3 Epiphany

January 23, 2011

1 Corinthians 1.10-18; Matthew 4.12-23
+ I sent out an email this week to you, the member of St. Stephen’s, asking for the dates of your baptisms. And, man did I get the responses. This is one of those times people really enjoyed responding to me. I got emails from people telling me they dug through boxes and files to try to find their baptismal certificates. And it has been fun to compile a list of these dates of baptism so we can commemorate this important day in our lives here at St. Stephen’s

Of course, we’ve been talking a lot about baptism lately. The sermon I preached the week before last was all about baptism and Sandy Holbrook’s sermon last week also referred to baptism. And almost as an added bonus to all this “baptism talk,” today we get to celebrate the baptism of Gracelyn Miller.

You already know how I really do rejoice every time we baptize here at St. Stephen’s. As the saying goes, “a busy baptismal font means a healthy church.”

But what’s been fun too is all the discussion this baptism talk has generated. In my sermon from a few weeks ago, I preached about how truly important Baptism is.

A few days after that Sandy Holbrook and I had a very interesting discussion. One of the things both Sandy and I enjoy about preaching is receiving feedback. And Sandy always has some informative feedback.

On this particular occasion, it was not so much about the sermon so much as about how she felt it was an inconsistency that I could preach so strongly on the importance of Baptism being the basis of all ministry in the Church and still do what is popularly called, though I think inaccurately called, “private baptisms.” A “private baptism” in this sense is simply a baptism service done outside the regular Sunday morning Eucharist.
I think I may have made a sassy come-back to Sandy along the lines of: “Well, when I appear before the judgment seat and am judged for the grievous sin of ‘private baptisms,’ I, along with the apostle Philip, along with all the people we ‘privately’ baptized, including the Ethiopian eunuch, will take my judgment as needed.”

Not exactly conducive to an intelligent discussion.

But it is a valid point that Sandy made and one that I don’t think we have had chance to discuss fully here at St. Stephen’s. The point of this is: I actually agree with her wholeheartedly. Baptisms should never be “private.”

BUT…the true fact of the matter is, and this is actually my argument: no baptism is “private.” Whether the baptism is in the context of the Eucharist, during the main Sunday service, with all the faithful gathered—which truly is the ideal, and one in which I certainly work to maintain—or if it is, for pastoral or personal reasons, done outside that service, the Church is always gathered.

As you have heard me preach many, many times, the veil that separates us here on earth, from the larger church, is a thin one and that veil is often lifted, especially whenever we gather for the Eucharist or for baptism. And, in a sense, all of us were present at each others baptisms, whether we were actually there or not. Whenever the church has gathered or will gather, we, as the baptized members of this church, are there as well. In those moments when baptisms are held outside the regular Sunday Eucharist, the Church is still always gathered and present.

“Has Christ been divided?” Paul asks this morning his letter to the Corinthians. The answer, of course, is no. Christ cannot be divided. And that same thinking can be applied to Christ’s Church.

Yes, there may be denominational divisions, or political divisions or even physical divisions, but the fact remains that the Church continues to be the Church Undivided in even the midst of all the wrangling and fighting and misunderstanding. Even death does not divide us. When we gather together—even two or three of us—Christ himself and the whole Church, both here on earth and in the nearer Presence of God is present fully and completely. And the great reminder to us of this undivided Body of Christ is baptism.

And the baptism into which each of us were baptized is not dependent upon when it was done or how it was done (outside of the fact that is be done in the name of the Trinity).

Many of us, including myself, were baptized outside regular Sunday Eucharists.

Our baptisms were not suddenly made invalid when the 1979 edition of the Book of Common Prayer came out and strongly encouraged us (though, I stress, in no way commanded us) to restore Baptism to its proper place within the regular Sunday Eucharist.

The point I made in my sermon two Sundays ago was this: our individual baptisms are not the issue. What is the issue, again and again, is that, in these waters, all of us were made equal.

If you ever notice, at our funerals here at St. Stephen’s, the urn of ashes or the coffin is always covered with a pall. The use of the pall is not just one of those quant things we Episcopalians do. It is not simply some fancy cloth we place over our mortal remains to add a touch of class to the service (though it does do that). There is a very practical reason for placing the pall on the urn or coffin. We put the cloth on because, no matter how fancy and expensive or cheap and inexpensive an urn or casket may be, before the altar, at the funeral, no distinction is made, just as, in God, no distinction is made.

We are equally loved children of God. We are essentially on equal ground under that pall. We are all the same. And, in so many ways, that pall represents baptism as well.

Just as the pall is the great equalizer, baptism is the truly great equalizer. Our baptism—that singular event that made us Christians—whether done in a church on Sunday morning during a Eucharist, or on Saturday evening, or on in a river beside a chariot in the Holy Land, are all the starting out points of our lives as Christians and the common factor in those lives. And just as importantly, that holy moment in our lives was the first moment when we were all compelled to preach the Kingdom of God.

To a large extent, what happened at our baptisms was the first major step in our direction of being disciples of Jesus. It was the day in which we essentially were called by Jesus , as Jesus called the disciples in today’s Gospel, to be fishers of people. Baptism is the first of many steps in following Jesus. And when we see that—when we see our following of Jesus beginning at that very moment in our lives in which we were baptized—we realize how following Jesus is truly a life-long experience.

In our collect for today, we prayed

Give us grace, O Lord, to answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ and proclaim to all people the Good News of his salvation, that we and the whole world may perceive the glory of his marvelous works…

That is what Baptism does. It compels us to answer the call of Jesus and to proclaim to all people the Good News of the Kingdom of God. And the first volley of that proclamation began at our baptism.

Today is the anniversary of the death in 1893 of the great Episcopal preacher and Bishop, Phillips Brooks. You can actually see his photo on the Episcopal News insert in your bulletins. Now, when I say Phillips Brooks was a “great preacher,” I mean “great preacher”. Phillips Brooks was probably one of the greatest preachers of the nineteenths century—often called the “Prince of the pulpit.” At Wednesday night Mass this past week, we commemorated him and I shared a few facts about him.

One of them was this: “Phillips stood at 6’4”, weighed over 300 pounds and spoke from the pulpit of Trinity Church, Boston, at a mesmerizing 200 words a minute.”

200 words a minute. And you thought I was a fast preacher….

“His sermons were like a freight train rolling downhill or a freighter plowing downriver with an ebbing tide. He was completely captivating and utterly spellbinding.”

I can just imagine what it must’ve been like to hear Phillips Brooks proclaiming his message from the pulpit. But it was Brook’s definition of preaching that I really like. Brooks described preaching as “communication of truth through personality.”

I’m going to repeat that.

Preaching is “communication of truth though personality.”

When we think about it that way, we realize that preaching should not just be relegated to what the priest and licensed lay preachers do on Sunday mornings from this pulpit. Rather, preaching might not even involve words at all, according to Brooks’ definition. Communication of truth through personality could mean almost anything.

So, in today’s Gospel, when we find Jesus and his first followers going through Galilee, “proclaiming the good news of the kingdom,” we realize that call to us to be “fishers of people” is not necessarily a call to preach wordy homilies to people. Possibly proclaiming the good news and being fishers of people might simply involve us communicating the truth of that reality through our individual personalities—through our demeanor, through the choices we make in our lives and the very way we live our lives. Our whole self then becomes a kind of walking sermon, even if we personally don’t say a word. And to a large extent that personality that we received God was formed in the waters of baptism.

This morning, as we baptize Gracelyn, we gather here together and with all the Church that has already been and that will be long after us. We gather to wash her in these waters. We come together to seal her with the Holy Spirit. We gather to mark her as Christ’s own for all eternity. And we set her on the path in which she too will proclaim the good news of Jesus with the personality that God will bless her with in her life. It is an incredible moment in her life, just as it was an incredible moment in our lives as well.

“Follow me and I will make you fishers for people,” Jesus said to those first followers. And he continues to say that Gracelyn and to all of us this morning.

So, let us follow him. Let us follow him from the waters in which we were washed to whatever place he leads us in our lives. And let us follow him with joy and gladness singing in our hearts.