Scripture: I Corinthians 1: 18-31
For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to
us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, "I will destroy the
wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart."
Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this
age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God,
the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our
proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom,
but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling Block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles,
but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the
wisdom of God. For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is
stronger than human strength.
Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human
standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is
foolish in the world to shame the wise; god chose what is weak in the world to shame the
strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to
nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God. He is the
source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness
and sanctification and redemption, in order that, as it is written, "Let the one who
boasts, boast in the Lord."
-- I Corinthians 1:18-31
In a few moments we will baptism a little baby, Jamie Anne. I will invoke the name of
God and drench Jamie's head with water. We'll pray together for her, for her parents and
her family. Her parents will make promises to God, and so will we. We will welcome Jamie
into the family of God, of which she is already a part.
In the Presbyterian church, as in many other parts of the Christian Church, we have two
types of baptism, but they are the same sacrament. One is believer's baptism when someone
is old enough to say they want to center their life on Jesus Christ and publically commit
themselves to God in baptism. This morning we will baptize a baby who is not old enough to
speak, let alone study the doctrines of the church or choose to commit her life to Christ.
When we receive communion in different ways (being served in the pew or coming forward
to the table), we experience the sacrament differently. Each of those experiences shows us
a different dimension of ourselves and God, yet it is the same bread and cup we share and
the same grace we receive. So too, when we baptize at different ages, we experience the
sacrament differently and each of those experiences shows us a different dimension of
ourselves and God.
The Presbyterian Church in this country is often word oriented, as if reading enough
scripture, preaching enough sermons and writing enough books can teach us everything we
need to know about how much God loves us and how to be a faithful disciple of Jesus
Christ. Our brothers and sisters in other branches of the church remind us that God also
reaches us through the senses sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste. Baptism is one of
these sensual experiences beyond our words, and teaches us truths about God and ourselves
that I'm not sure are ever communicated so fully any other way.
In infant baptism, we dedicate a child to God. We say that she is not just her parents'
child, she is God's child, and we want her to grow up knowing Jesus's love for her. In
infant baptism, we specifically dedicate children not to evil or the destructive forces of
this world, but to God and Good.
Baptism is also more than dedicating a baby to God. Baptism is an outward and visible
sign of an inward and invisible grace.
Look at this wonderful baby. She is good and sweet and beautiful. Yet as good and
brilliant and talented as she is, she can't walk or talk or read or write or feed herself
or change her own diaper. She needs her parents, her brother and sister, aunts and uncles
to help her. She'll need teachers to open the world of knowledge to her, musicians to move
her heart with song, farmers to put food on her table, doctors and nurses to care for her
health, firefighters to keep her safe, and factory workers to build her a car someday
(frightening thought, Mom and Dad!).
Just as importantly, she needs the church, the company and fellowship of other
believers. Jamie cannot survive physically without people to take care of her. Nor can she
grow into the joy and love and strength of Christian faith without the church - other
Christians - beside her on the journey. Her church doesn't always have to look like this
one does. It can meet in a storefront or a group of believers who meet for study and
worship and fellowship in a house, or gather outdoors on a hillside in Madagascar. But
Jamie needs God and needs the church.
The Christian faith has nothing in it of rugged individualism, or just having your own
connection with God, or pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps, or making it on your
own. Those are the hallmarks of American individualism and individual spirituality, but
they are diametrically opposed to the central work God was doing on our behalf in Jesus
Christ, the work and faith to which we are called in our life.
We do not believe in an invincible God who leaps buildings in a single bound. We
believe in a God whose vulnerability and death on a cross brought triumph over evil. We do
not believe in a God who rides off alone into the sunset, like John Wayne and Clint
Eastwood, without committing to the messiness of human relationship. We believe in a God
who came to us in Jesus of Nazareth, walking and talking with us, eating and arguing with
us, getting angry with us and weeping with us, forgiving us and healing us.
God exists for relationship, and in baptism calls us into family, into the household of
God. The Christian life is about dependence, not independence, dependence on God and on
one another. The Christian life is about recognizing our fragility and mortality, and then
our strength and capacity for love that is ultimately eternal. The Christian life sees God
not only in the twinkling stars or jagged mountain peaks, but also sees God in the face of
the person in front of us, hears God's voice in the person on the telephone, feels God's
touch as we shake hands with the person next to us in the pew.
Baptism in the Presbyterian Church only occurs during a service of worship because it
involves a covenant not only between God and the person being baptized, or her parents,
but also a covenant between both the congregation and God, and the congregation and Jamie
and her family. This sacrament embodies the reality that Jamie is not on her own, nor are
her parents Lisa and Jim, nor brother and sister, nor in fact, are any of us.
Baptism is not ultimately what we do. It is what God does, and infant baptism
specifically reminds us of that reality. Infant baptism reminds us that God loves us and
cares for us not only when we are strong, but in our weakness, our vulnerability, our need
- especially in our weakness, our vulnerability, our need - for that is when we are most
human, and closest to the ways in which we are created in the image of God.
When we come before God in our vulnerability and weakness, knowing that we need God
just as much as babies need others to feed and bathe and shelter and love and care for
them, when we come to God in our deepest humanity, God responds with wisdom and strength
beyond our own.
When we recognize our vulnerability, God gives us a community of believers that laughs
with us when we laugh, weeps with us in our sorrow, teaches us how to share with others
and how to hope in the midst of despair, shows us how to live and how to die, picks us up
when we fall and stands beside us when we cannot stand alone - a community of faith that
does not make our vulnerability and dependence disappear, but celebrates them as the
wellspring of wisdom and strength.
The world says that being part of community is too messy, that getting involved in a
church is foolish, that depending on others just leads to disappointment, and that God is
too weak to save the world ... so learn to be independent, don't let anyone close, keep
your defenses high and do it on your own. It's the American way.
The baptism of a helpless, vulnerable baby reminds us in flesh and blood and water that
God has given us a better way.
As the Apostle Paul says, "God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's
weakness is stronger than human strength. Consider your own call, brothers and sisters:
not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of
noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what
is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world,
things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in
the presence of God."
God is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and
righteousness and sanctification and redemption. What better way to remember God's love
for us and our need for one another, than to welcome with the life-giving water of
baptism, a vulnerable little one such this? Let us remember our own baptism and be
thankful. Amen.
