Calvary Episcopal Church
Memphis, Tennessee
January 21, 2003
Integrity Meeting

What does it mean to be Christians together?
The Rt. Rev. Don E. Johnson
Episcopal Bishop, Diocese of West Tennessee

Gospel: Mark 1:7-11
(This sermon is also available in audio)

In the name of the Father, son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

I asked tonight that the readings be chosen from the passage from the first Sunday of Epiphany. That Sunday is typically the Sunday that we celebrate together the baptism of Jesus. It is in Jesus' baptism that we also find a sign of the importance of our own baptism.

So with that in mind, let me ask you to go back in your own life. Many of you are baptized; maybe a few of you are not. Of those of you who are baptized, how many of you were baptized as infants? Maybe about half of you? How many of you were baptized as young children? (I was the ripe old age of nine.) And then others of you were baptized as adults. Those of you who were baptized as infants probably don't remember much about your baptisms, but you were brought up, at least in theory, in a tradition that would have reminded you about the significance of that.

I had a parishioner in my parish in Johnson City, Tennessee, named Tom McGinnis. Tom was a doctor, and Tom had gone with his wife, Joy, on a trip to South America. When they came back, Tom could not say enough about a particular baptismal service that he and his wife happened to attend while they were on this trip. But Tom was not trained in liturgy; he had general impressions of the event, but he did not remember a lot of the specifics, although some things did stand out. He gave me a kind of general report, and that report itself was very powerful to me.

Within two weeks of Tom's coming back and sharing with me and others in the parish what had taken place at this baptism, someone who is quite a scholar reported on a similar experience that he had had when he attended a baptismal service in Buenos Aires. His name was John Westerhoff. John (who is now an Episcopal priest) shared from his trained theologian's eye, and with an ear to the liturgy, the experience that he had in that service. So as you think back on your own baptisms--or on what you were told about the baptisms until you moved to that place where you claimed those promises for yourself--let me ask you to join me with John Westerhoff and Tom McGinnis in the experience that they both described.

The congregation is on its knees as the service begins, and they are singing a Good Friday hymn. As the procession begins, the father of the child to be baptized comes down the center aisle of the church carrying a child's coffin. His wife is behind him in the procession, carrying a pail of water from the family well. Godparents carry the baby up toward the altar wrapped only in a serape. The father puts the coffin on the altar. The mother pours the water into the coffin. And the godparents hand the child over to the priest. The priest asks the parents and godparents the required questions; puts the oil used in last rites on the child's skin; takes the baby, holds the baby's nose closed and immerses the child in the coffin. "You are drowned," says the priest, "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." As the child begins to cry, the priest holds up the child before the congregation and says, "And you are resurrected that you might live and serve the Lord." At this point the congregation leaps up and begins to sing an Easter hymn. The priest pours perfumed oil over the child, signs the baby with a cross and says, "I now brand you, as we do cattle on the range, with the sign of the cross so that the world will always know, and you will never be able to deny, to whom you belong." The congregation breaks into applause, comes forward and offers the child the kiss of peace with the words, "Welcome, one Carlos Christiano." No longer was the child to be known as one Carlos Renosa. He had been adopted by and brought into a new family, and that family name is Christian. Westerhoff, after describing that moment, said, "That was a baptism I will always remember and need to recount."

I will always remember a baptism I need to recount. Remembering, not unlike Jesus' statement to his disciples and to all of us--his disciples--who have followed, "Do this in remembrance of me," our Savior and our Lord. There is also the need to recount that story. Go. Preach. Teach. Baptize. Teach all that I have commanded you. Go into the world. Recount your baptism.

On January the 10th in 1997, the Right Reverend Frank Griswold was instituted as our 25th Presiding Bishop. At that time, he told the story of going to Assisi to the Church of San Damiano, the place where we are told St. Francis went to pray before a crucifix in a ruin of a church building. When Francis was there looking up at this crucifix, he heard the words, "Francis, rebuild my church." Frank Griswold, our Presiding Bishop, said that standing before that same crucifix, he had something of the same experience and something of that same clarity as he understood what it was God was calling him to do--rebuild the church.

Certainly within our corner of Christendom--our part of the larger body of Christians that we all are members of--there are those places where we agree and where we disagree. But what we are called to do together is to be the body of Christ, to honor one another's gifts and ministries, and to share that in such a way that the world will not look at us in our fighting and wonder what it is we claim and why it is we don't live that way.

Christ calls us to be a people of Godly love, knowing we don't always agree. That's the love we're to manifest for one another. In doing that we bear witness to our baptismal change that took place when you and I were buried with Christ in his death, and then raised to a new life with him for all of our lives--marked and branded as his own forever.

Within the context of Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold's service, he also quoted during his sermon Rowan Williams. (At that time he was the Archbishop of Wales; now, as you know, he is the Archbishop of Canterbury.) Rowan Williams said, "We have been caught up by baptism in solidarities not of our own choosing." I have found that that quote of Archbishop Williams has come back to me over and over and over again in the last number of weeks; that you and I are caught up in solidarities not of our own choosing because we have been baptized. Our unity is found in our baptism. It is found in Christ. And it is in Christ that we live and live out the promises of Christ we have received. "We have been caught up by baptism in solidarities not of our own choosing."

I have preached that on the last couple of Sundays. It seems that it's come out in different ways in different contexts. I preach it here again this evening, because it seems to me that wherever I've gone, there is always some person or persons who is trying to understand: What does it mean for you and for me to be Christians together? It means that we're caught up in something bigger than we are that is part of God's plan, not part of our plan. And we need to find a way to listen to God, to be in solidarities together, so that we might bear witness to the love of Christ in the world.

We all are surprised at some of the people God asks us to be in solidarity with. And yet, that's what God demands. That's what Christ called us to do: to become his body, to become his presence in the world, with a call to each one of us to have transformed hearts which burn for the whole mix and muddle of this world.

Bishop Griswold called to those who heard him on the day of his investiture and called the church to mission--the mission as he understood it for our church that had been given to him at that time in Assisi: rebuild my church. I believe that we share in that ministry to begin anew; to begin again; to be faithful in rebuilding and bearing witness to the church and the Lord of the church, which is more important than the church.

Within that same spirit then this evening, we are challenged to renew our own baptismal covenants; to celebrate the new beginning God has called us to hear as the one's called, named, chosen and sent to accomplish the work that God has given you and me to do in his name--to be the presence of Christ in the world. We are called to be an epiphany, a manifestation of the love of Christ. Immersed in it in our baptism, we are raised with hope, emerging with hope and emerging from that death into a new life. To the extent that we are able to do that, we, like Jesus, experience the Spirit of God descending on us as a result of our baptismal solidarity with one another in Christ. And to the extent we are able to do that with God's help, you and I hear the voice of God to each one of us. With you--with you I am well pleased.

God bless you.

Copyright 2003 The Rt. Rev. Don E. Johnson

Gospel: Mark 1: 7-11
7 He proclaimed, "The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. 8 I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit."9 In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10 And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. 11 And a voice came from heaven, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased." NRSV

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