who stepped into leadership roles while my family and I went to spend time with our
extended family in Georgia and Tennessee. It was good to getaway. It is also good to be
home, take down the lights and just get back to living the best life we can.
2020 has been a bit of shock, though. I came home to an oil leak in my car and a fridge
with a backed-up overflow valve, then we had a storm that took out part of a fence I
share with a neighbor. Those are all manageable things though. The real shocking stuff is
in the news. We have an impeached president assassinating a foreign general, a police
chief that’s been asked to resign and the list goes on.
I tell you, coming off of the holidays into this mess can feel, well, Mo can you help me
illustrate how it feels? [Mo stands up and throws water in my face and then offers me a
towel] Thank you, Mo! I know that I can always count on you. It’s funny. Even when you
know what’s coming it is still a little terrifying. In fact, I think that sometimes we all feel
a little less baptized by water and Spirit and more baptized trial and terror, yet our faith
teaches us differently. Our faith teaches us that there is something else that we can
expect. There is something else that we can expect apart from our fear of the other
shoe or the unexpected end or the medical diagnosis or the job loss or the hits that just
keep coming!
Today in the life of the church we stand against the gloom and doom of the present age
as people who remember having candles in our hands just a few weeks ago. Remember
how that felt? We lit each other’s candles and we sang Silent Night and for a moment
all was good and well and right in the world. Now today we elect and ordain officers in
the church because we are ready to do the work of Christmas!
Maybe you’ve heard it before, but Howard Thurman was an African-American who was
a theologian, educator, and civil rights leader who once wrote these words in reflection
upon a time such as this:
When the song of the angels is stilled,
when the star in the sky is gone,
when the kings and princes are home,
when the shepherds are back with their flocks,
the work of Christmas begins:
to find the lost,
to heal the broken,
to feed the hungry,
to release the prisoner,
to rebuild the nations,
to bring peace among the people,
to make music in the heart.
We elect officers not so they can do the work of Christmas, but so they can lead us to do
that work together. Calling them Ruling Elders doesn’t mean they have authority over
our lives. It just means that we have agreed to be governed and guided by them in our
common life together.
It’s also to differentiate them from me as a Teaching Elder. That’s what the Book of
Order calls me, along with Minister of the Word and Sacrament, I’m a Teaching Elder.
That means that my role is to encourage and guide, while their role is to be guided by
scripture through the Holy Spirit of God to make decisions that we all agree to live by.
The model for how we live and love and serve is not me or them. It is none other than
the one Isaiah describes as a meticulous and tenacious servant of God. The One who
won’t even bruise an already bent reed or snuff out a candle that is barely lighting the
room is the One who suffers to bring about justice! He won’t cry out or fuss about his
own needs. He simply works for the restoration of the weak and the accountability of
the powerful. This is the One who opens the way for what God will do so that suffering
will be no more!
Of course, we know this One to be Jesus, who is the Christ – the Anointed One of God.
This is the One that led Peter to proclaim that God doesn’t pick favorites and everyone
who comes to know God will be moved in their hearts toward righteousness; toward
doing the right thing; toward letting go of being right and grabbing hold of a right
relationship with God and with each other.
Being righteous – being in a right relationship with God and with each other – is actually
the first part of the work of Christmas, and it is what drove Jesus into the waters of the
Jordan. Every year we talk about how strange it is that Jesus might have been baptized
when John was offering a baptism of repentance and forgiveness of sin. Every year it is
the same answer, “This is what was needed to fulfill the righteousness of God.”
Every year we are reminded of God’s claim upon Jesus as God’s beloved Son, and every
year we are reminded that we are claimed in the same way. Whether you were baptized
as a child or an adult or somewhere in between, the covenant exists not only to
acknowledge God’s forgiveness of sin but also to proclaim that you have been elected to
the position of a faithful follower of Jesus. Whether the heavens opened for you or not,
you have been claimed as beloved by God.
First Presbyterian Church Lafayette, Louisiana January 12, 2020 (Baptism of the Lord, Year
A)
So here we are, all claimed and loved by God. Here we are with cold water dripping
from our faces. Here we are facing the choice to follow the way of Jesus at the
beginning of a new year. How will we choose?
Are we going to receive the challenges that seem to keep coming out of leftfield – and
those that hang over us from last year – as trial and terror, or are we going to receive
them as an affirmation of our baptism and get busy doing the work of Christmas?
I want to see you vote with your bodies. Who will stand with me? Who will stand and
proclaim that even the worst storm is nothing but an affirmation of God’s claim on us at
baptism? If you believe that, go ahead and stand. [Congregation stands.] Thank you.
Now that we are standing, the work us Christmas begin s:
to find the lost,
to heal the broken,
to feed the hungry,
to release the prisoner,
to rebuild the nations,
to bring peace among the people,
to make music in the heart.
To that, let all God’s people say, “Amen!”
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