Fourth Sunday In Lent - B

March 22, 2009

The Very Rev. Peter Swarr

Today is the third Sunday in our Lenten examination of some of the sacraments of the church. On this day we will examine a sacrament which all of us know well, Baptism. Baptism often seems very comfortable to us. Four to five times a year our community gathers to celebrate Baptism, welcoming new members into our faith through water and the Holy Spirit, and renewing our own baptismal promises. Time and again we gather together, often with infants in their parent’s arms, to listen to the words of the Prayer Book. Time and again we see water poured over heads in the name of the Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Time and again we welcome the newly baptized into “the household of God.” And we charge the newly baptized to “confess the faith of Christ crucified, proclaim his resurrection, and share with us in his eternal priesthood.”[1] For many of us, Baptism Sundays, which are scheduled on some of the highest, holiest days of the church calendar, are days of joy, days of celebration, days of new life.

Baptism stands at the center of our life as Christians. As many of you learned last Sunday, since the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, baptism has reclaimed the central place in our common life as the Church. Harkening back to the first thousand years of Christian history Baptism is again seen as the sacrament by which all people are fully initiated into the life of the church. Baptism is the place where we believe Christians receive the Holy Spirit and are welcomed into the risen life of Jesus.

Yet in reality no matter how many times we have been present at baptisms, the sacrament of Baptism is so much more than we realize. Baptism, just like our readings from Numbers, Ephesians, and John, is something that is foreign, and full of untapped-depths, power, and mystery. Each and everyone of our readings from Holy Scripture today reminds us that ours is a faith that comes from long ago, a faith full of mystery and surprise.

Needless to say stories of snake bites and bronze serpents are not exactly the first scripture reference most of us would think of when talking about Baptism. Yet such passages of scripture are important. They remind us that lying behind a font of warm water, an infant, child or adult, and nice white linen towels lies something deeper, something ancient, something mysterious. You see, Baptism is more powerful than we often realize because it connects Christians with the resurrection of Christ.

In Baptism, the believer is buried, buried with Christ in the tomb and the believer is raised, raised to new life. In Baptism humanity is connected to the all-powerful love of God which overcomes death. In Baptism Christians are given a hope and a faith which goes beyond common sense, a hope and faith which is able to cause new life to spring up in places of death and despair. In baptism Christians are welcomed into a fellowship of faith which is meant to be transformative and powerful, just as Christ’s resurrection powerfully transformed humanity and history.

Baptism is, in reality, a sacrament which makes creation and the baptized new, new people, resurrected people. Baptism is an event which challenges the church to live new lives, lives which deny the power of death in the midst of a world so filled by its power, so consumed by its fear.

Examples of the profound power of baptism may be seen throughout the early history of the church where men and women of faith risked all that they had to live and speak the good news of Christ to a world that rejected them, to a world which viewed them as confused and threatening. The power of baptism may be seen today, near and far, in the resurrection-life which is brought into being in places of hopelessness, places of despair.

The Dominican Republic is such a place of apparent hopelessness and despair. On my recent visit to the D.R. I, along with four bishops, two priests, two deacons and one lay person visited a small barrio named “La Bombita”. La Bombita is a neighborhood of profound and disturbing poverty where many families live on about 2000 dollars a year. In La Bombita there are no government programs to protect the poor. In La Bombita there are no schools or medical clinics. In La Bombita there are no jobs and the unemployment rate hovers around 90%. La Bombita is the very definition of hopelessness, it is the incarnation of brokenness, it is the realization of hundreds of years of systematic abuse of the poor by those with power and wealth. And yet, in this barrio so defined by poverty, the power of Baptism shines with a light so bright that it stuns visitor and resident alike. 

Two years ago a friend of mine named Alvaro Yepes, an Episcopal Priest, moved to La Bombita to serve a struggling house church of seven members.  Many clergy in the diocese thought that Alvaro’s assignment was a hopeless one. They believed that in such a location, the church had little chance of surviving, let alone thriving with so few members and so little resources. Yet Alvaro trusted that through the risen life of Christ given to him and those seven church members through their baptisms, God could do incredible, death-defying things in La Bombita. And so, day in and day out, as Alvaro walked from his modest apartment to this hopeless barrio, he knocked on doors and invited all who would speak with him to come to church. Alvaro traveled to the furthest outskirts of this slum, to places the local Catholic priest would not even consider visiting, and Alvaro listened to the needs of the people, and he responded with love.

When I visited La Bombita with the rest of our All-Michigan delegation just 15 days ago, we were welcomed by over 150 singing people, holding candles and throwing flowers. They showered us with welcome, they told us stories of how their faith had transformed them, they told us stories of the power of God transforming their desperate neighborhood into a community of expectation and hope. Then, after welcoming us into their modest house-church, nearly 90 children ushered us to the incarnation of their hope and joy, a brand new church building with a two story school structure and space for a medical clinic. These people, led by their soft-spoken priest, were living examples of the power of Baptismal hope thriving in the midst of hopelessness. They had, against all odds, against all logic, created a vibrant and welcoming community of faith which was reaching out to the desperate need of the community through worship, education, health care, and a person relationship with a living Savior. In the faces and the voices of La Bombita, the power of baptism and the resurrected life of Christ which believers are ushered into was stunningly visible for all to see.

My friends Baptism is not simply a warm and comfortable right of passage. It is not simply a day to gather family and say a prayer or two. Baptism is a life-changing, world-transforming act which defies the brokenness and fear of our world. Baptism is a sacrament which marks humanity’s utter dependence on the power of God to give us life and hope in places where life and hope make little sense at all. Baptism is a sacrament which reminds us of the words of Ephesians which we heard only minutes ago, “God…made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and [God] raised us up with him and seated us with him …so that in the ages to come [God] might show the immeasurable riches of his grace…This is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.” Baptism is the gift of God. Baptism is the sacrament which ushers us into the Church, the very Body of the resurrected Christ. Baptism is the sacrament by which we are made alive, the sacrament by which we are given the power to live lives of grace, love, and hope.

The outworking of Baptism in places of extreme poverty is stunning, so too is the outworking of the resurrection in places such as this. Resurrection-life is something that fills us with joy and hope even as the economy continues to falter. Baptismal-life is something that gives us the strength to resist the fearful culture which surrounds us and bombards us day-in and day-out. Baptismal-life gives us the grace to invite friends and neighbors into a life-giving, meaningful relationship with God, Baptismal-life calls members of this church to pray for the sick, study the Scriptures, volunteer in Detroit, welcome strangers, feed the poor, make quilts for the sick, visit the homebound, and share our resources generously. Baptismal-life, Resurrection-life calls us to never be satisfied with where we find ourselves, but instead to strive after the kingdom of God and after the righteousness of God in our own lives and the life of this community.

My friends, as you leave this sanctuary today, pause for a moment at the baptismal font in the back of the church and think, think of the incredible calling and gift which God has given us in the life-giving waters of baptism. In those waters God has enabled us to live life as it is meant to be lived, no longer for ourselves alone, but instead for God and for the world around us.