‘A’   //   Baptism of the Lord   //   1-13-08   //   Celebration of Worship, Northside

 

Scriptures             Isaiah 42:1-9                   Acts of the Apostles 10:34-43

                                                Psalm 29 (sung)               Matthew 3:13-17

 

Some of the veterans here at Northside may recall the time when the property of Northside Associated Ministries became infested with my namesake: the woodchuck. Yes: Woodchucks. It’s oral tradition. I learned about it when I arrived here, nearly a decade ago. Those woodchucks proliferated at an amazing rate, and they soon become a real nuisance. 

 

It seems we at Northside and St. Aidan’s decided that we did not want to harm God's creatures. But instead of just sitting back and saying, “It’s all God’s plan”, we caught them in humane traps and released them far away – somewhere around Leslie Park, I believe. Unfortunately, a few days later, those darned woodchucks returned. Every last one of them.

 

Finally, our NAM Board huddled together, and came up with the one thing that worked. We decided to further God's plan by dividing that woodchuck population in half, baptizing them, and making an equal number members of each church.

 

Now, we only see the beasts at Christmas and Easter.

In the words that greet us on the baptismal font every Sunday morning at the sanctuary door: How many of you literally remember your baptism? If you do, please: Raise your hands! … Ah. There are a few.

 

Now – on the cusp of installing four elders to our session next week, elders who have been ordained to that office before – let me state that I do not believe all are called to ordained ministry as deacon, elder, or pastor. Saying that, I do not believe any group of persons should be deemed not called to ordained office, either. And yet, whether any of us may be called to ordained ministry or no, how do we go about actively remembering our baptisms? How does each of us know we’ve been marked for a call … at all?

 

Let me bring this out of the realm of theory, and state it more concretely and contextually. How many – aside from our guests and newer friends – have not found a place for their gifts here at Northside? (Good: No hands!) If you are even tempted to raise your hand to that one, then come see me, and we’ll see if you have a call here. Perhaps your call here is still hidden. Or, perhaps your call is with another Christian body.

 

For it takes participation in a faith community for each of us to truly hear our call. Or – better put – to have it heard into speech for us. For each of our baptisms can only be remembered in a Christian community that names and claims and utilizes those callings.

 

The call may be more pastoral; it may be more prophetic. It may be more joyful; it may be more ascetic. It may be that you nurture others well. Or, you may be a born advocate: sensitive to righting wrongs in this world, seeking to – in the words of Jesus to John the Baptizer today – “fulfilling all righteousness” as God so intends in this world. You may be a mystic; you may be a bearer of mercy; you may even be a martyr. There are over two dozen gifts Paul and the Pauline writers lift up in their letters to the earliest churches. Tools of the Spirit, you could say. For – as the old saying goes – God has reserved a wrench for every church nut.

 

 

 

Let me end this trip down memory lane by sharing my own: the story of three sixty-somethings named Joyce, Esther, and Roscoe. You see, these were the first three folk I ever baptized as a pastor. No mewling infants, here! It was Easter Sunday 1995 at First Presbyterian Church in Ringwood, Oklahoma – what would have been my father’s seventy-eighth birthday, and what would be the last Sunday before the federal building 90 miles away, including its nursery of what I imagine were many recently baptized infants, was bombed to smithereens.

 

I remember the case of Roscoe, in particular. Joyce and Esther: You could see them coming. For starters, they were the sisters of the clerk of our session … who had been clerk for each of the previous forty years. (Linda TerHaar: Take note!)

 

But Roscoe – Esther’s husband – was another story. “Leave me alone,” he once told me. “I’m not a prospect for your church. I mind my own business.” And so I left Roscoe alone. And so Roscoe minded his own business. That is until Esther started coming to church, and old Roscoe couldn’t help but tag along. And then, couldn’t help but see how the church members re-membered him to the bosom of God: how they heard the song in his aged heart, and sang it back to him when his memory faded.

 

Here’s how the story goes after Roscoe’s baptism.¹ I said, “Roscoe, do you remember what you once told me: ‘Leave me alone. I’m not a prospect for your church. I mind my own business’? Remember that?

 

“Yes, I remember.”

 

“Then what happened, Roscoe?”

 

“Well … I guess I didn’t know what my business rightly was.”

 

Now he knew. Roscoe knew. His business was to serve human need.

 

On this note of river bottom mercy: I invite you to hear the words of God to Jesus today, anew, ringing in your ears just as they rang in the ears of Jesus at the River Jordan:

 

 

Do you remember that?

 

Do you remember?

 

 

¹A somewhat similar tale can be found about a man named Frank in Fred B. Craddock’s The Cherry Log Sermons (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), p. 12.