September 28, 10:30am (Sare Gordy)
Let’s be clear: Baptism – Conner Cunningham’s, yours, mine or anyone else’s – has nothing to do with heaven or hell, Salvation or damnation, divine love or divine rejection, sin, forgiveness…or any other whacky Christian superstition of the past two-thousand years. We understand where that came from in our history and we need not be embarrassed about it. Death is frightening. Death is even more frightening in a primitive human society where it is a near daily occurrence and where there is very little understanding about the causes of death.
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September 28, 2008: Proper 21, Year A
“Sharing water”
The Rev. R. Cameron Miller
***
Good morning.
In case you are especially sleepy this morning, or your child has been demanding your attention, or for some other reason your mind has not arrived at the same place your body is now resting…the worship here today is drenched with the theme of “water.”
That piece from Helen Keller’s journal is especially poignant and metaphorically rich with symbolism:
I knew then that “w-a-t-e-r” meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free!
It was perhaps coincidental that “water” was the first word that Helen Keller recognized, and that “water” opened the door to a life of com-municating with others for the girl who had been born without sight, hearing or speech.
It was perhaps coincidental that “water” thus became the watershed moment for the flood of remarkable changes and innovations that Helen Keller, and those who worked with her, brought to the development of education and care of those with similar disabilities.
It was perhaps coincidence that water, the substance that we need in order to live as much as the air we breathe, became the substance through which followers were born into or initiated into Christianity.
So it is that the substance from which all life emerged and in which all human life is gestated, is the substance through which we are initiated into Christianity.
Let’s be clear: Baptism – Conner Cunningham’s, yours, mine or anyone else’s – has nothing to do with heaven or hell, Salvation or damnation, divine love or divine rejection, sin, forgiveness…or any other whacky Christian superstition of the past two-thousand years.
We understand where that came from in our history and we need not be embarrassed about it. Death is frightening. Death is even more frightening in a primitive human society where it is a near daily occurrence and where there is very little understanding about the causes of death.
Death is even more frightening where there is a shared insecurity from an utter lack of protection against the whims of nature, the scourge of disease or an abundance of human violence.
On the other hand, we moderns we have a disadvantage when it comes to dealing with death because we are so incredibly disconnected from the natural rhythms and cycles of Life. We have difficulty coming to terms with death and embracing it the way the ancients often did as a natural part of living.
For example, did you ever try to find a clump of dirt at a graveside? You can’t! Because they cover it all up with green plastic indoor-outdoor carpeting! I like to sprinkle dirt on the casket or urn at the words: “And we commit her body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust…” But I can’t find any dirt at the cemetery! The Funeral Home guys carry a little brass flasks of sand that they hand me instead – God forbid anyone would recognize we’re putting somebody in the ground!
But while we suffer from our own modern peculiarities around death, we have an advantage over the ancients because we understand the causes of it, and we know all about the processes of it, and we live so dang long that a lot of people down right wish for it after awhile.
But it is not difficult to understand how baptism turned from a ritual of atonement and a rite of initiation into a superstitious talisman against eternal damnation. But that is not what Baptism was for Jesus and it is not what Baptism is for us.
First of all, John the Baptism offered baptism as a ritual cleaning away of old sins. It was a ritual not an actual cleaning away. John’s baptism was like the 5th Step in AA in which the recovering alcoholic goes to someone and, as it says in AA’s Big Book: admits to God, themselves and to another human being the exact nature of their wrongs.
That is just a very practical, concrete action that anyone who wants to reconcile with someone else, or who wants to change their behavior, simply has to do.
If I keep doing something that is self-destructive or is creating a problem of some kind, and I keep doing it over and over and over again – and by the way, that is not an “IF” it’s a “WHEN” – the only shot at changing my behavior is for me to acknowledge out loud, in front of someone else, what I have been doing wrong.
Or, if I want to be reconciled with someone who I have offended or betrayed or hurt in some way, then there is really no way to do it other than to acknowledge to them what I have done, and then go about trying to change my behavior.
By the way, let’s think about that with our Captains of Capitalism. Without a Truth and Reconciliation Commission that gives leaders the opportunity – or requires them to take the opportunity – to publicly acknowledge what they did wrong and to publicly commit to different behavior ain’t nothing going to change…and you can take that to the bank.
So anyway, all that John’s baptism did was to give people an opportunity to publicly acknowledge their bad behavior – whether done or left undone – and free them from the ghosts of that behavior so that they could go on into a new relationship unencumbered by guilt, shame and poor self-image.
It was a ritual of liberation. It was meant to free people to enter into a new relationship with God – not because God required it or needed it, but because they did in order to stand before God without shame.
It wasn’t spooky. It wasn’t fear-based. It wasn’t guilt oriented. It wasn’t superstitious. It was very very concrete and practical. It makes perfect sense and is rooted in what we know about how best to practice relationship-building and repair.
Now, let’s think about Jesus and John’s baptism. Why would a super-human-perfect-person need baptism? Why would someone who is perfect need reconciliation with God?
Because…if Jesus was fully human, of which I have no doubt, he needed at least one 5ths Step in his life and probably more than one. It was Jesus’ concrete, practical act of reconciliation with God so that he could move forward in freedom.
Jesus needed reconciliation as much as anyone else and he submitted himself to John’s ritual cleansing. As a result, we are told, he had an intense religious experience. When he was coming up out of the water he heard a voice whisper in his ear: “You are my son and with you I am well pleased.” …With you I am well pleased.
How sweet an affirmation. May Conner, his sister, and all of our children, receive such complete and unconditional affirmations from us:
You are my child, with you I am so very pleased.
And that is really what this is about: affirming Conner and one another.
Let me step back from baptism for a moment and ask you to think about the basic dilemma we share in our spirituality. Think about the time you experienced something that brought you great joy.
Recall if you will, that feeling of joy that fills your chest and your head so that you could just burst with…with…joy. Recall if you will, a time you were just brimming with joy and went to or called someone so you could let it out, so that you could share it.
Then, after having burst forth with enthusiasm you suddenly recognize a smile plastered upon their face and realize that they do not feel what you feel. You wanted to share your joy but their not getting it. Or, go with me on this journey here, to the other end of the spectrum.
Recall if you will, a time when you were hurting or sad or afraid and you finally squeezed up the nerve to let it out to someone who you hoped would be present with you in the midst of your angst or pain. Then, suddenly, you realized they were just sitting there and you had been doing all the talking and there wasn’t any real response coming at you and your friend was just looking at you.
You wanted so much to be heard, not just listened to; to be received and responded to but they were just sitting there passively; or they started doing problem-solving and telling you how to fix things instead of hearing and receiving and being with you. I know you’ve had that experience before, haven’t you?
Most of us have one or two friends, or a partner, who we can count on to share joy with us or be present with us in times of difficulty. But few of us have someone we can share our spiritual depth with –
or our spiritual journey or even our spiritual questions.
We can talk about sex, we can talk about money we can share joy, sorrow and grief, but sharing our spiritual yearnings or depth or needs is something that few of us do…ever. There is this huge dimension of our personhood trapped inside us and so few people, if anyone, that we can share it with.
That is what we are supposed to be doing here. We are saying to Conner,
and through Conner to his sister and parents, that this is a place and we are a people with whom it is safe to share spirituality out loud. That is what baptism is, the ritual of initiation into a spiritual relationship with a particular religion and through a particular community.
I mean, Conner and God are already tight – they’re buds for a long time now. It is the world and human beings he’s going to need some help with – in order to not walk alone among us. As he gets older and more and more distant from the whisper of God that is cooing in his ear at this very moment, he’s going to need companionship, partnership, and guidance in order to practice spirituality in a culture and in a moment in history that has no place or respect for the practice of spirituality – especially the communal practice of spirituality.
This came home to me in a new way when I was in Guatemala last spring. I went to Guatemala to study language and I went with a friend who many of you know, Tim Wadkins who teaches religion at Canisius College.
Tim and I are both terribly extroverted, which means that we have to talk out loud in order to hear ourselves think. (Thank God for preaching
or I would never have a thought).
So we were there for nearly 3 weeks and we traveled together and met daily for conversation. We talked about everything. We are nearly the same age, even though he is aging much faster than me. We both have kids. We both are professionals in religious institutions. We both struggle with the meaning of our professions in a world in which religion
is nearly irrelevant in so many realms.
And so we talked and talked. We talked about aging. We talked about parenting. We talked about marriage. We talked about being male. We talked about religion. We talked about our own histories and struggles. We talked about our demons and angels – and I mean that very metaphorically.
And I think it struck both of us that the kind of conversations we were having – especially given our professions and vocations and interests –
should not be so rare. The kind of conversations we were having should be on the menu almost daily for people who are engaged in spiritual community.
And that is what we have to offer Conner, a community in which spirituality and the practice of spirituality is not an isolated realm stuck inside him. Sure there is an internal process, a deep reservoir, as I like to say, in which we swim with God all by ourselves.
But that is not all there is and that is not all we are left with: deaf, blind and mute stuck inside ourselves before we learned about w-a-t-e-r.
And so we have so much to share with Conner that we should be bursting inside to let it all out and to help him know what we know. It is a privilege that we get to bring Conner into the water today and commit ourselves to sharing our spirituality with him.
