This sermon was preached for Sunday, June 18 for the occasion of the baptism of Margot Inez and James Andrew. The texts for this sermon were: Genesis 18:1-15,(21:1-7), Psalm 116:1, 10-17. and Matthew 9:35-10:8.
When Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.”
There’s a black-and-white photograph from Hamburg, Germany, 1936 of a crowd gathered at the Blohm and Voss shipyard. The first thing you notice about the photograph is that it is of a sea of hundreds of people all raising their arms in the Nazi salute. The second thing you notice is that there is one man, in the upper right of the photo, just one, who is refusing to salute, his arms crossed in defiance.
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| Hamburg, Germany, 1936; man believed to be August Landmesser refuses to make the Nazi salute, Wikimedia Commons |
When I meet with parents and godparents to prepare for baptizing their son or daughter, we talk about the kind of values we want to instill in our children and how they are reflected in the vows we are about to take together. It is always striking to me that the renunciations - the three questions about the evils we denounce, our nos - come before the three “I do”s, our yeses to Jesus and God. Evil comes up again in our baptismal covenant questions: will you persevere in resisting evil and when you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord? At this joyful and hope-filled moment of celebration - our children’s baptism - we acknowledge that the world in which we are raising our children is deeply broken.
When we discuss the meaning of the renunciations, it's my practice to ask parents and godparents to name things they’d like to teach their child how to say no to, to identify some of the things they’d like to renounce on behalf of their godchild. Lauren and Randy, and Becca and Jake, Devin and Jim and Mar-i-ja and Travis all hoped to give their daughter and their son the strength and ability to withstand peer pressure. They all want to teach their children that the measure of whether something is right or wrong should never be how many people are going along with it. The measure must be: is this kind? Is this loving? Is this just?
The man in the photograph, the one with the courage to cross his arms when everyone else saluted, the main theory is that his name was August Landmesser. He was named for his father, a good, strong German name. When the photograph was taken, August was 26 years old. He had already fallen in love with a Jewish woman, Irma; he had already married her in defiance of German law. We can all guess at the end of their story, and it’s true: August and Irma were both arrested and imprisoned in concentration camps. They died for love, their love for one another and their love for the two children they had hoped to raise together.
My son’s name is August. When people ask me about the meaning behind his name, the values that name represents to me, I think of August Landmesser. His strength, his courage, his conviction, his love for his spouse and children. I pray for a better life for my son than August had, but some of that - a lot of that - and certainly all of what he’ll face in his adult life - isn’t up to me. What is up to me, what is up to all of us parents and godparents and grandparents and intergenerational communities, are the values and faith with which we infuse our children’s upbringing.
We can choose to raise them to respect and honor the dignity of every human being. To persevere in resisting evil. To love their neighbors as themselves. All that good stuff that’s right there in our baptismal covenant.
As we discussed in our baptism prep, teaching, and most importantly modeling, that faith won’t be easy. It might involve going against the grain. Giving up our Sunday mornings. Sticking to difficult decisions and unpopular convictions. Standing up for what’s right. Apologizing when we get it wrong.
When we take the responsibility of parenting and godparenting and being a village to children seriously, it can be easy to slip into anxious what ifs? What if it all goes wrong? That’s what I love about the name Sarah chose for her child. She named her son, Isaac, “laughter” for the laugh of astonishment and wonder she couldn’t help but let out when she heard a visitor absurdly promise she would bear a child - yes her, Sarah, at her age. Sarah named her son for the laugh that she had tried to hide in fear, the laugh that overcame that fear to become real laughter. Isaac, the laughter that pulled her out of the dark, anxious what ifs and into a new kind of what if: What if everything works out?
Is there anything too wonderful for the Lord?
Naming a child is part of what we do here in baptism. Naming a child is an act of hope and imagination. James and Margot are each honor names. James was named for his father and grandfather, and Margot Inez was named for her grandmother and great-grandmother. James’ mom hopes that he carries forward the same loyalty and honesty she admires in his father and grandfather. And did you notice both of his names, James and Andrew, were in the list of the twelve from our Gospel today? Margot’s mom hopes that Margot will have that same delightful mix of sweetness and sassiness as her grandmother, Margaret.
These children will make their names their own. They already are! Margot’s name takes her grandmother’s name and incorporates her father’s French-Canadian heritage, and James is affectionately known by his initials, Jam. In much the same way, Margot and Jam will also take the promises we make on their behalf and make them their own as well, their own particular way of living them out, and we pray, their own relationship with God in Christ.
I wonder if you know the story of your own name: what hopes and values did it represent to the ones who named you? Were you named for someone special like a father or grandmother? I wonder how you have made your name your own, how it has changed and grown with you. I wonder how you are living out your baptismal covenant in your own way. If someone were to name a child for you, what values would you hope your name represents to them?
Today, with our hopes and prayers and promises we renounce fear and paralysis. Today, we deliberately choose to imagine together, what if these children become all we pray that they will become? What if they grow to be even more wonderful than we’d have ever guessed? What if our stories, too, each of ours, have more wonder and joy in store than we could possibly know right now? No matter our age.
Together, we say, I will, with God’s help. Because we do not do this alone, even when it feels like we are, even when it seems like we are the only courageous one in a crowd of harassed sheep. And whenever any of us thinks, wow the laborers sure are few, whenever we fall into the terrifying what ifs, I hope we can remember this day, this moment surrounded by all these people committing themselves to goodness and love.
Is there anything too wonderful for the Lord?
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