Baptismal Promises – God’s and Ours Jan. 14, 2007

Isaiah 43: 1-7, Romans 6: 1-5, Luke 3: 15-17, 21-22

“Remember your baptism!” We use that phrase on this day called “Baptism of the Lord,” a day when the scriptures remind us of Jesus’ baptism and invite us to consider our own. If we were to have a conversation about our baptisms I’m sure we’d hear a variety of stories. Some people would be able to say “I remember the day very well….” Perhaps someone might say “My parents were members of the Baptist church, so I had to wait until I was ready to state my faith in Jesus. I was 12 years old, and I remember walking into the water of that lake (or maybe of the baptismal pool in the church)…….” Or someone might say “I was raised without religion, but as an adult I knew I needed a spiritual basis for living. I became a Christian, and my baptism happened here at Hyde Park UMC, the day I formally joined the church……..” But many others would have to say, as I would, “My baptism? I can’t tell you much about it. I was a baby, and my parents thought it was important……” The fact that I cannot remember the event of my baptism makes this day especially important and necessary for me – a time for affirming what happened on that day, for remembering its significance if not the literal details, and for remembering who I am because of that event.

This year I have found myself thinking a great deal about the word “promise,” in connection with baptism. Baptism is an expression of promise – first and foremost the promises of a loving a gracious God. Baptism declares that we are loved and accepted by God, that God’s grace is offered to us, that the benefits of Jesus’ saving death apply to us, and that we are a part of God’s immense family. Jesus, rising from the waters of baptism, heard God declare that he was God’s own dear son, with whom God was pleased – and that is the truth that was also declared about you at your baptism. You’re not the messiah, but you are a son or a daughter of almighty God, one loved by God, by God who is pleased to love you. Baptism is an expression of God’s grace, of God’s promises – but we make promises too.

Parents of baptized children promise to live as faithful Christians, and to nurture and guide their sons and daughters into lives of maturity in which they will be able to make their own spiritual commitments to Christ, at which point they will be invited to accept for themselves the promises that their parents made on their behalf. Youth and adults seeking baptism promise that according to the grace given them they will live a Christian life, following Christ as their Lord and Savior. We make these promises, and then? Well, a lot of stories could be told, couldn’t they – of good intentions, of partial success, of utter failure, of cynical people who never intended to keep these promises, of guilty-minded people who intended to but got side-tracked, and (I hope) a lot of stories of people who know they’ve been imperfect but keep trying anyway.

God’s promises are sure – of that I have no doubt, and it is my hope and prayer that God’s faithfulness, not our performance record, will be the last word when it comes to eternal reckoning. But our promises matter too – and at least as far as we can see on earth, baptism changes and blesses people to the extent that they are striving to keep the promises they’ve made. Then power of baptism, in terms of what we can see, often corresponds to the level of peoples’ faithfulness in their promise-keeping.

Until he died at age 91 one of my best friends was a man named J. MacAusland Bristow, better known as Mack Bristow to everyone in our community. He was a member of my former church, but we had an unusual friendship that went way beyond the normal close relationship of pastor and parishioner. We were friends, and the fact that Mack was 45 years older than me didn’t seem to hamper our friendship at all. If anything it enriched it. Sometimes we could talk about things like what it had been like for him to sail a ship through the Suez Canal in the 1930’s, or what life was like in Warwick when not a single street was paved. Sometimes Mack would bring up some story that had appeared in that morning’s NY Times, or some idea from Bible reading that week. Our birthdays were a day apart – June 7^th and 8^th - and for quite a few years we went out to lunch – celebrating that I was turning 38 and Mack was turning 83; I was turning 42 and he was turning 8t, etc….. We had a wonderful bond of friendship, a mutual respect and care for each other that was pretty special, and one of the things we had in common was the fact that we were both preacher’s kids – PK’s as they used to say. Mack’s father had been a Baptist pastor, and we had a lot of interesting talks about life in a parsonage, though for him the era was before 1920 and my era was the 50’s and 60’s. In one of those conversations Mack told me about an expression of his mother’s - a phrase that used to really annoy him until, years later he got a new perspective on it. It seems that when Mack was a boy he would often hear his mother calling out these words as he left the house: “Mack, just remember whose son you are!”

“Just remember whose son you are!” What was the message being given? Mack wasn’t a wild or troublesome kid anyway, but he took this message as a guilt-laden reminder, as an unnecessary way of saying, “Don’t forget that your father is the preacher..... that your behavior reflects on him..... that you are expected to be good..... that pastors’ kids are held to a higher standard.... etc.” Mack told me that he resented what seemed to be nagging - but much later, in adult years, he began to think of those words in a different way, and felt some blessing in remembering whose son he was. It was good to remember that he had been a part of a family where people really loved each other... that he had grown up with parents who did their very best to care for him.... that he had been given faith and values and education and opportunity in ways that some people had not..... that his life had been shaped in a particular way because he just happened to have been born into that particular family.....

So, after a time these words lost their annoying connotations and took on a warm and positive feeling and even when his parents were no longer alive Mack found a special meaning in remembering, and in reminding himself, of whose boy he was. As the president of a local bank, he told me, it was good for him to remember that his purpose was not just making money, but helping young families to get the appropriate loans for starting home ownership, or helping small businesses weather times of financial trouble. Serving others was a value in the home in which he been raised, and he remembered who he was and where he’d come from in the way he ran the bank……. He didn’t tell me this, but as his wife aged and became ill and utterly dependent upon him, I saw the loving and dedicated way he took care of her, and I knew that he was remembering who he was, and acting out the values of fidelity and compassion he had learned in that preacher’s family……. And when I heard, after his death, that Mack, who had no blood relatives, had willed 1/3 of his estate to the local hospital, and 2/3 to our church, I knew that Mack was just remembering who he was – who he was as a preacher’s kid, but also who he was as a child of God.

Whose son or daughter are you? Where do you have belonging? Who has a claim on you? What shapes your understanding of yourself? Who can you count on? These are really basic questions of identity, aren’t they? Most of us, whether we know it or not, want to belong to something, want to be connected to something larger than ourselves - but it matters what you belong to. A kid who belongs to an urban gang may find a wonderful sense of belonging, but be on their way to a violent and tragic life. A person whose primary place of belonging is some sports team’s fan club may not get into trouble, but if the Red Fox Club is their primary identity they’ll have a mighty superficial life. You can belong in many places that are wholesome and good – scouts, 4-H, family, church, country – and derive a reasonably healthy identity from those associations, but beyond all these there is a bedrock identity, a bottom-line identity. It’s an identity that would remain if everything else was stripped away – if your job was taken from you, if your family perished in fire, if your nation was destroyed by enemies……. It’s the identity given to us by God, expressed (among other places) in our baptism; and activated as we remember our baptism, God’s promises and the promises we made. You are a Christian, a beloved child of God. That’s who you are, no matter what.

But can you remember that? Can you remember whose son or daughter you are? If there are times when prominent voices in your world seem to say that you are nothing, that you don’t deserve any respect, that you are unworthy of justice, that your needs and opinions don’t matter, can you remember who you are? At your baptism you were declare worthy, valued, honored and loved by almighty God, but do you remember?

Can you remember who you are when the world invites you to live by someone else’s standards? Sometimes the world seems to be saying “You can do what you want – no one cares. You can be faithful to your marriage vows or go have a fling; just don’t get caught….. You can get hung up on rules and old fashioned ideas of honesty, or you can just do what is expedient. Everybody else does. Just play the game smart and no one will be the wiser……” But in such moments do you know who you are? Do you remember the standards of the family into which you were welcomed at baptism? Do you remember the promises you made, and the commitment to live in a way that reflects your heavenly Father’s values? It was declared at baptism, but do you remember?

Mack Bristow had his mother to remind him, whether he liked it or not: “Just remember whose son you are!” she said. Every baptism we witness, and every occasion for renewing our vows can be a reminder to us. Remember your baptism - the promises of God and your promises. Remember that you are accepted, loved, accountable, included, commissioned, and responsible. Remember your baptism and whose you are.