Monthly Archives: November 2011

Reflections on a Baptism.

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On Saturday, I baptized “my” first baby since being ordained. It was an overwhelmingly joyful moment - one I personally very much needed, since I have already done six separate funerals or interments in the five months since I arrived at Saint Johns.

I repeated a practice here that was common in the church where I was raised: inviting all the young children present to gather around the font to watch. It was so thrilling to me to watch them crowd around the edges, each trying to get a closer look. I couldn’t help but remember doing the same as a child - standing on tip-toes trying to get a closer view - that memory very nearly made me lose my own composure.

But perhaps the thing that most struck me is that there is no “neat” way to do a baptism. You get wet pouring water from the pitcher into the font; you get wet as the baby squirms and knocks the shell out of your hand; you get wet, when, after the third and final covering with water, you raise the child back upright and the water streams off of its head. But, even if there is a neat way to baptize, I would argue strenuously that we shouldn’t attempt it.

Baptism is prodigal in its “messiness” - water gets everywhere. Things get wet, and there’s utterly nothing you can do about it. But, of course, the grace offered to us in the sacrament of Baptism is utterly prodigal, too - an unmerited and undeserved adoption as God’s children, a full knitting into Christ’s body the church, and heirs of the kingdom of God. There’s no clean, neat way to describe what happens - because the whole scenario is messy. We get baptized, and we get fundamentally, radically changed. And once that water covers us, there’s no going back. A friend once reminded me that there are two words affiliated with washing in the New Testament - bapto (I wash), and baptizo (I baptize). Bapto implies a simple dipping in water, much like taking a short bath, or washing one’s hands. But baptizo, baptism, on the other hand - denotes an fundamental change. It’s the difference between a cucumber and a pickle - you can dip a cucumber in some water, and it’s still a cucumber. But once a solution changes it into a pickle, it’s never going to be a cucumber again. Things are messy, and things change.

I loved the messiness of the baptism on Saturday. I may have even tried to be a bit messier than is prudent - raising the pitcher a bit higher so the kids around font would get a bit of the kickback as the water hit the font; using larger scoops of water than I needed; making no efforts to avoid getting water on myself or anything else.

But that’s just how baptism goes. Prodigal in its giving of grace. Fundamental in the way it changes things. And messy enough that once that water hits you, you know there’s no going back.

 

 

Sermon for Year A, Christ the King (Proper 29)

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Proper 29 / Christ The King
Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24 / Psalm 100 / Ephesians 1:15-23 / Matthew 25:31-46

As some of you know, before I left South Carolina to come to New York for seminary, I was a graduate student in Chemistry. During my last few months in school, the Chemistry department was in the middle of a major move into a new wing. As part of this process, we had to go through all of the chemicals that had collected in the research labs over the years. During this process, we had to sort through the various containers, grouping them by property – all of the chemicals containing mercury, for instance, had to be grouped together because of the hazards associated with mercury poisoning. Likewise, we had to group all of the oxidizers together, and all of the flammable items together. But our instruction sheet contained what I thought to be a curious instruction: The sheet read: “Make sure that items marked as flammable and items marked as inflammable are kept together.” This instruction didn’t make any sense to me – why would we group dissimilar items? I asked my advisor, who smiled, and advised me to check in a dictionary. As it turned out, through some of the subtleties of the English language, the word “inflammable” means exactly the same thing as the word “flammable” – easily set on fire. While we generally associate the prefix in- with negatives – such in the words indirect or insufficient; however, the Latin prefix in- has the meaning of “into.” And that was the particular way the prefix was used in the term “inflammable” in the lab. Somewhat paradoxically, that one single word carried two opposite meanings at once; one meaning that seemed obvious on the surface, and one that required a bit more digging to reach.

The gospel appointed for today – the Solemnity of Christ the King, the Last Sunday after Pentecost – exhibits a bit of this same phenomenon. Today’s gospel from Matthew picks up where the Parable of the Talents left us last week – continuing a series of passages in which Jesus instructs his followers on how they are to live in anticipation of his return. Our passage today presents us with the only description of the final judgment within the four gospels, and the most exhaustive description of those events in the New Testament. Unsurprisingly, then, for centuries the church has paid great attention to this pericope of scripture. You recall the gospel as we just heard it in its apparent simplicity: at the second coming, all nations are gathered before Jesus on his throne of glory; and the righteous are separated from the unrighteous just as a shepherd would separate the valuable sheep from the less expensive goats. The king invites the righteous, gathered at his right hand, to inherit the kingdom prepared for them, “for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’” When, the righteous ask, did we see you in these states? And the king answers, “‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’” The scene repeats itself, this time with the unrighteous at the king’s left hand; they, however, are sent into eternal fire, for, as the king says, “for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’” They, too, ask when they neglected the king, and he responds that “Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’” And so the righteous are led into eternal life, and the unrighteous into punishment.

For years, we have taken this passage at its face value, for the face value lesson is itself valuable: in serving the least among us, we are serving Jesus himself, and that in ignoring the least among us, we ignore Jesus himself. While our salvation is never achieved through our own efforts at good – for it is, after all, by God’s grace that we are able to do any good at all – we are called to reach out to the Christ in others even when do not, cannot, or dare not see him there. Just as Jesus was found throughout his ministry among the lost and least, we, too – as heirs to Jesus’ ministry and kingdom – are called there, too.

But words, as I noted earlier, are tricky. When the gospel text today says that “All the nations” will be gathered before the Son of Man in all his glory, it uses the Greek phrase “πάντα τὰ ἔθνη” - “panta ta ethni” The word ethnos – translated in this phrase as “nations” – is also repeatedly seen throughout Matthew’s gospel to mean “Gentiles.” And if we take a second look at our gospel through that lens, its meaning changes drastically. Suddenly, “all nations” become not representative of all of humanity, but of all of the Gentiles – of all of those outside of the Gospel community. And suddenly, “the least of these” becomes representative not of the poor, the naked, and the hungry, but of those who follow after Jesus as the least in society. The lesson suddenly changes from a lesson about how we treat others, to a lesson about how God intercedes on our behalf – after following the difficult promises of Jesus, after being among those persecuted for righteousness sake, ours will be the kingdom of heaven. The passage moves from judgment to comfort, as the order of nature is re-shuffled into the reality of God’s vision for all creation. Things aren’t as apparent as they seemed at first glance.

So which is it? How do we read this passage? And who, specifically, are we in this passage? Are we the ones being judged before the throne of glory, or are we the ones for whom Jesus is interceding? The scriptures, once again, may leave us tied in knots. But I believe the contradictory questions point to a larger truth: we live on both sides of this story, in both interpretations at once. Somewhat paradoxically, this one single story carries two opposite meanings at once; one meaning that seemed obvious on the surface, and one that required a bit more digging to reach. And yet in this paradox is great truth.

We are at once persecutor and persecuted; we are at once commanded to care for others while ourselves needing the deepest care in our own brokenness. We are both judged by Our Lord for our failure to see his face in the other, while also redeemed and interceded for by him when others fail to see his face in us. Such is our life in that great kingdom in which Christ is King. We constantly know where we are going, and taste it this very moment – but we are then ever reminded that we are not there just yet. And so, on this final Sunday of our liturgical year, on this Solemnity of Christ the King, we find ourselves making that same prayer we made when the church’s year began one year ago, and that we will make again next week in our new liturgical year as we enter into Advent: Come Lord Jesus, and be our judge, and open in us the gates of your kingdom.

Amen.

Feeding on Manna: An Introduction

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This is probably about the fifth time I’ve tried to reliably keep a blog. I’ve never really figured out why it is that after about two weeks I always seemed to stop posting. Perhaps this happened because of crazed life of undergraduate and seminary academia, or sheer laziness, or because the people I most wanted to communicate with were generally around me. Or perhaps I didn’t really have anything valuable to say, at least for the web.

But life changes, or at the very least, becomes more complicated. In the span of five years, I have graduated from college, received a masters’ degree, perceived a call pulling me from life as a Chemistry academic to the life of ordained ministry, moved from South Carolina to New York, received another masters’ degree, been ordained as a Deacon, and taken cure as the clergy-in-charge at a 177-year old church in Brooklyn. In nineteen days, I will be ordained as a Priest. I didn’t expect to be here six years ago, and it still often comes as a shock to me now. That’s not to say that this is a bad thing. Not at all - I’ve been incredibly, deeply blessed to journey through the last several years.

Things change. And now I’m finding that it may be worthwhile to keep a blog again. My parishioners have started asking for an online repository of my sermons (which I take as a compliment); this seems like a good way to do that. I certainly have plenty of thoughts and musings on life and ministry as a 26-year old that are worth recording somewhere, even as a simple record of my own evolving ministry.

So I’m trying again. I’ve decided to name the blog from a line in one of my favorite hymns, “Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken”: “Safe they feed upon the manna which he gives them when they pray.” Thus “Feeding on Manna.” I’ve been given just the amount of manna I need, like Israel in the desert: not too little, not too much. And lo and behold, it was food enough.

More to follow…