Not an Easy life with Christ

If anyone ever harbored the thought that life as a Christian is a guaranteed easy time, all sweetness and joy, the lessons for today should give that person a serious jolt.

For Jesus says that he comes not to just pat us on the head and say that he likes us just as we are, and doesn't want to change a thing.

Rather, he makes it clear tat what happens when one follows him is that life gets changed, that the old priorities get scrambled, and that all the old relationships may be stress-filled until a whole new life emerges.

It is not going to be easy.

“Do you think that I have come to bring peace on earth?” Jesus asks.

“No, I tell you but rather division.”

Whatever happened to “...peace on earth, goodwill ….that we hear din the angels' song at Christmas?

This was the peace that Jesus was to embody, wasn't it?

We are dealing with two different understandings of the word “peace.”

We usually think of peace as in “peace and quiet,” or peace as an absence of conflict.

Human peace is often a matter of trade-offs: “I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine, and as long as this arrangement is mutually satisfying we'll avoid hostilities.”

That human peace will be fractured by Jesus when he puts a claim on the lives of his followers.

The peace of which the angels sang, the peace which Jesus will bring, is very different – it means wholeness, completeness, everything and everyone in its proper relationship and order.

And the reason that this causes trouble is that it is a totally different way of organizing society.

If we stop doing things for what we can get out of it, and begin to do other things because we trust that they are the things which Jesus will have us do when creation is complete, folks are going to be upset.

The old Star-Trek series had a race of people called the Ferengi, whose primary central, all-pervading principle for ordering their society was “profit.”

“Where's the profit?” is their ultimately disdainful dismissal of a proposal which they don't like.

They have a difficult time dealing with anyone who operates on a different basis.

There are constant conflicts and misunderstandings with humans and others.

The TV series was of course magnifying the problem in our own society where the love of God and the love of money are always in conflict.

Is society to be based on what each of us can do ourselves, our accumulated accomplishments, or is it to be based on the promise of God and God's intended transformation of all that he has made?

Are we to be dominated by our past, or by God's future?

Dr. William Willimon, college chaplain in Duke University in North Carolina, got a call from an irate parent.

“It's all your fault,” the parent yelled at the chaplain.

“I'll hold you personally responsible for my son throwing away his life.”

“He has been on a fast track to success through the University and Law School, and he has just announced that he's going to Arizona to work on a church mission project.

He's throwing it all away for what?”

The chaplain replied, “Hold on, now.

First, you don't know that his life is being thrown away.

We'll wait and see how his life turns out.

Secondly, I'm not to blame for this.

You're the one who had him baptized.

You're the one who made sure that the promise of God was spoken to him early and often.

Jesus may make good on his promise through a law career, or maybe through a mission career in Arizona, or maybe something else that none of us have even considered.

That's the kind of thing that just may happen when Jesus gets hold of a person.

You and I may think it is ridiculous; Jesus may have other plans.

If you wanted to pretend that you have control of how things all turn out, then, you should have stayed away from Jesus.”

That story is for Rick and Kristi as they brought Max for baptism several months back, and it is also for every other parent and baptized person present.

When Jesus gets hold of a person, he gives a different basis for life.

Profit is no longer the only measure.

I came across another story that points to the utter seriousness of what we do when b=we baptize.

A man who visited in Central America told of a village which had a profound theological understanding of baptism.

When he was at a service in this little village, two parents brought their young child for baptism.

It was unusual in that they didn't carry the infant in their arms, but instead in a child-sized coffin.

Don't misunderstand; the child was very much alive, but they understood the words of St. Paul in Romans 6:

For surely you know that when we were baptized into union with Christ Jesus, we were baptized into his death, in order that, just as Christ was raised form the dead by the glorious power of the Father, so also we might live a new life. [Romans 6:3-4]

Those parents knew that Baptism is a dying to an old way and a rising to a new way, a giving of control to Jesus.

There were tears from those parents, tears of sadness at their loss and tears of joy in the trust of Jesus' promise.

[Perhaps it is related to the tears of Hannah when she left Samuel at the tabernacle with Eli.]

Those village parents shed tears also of understanding the seriousness of Holy Baptism.

They knew what Jesus meant when he spoke: “I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed!”

Jesus was talking about his death, his cross.

This relationship between Jesus and us is costly!

Remember how costly it was for Jesus even before the cross: the embarrassment his family felt,

--how they wanted him to come home and be quiet,

--how he announced that those who listen to him are his true brothers and sisters,

--how he was unwelcome even in his hometown,

--how as the cross approached, all of his disciples fell away in confusion.

But the overriding fact, the fact which makes it all different for us is that God raised Jesus form death and continues that offer to us in Holy Baptism.

Each time we baptize, we admire and congratulate the person, whether child or adult, and say how nice it all is.

But this dare not disguise the utter seriousness of the event.

Families and sponsors are giving up a person, in order to get back a person of promise, whose life will never be the same.

Some weeks back, it was an 85 year old priest who was murdered at the altar while saying mass with some elderly nuns.

These days, it is young boys kidnapped, tortured, and held for ransom in Ethiopia because they name Jesus as Lord.

It is a businessman ridiculed for his ethical business practices and fair treatment of employees.

These and so any more examples remind us that it may not turn out to be an easy life, but because of Jesus' promise, it will be an enduring life, even in the face of death.

At the close of Baptism, we share the Peace.

As we step across the aisle today, think of which kind of peace we are invoking with those other persons.

Are we wishing only for peace and quiet, or are we wishing for the wholeness and completeness which Jesus brings?

We could sing it this way:

Lord, take my hand and lead me along life's way.

Direct, protect and feed me from day to day.

Close by your side abiding, I fear no foe;

For when your hand is guiding, in peace I go. [LBW#333.1+2]

Let all who will dare to trust Jesus' promise say... Amen.

Please note: The preceding sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him.