This sermon was preached for the third Sunday of Easter and the baptism of Joseph Matthew, Sunday, April 14, 2024. The text for this sermon were: 1 John 3:1-7, Luke 24:36b-48, and Psalm 4.
Whenever I meet to prepare a family for baptism, I ask the parents and godparents to choose the question from our baptismal covenant that they like best and are most excited to teach their child or godchild about. In the case of our baptizand today, both his mother and his godfather had the same answer. They loved the sixth question, which is actually the most recent question added to our baptismal covenant: “Will you cherish the wondrous works of God, and protect and restore the beauty and integrity of all creation?”
Joseph’s mother, Jenn, lit up as she spoke about teaching Joseph to cherish the littlest of God’s creatures - even the ants that get in the house! Greg lit up as he spoke about teaching Joseph to appreciate the wonder of natural phenomena. He can’t wait to bring his godson out into nature, can’t wait to teach him about the scientific processes behind all he sees. I had to smile, both at their enthusiasm, and because it reminded me of a comment someone had made recently about how they and their wife call going outside the “child reset button.” Kid going crazy? Take them outside! It certainly works for my kids. Here’s the thing - it works like that for adults, too.
This past Monday, the three great celestial bodies that govern the rhythms of our lives, the sun, the moon, and the earth, aligned in just the right way that a large swath of the United States experienced a total solar eclipse. Thousands of adults paused in their daily lives and stepped outside, lifting their eyes to the heavens. Pressing the reset button in our relationship with the nature we take for granted. The folks I knew who set aside time to travel to totality - the areas where the moon completely blocked the sun - said they had trouble putting into words how powerful the experience truly was. What they ended up describing, on the whole, was a sense of complete awe. It’s one thing to read about the mechanics of an eclipse - but a whole other thing to live it.
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| Total solar eclipse, official NASA photo |
In the case of an eclipse, as Greg pointed out to us on Wednesday, scientifically understanding all that goes into an eclipse happening can actually enhance our awe. In order to make a total eclipse possible, the moon has to be the exact right size and the exact right distance in between us and the sun such that it precisely covers the sun, with just the sun’s corona peeking around the edge. But more than that, because the relative positions and orbits of the moon and earth are continually and gradually changing, the moon won’t be this distance from the earth forever - so it’s also that we live in this exact right time in the history of the universe to see a total eclipse, too. Talk about wondrous.
If you think about it though, that’s true of every moment. There is so much that needed to align for Jenn and Matthew, Greg and Becky, to become the parents and godparents of this particular child here today, too. For you and I to be here to celebrate and witness it. This moment here, today, almost didn’t happen in a million ways. And that we can be in awe of, too.
Awe and wonder are an essential part of faith. Awe and wonder begin from our senses - something we see, hear, or feel. An encounter with something astonishing and mysterious. Seeking to understand that mystery often doesn’t destroy our wonder - it enhances our awe and our gratitude.
Today we reflect on the second resurrection appearance in the Gospel of Luke. The disciples encounter something absolutely astonishing: Jesus Christ, alive again. He encourages them to come and experience his resurrected body: to see him and to touch him. He shares their meal with them. Then, only then, does he open their minds to understand the scriptures - what has happened and is about to happen. This resurrection appearance features one of my favorite lines in scripture: “while in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering.” Joy, doubt, fear, and wonder all wrapped into one.
I think as Episcopalians, or maybe just people who live here in this day and age, our instinct about what to do with disbelief or doubt tends toward the intellectual. Going at a problem by making it make sense to our minds first. My friend and fellow priest, Ethan Lowery, had a different suggestion in a recent interview on my friend’s podcast. “I want to step away from the primary way that we engage with our faith or the only way we engage with our faith is through our minds,” he said, “…if your mind is having trouble with something go do it with your arms and legs, go do it with your heart, go do it with your people.”
There’s an internet inside joke his comment reminded me of: when it’s clear someone is spending too much time online or is way too lost in a wacko conspiracy theory or has just lost the plot on reality, people will type back: go touch some grass. I think there’s a faith equivalent here. Maybe: go touch some Jesus or go eat some Jesus. Come here to the table. Come here to the font. Experience first, then trust that Jesus will open your mind to understand scripture and tradition in a way that will enhance your wonder.
In a baptism, the presentation and examination of the candidate happens first. We renounce evil and pledge ourselves to Jesus, recite the creed, and commit to the practices of the Christian faith before we get the sensory experience of water, oil, and flame. The intellectual adherence precedes the embodied experience. But growing into faith, returning to faith, so often happens the other way around. That’s why an infant baptism has so much to teach us.
Today, Joseph’s parents and godparents will be answering the questions on his behalf, holding them for him until he can understand and claim them for himself. Then Joseph will practice the Christian faith by experiencing the sacrament in his own little 11 month old way. What is so particularly delightful about baptizing a little one like Joseph is watching how they interact with the most ancient symbols of our faith: wincing at the water on their forehead, smelling the chrism scent, reaching for the flicker of the candle’s flame. Every child I’ve baptized has been drawn to the flame. Joseph can’t answer the questions at the heart of the Episcopal faith for himself quite yet, it will be a while before he can understand the words that make up our creed. But in his baptism, Joseph Matthew is fully a child of God, fully a part of our faith, he fully belongs to God.
What we do in baptism today is what we do anytime we are raising a child. We have a responsibility to say yes to the values we want to instill in them - loyalty, perseverance, kindness - until they can say yes to them themself. We say no to the pressures and temptations they’ll need protection from - until they can protect themself. Above all, we have a responsibility to bring them to the experiences of the great mysteries of faith, the wonder of God’s creation, the power of love. Out into nature, and here, into church. Trusting all the while that God will open their minds such that they can claim all these things as their own when the time is right.
The Good News and the hard news is that the journey of faith isn’t linear. We are in the moment from our Gospel passage right along with the disciples all of our lives. We continually need to return to seeing, touching, and sharing food - experiencing our faith on the level of touch, taste, scent, sound, and sight; silence, light, and song. The other key is that faith is not about being set and certain in our beliefs, but rather all about having our minds continually opened to new understandings. When we commit to this Christian faith, we promise to keep our minds open our whole lives long. To keep learning well into old age. As John writes, “Beloved, we are God's children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed.” We can be certain of God’s love, and our belonging - the rest is being revealed.
I would love for church to be the same sort of reset button for each of us that spending time outside in nature can be for kids. Come and be reset, recentered, on love. Touch, taste, and see. Open your heart to joy, doubt, fear, and wonder all at once. And have your mind be opened, too, to the sort of understanding that enhances your awe.
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