have the curtains open on the baptistry today as we think about baptism – Jesus’ baptism as well as our own.

Some of you were baptized here in this church. For some, that may have been 50 or more years ago. Some of you have been here early on a Sunday morning, filling the baptistry with water. Some of you have been present to assist baptismal candidates get in and out of the water. But I suspect that a good number of you have never seen the inside of our baptistry.

Ours is actually a huge baptismal pool. The architect made it much larger than it would need to be – we could have big old hot tub parties in there.

All things considered, it really is a strange thing we do, baptism.

Peter Gomes was much-loved chaplain at the Memorial Church at Harvard who died last year. He recalled that a number of years ago, an undergraduate couple approached him asking to be baptized. He talked it over with them, they discussed what baptism meant and he said yes, he would be glad to baptize them. They wanted to be baptized by immersion, which was great, he was a Baptist - an American Baptist, at that - but they did not have a baptistry at the Memorial Church, they had a baptismal font, and it just would not do. So they had to find a place to hold the baptism.

Walden Pond was a special place for this couple, so it was decided to have the baptism there. Unfortunately, it was October, but they found a decent day and headed off to Walden Pond. Gomes said that he went into the water, the two young people followed, there were words of testimony shared, and then Gomes wrote:

I performed the deed as I was taught: down and up, down and up. As soon as I brought the woman up from the water, she being the second, there was a great burst of applause. We were not alone. We looked and found that the shore was full of people who had come out of the woods and were absolutely fascinated at this bizarre activity going on at Walden Pond. Many strange things have been seen at Walden Pond but nothing, I’m sure, quite as strange as this, and clearly some word of explanation was in order lest they call the police. I explained that this was what Christians did when they wanted to make a profession of their faith, and I quoted a little scripture. One of the fellows on the shore asked, “Do you do a lot of this sort of thing?” I replied, “Not as much as I would like, but yes, I do.” He and his friends on the shore scratched their heads and said, “Well, it looks like fun,” and off they went into the woods.

It is a bit more domesticated perhaps with indoor plumbing, but wherever you do it, at Walden Pond or at First Baptist, it is still a bit odd. As a testimony to our faith in Jesus, we put on a robe and get dunked in a pool of water while friends and family watch in anticipation. Someone who wasn’t familiar with the idea, who had no background whatsoever in Christian faith and walked in on a Sunday morning and observed a baptism, would surely scratch their heads like those onlookers at Walden Pond and ask, “What is up with that?”

Well, that is a good question. Since we are called Baptists, the rite of baptism probably deserves some thought. Why do we baptize, and what does it mean? A good place to begin is Jesus’ baptism. It is reported in all four gospels. Only Matthew and Luke tell about Jesus’ birth, but all of the gospels tell about his baptism. We read this morning from Mark, who actually begins his gospel with John the Baptist baptizing Jesus. We read this same scripture back in Advent. Mark identifies John the Baptist as the prophet of whom Isaiah spoke when he said, “A voice cries in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord.”

We read that people came from all over the countryside as well as Jerusalem, confessing their sins and being baptized. And then, Jesus himself comes to John for baptism. In Mark’s gospel, the very first thing we know about Jesus is that along with scores of other folks, he goes to John the Baptist in order to be baptized.

Mark makes a point to say how many people were coming to John, confessing their sins. The place was just teeming with sinners – flawed, faulty, sorry, guilty human beings who were hoping that John could help them clean their lives up. These were people who were trying to come clean – with others, with themselves, with God. People who had no illusions about their own innocence.

And them Jesus comes along. He just jumps right in line with everybody else, with all of the sinful humanity to be found there.

Why did Jesus come to John for baptism? While Mark does not include any stories about Jesus’ birth, there is a sense in which he begins his gospel just like Matthew and Luke. Jesus comes and identifies fully with us, in all of our humanity. Matthew and Luke tell of Jesus being born as a baby, born in poverty, born in troubled times to parents of little means or power or reputation. Mark begins with Jesus’ baptism, with Jesus identifying with us in all of our need and brokenness and sin.

If he had listened to his PR people, Jesus might have just stood on the shore and offered words of encouragement. He might not have gotten into the water at all, except perhaps to tap John on the shoulder and say, “Why don’t you take a break? I’ll take it from here.”

Even if he were completely innocent, without sin, submitting to this baptism for sinners could damage a person’s reputation. Who would believe he was their only because he cared about these people and did not want to separate himself from them?

We learn a couple of things from Jesus’ baptism. One of them is that Jesus identifies completely with us.

And then, as Jesus comes out of the water, the heavens open up, the Spirit descends like a dove, and a voice from heaven says, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

What is God pleased with? Jesus has not done anything, not yet. He has simply been baptized, and God says, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” Baptism has to do with identity – it’s not about what we do but who we are. Jesus’ identity as God’s beloved son is affirmed.

John preached a baptism of repentance, and that word repentance, metanoia in Greek, means a turning around, a change of direction. One could argue that Jesus’ baptism was a change of direction for him. This is the inauguration of his life work. He is turning toward the ministry ahead, turning toward his calling. Clearly, something very significant took place for Jesus.

John’s baptism was not the same as Christian baptism, but it certainly anticipates it. As practiced in the New Testament, we believe that baptism is for those who have accepted God’s gift of grace and chosen for themselves to follow Christ. As Paul describes it, it is a symbol of dying to sin and rising to new life in Christ. Many of you grew up in other traditions – some of you were baptized as infants and then at a later point professed your own faith in Christ. We honor those who have had that experience of faith even while we practice baptism of believers.

Jesus’ baptism points out for us a dimension of faith that we need to take seriously, and that is, authentic, vital faith is both individual and communal. It is deeply personal, but it also happens in community and involves the community.

At his baptism, Jesus demonstrates a very personal and intimate relationship with God. He decides for himself that this is the path he will follow. As he rises from the water, there is a voice from heaven: “this is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.” This is a deeply personal experience.

And yet, it happens in community, it happens in the midst of all of those who have come to be baptized by John, it happens as Jesus identifies with the wider community – with us.

Faith is a deeply personal for all of us. We cannot scoot by on our parents’ faith or our church’s faith or anyone else’s faith: it has to be our own. And God says to each of us, even as God said to Jesus, “You are my beloved child.” It is personal, and yet it happens in community. We are baptized into the Church, into a community of faith made of those flawed, imperfect, yes, sinful people who are seeking together to follow Jesus.

We don’t do private baptisms because the community is an essential part of what happens. Jesus doesn’t go to John after business hours, he goes like everyone else; he goes with the crowds to the Jordan River where John is doing his thing. Sometimes we can get into trouble with our emphasis on individual faith and wind up with a kind of “just me and Jesus” spirituality. We have to own our faith for ourselves, it is true; but we come to faith and grow in faith and live out our faith in community with others.

The Church is a community where we encourage one another and challenge one another and support one another and teach one another, a place where we remind each other who we are – God’s beloved children.

Now, the question might be raised as to whether baptism is still a meaningful ritual. I mean, ritual and tradition is not what it used to be. And we don’t believe that baptism is magic – it doesn’t transform a person just by virtue of getting wet. The faith that is present and the commitment that is made and more than that, God’s love and grace toward us are what really matters. We don’t believe that baptism saves us, not in a transactional sense. And so, why even bother with it?

Well, it might be argued that in a world where tradition and ritual and symbol have been kind of devalued, baptism is even more important – not in a legalistic sense but in a very real sense. There is something powerful about entering the waters of baptism as people have for hundreds of years, over the centuries, back to Jesus himself. There is something about having the waters wash over you and experiencing this very tangible sign that we have been made clean, that we have risen to new life. Ritual, symbol, tradition can be very powerful.

The story is told of a Christian community in the old Russian Gulag. These men were unable to have any outward show of their faith. To do so would mean dire consequences. And yet this community celebrated Communion each week during the Sunday meal at the mess hall.

They would silently lift and break their bread together and then eat it. And then they would silently lift their cups of water together and drink it. By doing this, they were strengthened and renewed to face another week in the company of guards who never knew that communion had been celebrated - without clergy or words, but with powerful symbols and a powerful simplicity of faith. These men knew the power and the importance of Christian community and the power and importance of ritual and tradition.

We observe two ordinances, or sacraments, in our church: baptism and communion. Both tell us that we are a part of God’s family. Each connects us to God and to one another and to all who have shared at God’s Table or entered the waters of baptism. And those words that Jesus heard at his baptism are words for each of us: “You are my beloved child.” Amen.