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The Rev. Michael Richardson |
2 Epiphany -- A |
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The Chapel of Our Saviour |
Isaiah 49:1-7 |
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Colorado Springs, Colorado |
Psalm 40:1-10 |
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January 20, 2002 |
1 Corinthians 1:1-9 John 1:29-41 |
God calls. We respond, or not. Today we will baptize a little child, a child who cannot yet respond for herself so we will respond for her. All of us, her parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, godparents, and her brothers and sisters in her new Christian family, this congregation, will respond today and in the future to welcome her into the fellowship we have been given by Christ Jesus. We will respond to her in love, because that is the response that Jesus taught. We will respond in love because love is the response of baptism.
God calls and we respond, or not. We already have everything we need to carry out the calling. We are "not lacking in any spiritual gift", as we heard from the I Corinthians reading, but have an abundance of spiritual gifts to help with our response. We have gifts of teaching, carried out by our wonderful Sunday School teachers, volunteers in youth ministry and folks who volunteer their time for our benefit in the catechumenate. We have gifts of listening, carried out not only by the clergy, but by Lay Eucharistic Ministers and Stephen Ministers. We have gifts of encouragement carried out by many kind people in this place.
We have gifts of hammering and painting and cleaning and cooking; gifts of managing resources and organizing workloads; gifts of feeding people in body as well as spirit; gifts of glorious spiritual music and gifts of singing lullabies to babies. We have all the gifts we need, and I know I've only scratched the surface of the gifts in this place.
But we can have all of the gifts in the cosmos at our disposal and it would do us no good, nor would it do anyone good, if we sat on them. If I don't teach what I know about Jesus, what does it matter that I know it? If I don't feed people, what does it matter that I can cook? If I don't heal people, what does it matter that am a gifted healer?
Our response is our responsibility. No one else can do it for us. So how can we respond for Sophia today at her baptism? To be truthful, we are simply making known to her something that has already happened. If Sophia had to make an intellectual response to God affirming His love and forgiveness, His salvation or making whole of her person, in order for that love to be effective, then we could surely not get in the middle of the transaction. That is, we could not try to be responsible, or respond for her, to God's need of understanding. God's love would be contingent and conditional to her actions and understanding.
That is not the God we know. It is not how we act as parents of our children and we would be appalled at God acting in a manner that is less loving and giving than we act. Imagine trying to raise a child to love the world around them without giving them love in the first place. Imagine trying to raise a child without actually caring for them.
Many years ago I read of an experiment where orphan infants were intentionally not touched, or held, or spoken to - except to take care of necessary physical needs like changing diapers and feeding. The babies wasted away and had signs of malnutrition, even though they were being given all the food they needed. Many eventually died from lack of affection and attention. Most of us can't imagine treating little babies that way. So why would we ever imagine that God would treat us in a similar manner, requiring us to understand His love before we He gave us that love?
When we are called by God to a life in response to His gracious love, it is a call to a love that has already been given, a love that was prepared for us as God created us. John declares that "God is love". If that is so then we were created by Love in the image of Love, in order to carry on that love with each other. We were created to be in relationship with God and with each other and that is what baptism is about. Baptism is about being in relationship, literally an "adopted as heirs" relationship according to the Apostle Paul.
There is no response that we can give, no gift we can use, that doesn't require of us that we give out of love. Remember the beautiful words that Paul uses later in the Epistle to the Corinthians. This is how Eugene Peterson translated them.
"If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.
If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing.
If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love."
Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn't want what it doesn't have.
Love doesn't strut,
Doesn't have a swelled head,
Doesn't force itself on others,
Isn't always "me first,"
Doesn't fly off the handle,
Doesn't keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn't revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.
Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled...
But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.
Our sin is already taken away. And not because of anything we have done, but because God chose to take it on himself and discard it. That is God's choice, not ours. God is the one who is hurt by our sin, by our being out of relationship with Him, so God can choose to respond to that hurt in any way He desires. He chooses to love. Just as we can choose to respond to hurtful events in our own lives by being angry or resentful, or by forgiving and moving on so as not to allow the event to control our lives, God can choose to love rather than hold a grudge against us.
Jesus, Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, have mercy on us. Love us anyway. Extravagantly. This is what John the Baptist proclaimed about the nature of Jesus, and the nature of God. That God sent his own Lamb to be the sacrifice that would show us that love is more important than anything else, not because of some rational teaching, but simply because God chooses for it to be that way. God's response to sin is love. It's God's choice. All we can do about it is accept it and respond in kind, or not.
God chooses to love us no matter what we do, or think or believe. He will love us whether or not we love him back, because that is the nature of love. Love is vulnerable and open and takes every risk possible in order that love never be closed off. God's love knows no bounds. But we still get to choose whether or not to respond.
It's amazing. Jesus took away the sin of the whole world. Took it away - already! It's not that he's going to take it away. He has taken away the sin of the world. Not just the sin of those who believe, or those who are righteous, but the sin of all creation. Now we get to choose whether or not to accept his taking of our sin. God will let us take it back and carry it for eternity, if we so choose. That is love. That is how God calls us. That is what God calls us to do. Love. So we respond out of love today at the baptism of Sophia and share with her in our adoption as God's heirs. We leave here today and go about the business of loving one another. And we choose to love, or not.
I want to leave you with an Islamic parable about Jesus. That's right, an Islamic story about Jesus. In this day and time we need to hear how our brothers and sisters of Islam understand God, and this story gives us a clue that it is not very different from our own. At least not always.
Attar of Nishapur, a saint of Islam, told this story about Jesus.
Some Israelites reviled Jesus one day as he was walking through their village. But he answered by blessing them and praying for them. Someone said to Jesus, "You blessed these men, did you not feel anger towards them?" And he answered, "I could only spend of what I had in my purse."
Jesus' choice is to carry only love in his purse, and to spend it freely. We get to choose what we carry in our purse. Our response to God's love is our responsibility. No one can respond for us. But we can help each other to trust that love is the response that will beget love. We can reach out to one another, as we reach out to Sophia today, and encourage the response of love. +