Agents of a New Age (Matthew 3:1-17; Baptism of the Lord; January 11, 2015)

Agents of a New Age

Matthew 3:1-17
Baptism of the Lord
January 11, 2015

Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, IA

It's a happy occasion today, not simply because we gather to worship, which is a pretty good thing all by itself.  It's a happy occasion today because a little later in the service we will welcome Tessa into the company of God's people.  We have been doing this in the Christian tradition for a while now.  A hundred generations of parents have brought their children to the baptismal font.

I can't know what they experienced, what went through their heads, as their pastor asked them the questions that I will ask in a few minutes.  I can hardly imagine the mixture of hopes and fears that filled their hearts as they approached, answered, and watched.

I know that, before we do this thing, we would do well to stop to ask ourselves just what we think we're doing.  Heaven knows, she has no idea.  We at least should have one.

For some folks that fact that she has no idea presents a problem right there.  For some, baptizing her is scandalous, since she has neither choice nor understanding.

I confess I’m not particularly scandalized.  It's not as if this were the only decision her parents are making for her--for her in both senses of the word: on her behalf and for her sake.  I've heard people say, "Well, we're going to wait until she's old enough to decide for herself." As if being a part of a faith tradition were like going to the grocery store and picking out a breakfast cereal.

Speaking of which, we would never say, "Well, you know, she doesn't really know what kind of food she likes, so we're going to wait until she's old enough to know before we give her any."  We would never say, "There are three thousand different languages around the world.  It would deprive him of his right to choose if we taught him one just because we picked it out."  We wouldn't say, "Oh, names are very personal.  We're not going to give him one until he can pick out his own."

In fact, we make choices for our children about important things all the time without asking their permission.  We'd be lousy parents if we didn't.

Of course, there is the other part of the objection to baptizing babies, namely, their lack of understanding.  But the older I live, the less sense that objection makes to me.  I've been baptized for over sixty-two years and I still don't understand it.  If I have to wait until I can understand it, just when will I be baptized?

Baptism in this way is no different from other promises we make. Whenever I stand in front of a couple and have them repeat the wedding promises, I always think, "Those poor kids; they have no idea of what they are promising!" They don't, but they will.  And when they do, I hope they'll have enough support so that the audacity of those promises will carry them through.

A military enlistment oath is like that, too.  There is a promise to defend the Constitution of our nation and to obey one's superiors.  But no one can know in advance what that oath will require of them, nor how they will respond.

By the way, the enlistment oath brings us to what we're doing today, because the word for an enlistment oath in Latin was sacramentum.  The sacramentum in ancient Rome was a big deal.  At first and still during Jesus' time, only citizens could enlist.  The term of enlistment was ten years.  Training was rigorous and service was often grueling.  This army travelled mostly on its feet and carried most of what it needed on its backs.  They marched fifteen to twenty miles a day. 

An enlistment between 70 and 190 of the Common Era, the period known as the Roman Peace, may have been relatively easy.  Before or after that, however, a ten-year enlistment would have meant lonely, dangerous service fighting barbarians or an even more dangerous civil war fighting other legions.  When a legionary enlisted, it was a commitment to an uncertain future.

The Christian sacramentum—the three-part rite of baptism, the laying on hands, and communion—is also a commitment to an uncertain life.  Sometimes it has been relatively easy to be a Christian, to discharge one's sacramentum faithfully.  Sometimes it has been very hard.  Those of us who are over fifty or so have lived in one of the easier times.  We grew up with vestiges of Christian commitments in our common life.  It still made sense to speak in public about the common good.  It was still a time when, in Adrienne Rich's words, "to feel with a human stranger" had not yet been "declared obsolete."[1]

Tessa's enlistment, I believe, will be very much more difficult than ours has been so far.  This is not because of some plot by liberals to persecute Christians, either, though there are liberals who are amazingly illiberal when it comes to matters of faith.  There is for instance no war on Christmas.  In fact, Christmas has been at war with Christianity and with Jesus' message for well over a hundred and fifty years now.  Christmas has been doing just fine.  Nor is it because our public school teachers can't lead students in a prayer.  It's because our public values and our public commitments are increasingly un-Christian.  We treat the poor with contempt. We let the robber barons of Wall Street write the rules.  We criminalize the homeless. We live by the sword. We abuse the earth, our fellow creature.  We silence any criticism of a system that demands our souls in exchange for its goods.

Tessa will grow up in this world.  In one of the Septembers before she starts kindergarten the arctic ice cap will disappear, ushering us into a world in which no human being has ever lived. 

In her cohort, the children who were born in 2014, there is no racial majority.  At about the time she comes of age, the nation as a whole will no longer have a racial majority. She will grow up in a world in which a wealthy few grow ever wealthier and ever more distant from the poor who grow ever more desperate. 

These changes will call on Christians to make unpopular commitments, to choose the welfare of the earth rather than the system that is destroying it,to embrace a broader vision of the human community rather than a system that grants her privilege, and to side with the poor rather than a system that is destroying the common good for the private gain of a few.

We are placing a great burden on Tessa's tiny shoulders at a time when her world is still full of delights and wonders.  But this is the burden that all of us carry, whether we know it or not, all of us who bear name of Christ and his mark.  And the world, in spite of all the damage it has and is sustaining, is even yet full of wonders and delights. 

So the most important question for me is not, Should we baptize Tessa?  The most important question is this: What does Tessa need from us in order to carry out the promises of her sacramentum? What resources will she need to make a space in her life and in this world—and sometimes at great personal cost—for the Reign of God to emerge? 

Here is what I think she'll need, she and all of our young Christians, and even we ourselves:

She will need a community that laughs and weeps together, that is also able to talk openly about deep matters and to make deep commitments to embracing what can be embraced in our world, to changing what cannot be embraced, and to resisting what can be neither accepted nor changed.Only as part of such a supportive community will she gain the strength she will need to keep the promises of her sacramentum. 

She'll need to know the biblical stories.  Against the false and shallow stories of neo-liberal capitalism and of public and private violence there are the stories of our tradition.  These are the stories that will give shape to Tessa's life: the story of a God who hears the cries of suffering, who knows the pain of creation, and is present to rescue and to save; the story of the prophet who denounces those who abuse their power by seizing the living of the poor; the story of the peasant woman who sheltered the Reign of God in her arms, nursed him through fevered nights, and engendered in him an unquenchable passion for justice.  In these and hundreds of other stories, she will find the examples she will need. 

Of course, for her to learn the stories, her parents will need to know the stories, and her grandparents, and her Sunday School teachers, and all of us in the community of God's people.

She will need the rich liturgical legacy of the church's tradition.  In a world in which everything and everyone has been flattened into a commodity, she will need constant access to mystery, to spaces and times when there is more than meets the eye, when the world's schemes of buying and selling look as shabby and shopworn as they really are, when ordinary things like water and bread and wine become transfigured vessels of God's presence in our world.  Otherwise, how will she know that she herself is just such a vessel, as are all of us, as are all of God's creatures?

Tessa will need a church that takes its mission seriously.  Tessa will need a church that tells the tradition's stories and tends the tradition's mysteries.  She will need an earthy church in which old stories and new mysteries take root, grow, and yield their fruit.

A long time ago,at a time when I needed him most, my favorite author was a priest named Henri Nouwen.Nouwen once wrote, “There are many people who would become good and wise and holy for our sakes if we asked them to.”

At the baptismal font we promise to become good and wise and holy for Tessa’s sake.  That is what God is asking of us.  That is what Tessa is asking.  That is our sacramentum.

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[1] .Adrienne Rich, "To the Days," Dark Fields of the Republic: Poems 1991-1995 (W. W. Norton & Company, 1995), 31.