Questing Parson

Sermon Under A Pecan Tree

It took longer than it would most folks. I always travel, as much as possible, on roads limited to two lanes. Expressways, with their six and eight lanes, and ten lanes, are mostly home to billboards and crazy drivers. Two lane corridors meander through mountains, follow rivers down the valley, and are decorated by homes, nicely cared for homes, as well as the occasional cabin and even double wides often accented by immaculately cared for yards.

Oh I realize there are some eyesores along the way, but they pale in comparison to what borders the multiple lane corridors of excessive speed. The two lane roads are the way to travel. I'm convinced of that.

As such, I'd left the day before the event in which I'd been invited to speak. It was something I looked forward to. After all, when one's invited back to a place where one has preached before, one cannot help but be somewhat flattered. It's something you'd like to tell your skeptical cousins about. Maybe I was just eager to get there; maybe I wanted time to meander those back roads. Whichever, I got there the night before, checked into a comfortable inn, enjoyed a delicious dinner, watched a little TV, and turned in early.

I was scheduled to speak first at a luncheon and that evening at the closing service. I spoke. Folks had some nice things to say. I felt good.

I skipped the afternoon business session and found myself sipping on a Sprite as I sat on a garden bench under the shade of a pecan tree. The Sprite was about gone when she approached.

“I know you,” she said.

“You do?” I replied. “How do you know me?”

“You baptized me when I was a baby.”

“You remember that?”

“Well, no, but my Mom told me you did.”

“Who's your Mom?” I asked.

She told me. I remembered her. Gracious, I'm getting old; I not only had baptized this child; I had also baptized her mother.

“So, your Mom still goes to church here?”

“No, sir,” she said. “We don't go to church now. She just came to this thing because you were preaching.”

“Do you mind if I ask you a question?”

“No.”

“Why don't you folks go to church?”

She sat down on the bench beside me. “I think we don't go because we got really busy. You know, I have ball games and Mom and Dad have a lot of things to do. You know what I think?”

“What do you think?”

“I think the church needs to stop being so church. I mean, the church is songs and prayers and sermons by people like you. And I know my Mom likes you, but, well, you know all those people in there.” She pointed to the Family Life Center where everyone was gathered. “After you preach tonight everyone will go home and do what they always do. Now what I think is this: the church ought to make a difference. Do you know what I mean?”

“I do know what you mean,” I confessed. “Do you know how we can fix it?”

“No, sir, I don't. But the same old stuff isn't working. People are too busy for this same old stuff.”

I drove home that night a more humble than when I arrived.

I Met God Yesterday

I wrote this on this blog years and years ago. I just felt the urge to offer it again.

 

I met God at church yesterday
and that’s so strange!
I’m the pastor.

I do not go to church for God.
I go to speak of God
To the people.

In church God is often stranger
For I am occupied
With being me.

I met not God in the sermon.    
I wrote the sermon
To give others.

I met God at church yesterday
in water droplets falling
from my hand upon
a baby’s head
and words of
“I baptize you….

I met God yesterday
in an offering plate
containing an unwadded
five dollar bill
given by a widow
on Social Security.

I met God yesterday
in the off-key singing
of one so full of joy
off-key was harmony
and everyone followed
her leading of
each joyous refrain

I met God yesterday
in an abused foster child
pulling upon my stole
until I knelt and felt arms
about my neck
and heard her
whispering in my ear
I love you, pastor.

About the Baby's Baptism

“Got a minute, Parson?” called Frank McQuire, an insurance agent in the town who occasionally engaged the parson in theological debates.

The parson stopped at the door of the courthouse and turned to answer Frank. “Sure,” said the parson. “Since you're the big politician it would have been nice if you'd seen me before I paid the taxes.”

“I think if you check the scriptures, Parson, you'll find Jesus did something about death, but he wasn't too successful with overcoming taxes.”

“You have a point, Frank. How's the family?”

“Everyone's doing good, Parson. In fact, Janet wanted me to ask you if you'd baptize the new grandchild.”

“Janet? She's your youngest?”

“She is. The baby was born back in December. They were over at lunch last Saturday. The wife mentioned they should baptize the baby. So Janet said she'd like for you to do it.”

The parson's mind immediately went back to a difference of opinion between him and a church superior. The superior insisted the only reason for baptism was the path to church membership. The parson insisted baptism was a sacrament and nowhere in his denomination's infant baptism parental vows was there a mention of membership. The parson insisted a Sacrament was something God did and it therefore could not be denied anyone. He recognized his conservative stance, but found it satisfying that one a few things he wasn't the liberal everyone insisted he was.

“Where does Janet go to church?” the parson asked.

“Ah, she and Ed don't go to church, Parson. You know as well as I do that Janet is a Christian and as moral as they come, but they don't have an affiliation with any specific church.”

“Which churches does Janet visit?” the parson asked.

“Parson, Janet doesn't go to church.”


“Tell you what,” said the parson. “You have Janet call me and we'll talk about it. But she has to call me and not relay messages through you.”

“Fair enough,” said Frank. “She'll call you.”

The parson headed to the car. He knew he was going to baptize the baby, but he was going to make Janet squirm a bit.

Generational Pastor

The parson was sitting in the church fellowship hall following the morning service. A couple of committees were having quick meetings on events taking place in the near future. The parson had been talking with one of the spouses of a meeting attender. She'd now headed to the kitchen to help with some activities there. He sat alone now sipping his coffee, thinking back over the sermon he'd delivered and how he'd change it if he ever delivered it again.

His contemplation was interrupted.

“You're the Parson, aren't you?” asked a young girl of about six years of age.

“I am,” said the parson. “And you're Molly Fletcher.”

“I didn't know you knew my name.”

“I do know your name. Six years ago your mom and dad bought you to this church when you were a baby and I baptized you. And just before I baptized you I asked your parents, 'What name shall be given this child?' They said, 'Molly Ashley.' That's how I know your name.”

She moved closer to the table and seemingly studied the parson a moment. Then she resumed her questions.

“My grandmother said that you baptized my Mom when she was a baby.”

“I did; I baptized your Mom. And I baptized your Daddy, too.”

“Wow,” she said, “that's cool. You must have been a pastor for a long time.”

“I have been,” admitted the parson.

“Do I know any other people you baptized?” she asked.

“You do,” said the parson. He leaned forward and said in a quiet voice, “I baptized your grandmother, too.”

“My grandmother?” asked Molly. “You baptized Nana?”

“I did.”

Molly stared at the parson intently. She leaned forward in another expression of confidentiality. Then she whispered.

“How old are you?”

The Water Tickled My Ear

A Farmville Church Sermon
The Water Tickled My Ear
Matthew 3: 13-17
The Baptism of the Lord

I can still feel the water. It wasn’t cold. It was room temperature. After all it had been in that bowl for at least several hours. But still, water always seems a bit cool, especially on a spring day in Georgia.

I can still feel it as though it happened only a few moments ago. The first drop splattered upon my head, dead center of where my bald spot is today. Another followed and another in rapid succession. Suddenly, while I could still feel the drops striking my head, my center of concentration moved to the trickle of water that was running down the side of my head. One little rivulet  meandered down in front of my ear and across my cheek. Another followed course but broke away from the path to rest  in a delicate balance right on the skin where my ear joins my head. It balanced there and tickled my ear, refusing to cascade down. And its presence labored to distract my attention from the words being spoken above me.

The Reverend Charles Solomon was speaking, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” I know he added an “Amen” following that, but I didn’t hear it because that drop of water balancing on the top of my ear trickled itself down the back of my ear and down my neck to be soaked up by my collar where the clip on tie had been fastened to my twelve-year-old shirt.

I had been baptized. I had been initiated into the Family of God. I was one of the chosen.

Today we celebrate The Baptism of the Lord. Having said that I realize that some of you are about to settle back, hoping that the next ten or fifteen minutes, or maybe forty, of this sermon will hurry along and in no time at all we’ll be singing the closing hymn and you’ll be on your way. That’s to be expected because we just don’t get all that excited about baptism. Been there; done that; got the t-shirt. And we’re sure we know all we need to know about the subject.

It’s a normal way to feel, I suppose, especially in a United Methodist Church where we celebrate infant baptism. So most of us think it’s something we do with babies or when done as adults it’s a vaccination against damnation.

So bear with me a few minutes this morning. I want to talk to you about baptism, your baptism, or if you have not been baptized, your need of it.

In the United Methodist Church we believe that baptism is a Sacrament. In a sacrament, it is God who is active. When we’re baptized, we believe, God is in it. It is in that act God claims us as God’s own. God claims you as God’s own. That’s why your baptism is important for you. It is important because there is power in your baptism.

In our Gospel lesson today, Jesus comes to the River Jordan to be baptized by his cousin, John. Jesus, the Son of God, standing before John to engage in this ritual of purification. Jesus, It’s Jesus, and John is taken back. This, after all, is the Son of God. What possible need of baptism could he have.  To receive the redemption in this ritual of the water is superfluous. This is Jesus; he is, himself, Redemption. Jesus has no need of baptism. Or does he?

Scholars have debated this throughout the centuries. But I don’t need the theological arguments. I’ve felt the water tickle my ear. I know why Jesus came to John to be baptized. He came so that he could identify with me. For me it’s as simple as that. Christ was baptized so that I could kneel down that day at the altar of that church and feel the holy drip of that water upon my head and the redemptive tickle of the drops upon my ear.

Listen! I’m going to say it again. I want you to remember this. There is power in baptism! There is power in your baptism! I could stand here and engage you in all the theories I’ve studies over the years, but, for me, it boils

down to this: God is in our baptism and therein is the power.

When I approach that sacred time that a child is brought to this altar for baptism and I dip my hand in that water and let the waters drip from my hand to splash upon that child’s head and trickle over his forehead and maybe tickle his ears, it is not my hand. It is the hand of God. And because it is the hand of God and it is the waters of the Spirit that child is marked forever. That child belongs to God!

A lot of times, when adults come to me to join the church, I ask them that question: Have you been baptized. And often they say, I have, but it was when I was an infant. I don’t remember anything about it.”

Well, of course, they don’t. How could they remember what happened when they were just months old? But God remembers. God remembers that long ago God made a claim upon that person’s life. God remembers that although they are unaware God is simply calling them back home, back home into discipleship, back home into life, back home into the joy that is found when we come to the waters of our baptism.

Thirty-seven years ago Bishop John Owen Smith came to our town. He came to baptize my son, Scott. I learned later from Ms. Smith that for three days before he came he went next door to his house and borrowed their infant child so he could practice. It had been a long time since he’d baptized a baby and he wanted to get it right. You see, he understood the importance of baptism. He knew that when he laid his hand on Scott’s head, when the waters flowed across that baby’s face, something beyond our human understanding was going on. He understood the God of the Ages would be in that room and in that event, and God would be claiming a new life for the Kingdom. He knew he had to get it right.

And you, my friend, God got it right at your baptism. God claimed you as God’s own. So often in the rituals of the church we speak the words: Remember your baptism. Well, do that. Remember your baptism, for when the waters flowed down your head it was God tickling your ear.

And if you’ve not been baptized yet, I pray for the day God claims you as God’s own.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
_____________________

With many thanks to Rev. Dr. Gary DeMore, Saint John’s United Methodist Church, Augusta, Georgia for his sharing of ideas.