Sermons

“Consequential Faith: Who Are You Proclaiming?”

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22; Luke 4:14-21 – Rev. Rebecca Littlejohn

Vista La Mesa Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), La Mesa, California – January 6, 2019

 Holy God, bless the speaking and the hearing of these words that we might give thanks for the gift of baptism and turn to your Spirit to help us in our daily endeavor to follow Jesus.  In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

I probably should have warned you all of this, and especially the kids in my Discipleship Class, but we’re having double class today, starting right now.  The class, of course, is called “Discipleship” class, not “baptism” class, because it’s bigger than just baptism.  But then again, maybe it isn’t.  Baptism is pretty big.  The class I’m doing with our youth is spread across seven sessions, one a month, from October till Easter.  And we’re calling it Discipleship Class, because too often, we think of baptism as simply an event, rather than the beginning of a whole new way of living.  Baptism is an entrance into discipleship, which is just another word for following Jesus.  Another way of saying that is to say that baptism has consequences.

Now some of you are most familiar with the word “consequences” from the phrase “natural consequences.”  We use that word at camp a lot, to talk about what happens when you make bad choices.  If you decide to try to balance on something that’s six feet off the ground, there’s a high likelihood that you will fall off and break your arm.  That would be a natural consequence.  Likewise, if you say mean things to people most of the time, it’s very probable that nobody is going to want to hang out with you.  That is also a natural consequence.  But the consequences of baptism aren’t natural like that; they don’t happen automatically, like gravity.  Because baptism is a different kind of choice.  Baptism is public ritual we undergo in order to give significance to our decision to follow Jesus.  But it’s not a magic spell; it doesn’t take away our free will and turn us into heavenly robots who only ever behave lovingly.  It’s more like making a marriage vow, which is a promise we have to choose to keep and honor every moment of every day that comes after the wedding.  Keeping that baptismal promise is what we call discipleship.

So in our class, we’ve talked a lot about what baptism means and how it’s supposed to affect our lives.  But we haven’t talked that much (yet!) about the “why?” of baptism.  And since that’s a lesson we can all benefit from reviewing, I thought we’d do it together this morning.  Because here’s a pro tip:  the “why?” of baptism is the “why?” of Christianity as a whole.

In order to tease out the “why?” of baptism, we have to spin it around a little bit.  We’ve already said that baptism is a public ritual we undergo to give significance to our decision to follow Jesus.  It’s helpful, if we’re going to make that choice, to have some sense of where Jesus is going.  That is why we read both scriptures from Luke today.  This is the main Sunday of every year when we remember the story of when Jesus was baptized.  And there’s a lot we can say about that.  But if we’re focused on baptism as the binding moment of our commitment to follow Jesus, we also need that story of Jesus announcing his ministry in Nazareth, with the words from the prophet Isaiah, laying out what he was going to be about.  “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the bind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

And that, that right there, is why we can’t just say, “Okay, I’ll be a Christian” and think that somehow it will work.  We’re supposed to be joining Jesus in bringing good news to the poor!  And release to the captives and freedom for the oppressed!  That’s a big deal.  And we humans have notoriously short attention spans.  Baptism is a gift God has given us to clarify for our own hearts and minds that deciding to follow Jesus is a big deal.  It’s not something to be taken lightly.  We don’t do it just because everyone else is, or because we want attention, or because we want to secure our place in heaven.  We’re not signing up for an activity; we’re signing onto a mission.

One way to explain the consequences of baptism is by imagining a twist on the Greatest Commandments.  The Greatest Commandments, of course, as Jesus taught, are to love God with our whole being and to love our neighbors as ourselves.  What we hear from our scriptures today looks at those commandments from the other direction.  Baptism confirms that we’re beloved children of God; and choosing to be baptized means we’re promising to live our lives recognizing that everyone else is a beloved child of God also.  That’s not as easy as it may sound.  It means working to bring freedom to the oppressed and release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind and good news to the poor.  At least, that’s what Jesus thinks it means, and if he’s the one whose name we’re being baptized in, he’s the one who gets to define what that means.  Baptism in Jesus’ name is what calls us into the kind of ministry Ken is doing in DC, the kind of ministry Michael led at the National Council of Churches, the kind of ministry we’re doing here at VLMCC with our unsheltered neighbors, and the kind of ministry I do with Disciples Peace Fellowship.

Again, this is more of an explanation of the “what?” of baptism, but the breadth and depth of the “what?” points to the why.  Following Jesus isn’t a hobby or a fad.  It’s a whole other way of living your life, different from what our surrounding culture encourages.  Rather than trying to maximize your potential for the sake of your own comfort and “live your best life now”, following Jesus requires us to receive the gifts God has given us and use them fruitfully for the sake of others.  Why?  Because of love, love that is bigger and harder and more amazing than we can possibly grasp fully.

So we don’t just say, “Okay, I guess I’ll do that today.”  We study and pray and consider and make an intentional choice, and then we consecrate that choice with a holy and ancient ritual – baptism.  God knows that we do better at remembering things if we have rituals to recall as reminders of the promises we made.  We can bring them to mind whenever we need to: when we’re feeling un-beloved, when we’re feeling disconnected, when we’re feeling not courageous enough to proclaim release to the captives, when the poor seem too demanding, when the oppressed are asking us to make sacrifices, when we’re tired of trying to help people see through God’s eyes.  There’s a lot that tries to get in the way of us following Jesus.  Having made that choice publicly and dramatically – what could be more dramatic than getting completely soaked, being literally washed clean? – helps us stay committed to it.

Baptism is a big deal because following Jesus is a big deal.  That may be clear by now.  But some of you may still be wondering why we’re talking about it in the middle of a sermon series aimed at re-focusing us on our goal of cultivating vitality and growth in ministry and members.  It’s not that far of a stretch.  If you were going to invite a friend to a club, you would definitely explain to them what the club does and why, right?  If we’re talking about a community that is so much more than a club, one that involves an entire re-orientation of lifestyle, doesn’t clarity seem even more important?  How can we possibly welcome people into the family of faith if we’re not clear on the consequences of becoming part of it?  If we just tell them what they might find us doing here, without explaining why we do it, they may come participate once or twice, but the chances they’ll commit are low.  If we mention Jesus but don’t explain why he matters, they’ll likely assume he’s not that big of a deal.

We need to understand the consequences of baptism because we need to understand our faith.  We need to know why we made the choice to follow Jesus, and we need to remember that every day.  When we’re clear on that, there may be some people who discover more quickly that they want nothing to do with it.  But there are more people who are longing for meaning and clear purpose.  There are people searching for a way to live their lives for something bigger than themselves, who want to follow Jesus, even when it’s hard, even if they don’t know yet that what they’re longing for, and they’re going to need a community in which to make that work.  They will find us faster if we’re clear on what’s going on here.  People aren’t looking for wishy-washy niceness.  There’s plenty of that around.  They’re looking for people who understand what they’re doing and why they’re doing it, people who are pouring their lives out in service, with joy and gratitude.  They’re looking for a place where their beloved-ness is so obvious, it can reflect off them and into other people’s lives.  Our faith has consequences.  They are life-saving, world-changing consequences, and we need to be living our lives in ways that make that clear.  Baptism helps us understand that and remember it.  It’s a big deal.  Alleluia and Amen.