God's Family

 Whenever I talk about baptism, and especially Jesus’ baptism, I’m deeply indebted to a little boy that I met at Fairport UMC, way back when I was a seminary student interning there.

Me and the little boy’s mom had a common connection–Asbury First UMC in Rochester, where her family used to go. She explained that they were once members, and her older child was baptized there, but when she moved out to the suburbs there was just no earthly way to get young children out of bed, fed, dressed, ready, and out the door in time to make it to a church that was twenty minutes away. Now that I have my own Motley Crew, I have to agree, I think it would be easier to get my kids to Mars than to church most Sundays. So, this mom found a new church home right in Fairport. But when her little boy, who was maybe 8 or 9 at the time, heard the word “baptized”, his ears perked up, because this boring mom conversation suddenly became interesting, so he ran over and asked:

“Mommy, what’s ‘baptized’?”

His mommy stuttered for a second and then turned to me and said…”well maybe Pastor Natalie could answer that question?”

I told the boy, who had also just gotten his very first Sunday School Bible, that there was a story in there where Jesus was baptized. His cousin put some water on him and told him he was part of God’s family now.

But this wise little boy fired back: “But EVERYONE is in God’s family! You don’t have to be baptized to be in God’s family!”

Touche.

Then his mom started talking about how it was important to his family here on earth, and Grandma really needed a picture for the family album of him in that little heirloom gown. And I added: “It’s also more than that. When you got baptized, you officially became part of this church family, and they promised to always look out for you.”

And then the little boy got all quiet, and asked: “But…what if someday I don’t go to this church anymore? Will they still look after me?”

That conversation happened fifteen years ago, and that kid can buy beer now. But there’s something incredibly special about the insights of children. They don’t care so much about what we think, or what conventional etiquette says they shouldn’t say in polite conversation. And because of that they just cut straight to the truth, like a knife. And when that sharp wisdom comes out of their little mouths, it stays with you.

A lot of us were baptized, and because it’s traditional among Methodists to do so, many of us were baptized as babies. It means that, unlike Jesus, we don’t have memories of our baptisms, of the moment that God flew overhead like a dove and told us how much the Divine loves us. All I have of my baptism is an old church record I had to dig up when I was going through the ordination process, and a picture from August of 1987 of my mom holding me in the family baptism dress that had been passed down for three generations. Two of my three kids wore that same little dress at their baptisms, and I know how my mom felt holding me: joyous, loving, and full of dread that I would throw up on it.

You might have memories like that of your children, your grandchildren, your nieces and nephews, your friends’ kids, or kids from this congregation, this church family. I’m very grateful to have beautiful memories of my kids’ baptisms, all officiated by my clergy bestie, Emily. They were baptized at three different churches in three very different places, and none of those sanctuaries are ones I anticipate walking back into soon, so the little boy’s last question is one I’ve spent a lot of time wrestling with for the sake of my family: what is a church family, really, and how do we manage to keep taking care of each other when our blessed Methodist itinerant system shuttles us hundreds of miles apart? Or, for the non clergy among us, how do we manage to hold one another in our hearts when life gets in the way of us being in the same room again? And, of course, some of us weren’t baptized. Some of us were baptized as grownups, and maybe some of us have never seen a baptism. Where do we find a connecting thread?

Blest be the tie that binds our hearts in Christian love, the fellowship of kindred minds is like to that above…

The connecting thread, of course, is God. And perhaps the biggest message the Holy imparts in this Gospel story is that we shouldn’t overthink the bond. Jesus didn’t, even though his cousin John the Baptist, of all people, did. We’re looking at Luke’s telling of this story today, and Luke gets straight to the baptism itself. But if you read this story in Matthew’s Gospel, he tells us that John the Baptist, despite his moniker, balked at the idea of baptising his own cousin. He told Jesus it should be the other way around, he wasn’t worthy of the honor. But Jesus assured him he could go ahead, he was the right guy for the job, he could do this. You wouldn’t think a guy who eats bugs would have those kinds of reservations, so let this be a lesson to you, we all doubt sometimes. But when John finally trusts Jesus, and baptizes him like he had so many others, God swoops overhead like a bird and announces the Divine love for Jesus, the Son of God.

We might not remember it, we might now have noticed it, this might not feel like part of our story. But God did the same thing for every one of us, at every occasion that we have been present for a baptism, whether it was our own, or one we had the honor of bearing witness to. We are God’s beloved children, bound together by the fact that the same Creator loves all of us, and the Sacred is proud of us, before we’ve done anything. If God can so effortlessly pull us together, and love us so much, even when we don’t think we deserve it, then there’s really nothing else under the sun worth our worry.

My most powerful baptism experience didn’t happen in a church sanctuary at all. It didn’t involve my kids, anyone in my blood family, any of my friends, or, frankly, anyone I suspect I’ll ever see again in this life. And none of that matters, because the connecting thread of the Holy is so powerful.

I was 26, and interning as a chaplain at Strong. It was a Saturday, and I was spending a whole 24 hours on call at the hospital. I had a tiny little room with a cot to hang out in, and a pager to carry around, where folks could contact me if they wanted me to come visit. And it had been a busy 24 hours. It was a sleepless night, and I was looking forward to faceplanting in bed as soon as I got home. But only an hour or two before I was going to go home, I got a page from the third floor, which I knew was the labor and delivery floor. I called back, and a nurse asked me to come meet a precious family.

I got up there, and met a mom, just a tad older than me, who just gave birth to twin boys. I met the first twin as soon as I came into the room. He was named after his dad, Felix, and he was taking a snooze in his little bassinet. It’s very exhausting being a baby, after all. I couldn’t figure out at first where the other baby was, until I noticed the blankie that the mom was holding to her chest, and the little pink foot sticking out of it. He was the very first baby I was asked to baptize. He had anencephaly, a condition which meant that most of his brain never developed, and the family knew he wouldn’t live very long after he was born. He was so tiny, like a little doll, and wiggling around next to his Mommy, and his name was Zion. When you baptize babies at Strong, they give you a little seashell, and pour saline into it, and I dipped a finger in the saline and told little Zion that he was part of God’s family, too. He passed later that morning, and went straight to the paradise his mom named him for, but she and I both thanked him for staying long enough that we could say hello.

It’s one of those stories that I can barely tell because it’s so powerful. And like the presence of the Divine, flying over Jesus like a dove and welcoming him into God’s family, there’s a holy, mysterious quality to that story that I can’t explain in words, I can’t show you in a picture, you just have to feel it. But boy, do you. It’s beyond words how much I love that family, and I always will. It’s a love that just is, something so strong that I don’t have to think about it, I don’t have to do anything to create or sustain it. It’s just there, all the time. Like God’s love for us. God makes the first connection, from heaven to you, and then from you to your closest family, and then it spreads out like waves in the ocean, and nothing can stop them. And that’s true whether we were baptized seventy years ago, last week, or if we haven’t experienced one of those yet. 

Sometimes, on this day, when we read about Jesus’ baptism, pastors will share a litany with their congregations that reminds them of the blessings of baptism. I invite you to hear this one, with me.

Sisters and brothers in Christ:
through the sacrament of baptism
God's Spirit has been poured out upon water,
water poured over and immersing us,
water that flows freely for all who will receive it,
water from the streams of God's saving power and justice,
water that brings hope to all who thirst for righteousness,
water that refreshes life, nurtures growth, and offers new birth.

Today we come to the waters,
to renew our commitments
in each other's presence
to Christ who has raised us,
the Spirit who has birthed us,
and the Creator who is making all things new.

Together we, once again, renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness, reject the evil powers of this world, repent of our sin, and accept the freedom and power God gives us to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves. We claim Jesus as our Lord and Savior, and this church family as our own.

Sometimes, we make mistakes. We see these flowing waters of God’s love and build a dam to block them. We try to walk so far away from the water that we can’t even hear the faintest trickle anymore. But, in those moments when we feel so dehydrated and weak that we don’t know how to keep going, God’s love overtakes us once again like a waterfall in a dessert.

Let this water remind us all of God’s mercy. Let it remind us of God’s steadfast justice and righteousness. Let this water renew in us the resurrection of Jesus, and let these waters make us thirst for the Kingdom of God here on earth.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.