Sermon: I have called you by name. You are mine. No take-backs. (Jan. 13, 2019)

Baptism of Our Lord C

January 13, 2019

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

INTRODUCTION

         Today’s festival, the Baptism of our Lord, happens each year after Epiphany. Jesus’ baptism is what kicks of his ministry – just as it kicks off our own relationship with the Church. Each of our texts today will enlighten us about some aspect of what happens in our baptism – even Isaiah and the Psalm, which are of course written well before baptism as we understand it was a practice. Isaiah reflects upon belonging, naming, and God’s love for us. It is in fact the only place in scripture where God says directly to God’s people, “I love you.” The Psalm hearkens the powerful voice of God, which has always been active through water. Acts tells us a story about some of the earliest people to be baptized, revealing a bit about that practice among the early converts. And of course our Gospel reading tells the story of Jesus’ own baptism.

         As you listen, watch for all those baptismal connections. What new thing can you learn about this central practice of our faith? What do these readings enlighten for you about baptism, or baptismal faith in general? What components of these baptism stories do we still include in baptisms today? Let’s listen.

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The moment of my baptism, August 28, 1983
Grandpa Dick, Mom, Dad

         “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.” The first time I remember encountering these words from Isaiah was at a chapel service in seminary, during a Thanksgiving for baptism. We were all blessing each other, doing the sign of the cross on each other’s foreheads, saying, “I have redeemed you. I have called you by name. You are mine.” I don’t remember what was going on in my life at the time, but I do remember feeling that they were exactly the words I needed to hear that day. Several years later I found myself circling my living room with my crying newborn Grace in arms, singing to her a hymn with these same words as the refrain: “Do not be afraid, I am with you. I have called you each by name. Come and follow me. I will lead you home. I love you and you are mine.” I told her recently about this, and added, “They are good words for moving.” Both are strong memories. Needless to say, these words from Isaiah have meaning to me.

         And why wouldn’t they? What beautiful words they are! That God would name us, call us by that name, claim us as God’s own – that is truly remarkable! I read somewhere that people who name their cars are statistically more likely to take better care of their cars. (If you wondered, my Subaru Outback is named Lucy.) It’s similar, I suppose to why you should never name a stray cat who comes by for food – because as soon as you have named the cat, that cat belongs to you. You develop an affection for the cat. You name the cat, and you’re bound to take care of it. If this is true for our cars and strays, then how much more so when God, the creator of the universe, names us bunch of strays! With that name comes a promise, to love us, and to care for us. “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you. I have called you by name. You are mine.”

         We see that remarkable claim a second time in our Gospel reading, the story of Jesus’ baptism. Luke’s version of this story differs slightly from the others, and one way is that in Luke, that voice from heaven speaks directly to Jesus, saying not “This is my Son,” but rather, “You are my Son, my beloved.” Both in Isaiah and in Luke, God gives those to whom God is speaking an identity: an identity as belonging to God as a son, a daughter, a child of God.

         Now, why should that matter to us? It matters, because in our baptism, God does the very same thing. We are called by name. We are claimed as God’s own. We are sealed with the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever. And so we, too, receive an identity: we, too, become children of God.

I think that’s really worth dwelling on for a moment, because identity is not always easy to come by these days, is it? Traditionally, people have found their identity in their job, their hometown, who their family is – but all that looks different these days. People change careers, they move far away from home, they have complex, blended families. But in all the changes that life brings there is one part of our identity that never changes: we are God’s beloved children, through good times and bad, and we always will be.
I've been thinking about that a lot the past couple months, as my family and I have worked through this big change, to come and join you here at St. Paul's. Shortly after I accepted your call to serve as your pastor, I got a text from Bishop Macholz, congratulating me. I told him I was happy, but that one thing I struggled with was leaving the churches where my children were baptized. I could not longer say to them on Sunday mornings, "This is the font where you were baptized!" His very bishop-ly response was that while this was true, I could still say, "At a font like this, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever!" He said this would give my children even a deeper understanding of the church. I wept when I read that text, just sat in that parking lot out there and cried. Last week, my little Isaac was toddling up to communion, and when he walked by the font, he gazed up at it, smiling, and reached for it to touch it, and I almost lost it again. 

At a font like this… wherever that font, or lake, or river or whatever happened to be… at a font like this, you received this identity: that you are a child of God, no matter where you live, where you go to church, or what else might be going on in your life. No change in your life will ever change that. Divorce, loss, job change, kids moving out, new school – whatever the change, whether good or bad, desired or not, nothing can change the identity that is lovingly given to us in our baptism. Nothing can change it, because we didn’t do anything to earn it in the first place. And that is perhaps the best news of all: God has given us this amazing gift of love, forgiveness, belonging, identity, and grace, all of this completely, as Luther says, “out of fatherly and divine goodness, though we do not deserve it.” And there is nothing we can do to mess it up.

I find this gift to be both humbling and liberating. I am amazed that God would bestow such goodness on little old insignificant me, bestowing it not because I’m something extraordinary, but because God is. And to think, that God will never take this gift from me – not when I feel worthless, or when I do something that hurts or upsets someone else, or when I doubt my abilities, or when I make a huge mistake, or when I don’t live up to someone’s expectations… All of these things, which have happened and will continue to happen in my life because I, like all of you, am human – all these things make me want to doubt that God made the right call in claiming me as His own. If I were God, I might have taken it back by now. “Never mind, Johanna, you weren’t worthy of these gifts after all. I take it back. I don’t want you.” But God doesn’t do that. God does not renege on this offer. God offers anyway. God names and claims us anyway.

And that is liberating. What I mean is that suddenly, I start to believe that if God views me as worthy to receive God’s gifts, maybe I shouldn’t doubt myself. And if I don’t doubt myself, then just think what I could do in and for this world!

Suddenly, this event that happened to most of us when we were babies, that we can’t even remember, starts to have real meaning to us in our daily life. The fact that we are baptized matters. It matters because it is a profound statement of God’s unconditional love for us. It matters because it promises us every day that we are forgiven, and in showing us that, it also urges us to “forgive those who trespass against us,” and with forgiveness comes healing, and with healing comes transformation. Baptism matters because it assures us that even when we fall short, we still carry with us, everywhere we go, the gift of the Holy Spirit – the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of Lord.

         What does that Spirit, the Spirit you received in your baptism, move you to do in this world? What does the assurance of God’s love, grace, and belonging, give you courage to pursue? For me, that promise emboldens and enables me to love people whom I find difficult to love. That includes people I encounter in my daily life, and family members who are more difficult to get along with than others, and people who have done things that make me really mad, and people on the other side of the political spectrum from me, and even people whom I don’t know except that I know they look and believe and act differently from me. Loving these different people doesn’t look the same for each person, so the Spirit pushes me to figure out how to love all these different people, what it looks like with each. The Spirit urges me not to sit still and be quiet in the face of injustice, but rather to use what gifts I have to make sure all of God’s children have what they need. The Spirit encourages me to do things I’m scared of, to get out of my comfort zone, to go out on a limb for the sake of the gospel, because I can trust that if and when I fail in my efforts to live a life guided by Christ, God will still not renege on the gifts of my baptism. I will still belong to God. I will still be loved by God. I will still be forgiven by God. And to me, all of that matters quite a lot.

         So do not be afraid, children of God. God has redeemed you. God has called you by name. You belong to God. And nothing can ever change that.

Let us pray… Spirit of God, in our baptism, you have promised us forgiveness, grace, belonging, identity, and unconditional love, and we can trust that you will not renege on these gifts. As we celebrate the baptism of our Lord, help us to remember our own baptism, and help us also to discern what you would have us do with this abundant gift to love and serve your world. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.