Acts 2:1-21 or Genesis
11:1-9
Psalm 104:25-35, 37
Romans 8:14-17 or Acts
2:1-21
John 14:8-17, (25-27)
Homily by Fr R Christopher Heying
When the Day of Pentecost
had come, the disciples of Chatham were all together in one place for the Holy
Spirit to come . . . to come and to seal Susan, to come and to mark her
as Christ’s own forever.
Come, Holy Spirit, come!
From that first Pentecost—with its sound of rushing wind and appearance of divided tongues, as of fire—to the fact of the church’s very existence despite two thousand years of failings that would assuredly have shut the doors and turned off the lights on any purely human enterprise, the coming of the Holy Spirit has always been attended by signs and wonders, the most clear of which is the transformation of lives and of communities.
Yet at one level the baptism of Susan does not seem that amazing, for if we were to look for someone to give testimony about how he or she was a wretch until by God’s grace saved, you and I would probably not think of Susan!
Susan comes to the water of baptism with a character, faith, and life that commends her as already being not only a mature and faithful person but a lovely one as well. I suspect that the principal reason that many of us have come today to witness her baptism is that we really like Susan the way she already is. I know I do!
Perhaps this is a testimony to the Christian church that, despite the tragic news emanating 24/7, our society has been in fact greatly shaped by the faith and belief of Christians throughout the ages.
Even if it is to be argued that such may be less true today than in previous generations, it is unarguable that in our world there are countless unbaptized persons who are indeed good people, people we know and love, people whose values represent the best of our own and who bless us with their innate decency, their kindness, their friendship, their love.
Baptism therefore will not make Susan a better person than she already is, nor will baptism assure her that she is now more loved by God or by us. God knows Susan and loves her as she is, and we do too.
While this may touch on the various traditions represented here today, I must confess that I do not see any evidence that the baptized are automatically “in” while the unbaptized automatically “out” of God’s salvation. As we heard from the Acts of the Apostles: “In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh” (Acts 2.17; cf. Isaiah 44.3, Joel 2.28).
So then if it is not to make a good person better or to assure a salvation that could not be received without it, why have we gathered for a baptism?
As to the whys and wherefores Susan has decided to be baptized, she alone can tell us insofar as she herself knows. I suspect that her spiritual journey, like our own, is an unfolding reality that requires reflection, prayer, and wonder, something seen through a glass darkly, only understood in part.
We can give her time and space for her growing self-awareness, and we can allow her to share as she chooses, while reminding her and ourselves of Peter’s words in his first letter: “Always be ready to give an account of the hope that is within you” (3.15).
Entrusting questions about the unbaptized to God who has prepared for all better things than we could ask or imagine (Eph. 3.20), let us consider what we can say affirmatively about baptism as we find it in scripture.
In baptism, we die with Christ and are raised to new life with him. We are in-grafted into Christ’s body (not so much “christened” as “en-christed”) and adopted as sons and daughters of God, whereby we cry “Abba! Father!”
We are reborn—or as our evangelical friends like to say, “born again.” If any be in Christ, that person is a new creation, the old has passed away, the new has come.
As the Spirit of God descended on Jesus at his baptism so the Spirit descends on us at our baptism, for the Spirit is the promised gift of God, our Advocate and Comforter, the one who leads as into all truth, even to Jesus Christ, who is the way, the truth, and the life.
Through the Spirit God dwells with us and by the Spirit we live with God, so that in baptism we begin to move more fully into that reality whereof we can rightly say that we live and move and have our being in God.
At our baptism, through the ongoing encounter with God’s word and the reception of God’s sacraments, the Spirit of God has made and is now making Christ truly present in our lives and in the eucharistic body and blood, an integral part of daily bread for which we pray.
Through baptism (and in the renewal of our baptismal promises) we receive that covenant that God has established with us, in nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.
We are set free from worrying about earning salvation so that we may receive it as a gift. Our thanks for this gift is to offer our selves to God’s service, even to present ourselves as a living sacrifice to God, to walk in God’s holy ways, keep God’s commandments, love one another as Christ loves us, and ever strive to do God’s will on earth as in heaven.
Through baptism we are united not only to Christ’s resurrected body but to his body here on earth, the church, through which even “greater works” continue to be done, that the Father may be glorified in the Son, as Jesus tells us in today’s gospel reading.
In baptism we are invited to share in the church’s teaching and fellowship, the breaking of bread and the prayers. In baptism, we are invited to live lives of continual repentance and turning to God, who alone is our strength. And in baptism we are called and commissioned to proclaim the gospel to the end of the earth and to work for justice and peace now, respecting the dignity of every human being.
Baptism then is rightly said to be our ordination to do the work that God gives us to do, to use our gifts for God’s service, to look for and to serve Christ in others.
Baptism, then, is an invitation, an invitation to live more and more into the awareness and the reality that there are not two worlds, this world and the next, the sacred and the secular, but all is even now being filled to overflowing with the glory and the love and the life of the living God.
So let not your hearts be troubled, do not let them be afraid, God really is with us and in us and nothing, not even death, can separate us from God’s love.
How about that?
Is that the peace, the fullness, the life that you want, Susan?
My fellow baptized Christians, is that what you are willing to renew your own commitment to?
Then on this Day of Pentecost, this day of Susan’s baptism, let us pray together to the Father:
Come, O Holy Spirit, come. Come as the wind and cleanse; come as the fire and burn; convert and consecrate our lives to our great good and your great glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.