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‘A’ / Easter 4 / 4-13-08 / Celebration of Worship, Northside Presbyterian Church
Scripture Psalm 23 (read and sung – four hymn versions)
Runneth Over: Baptism As If We Really Mean It
Dedicated to Mary and John Rodriguez,
Daughter and Son of Kristin Klevering and Edward Rodriguez,
and Children of God and the Church that claims them
on the occasion of their Baptisms this Sabbath day
Prayer: God of all gifts, and Lord of all love: We have sung your praises in this psalm this morning in many ways, because we know it seems a bit pretentious to comment on it otherwise.
I dare pray now that you allow this sermon to be as a song – engaging our whole lives in the cares and the prayers found between its speaking and its hearing. And in its speaking and in its hearing, let the only thing that runneth over be your Spirit of wisdom.
At first hearing, the title of today’s message sounds a bit like part of the response to a “knock, knock” joke I once heard as a child:
Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
Goliath.
Goliath who?
Goliath down. You looketh like you’ve been runneth over.
The psalmist today erupts in gratitude: “My cup runneth over.” And yet, when it comes to the sacrament of baptism, too often we Presbyterians treat that two-word phrase as if it were a bad joke.
Propriety can dampen anything. I recall the stifling sense of decorum at my own baptism. You see, I was baptized as a teenager and not as an infant – my Baptist-bred parents not having considered making this covenant with the church on my behalf when they became Presbyterians around the time of my birth. Therefore, I literally remember my baptism.
I distinctly recall the feeling of the moistened index and middle finger of the distinguished pastor’s right hand outstretched over my brow as if to say, “Here – you’re baptized, now. Just don’t take this moment too danged seriously.”
Much like the disciples in Mark’s gospel, apparently. Mark’s story of Jesus reads as one long morality play: the disciples cozying up to their baptismal calling, and then running for the hills when the costs of discipleship prove too great. Mark prepares us for this narrative trajectory at the outset by depicting John’s disciples being baptized in the river Jordan – whereas Jesus is baptized into it. The Greek prepositions Mark use make clear this qualitative difference in their baptism – although no English translation I know preserves Mark’s quite intentional distinction.1
The way we Presbyterians have historically performed baptisms seems to confirm Mark’s point: that Jesus may have been immersed in his ministry, but God forbid we dip ourselves too deeply.
And God forbid we listen to our denomination’s Constitution, which mandates in its Directory for Worship that “By whatever mode, the water (of baptism) should be applied visibly and generously.”2
And God forbid that we take seriously a phrase from our own church purpose statement – one we find each Sunday on the back of our bulletin. The phrase: being “Liberal in Love”.
God forbid we be seen as visible and generous and liberal in the way we baptize. We must preserve our propriety. We must defend our decency. We must contain God in this modest font. We must. We really, really must.
We must, for we must not let our sacramental enthusiasm – much less our sacred discipleship – to runneth over!
A medieval mystic, Gertrud of Helfta, was fond of describing the sacrament of Eucharist as “a school of desire”.3 Were we to treat not only communion, but our other sacrament, in that way! Sometimes I wonder if we Presbyterians, through our careful ordering of the most sacred of our spiritual markings – and, of ultimate importance, the symbolic way these orderings speak of our way of discipleship – are taught to promote among ourselves and especially among our children more of a suspension of yearning than a school of desire?
A suspension of yearning – of delighting in a God of abundance, who overflows our capacity to ever contain her. Who immerses us, saturates us, overwhelms us when all we have ever wished to be is to be “whelmed”.
But let us turn to hear the deep yearning – that holy ache – in the psalmist’s voice today. That holy ache, of a life lived in a radically trustful reception of God’s good gifts.
That holy ache. I’m not speaking especially of the transcendence of God in the third person, expressed in the opening lines: “The Lord is my shepherd … God makes me … leads me … restores me … leads me”, again. Transcendence expressed as gratitude for a pastoral presence – one that is yet forceful and directive.
When speaking of that holy ache, I’m not speaking especially of our nod to this third-person God. I’m speaking of the divine in the second person – the yearned-for “thou” who in the middle of the psalm leaps on stage with a magisterial bow. “You are with me”, the psalmist cries, and in the valley of the shadow. “Your rod and your staff comforts me.” “You prepare a table before me” – again, in the presence of evil. “You anoint my head”, and with a cup of oil.
A cup. My common cup. A runneth-over cup. Courtesy of you, O God of true and faithful intimacy.
Sisters and brothers, this is the God with whom we covenant today. Covenanting to support Kristin and Ed in providing not just the physical places, but also and especially the relational spaces, to stand with their children Mary and John as they grow into the fullness of God’s calling for their lives.
To stand with them not that they may simply come to know who they are, but also and especially that they may come to know whose they are. So that they may never find it necessary to Google God and pour him into what they might be led to believe is an empty vessel, but that they may find that the divine is always overflowing their given bucket, because they are loved and they are beloved and they are longed for and they belong.
So let us hear those verbs of intimacy again – used to describe a second person God by the psalmist, yes, but also intended for God’s church as her appointed and grace-filled instrument.
Let us hear those verbs again: comforts … prepares … anoints.
We covenant today to comfort Mary and John – meaning, we will provide pastoral care to them.
We covenant today to prepare a table for Mary and John – meaning, we will edify them, we will build them up. In education, in worship, in communion. This school of desire. Yes: In the presence, if necessary, of enemies of their discipleship.
And we covenant today to anoint Mary and John with oil – meaning we will commission them at the appointed time, we will send them forth.
We will be pastoral with them. We will build them up. We will send them forth.
Our intimate God. The God we covenant today to convey to Mary and to John.
The God of their baptisms, that their cup might runneth over.
May our trust in God be so that this font may be so with our love. That we might baptize them today … as if we really mean it.
1Herman C. Waetjen, A Reordering of Power: A Sociopolitical Reading of Mark’s Gospel (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989).
2The Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Part II: Book of Order, 2007-2009, W-3.3605.
3Gertrud Jarron Lewis (translator), Gertrud the Great of Helfta: The Spiritual Exercises (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1989). | 
