Springwood Presbyterian Church: Whitsett, NC

Have any of you visited the Vietnam Memorial in Washington?  It’s a powerful place.  Maya Lin, who designed it, was asked why she thought the memorial has such an emotional impact on those who visit it.  “It’s the names,” she said.  “The names are the memorial.  No edifice or structure can bring people to mind so powerfully as their names.”

She’s right.  Remember the pet name your favorite grandparent called you—the name of your first sweetheart—the name of the street you lived on when you were 5.  (That’s bringing smiles, isn’t it?)  How did you feel when someone twisted your name into something to tease you with?  And what memories flood our hearts when we speak the names of those loved ones who have died.  What a pity that today, we are as often identified by our Social Security numbers, bank account number, birth date, driver’s license number, and so forth, as by our own names.

God doesn’t substitute numbers for names.  I have called you by name.  You are mine, says God.  The people who carry God’s name are special: created and formed by God, loved by God, redeemed by God.  The Greek word for baptism includes the meaning “to saturate”—to be brimful, the way the creeks and streams and ground are saturated and overflowing this morning after the heavy rains.  In baptism, God saturates us with water, saturates us with grace, saturates us with blessing, saturates us with meaning—establishing our identity as beloved children of God.  In the baptism service, the pastor speaks the name of the person, saying, “Rachel, child of the covenant, I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”  In that moment, we know—if we didn’t know before—that God loves us and accepts us, despite our sins and faults.  We are blessed and beloved.  We, like Jesus, bring pleasure to God.

When we’re named by God, we’re also claimed by God for God’s work: everyone who is called by my name … I created for my glory, declares God.  With our baptism, we’re being sent out to do the work Jesus showed us is needed: helping the poor and sick, feeding the hungry, forgiving those who hurt us.  That work is for everyone who’s baptized--not just for Elders.  Of course, when we consider the numbers of poor—the courage it takes to forgive--the magnitude of disasters like the earthquake in Haiti—we might think we just can’t do it.  But we can. Remember that while Jesus prays after his baptism, God calls him by name: you are my son, the Beloved.  With you I am well pleased.  This affirmation is the defining moment for Jesus.  With those words, God undergirded Jesus with the courage to speak the good news in places and to people not normally receptive to hearing about God, to care and serve, to challenge the conventions and customs that run counter to God’s will for the world—and to bear the consequences that come from obeying God. 

Scripture doesn’t tell us why Jesus chose to be baptized.  We can, however, surmise that he wanted to identify with us and all our sins: to be like us, so we can grow to be like him.  God prepares us through Jesus, the Christ. 

And God prepares us through the family of faith.  In Eastern Orthodox tradition, all who are baptized in the same font are called sisters and brothers: siblings—born of the same flesh and blood.  In this sense, Jesus became brother to the entire crowd that was baptized in the river Jordan.  How many people have been baptized from this font?—what a huge family of faith you are!  When ­­we are baptized into Christ, we become sisters and brothers to him, and to one another to support and encourage and help each other in the work of Christ.  We are then given not only the name our parents put on our birth certificate, but also by the name God gives us: Christian—bearer of Christ.

That becomes our vocation—our calling and our work—to bear Christ into the world—to reveal Christ to others.  In this season of Epiphany, we are reminded that, on that day of his baptism, Jesus was revealed to be the Messiah, the Christ.  And like him, we, too, are revealed by our baptism--revealed as his disciples by the way we live out our baptism.

Jesus didn’t ask folks to agree with him or to think about him or even, very often, to believe in him.  Instead, he asked them to follow him and to try to do what he did.    May we remember our baptism and be drawn closer to him this year 

Join me in reaffirming our baptismal covenant, using the litany in the bulletin insert.