| Rector’s
Sermon
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| Something unbelievably mystical, spooky, counterintuitive, and cute is just about to happen to Bryce, Klara, and James. Let me repeat the adjectives: mystical, spooky, counterintuitive, cute. Let me start with the last adjective and work backwards. Cute. When Bev’s and my older daughter Elizabeth was planning her 12th or 13th birthday party, we had a small family meeting to discuss who would be there, the games we would play, what kind of cake she might want to have. Elizabeth’s younger sister, Marnie, was seven or eight years old and took a great interest in all of these details. Finally I think Elizabeth had had enough and allowed as how Marnie was certainly welcome at Elizabeth’s birthday party but added this one directive: “But Marnie, don’t get all CUTE!” At today’s birthday party—Pentecost is often called “The Birthday of the Church”—Bryce, Klara, and James have every reason to upstage whatever else we have planned for this service by being cute. And just look at them. How much more cute could they possibly be? (Just don’t throw up like the last one did. That was exciting, but his mother would not have said it was cute!) In any event, and whatever their state of mind, there’s hardly anything quite so winsome as a child being presented by his or her parents to receive the sacrament of Baptism. However, there is something very counterintuitive about what we think actually happens in baptism. I’ll cut to the chase and simply quote the Prayer Book: But Pentecost is also spooky. Think back to the story we just heard when all of these different nationalities that had gathered in Jerusalem hear the disciples speaking in a tongue they recognize as their own all at the same time. In the old Prayer Book the third person of the Trinity was called the Holy Ghost. That language is still retained in our Rite I services, and growing up I had a certain confusion around the notion of God being “ghostly” because “ghostly” to me was spooky. Casper the Friendly Ghost was always very comforting, at least in theory, but God’s invisible presence can be a bit unnerving, especially when we associate God’s invisible presence with power. In Hebrew the word for wind and spirit are the same: ruach. In Greek, the word for spirit is pneuma, the same root for the word pneumatic which for me conjures up images of great power. Spooky, scary, awe-inspiring, if God is God then these adjectives can surely have a place in our vocabulary. Mystical. How to define that word? In my mind it has not so much to do with something that’s secret but rather something that only God can do and something only God can be. In Pentecost, and in Baptism, we are saying that only God can do what’s happening today and what Bryce and Klara and James are becoming. Immediately after their baptisms, the sign of the cross will be placed on their foreheads with oil blessed by our bishop and we will say, “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.” Only God can do that for them. We go through the motions, but God through the mysterious presence, through the mystical presence of God’s spirit, has enveloped these children and will make them part of the Body of Christ. Now I can sign a certificate to that effect, and we can make sure that the water we use is tepid enough so that they don’t cry, but it is God whose love undergirds and lifts up and surrounds them and brings them into the Kingdom. That’s mystical. That’s something you cannot find outside of this place nor with any other words. Maybe I should have used the word miracle rather than mystical, but each will suffice for how it is that we know ourselves and these children to be blessed in the name of God the Creator of Heaven and Earth, in the name of Jesus Christ, and in the name of the Holy Spirit who moved across the face of the waters at the beginning of time and has infused this water and these children with eternal life. Amen. |
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