Sermon for the Baptism of our Lord
Tattooed with the Cross
By The Rev. Eric Christopher Shafer -
My Mother stayed up with current events all through her life. It was probably partly because she had spent most of her life as a high school teacher and her students kept her up to date on the latest trends and news. In her 90’s she started a Democratic Party club at her mostly Republican senior community and even held a party celebrating President Obama’s election.
So, it was not actually a big surprise when one day when she was in her 90’s my Mom told me that she was thinking of getting a tattoo! Since she was smiling as she said this, I felt brave enough to respond that that was okay since she wouldn’t have to worry about it getting wrinkled in her old age! You can imagine the look she gave me after that remark!
I do not have any tattoos, and my Mom never followed through with her tattoo thought, but my friends with tattoos tell me that their body art, small or not-so-small, their tattoos most always have a back-story, a reason for each tattoo. Reflecting a time in their lives, a past or present love, or just something beautiful. Tattoos have stories attached to them. They have a story to tell.
And, believe it or not, on a Sunday when we remember Jesus’ baptism and our own, I began thinking about tattoos. Because in baptism - the water, the oil, the sign of the cross on our foreheads - in baptism we are marked with the cross of Christ forever. Tattooed, if you will, with the mark of Christ forever.
And, in baptism we are marked forever as a beloved child of God.
As today’s Gospel text tells us, when Jesus had been baptized and the Spirit of God descended upon him like a dove, a voice from heaven said, "This is my son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased."
"Beloved." What a beautiful word. To be beloved is to be adored. To be beloved is to be cherished, is to be treasured.
This is the promise in our baptism. It is first an act of God--God claiming us as God's very own--a beloved child--and then God declaring to us--simply because we belong to God--that God is well pleased with us.
Now that is a story to tell: that you and I, we, are beloved by God and that God is pleased with us!
Because that is not always the story we tell ourselves. Most of us have another story that runs in our head. It is a story from our inner critic, the one who reminds us just what a failure we are or how people may only be pretending to like us. And, if they really knew us, they would run away. This inner critic tells us how we are not attractive enough or talented enough or clever enough or intelligent enough to be beloved--much less have someone be pleased with us.
Life can bring with it joy and laughter and wonderful conversations and friendships, some close enough even to be our chosen families. And right alongside it, life can bring with it loss and disappointment and sleepless nights and an inner certainty that no matter what we do or no matter how hard we try, we're just not measuring up.
Which is why we need to tell this baptism story over and over again--to counter the story of the inner critic--to counter the story the world often tells that to be truly beloved you have to possess something: money, house, good looks, power. We tell this baptism story over and over to counter the story that you don't measure up or that you don't belong.
The story of baptism is not only a story that we belong to God and are beloved by God; it is a story that we belong to each other, that we are a part of a larger story of God's presence in the world.
Pastor Debra Samuelson of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Minneapolis tells the story of one Lenten season when she wanted to emphasize the important of baptism in her members’ lives. She wanted her people to remember their baptisms and the difference being baptized can make in their day-to-day lives.
Pastor Samuelson had some talented folks in her congregation, like we have Jeremy and Samantha here at Mt. Olive, Pastor Samuelson had a conversation with a couple of these talented artists in her congregation, and in that conversation they came up with the idea of creating a special baptismal font just for Lent, one that would somehow also be interactive. She writes that when they told her this idea, she loved it and told her artists to run with it. And they did run with it, but, in the end, it ended up a little bigger than the original plan.
Pastor Samuelson was thinking of a nice little fountain with some water that would be running and maybe would splash around and draw some attention to it. But when the congregation entered the church that first Wednesday evening in Lent, they discovered a huge 10 by 10-foot box with 2½ feet high cement walls, with three pipes sticking up about 5 feet from the bottom. Positioned around the edges were chunks and pieces of limestone left over from landscaping jobs because they weren't the right size or they weren't the right color or the right shape for their original purpose, each one with a round hole drilled through the middle of it.
Following the worship service, the congregation was instructed to line up and take pieces of the limestone, pass each one down the line and put them on the pipes until each pipe was filled to the top with limestone pieces. What people hadn't realized was that those pipes were water pipes. When they turned the water on, water started trickling out of those pipes and over the stones, and these leftover stones that had been rejected from various jobs of the landscapers and were in all different shapes and sizes and colors, now stacked together and with water sprinkling over them—these leftover, rejected stones had become a beautiful fountain.
Pastor Samuelson writes that those stones were and are for her members, as they are for you and me, they were and are for all of us, all of us who sometimes feel rejected because we feel we just don't measure up, they remind us that we are chosen to be part of something big and beautiful, just as God has chosen us in our baptism to be a part of God's kingdom, to be a member of God's family. As she watched the water run over the stones, Pastor Samuelson imagined God's love, shown to us in the waters of baptism, washing over our lives, bathing us all in love.
We come together in worship because we need to hear over and over again that God loves us and has claimed us as beloved children, cherished and treasured. And we come together in worship because our wells sometimes have run dry and we need to feel those refreshing waters of baptism trickling over us again. Because sometimes life is just so hard that we have no words to pray or no songs to sing that we are just that empty.
It is in those times that the community of the baptized sings those hymns we cannot always sing, in those times it is the community that prays the prayers we cannot always pray, and it is in those times that the community speaks the words of faith that we can have trouble speaking ourselves or even believing ourselves.
And, in those times, we can just let those words and songs and prayers wash over us, reminding us of God's love, reminding us that in the waters of baptism, God has called us and claimed us as God's own--beloved and delightful--cherished.
We are marked, tattooed if you will, we are marked with the cross of Christ forever. And, as we are marked with Christ, we are also reminded that we are beloved by God. Forever and ever beloved by God. That's the story of our baptisms. And our lives. Marked with the cross of Christ forever and forever beloved children of God.
Amen.
(Adapted from a sermon by the Rev. Debra Samuelson on “Day1”).
The Rev. Eric Christopher Shafer
Senior Pastor - Mt. Olive Lutheran Church
Santa Monica, California
January 11 & 12, 2020
