Remember Your Baptism- Rev. Wendy McCormick- Jan. 12, 2025
Remember Your Baptism Rev Wendy McCormick
There’s a lot going on. A lot.
In this one service. In this one month.
The full swing of activities in school and community is underway – we may wish for another snow day to pause the busyness.
Wallace Bubar is getting settled in our community and is working with me and with others to transition to his official beginning here three weeks from today.
I’m making lists of things I want to finish or hand off in these few weeks. What do I need to download from my brain to Wallace’s? What do I need to just let go . . . he’s very capable. And the church is fine.
All kinds of things are happening on their regular schedule in the church: new officers are launching and our leaders have their work cut out for them this year; our ministries with children and youth are in full swing, and today we bless a new confirmation class on their journey of faith exploration and growth.
We are all moving forward in our own individual journeys and in our church’s collective journey, even though I know more than a few people are feeling if not saying, ANOTHER CHANGE? REALLY? ALREADY?
Or, I knew she wasn’t staying forever, but I was just getting used to her and now we have to change again??
And of course the things you dare not utter ---- What if I don’t like the new guy? What if he changes everything? Or what if he only changes one thing but it’s the thing that matters most to me?
A lot is going on. Activity. And feelings. Excitement. And apprehension.
We’ve learned together over this year that transition is not one thing, a one-day happening as one person vacates this office and another person moves in. Transition is an ongoing process of moving from one place or state to another. In a way, we are always in transition from who we are to who we are becoming. Always. And our church is in transition from what it has been and what it is now, to what God is calling it to be. Still, we are in a stretch of a couple years of more than the usual amount of transition.
It’s a lot.
Enter baptism.
This is traditionally the Sunday of the church year when we tell the story of the baptism of Jesus and reflect on our own baptism as our grounding in God, our connection in Jesus, our faith foundation that cannot be taken away.
“Remember your baptism,” a friend of mine used to tell her kids each day as they left for school or practice or sleepovers – ‘remember your baptism.’
In other words, remember who you belong to – you belong to God.
And remember God’s got you – no matter what. “When you pass through the waters I will be with you.”
Remember God’s love for you is boundless. “Because you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you”. That’s Isaiah.
Remember.
But we forget so easily. We forget so quickly. We get pulled back within seconds of leaving this space. Pulled back by our busyness and distraction and by the values of the world around us. Pulled away from that fundamental message that we are loved and claimed and held by the master of the universe, that when we pass through difficulties we are never alone, that we are grafted to a great community of people stretching across every corner of the world and every time in history. People who have seen it all when it comes to faith and faithfulness.
And so it is more than fitting that we re-establish ourselves in this fundamental and essential identity in this moment, as we turn the page of a new year, turn the prepare for a new pastorate, launch new officers, bless a confirmation class, step up to whatever lies before each of us and all of us in the challenging life journey of following Jesus.
As the Bible tells the Jesus story, he grows up almost invisibly. There is only one Bible storybetween the stories of Jesus’ birth and the one we read today about his baptism by his cousin John, when he was about 30 years old and beginning his public ministry. And even that is a very short account. All the people were coming out to be baptized, and Jesus also was baptized, Luke tells us. It’s a way of telegraphing that baptism isn’t just about washing away sin since Jesus didn’t need that – baptism is about being claimed and held by God. “You are my son, the beloved,” the voice from heaven tells Jesus. “With you I am well pleased.”
And that is the message of baptism for each of us: you are my beloved child. With you I wellpleased. In Isaiah’s words, you are precious in my sight, and I love you. No matter what you go through, I am with you. That’s what it means to be baptized. To be claimed and loved by God, to live your life in God’s orbit, grafted to Jesus and to the body of Christ, the Church, never, ever alone, never, ever unloved or forgotten.
Does all that happen in an instant when we are baptized? Is it some kind of magic ritual? Are those who are not baptized less loved or claimed by God? . . . . you may ask. Excellent questions.Here’s the thing, and it’s important: baptism is not magic; it doesn’t MAKE God claim or love us. It shows and enacts and celebrates something that is already true. So we who are baptized aren’t better than people who are not, we just know and claim that God loves us, blesses us, promises to go with us through anything and everything including the proverbial hell on earth.
If you are not baptized, by the way, we can take care of that. Most of us are. The problem is we’ve kind of lost touch with it. And that can make our way lonely and discouraging. We can fall prey to feeling unloved and unlovable, to feeling powerless, to being overwhelmed by the floodwaters that are the challenges of life and faith. To giving up on this discipleship enterprise as too hard and settling for a squishy faith that asks nothing of us.
I was baptized as an infant.
I imagine many of you were too.
The cool thing about that practice – baptizing infants – is that it’s very, very clear that this is all about God, about God’s love for us, about God’s claim on our lives, about God taking the initiative in the relationship. And not about anything we do. Infants can’t do anything.
So when we baptize infants, we can’t say that it was because of anything they said or did that they got baptized, but simply because God’s love and mercy claim them as they claim all of us -- from day 1.
The problem with infant baptism, of course, is that we can’t remember. And the church has mostly done a pretty bad job of helping us to remember and connect to something that we can’t actually remember. Not very many parents are like my friend who told her kids every day, whether they were facing a difficult class or an unkind peer or a competitive soccer try-out, every day, whether they would be pressured to make poor choices or face discriminatory treatment, every day as they left the house she told them, “Remember your baptism.”
In a few minutes, we will join in a reaffirmation of our baptism, to help us individually and together to claim this amazing reality of our lives. Remember your baptism, and be thankful, we will say. It’s a cool ritual.
But some of us will have forgotten by this afternoon. Most of us will have forgotten by tomorrow. A few of us won’t forget till about Thursday. We need more frequent reminders.
So here’s a thought. Baptism is all about water. The same water we encounter many times every day. Water that makes up most of our actual bodies, water that fundamentally sustains human life.
It’s no accident that we don’t baptize with some rare magic potion but with this fundamental essence of life itself.
And so we actually have many opportunities each day to remember our baptism. We can do it anytime we come in contact with water. I hope our ritual this morning is meaningful, as we remember our baptism together in this space at this special time of transition.
But I also hope you will consider choosing one ordinary way you interact with water as a time to remember your baptism. Perhaps when you wash your hands or take a shower. Perhaps when you drink water or cook with water. Perhaps when you are washing dishes or wiping a child’s hands and face. In another season it might be when you go swimming or enjoy a water park.
Choose one time in your day when you regularly interact with water. And try to remember each time you do it to notice that water and let it connect you to your baptism and to those special words: you are my beloved child . . . you are precious in my sight. For indeed we are. Amen.
