by The Rev. Dr. Max Lynn
SCRIPTURE READINGS Luke 16:1-13, 1 Peter 3:8-22
Transcribed from the sermon preached on SEPTEMBER 18, 2022
“Hope is not optimism. It’s resolve to live within the promises we have made, trusting in surprise.”
It is wonderful that we have rain in the summer in California on a day when members of our community are being baptized, and our scripture references Noah and the Arc.
I put the rainbow colors up when I thought of the scripture. Of course, the rainbow has come to symbolize a celebration of the many colors that make up light, diversity, and an affirmation of the uniqueness of each individual, particularly LGBTQ folk.
The rainbow in the Bible is the symbol of new life, reconciliation, and mercy of God after corruption of humanity and the great flood had destroyed so much of the world. After all of the chaotic, watery darkness, light breaks forth. God has relented. God has changed God’s mind. Everybody gets a new start, even God. Peter says this is a precursor to baptism.
Part of being a Christian is being grafted into the people of God, into the story of the people of God. As Christ came into the chaotic stormy world of power, greed, selfishness, and violence, was crucified and buried, and then rose again, so we in baptism drown to our sins and the sins of the world and are reborn with Christ. The rainbow shines, hope springs forth, it is a new day, and we are a part of a new people.
The Christian affirmation is always into a community, into a people committed to a loving way of life.
A Christian affirmation is not about our individuality, our particular unique color. It is not about how wonderful it is to be different, but how God both loves and calls each of us, no matter what color, nationality, gender, and mental and physical gifts, to serve and be a part of this diverse and loving community. We are blessed and baptized as unique individuals, special, beautiful children of God. But it is not about us, but about how God creates, redeems, sustains, and calls us to be a colorful rainbow together. Baptism is an affirmation that we are adopted by grace into the family of God. We are now a part of the story of the people of God. Stanley Hauerwas said, “Saints cannot exist without a community, as they require, like all of us, nurturance by a people who, while often unfaithful, preserve the habits necessary to learn the story of God.”
Our identity is Christian, and our calling is to seek peace and pursue it. We are not only forgiven by Christ but called by Christ to a new way of life. And that new way of life is to seek peace and pursue it, regardless of whether or not it is expedient. Jesus was not weighing the political, economic, or social popularity and power of love. He simply knew that God is love, God is gracious and merciful, and therefore the way to live is dedicated completely to love and grace. So, we too, saved by grace, empowered by the Holy Spirit, commit to this loving community, with all we weird and imperfect people of all shapes and colors, to be the family of God.
Now the Church and Christianity are not popular in all parts of culture today. There are good reasons for that. Too often the church of Jesus Christ has become the church of empire, the church of nation, the church of race, the church of self-righteous hypocrites. There is idolatry in the Church.
But I suspect that you are drawn to the Church first of all because this person Jesus is quite amazing and calls us to a way of life, we can feel in our bones is wonderful, beautiful and powerful.
And society today is getting so fractured so broken down to isolated individualism that people are breaking apart psychologically. They are lonely, scattered, and anxious. The idea of freedom is translated into being disconnected.
Stanley Hauerwas says, “We live at a time when we believe we should have no story, except the story we chose when we had no story. We call this freedom. “The story that we should have no story, except the story we chose when we had no story, is a story that has at its heart the attempt to make us tyrants of our own lives. But no one is more lonely than tyrants.” But he also points out that though we like to think we are tyrants over our own lives and identities, we are actually left open to be more enslaved by the market, the money. “The problem with the story that you should have no story, except the story you chose when you had no story, is you did not choose that story.”
It is the story capitalism tells us to expand the number of ways the market can address newly created needs. If you have no story, no anchor, no connection to a story, then you are susceptible to marketing of capitalism. We jump at fads and the latest thing that supposedly proves we are free. “People who are free, the market tells us, choose this. People who are free, the market tells us, identify like this. People who are free buy this.
We feel like we get to choose but we also feel jerked around by all the choices we have to make. Then we begin to suspect that the story we choose for ourselves is pieced together with bits the market tells us it can fulfill. So, while we have more choices we can make than ever before, we can feel ever more constrained and overwhelmed.
And if we have to create our identity from scratch, then it is hard to not become narcissistic in our worry about ourselves. We have so many choices to make about ourselves that all we think about is ourselves. Rather than free, we become captive in our own mind, captive by the market, captive by the whims and fads and addictions of popular culture, by the lies and propaganda of the latest political arguments, and susceptible to the demigods who tell us if we worship them then it proves we are free. So, everyone insists they are free but deep down we feel isolated and stuck on a hamster wheel of market and culture. We cannot serve two masters. We cannot serve God and money.
When we agree to be a member of the Church of Jesus Christ, we are agreeing and admitting that we are not actually choosing this story but that the story chose us, that Jesus chose us, that the Mother of all life and the Holy Spirit Created us, and God’s grace comes to us even before we know, before we choose it.
This is why we baptize infants in the Presbyterian Church. God’s cleansing grace is a gift to us even before we understand it. We do hope to make a profession of faith, a commitment when our brains have matured, and we can make rational and conscious decisions. So, on the one hand as adults, we choose to be baptized, we choose to follow Jesus. But on the other our choice is an acknowledgement of the grace God has already blessed us with before we choose it. Being created is a gift. The forgiveness we receive from Jesus is a gift. It is not something we do. It is not something we choose. We choose to acknowledge it, to receive it, but we don’t dictate that God would give it.
At birth we become a part of a story we did not choose. We are a child of God, committed to each other in the family of God, and part of a story that started at the beginning of Creation, a story of liberation from oppression through the sea, a story of finding water in the wilderness, a story of washing each other’s feet, a story of baptism, a story of speaking truth to power and loving even when it leads to suffering and death, trusting too that this is a story of resurrection that promises to never end.
In Christ we are set free from the rat race of proving we are somebody, freed of the rat race of trying to have enough, choose enough, buy enough to be somebody. We are freed from all that because we are children of God. We are enough. We have enough. Resting in the gracious mercy of God, assured of our place in God’s arms, empowered by the Holy Spirit, we can shift focus from ourselves onto loving others, onto making peace, onto enjoying the community of the Body of Christ. So let us go out knowing who and whose we are. Let us go out humble before the holy God, yet confident in God’s grace through Christ. Let us go out knowing we are part of a story that is long and deep, part of a community as wide as the world, part of the power of love that cannot be killed, that lives forever. Let us go out to invite others in to hear this story they are already a part of. Let us go out to live the calling we did not choose, to love others as we are loved by God. And in this love, in this loving, we will find true freedom, now and forever. Amen.