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In a Peanuts cartoon, Lucy says to Linus, “I think I would
have made a great evangelist.” Linus asks, “What makes you say that?”
Lucy replies, “You know that new kid we met at lunch today? I convinced
him that my religion is better than his religion.” “How did you do
that?” Asked Linus. Lucy replied, “I hit him with my lunchbox!”
Over the centuries, Christians have had what I would call,
“family arguments,” about certain issues. And sometimes we have been
guilty of using the “lunchbox approach” with one another. One of the
issues about which we disagree most is baptism. Today, I want to talk
about the Presbyterian view of Baptism.
It is part of a new
series of sermons over the next four weeks on subjects that we need to
talk about from time to time, to remind ourselves what we believe about
these very important things that we do in the life of the church. For
the next four weeks, I will be talking about baptism and communion and
marriage and funerals. I’m going to try very hard not to get too
academic; though I’m going to also say to you, in some cases, you’ll
have to hang in there with me. If I say something you don’t understand,
I’m going to try to be as clear as I can, just catch me outside and say
“I didn’t understand that.” But we are going to go over some things we
just need to hear. If you are a visitor with us, well, I am somewhat
apologetic for that, because maybe you came in expecting something else;
but, maybe if you stay with us, you’ll get it later. But we just need
to talk about these things because in our society today, maybe it’s been
true forever, I find that these four things are not understood very well
even among Christians. You’ll notice that the title of my series is a
little bit cynical. It’s called “Hatch, Attach, Match and Dispatch.”
Now, there’s this joke among preachers: Why do people come to church?
Well they come for baptisms, for marriages and funerals and then you
don’t see them again. It’s kind of like the old story I heard one time
about three preachers who were talking together. They each had a
problem with bats in their church. Every week they would meet for
lunch, “Were you able to get rid of your bats?” “No, we tried
everything, exterminators, everything.” Finally one of them came after
a long time and said “I finally figured out a way to get rid of the
bats.” They said, “How did you do it?” He said, “Well, we just
baptized them all and we never saw them again.” Now I know that sounds
a little cynical and I want to ask for your prayers for me. Uhh, my
twenty-fourth year anniversary of ordination is in about three weeks,
four weeks and twenty-fifth year of ministry; and it’s easy to get
discouraged sometimes because often, sometimes, that’s exactly what
happens. People will get baptized or they will come and get married or
they will have a funeral and you don’t see them again. You’ll see those
people three times; now present company excluded, but it happens. Yet,
we need to understand why we do these things. We need to understand why
we do these things.
So today it’s baptism; and the first
question I’m always asked, and it’s a good one, from someone who isn’t a
Presbyterian or a Methodist, someone who does not believe in baptizing
babies, is “Why do you do it? Why do you baptize children when the
bible doesn’t say anything about it?” It’s a good question. The answer
is because you can’t understand baptism apart from understanding the
roots of our faith in the Old Testament. Now testament is a
newer word for the word covenant, and the bible says very clearly
that God is a God of covenants. A covenant is a solemn agreement that
God binds Himself to. He makes promises to do such and such, and He
asks His people to do the same. You can’t understand baptism - you
really can’t understand the Christian faith - apart from the Old
Testament. A lot of people say “Oh, the Old Testament. That’s the Old
Testament. We don’t deal with Old Testament anymore.” If you don’t
know the Old Testament, you don’t understand why Jesus died. You don’t
understand why we do the Lord’s Supper the way we do; and we’ll talk
about that next week. And you’re not going to understand about baptism
apart from understanding of the Old Testament. So it begins, as it
often does, with a man named Abraham. You know, Abraham was given
promises by God to make a great nation, a great nation. God said “Your
descendants will outnumber the sand of the sea.” Is that a hyperbole?
Well. Certainly! But is it only Israel? The Muslims claim Abraham as
their father too. No, it’s the Church. We are descendants of Abraham
through faith, and the bible says so. Read Romans 4. It begins with
Abraham. Abraham was called out of present day Iraq into present day
Palestine and God appeared to him and made a covenant with him, Genesis
chapter 15. Now in those days when two nations made covenants with one
another the word to make a covenant was berit, to cut, literally,
with a knife. It had a literal meaning. Two nations, two kings, would
get together and they would take animals; they would literally sacrifice
them and cut them in half; put them on either side of a lane and the two
kings would walk right through the middle of them. Here was the
meaning. We promise to keep the agreements of this covenant or let what
has happened to these animals happen to us. So it was a binding
covenant to death; very serious business. Well, in Genesis Chapter 15,
Abram has a dream in which he cuts animals in two and God walks right in
between, and says “This is what I’m going to do, and may this happen to
me.” Well theologically speaking, guess who did not keep the covenant?
Well God’s people didn’t; we haven’t. So there is a sense in which God
took all those consequences of not keeping the covenant on Himself in
the person of Jesus Christ and he died on the cross for us. It all
started then, in that promise.
Later on, flash forward about twenty,
twenty-five years, Abram still has not had his child and he’s wondering
what’s going on. God appears to him again; and this is what we come to
in understanding baptism, the renewal or the beginning of the
fulfillment of the covenant. This is where we are in Genesis Chapter
17. What I would like to do, is to read this together. You may not
have read this before; but this is the time when Abram is visited by
God, and that word, God Almighty, is El-Shaddai, the famous word for the
name of God. Let’s read this together. (Genesis 17: 1-7, 10-13)
When Abram was ninety-nine years old,
the Lord appeared to him and said, “I am God Almighty; walk before me
and be blameless. I will confirm my covenant between me and you and
will greatly increase your numbers.”
Abram fell facedown, and God said to
him, “As for me, this is my covenant with you: You will be the father
of many nations. No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be
Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations. I will make you
very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from
you. I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me
and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to
be your God and the God of your descendants after you.”
“This is my covenant with you and
your descendants after you, the covenant you are to keep: Every male
among you shall be circumcised. You are to undergo circumcision, and it
will be the sign of the covenant between me and you. For the
generations to come every male among you who is eight days old must be
circumcised, including those born in your household or bought with money
from a foreigner – those who are not your offspring. Whether born in
your household or bought with your money, they must be circumcised.”
That may seem like an obscure piece
of scripture but it’s not. It’s central to understanding baptism. What
did God do when He did that? He created a community. He had chosen
Abraham and Sarah, put them in this land, said, “I’m going to be your
God; I’m going to make you a great nation.” He was creating a people.
This is the beginning of it all. The side of the inclusion of that
community was at that time the practice of circumcision. Now that was,
of course, done for the males; but the females were included in that;
we’ll talk about that in a minute and how that changed. But it was this
community. Then notice what happened. All adults who entered the
community, including Abraham himself, and every later convert to Israel,
was circumcised; and also every child born was circumcised as an
entrance into this community. Now what’s happened? Well later on, the
Old Testament became the New and God created the Church. Baptism took
over the same idea as circumcision. Again, anyone who’s new who comes
into the community as an adult is baptized; anyone who is born into the
community is baptized. It is connected. Now we have, as I said
earlier, this tendency to dismiss the Old Testament and say “Oh, well
that was all abolished.” Some of it was, but God is a God of
covenants. I have a sort of an image for you – a small tree. Now
consider that tree as like an Old Covenant revelation, God revealing His
word. It is a beautiful alive thing, but it is not full grown yet. God
keeps revealing Himself and keeps revealing His word; and, though it is
the same tree, it becomes bigger. And isn’t life like that? We all
start out as children. I have memories of when I was one year old or
less. I’m still the same person. My parents, as I said in the earlier
service, must have spent more time in the emergency room than any
parents I ever knew. I have at least one hundred and fifty stitches, or
more. I tried to count them one day. I am still the same person even
though I have all those scars; but I have become an adult, well, at
least I’m trying. Somebody jokingly said, “Now we know what is wrong
with you. You had a lot of head injuries when you were a child” and
that is exactly right. The new covenant revelation is bigger; and it is
bigger. We have Israel, which is a lot of people; but it was a limited
area, with a limited group, which has become the Church, which is
worldwide. The old covenant did include females but only the males were
circumcised. Now everyone is baptized. It has become a bigger thing.
It is still part of the same tree.
Well, how did baptism come about,
anyway? Well it arose among the Israelites as part of the ceremonial
washing that they did. They would wash up before they did their
sacrifices and before they prayed; and it is still done in Islam today.
It is like the little boy who went to worship and his friend asked him
where he went. He got the word mixed up and he said, “Well, I went to
wash up.” That is a little bit what worship is. So that developed it.
Actually, communities would arise. It started mostly about a hundred
years before Christ. They would say to those circumcised around them,
“You have gone astray. In order to be the remnant of the people of God,
the real people of God, you’re going to have to be baptized.” So people
began to be baptized who were already Israelites. John the Baptist came
right out of these kind of communities. Baptism began to arise before
the time of Christ and the Church took it over. There was some overlap,
you know, the Israelites who came to Christ and were circumcised; but
after awhile, to make a long story short, they just went to baptism.
That’s how it arose. Baptism is what we do; but it is similar, again,
to the circumcision of Abraham. That is how we are to understand it.
It is new converts as well as children. Now, again, I want to say that
not everyone is going to agree with that. Not everyone here will agree
with that. We have the Baptists down the street who would vehemently
disagree with what I just said. But that’s why we do this as
Presbyterians, because of that connection, that covenant connection.
So what are we to do? How do we
understand this? Well first I want to tell you what baptism is not.
Here’s where the preacher cynicism comes out again. Baptism is not fire
insurance. In other words, baptism is not this magical thing we do that
is going to shield you from going to the wrong place in the afterlife.
So many parents, whether they would admit it or not, want to get their
child baptized because they are afraid that if they don’t do that, they
are going to miss out on eternity. They miss this whole concept of this
community thing that is a major part of what baptism is. Sometimes
people will come to me and say, “I want to get my child baptized.”
That’s great. Wonderful. But then I look in my Book of Order and say,
“Well, it says you either have to be a member of this church or another
church, are you that?” “Well, no.” Or a lot of folks come to me and
say “Well, we don’t really want to do it on Sunday morning. Can we do it
in our living room?” “No, because it is a community thing. And unless
you are in a hospital dying or I am out on the battle field somewhere,
and I have to do it there, I can’t do that. It is a community thing.
It is all part of the whole.” But baptism is not fire insurance and
neither was circumcision. A circumcised person did not necessarily go
to heaven. Not everybody who is, does, or baptized; but what it is, is
an inclusion in the community. There are benefits for being in the
community. I told you I was going to try to not make this too academic,
though we can’t help it a little bit; but to be in the covenant
community, I like to say is like being under the umbrella of God’s
protection. It’s being under the umbrella of protection from the sun,
and the rain and the weather. If you are a member of the community you
are a member of a group. We are better together, as we will talk
about. You know a rope is made up of thousands of little strands that
are easily broken by themselves but very strong together. A covenant
community is a place where people will pray for you and care for you and
love you. Just this week, you know, sometimes people get sick and they
don’t want their name broadcast, many of you know the person I am
talking about, got very, very ill; and, not only did our prayer chain
pray for this man, but his daughter called and just thousands of people
were praying for this man. The covenant community came through. So
many people look at our faith as this individual thing, you know. I can
know God while I’m fishing out there and whatever and never show up for
church except for hatching and matching and dispatching and just
occasionally, and say, “I’m I Christian.” Well, you may be, I don’t
know what’s in your heart; but you can’t be a strong Christian by
yourself. That’s what baptism is about. In the covenant community we
have purpose; we are together; we have protection; we have a history;
we’re part of what Abraham started so long ago with God’s help. There
are real benefits for being in the covenant community. When Peter
stands before the group, in that famous sermon in Acts, he says “the
promises to you and your children,” he’s thinking about all that.
And last but not least, there are
covenant obligations. We don’t like to talk about those. There are
obligations. You know, God has promised “I’ll do this for you,” and His
part of it is a lot bigger than ours. But our obligation is to the fact
that we are owned by God. I say that to you all the time, you know,
“Who owns you?” Well, you go, “Nobody does.” We’re owned by somebody
and it is either the devil or the Lord. In the covenant, God owns us,
we are His servants; and it is a good thing, it’s not a bad thing. We
have obligations to worship Him, to love Him, to obey Him, to serve Him
in the community, in the family. It’s not just coming to church and
getting our blessing and going and living our lives as we wish. There
is a whole thing going on here, as part of our baptismal vows and
promises. We baptize an adult and that adult has those obligations of
ownership. We baptize a child with the hope of future faith and the
parents take the obligations for the child until they can. That’s what
baptism is about. It is all part of the covenant. In the bible, the
church has called this the covenant of grace because God comes to
Abraham and chooses him; and, along the way, he chooses us and brings us
into His family because we are not able to do it for ourselves.
In closing I just want to tell you a
story. It is a story about a little girl named Alice. It goes like
this. Several years ago in Tennessee a girl was born without a face.
There was a story about it in the Readers’ Digest. The little girl had
a healthy heart, lungs and a body but where her face was supposed to be
was only a shapeless mass of wet mucous membranes with only a ragged
opening for breathing and feeding. People who saw this child were
stunned into silence, some shielded their faces with their hands and
turned away, other gasped or cried. One day a hospital supervisor
called a meeting of all those who took care of the faceless child and
said, “I don’t want to hear any more talk about this baby’s appearance.
Her name is Alice and she has a purpose in this world and we are going
to treat her like any other child.” These were brave words. The truth
was that Alice’s road toward happiness would run uphill. Alice’s mother
was a frightened, unmarried teenager. Alice’s father wanted nothing to
do with her. But one strong and kindly woman took an interest in her.
Her name was Thelma and she was a nurse at the hospital. Alice spent
much of her early life with Mrs. Perkins who held her and cuddled her
while others feared. She talked to Alice patiently, fed her through the
opening in her head and she said “I have held enough babies to know when
they wanted love” and Alice needed a lot of it. Mrs. Perkins was
right. Alice’s own mother was not mature enough to care for her
daughter, after all. Alice would need years of patient skillful
attention. She would need at least two dozen operations; for example,
they would need to build a nose and a face out of extra bones in her own
body, and for a long time Alice would look strange. She would need
protection. She would need caring people to teach her, to help her and
to tell her again and again that she was loved. Therefore, Thelma
Perkins and her husband, Ray, agreed to become Alice’s foster parents.
Foster parents are people who give parental care. Ray patiently taught
Alice how to walk. After many months Alice would explore the house by
hooking her thumb in Ray’s pocket and walking beside him. Thelma
Perkins helped the blind child learn to get around the house and yard
without getting hurt. Both helped her deal with the thoughtlessness of
people who care too much about what a person looks like. As a matter of
fact, other children have sometimes been kinder to Alice than adult
strangers have. For example, at a Sunday school one morning a woman
seeing Alice for the first time blurted out, “Who is that monster?”
“That’s just Alice, ma’am,” said a little girl standing nearby, and she
took Alice by the hand and led her off to the class. The main people in
Alice’s life were Ray and Thelma. They have shown grace; that is, they
have shown loving kindness to a person in misery. They had acted like
God. On February 7, 1983, Mr. and Mrs. Perkins legally adopted Alice.
“She’s always been my little girl”, said Thelma, “the paper was just a
contract.” The paper work for us is the covenant that God makes with us
through Jesus Christ and ultimately through Abraham. Let’s pray.
Father in heaven, we thank you for
your covenant. We thank you that so long ago you chose a man, and who
knows why you chose him. A man that you knew would become the father,
Abraham, of many; and through him, we ourselves have been shown love
even though we didn’t deserve it; and ultimately through Jesus Christ,
we have been adopted as your children. We thank you. We ask you to
help us to remember it. Help us to remember not only your love but our
obligations to love too, to love you and to love others. We pray this
in Jesus’ name. Amen |