Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

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St. Patrick, as we know, converted all Ireland to Christianity. In the course of that, there was one occasion when Patrick had persuaded the King of Munster (central Ireland) be accept Christ and be baptized. The day for the ceremony arrived. Patrick stood high on the Rock of Cashell, in full regalia, with his bishop's staff in hand The king humbly climbed the steep slope and came before Patrick, but when he arrived, Patrick (who was getting old) decided to plant his staff firmly in the ground - to free his hands for baptism.. Inadvertently, he drove the sharp point of the staff right through the king's foot. And here's the neat part: the king never flinched. He thought it was part of the ceremony! He was baptized, as if nothing unusual had happened, and walked with a limp for the rest of his life. That's a true and beautiful story. When we are baptized (that is, when we come to Christ for the first time and symbolize that publicly) we gain everything, but we lose some things, too. There is some pain, some loss involved when we take up the long journey of faith…when we are baptized, either literally or figuratively. We may limp a little for the rest of our lives. We don't drive a shaft through anyone's foot, but there should be something in our baptism ceremony to remind people of this loss, this pain that comes with the water. (Actually, we have returned to the traditional practice of asking candidates for baptism, or those who represent them, if they will reject the devil and all his works." That's a kind of loss. The old Book of Common Prayer had a sort of exorcism connected to baptism: "I command thee, unclean spirit…that thou come out and depart from this person….And presume not hereafter to exercise any tyranny towards this person, whom Christ hath bought with his precious blood…" That's a kind of loss. We love our demons…hate to lose them. Come to think of it, Jacob limped after wrestling with God (truly meeting God for the first time), limped for the rest of his life -- and was a much better man for it. That's a kind of loss. St. Paul speaks of "being buried in baptism." Same point: something has to be buried, something has to die. You can't be the old man and the new man at the same time. The two are not compatible. That's a big loss. And that's what keeps most people from coming to Christ. Maybe that's what faith means: to let go of the old life, trusting in God's promise, before we have experienced the benefits of the new.

Even after our journey with Christ is well under way, we sometimes mourn the old man. When the old man held sway, before we were converted, we did what we pretty well pleased. We pranced and strutted about like bantam hens and told ourselves, and anyone else who would listen, how good and perfect we were. We could be one thing by day and something else by night. We could exploit others and not be bothered by it. We could insist on our own way. We could be cruel and insensitive to the feelings of others. We could spend all our resources on ourselves. But the new man, or new woman, the one who rises out of that watery grave of baptism, cannot do these things. He (or she) is given to God. He (or she) has a conscience. We wouldn't go back to the old ways. It's just that they are always a part of us. We don't know as much as we would like to know about Jesus' young life. We know he was born in one-horse Bethlehem, in rather unusual circumstances, went to Egypt for a time, spent his boyhood in the little hillside village of Nazareth, and wowed the rabbis in the Temple when he was twelve. And that's about it. Until he appears (seemingly out of nowhere), at age thirty, on the banks of the Jordan River and asks his lunatic cousin, John, to baptize him. I feel for Jesus at this point. I know - we know --what lies ahead. Whatever innocence Jesus enjoyed as a youth is lost in this baptism. His boyhood friends, the carpentry shop, the shelter of his family - are now behind him. Only bitter controversy and a cross lie ahead.

Baptism marks us. They tell a young boy, when he is being invested as an Eagle Scout, "from this moment on you are a marked man." That's the perfect thing to say.. In other words, this is not an award you can earn as a boy and lay aside as a man. (I once introduced a grown man saying, among other things, he was an Eagle Scout. I was corrected afterwards. Never say "he was an Eagle Scout," the person told me. Always say, "he is an Eagle Scout.") People will know this about you. And, because of it, they will expect you to act differently from other people. Baptism, too, marks a person. People know it about us, and (rightly) expect us to act differently. Baptism is a commissioning. We are given a higher rank, to be sure, but much more, in the way of character, is expected of us. Remember your baptism. Dave Thomas, founder of Wendy's, died this week. Some very nice things have been said about him all week long: how he was adopted as a baby, and how he did so much to help families, especially adoptive families. How he was raised in a very modest home. Held all kinds of jobs. Always lived a clean life, and kept his eye on the things that count. Once, when Wendy's was in financial trouble and threatened with bankruptcy, Dave said to his Board of Directors: "Well, what's the worst that could happen? I could go back to being a bus boy. I was a very good bus boy." Its not how big a job you hold, nor how much money you make that makes you feel good about yourself. It's how you do the job that's yours to do. There's character in that.

Most of us were baptized as infants. Someone else answered the questions. Many of us "confirmed" our baptism in "confirmation," when we were twelve or thirteen. At that time we were asked to validate what our parents had done for us when we were babies. And some of us did. But, it's an imperfect system. We lose people between baptism and confirmation. And decisions made when we are twelve or thirteen don't always hold up. I ask you today to remember the first time you knew Jesus and accepted him as your savior, and started down the long road of faith with him at your side. Let's call that your baptism and let's affirm it today. And let's accept the pain, even if it causes us to limp. The Jews in Jesus' time, the ones who saw him baptized there in the Jordan River, had been told by the rabbis, and had come to believe, that the age of miracles (of deliverance from Egypt, and burning bushes and manna from heaven) - the age of miracles had ceased and would not begin again until Messiah came. They were in for a big surprise! Jesus would do more miracles in the next three years than had occurred for centuries, but they would still refuse to accept him as the Messiah. "These things just don't happen in our time," they said. We have much of the same hopeless, dead-end thinking around today. "We are what we are." "We'll never change." "Circumstances have us trapped." We have lost the hope we had at our baptisms. The voice that came from heaven when Jesus was baptized, which only he could hear, said, "This is my son, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased." The King James says, "…in whom I delight." When a baby is baptized today, or when a mature man or woman receives Christ for the first time, a voice comes from heaven saying, "This is my son - or daughter - whom I love and in whom I delight." Let us not weary in well-doing. Let us return to our early faith. Remember your baptism.