Johnny Cash, in fact, the whole Carter-Cash Family, are those
"baptismal font" kind of people who help us find the holiness
in the everyday stories and songs of our lives. Their kind of
song-making and story-telling is a lot like what Jesus did for a
"living." Baptismal fonts are supposed to be positioned where
we can run into them as often as possible. They remind us the holiness
that has been poured out upon us, into which we have been immersed,
always is with us wherever we are, however things are going for us, and
according to Johnny Cash, that daily going can be tough. And we already
know what he means by the sounds of the whistles through Reno, crying
out to us all in the night.
Welcome home, welcome hope: Our second Sunday of Homecoming Month.
Some 60 of us of all ages are making our worshiping home at Family Camp
this morning! Next Sunday we rejoice in the renewal of our campaign to
"love this place!" This house of God we call home. How do we
love this place? Let us count the ways. Let us count the ways we hope to
expand and to share the use of this place for ministry and mission! Let
us dedicate next Sunday’s worship to God, as always, and to our friend
John Dodson, guiding spirit to our campaign, for full and speedy
recovery from brain surgery this week. Meantime please continue the good
work from last Sunday. Complete or update the forms in the bulletins and
place them in the offering. Thank you.
I wanted to wait until the children left to tell what Mark Twain said
when asked if he believed in infant baptism. "Believe in it?
Hell," he exclaimed, "I’ve seen it!" So have we!
Witnesses! With our very eyes and ears! To the miracles of new life, in
the world and in the church! Entrusted with this amazing gift! Life
itself! Utter joy! (Shall we call it "Jay Joy" today?) Baptism
breaks in from above and below as the love of life itself! The
up-and-down reach of the arms of the cross. Joining with communion, as
the love of life joins with the life of love. The side-to-side reach of
the arms of the cross. Extending to every last person on earth.
Welcome home, we said last week, with an earlier line from this poem,
"September 11, 2001," from our Words for Meditation: "God
still dwells within." Today we say, Welcome hope, and add the line:
"We will never be the same." Venerable church historian Martin
Marty observed as part of a panel reflecting on 9/11 this week: Material
changes may come very quickly, like earthquakes. Spiritual changes must
come much more slowly, like glaciers. He says it is much too soon for us
to know, really, how changed we are. Marty is not at all sure we have
dared to turn to the longer, harder spiritual work of changing
ourselves. Perhaps all we can know for now is, we will never be the
same. Still, even that can be very good news. Our attention may yet be
turned.
Baptism in our tradition, rites of dedication and initiation, of
reception and acceptance of the gift of new life in any tradition,
testify that each child, each person, born is born with the whole hope
of the whole world! In front of every last person, say Hasidic Jews,
there go ten thousand angels proclaiming, "Make way for the image
of God!" Make way for the image of God. Truly, with each child born
an old world ends. This family, these families, this congregation, the
larger church and community of this congregation, never will be the same
again! Jackson makes that much difference, and more.
What does it feel like, what does it look like, what does it mean,
what does it require, to bring children into this world today? There is
a certain faith, a certain courage, almost a certain audacity, a certain
hope, a certain triumph of the imagination, that a better world, a world
of more life and more love, more joy and more justice, is possible on
this earth. The poet here says there remains so much sorrow for us to
forge into compassion. Compassion! Passion with. Suffering with. Always
the first step of God toward us, whether we are as slaves of the pharaoh
in Egypt, or whether, as Jesus keeps putting it, we are as lost sheep
without any shepherd. Compassion leads God to solidarity with us, as
baptism leads to communion, as gifts lead to callings, faith to works,
joy to justice, and life to love. In fact, Jesus himself is baptized by
John as an act of compassion for and solidarity with the whole world.
Sisters and brothers, like it or not, ready or not, we as persons and
as a church, as nation and denomination, we are approaching, or being
approached by, that glacier of spiritual change Martin Marty is talking
about. We are being called to surrender our normalcy, says the poet, to
yield our illusion of safety, for the very ground of our footing and
course of our following are shifting out from under and all around us.
We are no longer the children we used to be! We ourselves, conscious or
not, are changed. The poet calls us older, shock-eyed, trembling.
Is this, is any baptism, in today’s world, a moment of which T. S.
Eliot asks, in "Journey of the Magi," "were we led all
that way for / Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly, / We had
evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death, / But had thought
they were different; this Birth was / Hard and bitter agony for us, like
Death, our death. / We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, / But no
longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, / With an alien people
clutching their gods. / I should be glad of another death." I
should be glad of another death!
I should be glad of an ending and new beginning! Of a new life and a
new world! Of Jesus as the always-new-thing God is doing. What hope is
there for us but a new generation? Not only in life but in love. Not
only in faith but in works.
Baptism is first and foremost the act of our huge and loud
ever-echoing YES! to the gift and the gifts of LIFE!
YES! to the mighty acts of God our creator, still bringing
forth life to this day. YES! to the life and works of Jesus
Christ our redeemer, still giving hope to our being human. YES! to
the Holy Spirit our sanctifier and our sustainer, still shaping and
guiding, still gifting and calling, the church in the midst of the
world, the whole world and all the earth. All of this – life, human
life, human life in community – we say in baptism is God’s pure gift
to us all, "offered to us without price!" Offered to us
without price. The very self-offering of our God. A home, a hope, a
place with God, a peace with God, now and forever, freely offered, fully
received! All we need do is say YES! YES!
All texts are tough on us in some way. These texts from Proverbs and
James feel especially hard to hear both after baptism and after
remembrance of 9/11/01 and all that has followed from our various ways
of interpreting what happened to us, to our world, to our earth, on that
day. (By the way, do we need more time and space together to talk about
that? To help sort out where we are as a congregation in the light of
what 9/11 reveals about life in our world today? As a nation and as a
denomination? Do we need more time and space? Just asking.)
These texts challenge our very commitment to expecting God to be
speaking a word to us today, especially a word that is new and different
from the word of God we were raised on, for instance, the word of God
shaping our church and our view of the world as we know them. The world
that is ending all over again, that is. A word that is living, and
changing, and growing, and challenging us to change and to growth. These
texts ask what we are to do with "the gift of tongues." James
might call it the "gift of tongue," for to him the tongue
guides the whole body, as a bit in the mouth guides a horse, or a small
rudder turns the whole ship!
The tongue is capable of much good, as well as a lot of mischief. The
tongue is a marvelous, wondrous, if potentially dangerous, gift. Wendell
Berry calls language "the most intimately physical of all the
artistic means. We have it palpably in our mouths; it is our langue, our
tongue. Writing it, we shape it with our hands. Reading aloud what we
have written. . . our language passes in at the eyes, out at the mouth,
in at the ears; the words are immersed and steeped in the senses of the
body before they make sense in the mind." Our tongues, all our
tongues, are the gift of God’s many ways, and times, and places of
speaking, in many languages, colors, nations, tribes, sexualities,
creeds, and conditions of life. Are we even listening? Much less,
are we hearing anything?
For we are only likely to hear what we are listening for, and there
are no guarantees we will hear even then! I was moved when Ron Legg, one
of our congregation’s many teachers and educators, who are to be
specially judged, warns James, along with preachers I suspect, described
to me how he intervened for a student from another culture who sat in a
classroom listening with all her heart but could not really hear, --
get, grasp, understand -- a word that was being said! We all need so
much help with hearing. Which ought to be pretty obvious, since God
created us with twice as many ears as mouths! We might want to try more
time with our ears open and our mouths closed.
Listen, when I followed two different strong women who had been
pastors in San Rafael for a combined fifteen years, and someone in the
congregation told me they were not sure they were ready for a male
pastor (Imagine that!), I responded, I promise to be the next best thing
to a female pastor. Another person in the community said, I’d like to
come to church, but I’ve only been to Glide in San Francisco. Is every
preacher like Cecil Williams? I promised to be the next best thing to
Cecil! Now I’ve come here. I hear all about Olmstead’s preaching,
not to mention that of Emerson, Gafke, Meadows, Monroe. So I promise
this morning to be the next best thing to Olmstead! Not to mention
Emerson, Gafke, Meadows, Monroe.
Seriously, at our last annual conference, Bob Olmstead preached on
the fine arts of listening and hearing, no laughing matters for him. He
spoke of someone who heard a cricket in the midst of the tumult of Times
Square. So much depends upon what we are listening for! He spoke of the
gift of stillness. He spoke of his own electronic hearing devices and
told how he listens to us, to the person, not to the amazing
devices. He hears better than he has in years!
He spoke of the gift of St. Joan, how our souls can learn to listen
for words from God. For God’s "voices" come to us all, but
only the listening hear. When are our times and where are our spaces, in
light of 9/11 and every baptism, of water and of fire, for listening,
really listening to one another? As persons? As peoples? As nations?
For coming to know one another? For learning again to negotiate and to
compromise, -- build trust, exchange promises, give words, take risks,
make covenants, -- with one another? Where? When? The children, the
grandchildren, of this world are asking us. Jackson soon will be asking
us.
Wisdom is the voice of God’s Spirit crying out to us from the
streets! On busiest corners where people surge to and from the cities!
God in the midst of us all! Wisdom cries out to be heard. She stretches
her hand, her voice, out to us, to be heard above the day-today din of
our lives and our life together. How much counsel, how much reproof, how
much calamity, how much panic (Hear her now, church and nation!), asks
Proverbs here, does it take to get our attention? Are we doomed to
partake of the bitter fruit of our own way? To divert ourselves to the
breaking point with devotion to our own devices? So unlike the devices
that help Olmstead hear! Devices, whole technologies, of destruction and
of death. . .
Wisdom will not force herself upon us. We must turn to her, listen
and hear her, heed her and respond to her of our own free will and full
heart to be changed. All she has to offer, says Proverbs, is life
without fear. Life without fear! Imagine! What else do we long so to say
to our children? I understand the Bible says on 365 different occasions,
Fear not! Be not afraid! God loves you! The universe is your friend! The
love of life is the life of love! There is hope for the world! Perfect
love casts out fear.
Olmstead concludes, listening, really listening, is our act of
loving. We become participants in the life of God as Eternal Listener!
The one who hears everything! Silence is not God’s inattention or God’s
absence. God hears everything, every prayer, even the prayers of our
enemies! For prayer is not something to be accomplished. Prayer is to be
received. God prays in us! As God plays in us! The children still teach
us that. The Spirit of Wisdom is praying in us even now. Praying when we
pay attention. Let the branches of our listening be receptive to life in
love without end. "Perhaps then," says Albert Camus, "if
we listen attentively, we shall hear amid the uproar of empires and
nations a faint flutter of wings, a gentle stirring of life and
hope." Amen.
