Welcome to the club!

If you were to draw up a list of Saints who would you include? Let’s name a few of our favorites: There is St. Nicholas, who is jolly and cuddly and Christmassy. There is St. Anthony, who specializes in helping us find things (and people) who get lost. There is St. Christopher, who protects us from harm. Have a lost cause? There’s a saint for that: St. Jude. And there is St. Valentine, the bearer of romance. Let's lift a pint to St. Patrick, missionary, Irishman (at least by adoption) and football mascot. And let’s not forget our own patron, St. John the Evangelist.

I hate to burst your bubble, but despite the over 12,700 references on Google, there is no “St. Arbucks,” patron Saint of Coffee (Think about it). Sorry.

Well today, I want to add a new name to your list of Saints: Saint Samuel, our candidate for holy baptism today.

You may laugh, but I am not kidding.

When we talk about saints, we might talk about what makes a saint, well, famous. What gets a college or city named after one? We could talk about their sacrifices, their perfection, their witness, and their selfless deeds. Last Friday, one of my spiritual heroes, Dorothy Day, got the newest Staten Island Ferry named after her. How cool is that?

Today we hold up the “rank and file” saints, the ones who don’t necessarily get a day set a aside for them. But like the more famous capital “S” saints they all communicated Jesus to others, often one relationship at a time. These saints exhibited Christ even when they didn’t feel like it, know it, nor even understand it. Most of these saints don’t have a name or a date, but I think you may know one or two.

Christianity is passed along by word of mouth, by example, and through relationship. No one ever comes to faith entirely by themselves. We are all brought to and sustained in our faith, because someone or some people, brought us and nurtured us. These people were and are God’s ambassadors of reconciliation—showing off Jesus—and inviting those around them to come along.

Which is why Episcopalians, like a lot of other Christians in other traditions, baptize babies like Samuel. We believe that Christian households can and do raise up Christian children into active, productive, friends and apprentices of Jesus Christ.

One of the things that Samuel will learn is that saints are by definition imperfect. They will have live breathing examples of that, and probably in about twelve to fourteen years from now they will let you know. But that’s okay. No one is totally pure and no one is above corruption in thought, word and deed. Not one has ever completely put aside any one or all of the seven deadly sins. If you talk to a person whom you or I might consider saintly, they would probably be startled and think you were making mountains out of molehills.

I’ve never met a firefighter who was a hero. Not one. When you tell them they are heroic, which is especially fashionable these days, they will deny it and tell you that they are only doing their job. Most saints are just the same way.

Remember, in the early Church, “saint” was the term used to describe all followers of Jesus. All of us who live attempting to imitate Christ get the title “saint.” The first step to sainthood is to decide to follow Jesus. The entry point is baptism.

At the same time, saints are made not just born(-again!). Ask Saint Paul about the saints with whom he dealt through his correspondences we call Epistles. The saints in Corinth were willful and quarrelsome and others were sexually irresponsible. There were saints in Philippi who used their position in church for purely selfish ends. Even big-shots like Peter and Barnabas could act like hypocrites. And Paul himself admitted to the saints in Rome that even he did not understand his own actions—he did things he did not want to do, the very things he hated.

Sainthood should not be confused with being “nice.” Even Mother Teresa was known not to be nice all the time. But that’s no surprise because if you’re focused on caring for the poorest of the poor you might end up ruffling a few feathers.

Living into our saintliness is not about niceness but about newness. I remember a lesson from a priest when I was a boy, who pointed to all the pictures of saints around my home parish rendered in brightly colored stained glass. I remember him saying that we are all like those saints because saints are people the Light shines through.

As we welcome young Samuel into the fellowship of the Church and into the company of saints, I won’t need to tell experienced parents like Kimberly and Garret that there will be days when your little saint will seem like an angel, and days when he will be… well… won't. And that’s okay, because you know that’s already true about yourselves and all the others of Jesus’ people in your life and in this parish community.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus describes what it means to be blessed before God. He is also talking about what it means to be a saint—to be a regular, ordinary, everyday follower, friend, and apprentice of Jesus.

“Blessed are you who are poor,” Jesus says, “for yours is the kingdom of God.”
“Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.”
“Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.”
“Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice on that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven.”

Being blessed, Jesus says, comes from finding our focus just a bit more, day by day, on what God would have us be. And as we listen to God’s voice, and respond to God’s grace, we find that walking the way of Jesus touches lives in ways we can hardly imagine. The late pastor and writer Frederick Buechner wrote:

As we move around this world and as we act with kindness perhaps, or with indifference or with hostility toward the people we meet, we are setting the great spider web atremble. The life I touch for good or ill will touch and other life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what place my touch will be felt.

You are here, and you have brought Samuel and his siblings with you, because some place, somewhere, a saint touched you. Somewhere, sometime, you have touched another human being with grace. Somewhere someone cut you a break, told you the truth in love, or cared for you in a moment of crisis. Somewhere someone showed you what it was like to be touched by God. And, having been touched by the holy, you said “I want to do that, too” and that’s when you took another step towards your own saintliness. And now you want to communicate that ineffable quality and that eternal truth to your children and through them to your children’s children. God’s love touched you. You became a follower of Jesus. And you want that for your kids as well.

Saintliness is about newness--choosing to live this one day in one new way--choosing compassion over selfishness, mercy over revenge, kindness over disregard. Choosing just for this moment to serve God in the people God gives us and to look right now for Christ in the people we are given. 

As Saints go, you may think we have a way to go. When Samuel doesn’t pay attention to his feeding or sleeping schedule or as he touches things, and plays with Olivia’s and Hunter’s things, or he discovers new ways to go his own way, you may wonder about Samuel’s saintliness. But you have brought him here anyway.

Well, welcome to the Club, Samuel… the Communion of Saints, the fellowship of Christ’s body, the People of God. You will discover that we Jesus People are a strange lot. We may at times be quarrelsome, strident, short-sighted and at times ignorant or hypocritical, that’s for sure.

It’s true. We are not perfect, we saints; but we are everyday discovering newness. For all our foibles (and yours yet to be revealed) we are together learning and doing the work of Jesus, and just like all those other saints, we learning to let the light shine through.

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Here is a link to the bulletin for the Sunday after All Saints  at St. John's Episcopal Church, Clearwater

Here is a link to the Scripture readings.

Here is a link to a video of the sermon.

Here is a link to a video of the liturgy.

Baptized into Christian Community

A few years back, a Christian cartoonist named Cuyler Black came out with a line of funny Christian greeting cards called “Inherit the Mirth.” The cover of each card contained one of his single panel cartoons imagining a silly (sort-of) Biblical scene, with a clever greeting on the inside. One of my favorites was titled “John the Baptist as a Kid” and it showed a boy standing next to a bathtub filled with water. He is holding a very wet cat, and next to him were a dog and a parrot, also dripping wet and looking very confused. An exasperated Elizabeth  says from another room “Honey! For the last time-- stop doing that to the pets!”

I chuckle every-time I think of this cartoon because while John the Baptist appears nowhere in today’s lessons, it summarizes very nicely the challenges of living in a household, raising a child, all the while attempting to raise that child with a cogent, useful, and authentically held Christian faith.

Needless to say, I am still living in the glow of this new things called “grandparent.” And I hope I never lose that sense of awe and wonder. All it takes is a little smile from a certain little baby and I get all mushy inside. But this is not a new feeling… I’ve had it with my own children… as well as awe and pride at the people they are today. Part of the “mushy” is that I am getting to know this brand-new person who doesn’t know how to be anything but her complete, honest, direct, vulnerable self. And we are already watching Josephine grow… already a distinct personality, but how she will be in the future is a mystery still to unfold.

By bringing her to this community to be initiated into the Church, into the Company of Christ’s people, we are saying that not only will Josephine be a full part of the Church, she will be fully a part of us… not just her immediate family and friends, but the family and household of Christ’s people in all time and everywhere. We are also making a commitment that we… all of us, family, friends, congregation, the community of the faithful… will do everything we can to help her come to know God in Christ and herself as a follower of Jesus and to become a disciple… that she will live her life as a friend and apprentice of Jesus Christ.

The thing is that she will be attending the toughest, most transparent… and the most awkward… Church School there is. Not the one in this parish… although I know that Miss Mary can’t wait to have Miss Josephine join the crew! No, I mean the one in her home. It will be there that she will learn all the wonder and the love and all the possibility, hope, and security of a family daily learning how to be a family. And she will learn firsthand that Jamie and Johnny, her first teachers in the faith, are imperfect, have bad days, and don’t always have all the answers. In about ten to thirteen years, you parents will be begin getting feedback on all those gaps. (Don’t ask me how I know this!).

But that’s okay because we know that by baptizing babies like Josephine that Christian people are all the time raised up in Christian households. Not perfect, but faithful in an everyday kind of way.

Now, if you parents are smart, you won’t try to do this alone or on your own. Just as you will trust teachers to teach, and coaches to coach, and doctors and nurses to do their thing, you will also take part in a community like St. John’s to accompany you, support you, guide you, and show you the practical nuts and bolts of being a person of Christ.

So Josephine… welcome to the Jesus Movement! To paraphrase our Presiding Bishop, Michael Curry, Welcome to St. John’s branch of the Episcopal branch of the Jesus Movement!

Welcome to the Movement that received the gift of the Holy Spirit as it came to Jesus’ first followers on Pentecost. That Spirit took a frightened pack of disciples and empowered them to become a brazen bunch of evangelists and ministers who shared the Good News of Jesus with people who were far off and those who were near to their Jewish faith, including people from all over the known world. People who spoke all kind of languages, had all kinds of customs, and all kinds of traditions.

As I’ve said, this baptism that we are about to do is not simply an event to be recorded in the baby book. It is the beginning of an amazing journey of faith that will require time, attention, and intention. Take the time to pray with your child, from grace at the table to nighttime prayers. Share the stories of faith, not only from the Bible or a book of saints, but from your own faith journey (including the questions you struggle with) and the people you admire. Teach her to hang in there, even when things get rough, confusing, or are not according to plan. As you teach Josephine about respect, reliability, doing her chores, manners, showing up for practice, and all the rest, don’t forget to show her also the rituals of the life of faith, and how to look for God in the everyday.

This may come as a shock to you, but as you do this work as a parent, you won’t have to have all the answers. You just have to model that you too are developing those very same seven-fold gifts of the Spirit that we will soon be praying that Josephine will experience. So, show her your own inquiring and discerning heart, take a deep breath and show what it takes to have the courage to will and to persevere, take the time every day to share the gift of joy and wonder in all God’s works, especially as you see it unfold in this little person whom you present today for baptism. Because you are—all of you—growing on your faith journeys together.

They call Pentecost "the birthday of the Church" (and I understand that there is cake after Church in coffee hour!) So imagine, the Holy Spirit saying to all of us "welcome to the Church!"

Because what we are doing today is also an object lesson for the rest of us on how to be a Christian community. No Christian is a solitary Christian. So here's what we do. We pray together. We dare to have the courage to be vulnerable. We are discovering that it is okay to trust God while not having all the answers. We show up and are together, even when things are confusing, strange, uncertain, or (gasp!) boring. Because how we choose to be a community of believers together demonstrates how to be faithful to each other, our children, our grandchildren, our neighbors, the community, and the members of our households.

Pentecost was not the only time or the only way that the Holy Spirit arrives. God’s spirit is still present in a mighty way. For when we encounter nothing less than the presence of God in the people God gives us in all their variety, we come to know that we cannot limit who God is and how God acts, no matter how we might try. We who follow Jesus and have been baptized into his Church are called to act on our love of God as much as those first disciples were called to share God’s love. We are to share the love of God freely, without trying to limit who God might love.

All of us from Josephine, our newest member, to those who remember when this congregation first gathered more than fifty years ago, and everyone in-between, we all share the same call: we are to take this Good News that God loves us, and share that gospel in our deeds as well as our words with everyone we meet, and as we leave our worship, going in peace to love and serve the Lord (Alleluia times 3!), we are empowered by nothing less than God’s Holy Spirit, who meets us where are and by grace transforms us into Christ’s people, the people God made us to be. 

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Here is a link to the bulletin for the Feast of Pentecost at St. John's Episcopal Church, Clearwater

Here is a link to the Scripture readings for Trinity Sunday

Here is a link to a video of the sermon.

Here is a link to a video of the liturgy.