It's good to be back and sharing in worship with you this morning. As the years go forward and the changes of life come, as they do to us all, the experience of coming together as God's family, beloved children all, reaffirming our faith, grows more and more precious and, indeed, life-giving. This morning, I come to this time grateful to God and grateful for you-for your constancy, and your love, and the stubborn faith we share that defies death in its every manifestation.

Through these summer weeks, you have continued in this sermon series on the nature and purpose of the church. I've read Greg and Larry's sermons and want to continue forward this morning with a few more reflections on the second of the two sacraments that define and shape us as United Methodist Christians: baptism.

As we baptize little Jordyn Patricia today and welcome her into God's worldwide family- the church-let me share these reflections written by another mother on the occasion of her baby daughter's baptism:

What I want most for my daughter is for her to know that she belongs to God and is loved by God. And that the God who loves her and gave her to us as a precious gift is the same God who made all the creatures of the earth, and who loves all the children of the world. I want her to cry when other children cry, and to laugh when other children laugh. I want my daughter to love others as she is loved-to be generous and compassionate and forgiving. I want her to feel the connectedness of human life and all creation.

So I bring her today to the waters of baptism that she may feel on her forehead the cool, refresh- ing blessing of God. May she know from now until the day she dies that her life is in God's hands and may she realize that she is connected by water and the Spirit to the family of God.

And may our little Jordyn Patricia come to know that she, too, belongs to God, is loved by God, and is connected by water and the Spirit to the whole family of God.

This is the essence of the meaning of baptism for us as United Methodists. We are heirs to John Wesley's embrace of infant baptism, through which babies and children are initiated into God's grace. There is still a great deal of confused thinking out there about the meaning of baptism. There are holdovers of that old, now discarded, theology that unbaptised children, should they die, would not go to heaven. In that old way of thinking, baptism became something of a magic potion, warding off evil spirits, conferring on the child some sort of divine insurance policy.

Let me say, as clearly as I can this morning, that that is NOT what we believe-about God, about life, about children, or about baptism. Baptism IS a sign of God's grace and God's love. It IS the beginning of that child's lifelong journey of faith. It is incorporation into the church, the family of God. As one contemporary theologian has written: "Baptism, then, is not so much event as it is process. Like the Christian life for which it is both empowerment and metaphor, baptism is dynamic, not static; a journey, not a destination; a quest, not an acquisition. Baptism is promise, the fulfilling of which requires a lifetime and beyond."

That is why, for example, we present the family with the child's baptismal candle, lighted today and then hopefully each year on the anniversary of the baptism. Like birthday candles, it helps mark the movement of time, and change and growth, the fullness of the past and the promise of the future. It is a joyful thing, this baptism, to be remembered and appreciated throughout our lives. We emphasize the role of parents and family and godparents or sponsors, if they have been chosen and haven taken on that responsibility. And it's why we now baptize in the context of the worshiping community, not in a private, family ceremony, to emphasize the role the whole congregation plays in the nurture and upbringing of the child in the Christian faith.

At this point, I stand with a famous United Methodist, Hillary Rodham Clinton, who, quoting an old African proverb, wrote: "It Takes A Village to Raise a Child." Indeed! It takes a congregation, indeed, a global church, to raise up a newly baptized Christian to experience the depth and the scope of God's love. It takes the whole of the church-Methodist, Lutheran, Catholic, Armenian Orthodox, American, French, African, Korean, Hispanic, free church, high church, low church, contemporary church, active church, contemplative church, missional church, justice-seeking church, worshiping church--it takes the whole of the church to raise up this child into the fullness of God's love. Baptism is the beginning of the journey.

We are God's people, formed and shaped by water and the Spirit. As United Methodists, we can baptize by sprinkling, pouring or immersing. Each in a different way symbolizes the action of the Spirit in our lives. We might be sprinkled with a shower of the gifts of the Spirit. We might experience the pouring out of God's love upon us until our cup overflows. And sometimes we might even be privileged to experience full immersion into the sense of God's presence and promise in our lives. And we baptize at any point along life's journey-infants, children, youth and adults-each age bringing its own set of questions and insights.

Hear this account of an eleven-year old's baptism:

On the night before I was to be baptized, I could not go to sleep-for hours it seemed, I just couldn't. And I was hurting. There were so many questions running around my head-so much I could not understand.

Over and over, I kept asking God and myself, am I really ready to be baptized? Old enough? Good enough? Do I understand enough? How can I be sure . . . there was so much about God, about me, that I did not understand.

. . . . I kept struggling with all the questions and no answers until I heard a still, small voice speak to me. Not out loud. I did not hear it with my ears. But it felt more real than anything else in all my years did. I heard just three words: "It's all right." Just like that. But they covered every-thing for me. Breathing my thank you to God, I went to sleep, feeling enfolded by love, sure that God loves me just as I am and will always love me . . . [and the next morning] I went running to be baptized as if running to meet the sun rising from the depth of the sea.

Now, after more than seven decades, I recall, with wonder and thanksgiving, the many other times of fear's near-despair transmuted into epiphanies for me by the still, small voice within. As I grew older, the three words became other words: "God is love." Perhaps they are the same.

You know, there are times during the church year, when we share together in the beautiful service of the renewal of our baptismal vows. But I pray, too, that each occasion of baptism might be for us, in our own hearts and prayers, a time of remembering, and renewal and recommitment. May this day be a time of giving thanks for our baptism and our place in the church. And if there are any here today who have not been baptized and would like to talk about it, or pray with someone about it, please come to any of our staff or our Lay Leader. The doors are open.

The doors are open, and the water is fresh and clean. It is, like God's grace, readily available to all, offering life, and new life. Bringing us into a family that stretches through time, backwards and forwards, and all around the globe.

We are all one in Christ Jesus. May the Holy Spirit ever work within us, that we may be faithful disciples of Jesus Christ and walk in the way that leads to life.

NOTES:

From Alive Now, May/June 1994: Karen Burtner Graham "On the Occasion of My Daughter" and Emily Sargent Councilman "Three Words."
Gayle Carleton Felton. This Gift of Water: The Practice and Theology of Baptism Among Methodists in America. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1992.

© Patricia E. Farris, 2002. Permission is given for brief quotation with attribution. All other rights reserved.