St. Paul’s United Church Sunday, May 9, 2010

Opening Our Hearts to Christ – Rev. David Mundy

Acts 16:9-15 John 14:23-29

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What could be a more positive and hopeful event in the life of any congregation than a baptism? Today here at St. Paul’s and in many other United Church congregations we are celebrating this sacrament and sharing in the joy with of this family as well as the extended faith family we all represent. Even those of you who are worshipping with us from other Christian expressions will have recognized what we did here together this morning.

What if our baptism service was different –radically different from what we experienced today? John Westerhoff, a professor of religion, tells the story of attending a baptism service, in a small church in central America years ago, that he found unsettling and eye-opening. In fact it didn’t seem like a baptismal service at all to begin with. The congregation began with the mournful sounds of a funeral hymn while the father carried a child’s coffin he had crafted himself. The mother walked with him carrying a bucket of water from the family well.

The local priest carried the baby who was to be baptized in his arms wrapped only in a blanket. When they were all at the front of the sanctuary, the father placed the coffin on the altar, and the mother filled it with water. The priest slowly lowered the infant into that well water and as he did so he exclaimed “I kill you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit!”

It is coincidence or providence that on this Christian Family Sunday we are celebrating baptism and one of our passages of scripture tell us about one of the earliest Christian baptisms. In the Acts of the Apostles we heard about a visit by the apostle Paul to a community which had never heard about Jesus Christ. There were people, though, who believed in the Jewish God, the God of Israel. These folk didn’t have a place of worship, but they would gather by the river on the sabbath, so Paul found them and he enthusiastically preached a message of hope and new life in Christ.

One of those people, a wealthy woman named Lydia “opened her heart to listen” we are told. Not that she opened her ears to listen, but that she opened her heart. It’s one thing to hear words intellectually or for information. It’s another thing altogether to become alive in our emotional centre, the way we do when we fall in love.

Lydia fell in love with Christ as Paul spoke and as a result he spontaneously offered to baptize her on the spot, in the waters of the river. She was the first convert in what is modern-day Europe and her immersion into the waters of baptism was a sign that her life would never be the same again because she was a new person in Christ. At least that was the promise. What a great place to be baptized, in a river, because the water present in one moment is not the same as the water of the next moment, is it? A healthy, flowing river is a symbol of constant renewal and change. What we are told is that Lydia was willing to jump right in, with her whole household being baptized that day.

What an important reminder that baptism is a powerful, transformational moment, a conversion if you will. We aren’t meant to be the same after we are baptized and while a baby just doesn’t understand the consequences of what is happening we at least have an inkling.

Are our hearts opened to listen to Christ in what we do here today? And do we actually believe in the heart of our being that baptism is one of those times in our life when we participate in a new and bold way of living?

Life is filled with significant moments when we chose to take a risk by letting go of the past in order to move on to something which will be a new beginning. Maybe it’s not the same as dying but we have an expression “taking the plunge” which says it well. Sometimes we have to jump in and allow the river of possibilities to take us where it will.

Perhaps it is accepting that new job which will take us away from our close-knit family, at least for a time. Did you know that before Irish immigrants in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were about to set sail for North America the family would have a wake, a funeral party for those who were leaving because they assumed they would never see each other in this life again? These days we have telephones and Facebook and Skype and all those wonderful ways to stay in touch with friends and family, but even still we accept the possibility that life will change.

When we get married we don’t have guarantees of the outcome, no matter how much we love our partner. I have gone through a few occasions of a bride or a groom seeking me out before the big day because he or she wasn’t absolutely sure if this was the right thing to do. I actually had one couple call off their big, expensive wedding less than two weeks before the scheduled date, because they knew they weren’t ready, although they eventually did get hitched. What most of us learn when we marry is that we are making a choice which does alter the course of our lives, hopefully for good.

Having a child is another of those moments, isn’t it? I heard someone say just the other day that he thought that when he and his wife had their first baby they would push the “pause” button on their married life and then after a while they could push “resume.” After she was born he realized that “resume” just isn’t going to happen. When that baby came into their lives, she pushed the “reset” button because life is never going to be the same for them again. Does that sound like your experience?

Of course we sometimes regret taking the chances of change in our lives, but it seems to me that far more often we feel regret about the “coulda, woulda shoulda” opportunities which have been missed along the way.

In a way this is what happens through the powerful symbolism of baptism. Except that the mystery of baptism is that this isn’t just our choice. This sacrament is something God initiates and Christ seals and to which the Holy Spirit gives flight – God in three persons. You see, we can make all the vows and promises we want and we can have our fingers crossed the whole time, whether as family or the congregation.

We can renew our baptismal faith over and over, as we did once again this morning but there needs to be an openness to what God is able and waiting to do in our lives. Or we can listen with our hearts to hear Christ say to us in a very personal way that something may die in our lives in order to be reborn.

Now you may be asking what could an adorable ten-month-old baby such as Abigail, our baptismal candidate today, possibly have done that would require a rebirth? The quick answer is nothing – she is perfect in every way! But we know that as she grows physically, intellectually spiritually she will end up swimming in some scary waters and our deep desire is that with God’s guidance and ours she will mature into the person she is intended to be. And we pray that even now, as an infant, she is awakening to the presence of God who can be the source of light and life in all her decisions.

This past week there was a lengthy article in the New York Times with the title The Moral Life of Babies. In this article a researcher Paul Bloom offers:

A growing body of evidence, though, suggests that humans do have a rudimentary moral sense from the very start of life. With the help of well-designed experiments, you can see glimmers of moral thought, moral judgment and moral feeling even in the first year of life. Some sense of good and evil seems to be bred in the bone.

You might think this researcher is religious, perhaps someone who perhaps believes in the doctrine of original sin, but he doesn’t. In fact he essentially dismisses the notion of the “God factor.” What fascinates him is that we seem to be made to choose between right and wrong, almost from the beginning.

As Christians we affirm that this does come from God and that every one of us from the tiniest baby to the oldest amongst us is in a demanding, exciting, lifelong “swim” with the one who made us and redeemed us and sustains us. It is God who guides the life-affirming, life-giving choices and we offer our support and love and nurture.

I hope we are awake to the fullest meaning of baptism today and that again we can affirm this new life which is our remarkable gift from God. We all stand in that tradition of Lydia who responded in love to Christ, and included all of her household. This can be our moment of a new beginning. Open your hearts to listen for Christ today and every day.