The Episcopal Church starts every calendar year, more or less, with the stories and remembrance of baptism.
So today we heard the story of Jesus, baptized in the Jordan, and launched into ministry as God’s Beloved Son, full of the power of God, as witnessed by the Holy Spirit. And the story of the disciples in Ephesus baptized with the Holy Spirit, the baptism John promised us Jesus would bring, who immediately speak with the power of God.
Both of those stories remind us that baptism – Jesus’, Paul’s, yours and mine – is not a simple cleansing, with forgiveness. And it’s not a protective shield to keep us from getting worn or dirtied or injured by the evil in the world.
Instead, baptism is the sacrament that creates us – and keeps re-creating us – as children of God, connected to Jesus and one another in God’s nurturing, unbreakable love. And baptism empowers us with the Holy Spirit, to speak and act and live as part of Christ, God’s hands and feet and heart active day by day in this world.
I need that reminder right now. Maybe you do, too.
Right now, it can seem like many protective shields we’ve counted on – whether masks and distance, or tradition, or the US Constitution, or anything else – are thin and fragile. The coronavirus gets closer to us, our friends and family. The familiar rituals of church can’t be in church. The US Capitol building was overrun by a mob intent on disrupting our constitutional process and overturning a democratic election – and who succeeded in committing national security breaches, theft, selfies, and trashing the place, if nothing else.
Many of us feel vulnerable, feel a betrayal of trust: new or renewed disappointments in elected leaders; familiar resentments and the bitterness of division with our fellow citizens; the echo of ages of injustice and oppression in the strikingly different ways Washington responds to the “protests” of privilege and the protests of the disenfranchised.
Some of us feel unprotected, many of us feel isolated, in the face of COVID cases that rise and rise.
We all need that assurance of connection, that experience of empowerment that Jesus demonstrates at the Jordan river, that Paul conveys in Ephesus, and that God offers each of us in our own baptism. It doesn’t matter whether we’re baptized as infants, children, or adults: we who are baptized are marked forever as children of God, connected by love to God and to every other one of God’s children at the root of our souls. We who are baptized have been given the gift of the Holy Spirit, the opportunity to transform the world, to heal betrayal, resist evil, not with our own strength, but with God’s, in the simple actions of our everyday lives.
I know it doesn’t always feel that way.
I know it’s easy to feel powerless in the face of the news. Easy to feel disconnected from one another.
I know there are days, or hours, or years, or moments, when the love of God, the community of faith, the transformative power of the Spirit seem unreal, or completely missing from our lives.
I know there are times when our baptism doesn’t really seem to matter.
That’s why the church calls on us to actively renew our “Baptismal Covenant”, as you and I will do today in just a few minutes.
When we renew this covenant – in worship together, or in our personal prayer – we repeat the Creed as the story of God’s love: in creation, in the coming of Christ, in redemption and resurrection and eternal life and forgiveness and our connection with the whole communion of God’s people, now and to come.
We repeat the promises that describe the way we live in response to knowing we’re beloved children of God: living in community of faith and prayer; loving all God’s children as ourselves, or as Christ; trusting God’s forgiveness enough to seek it when we get tangled up in the ordinary evils of the world; inviting others to share the good we’ve been given; and sharing in God’s work of building a world where justice and peace come naturally and human dignity is universal.
As we repeat all that we sink our soul’s roots deeper into the love of God we need in the face of evil, despair, confusion, disconnection or indifference.
When we affirm that we live this way with God’s help we accept all over again the gift of the Holy Spirit that has empowered us to use God’s strength, not just our own, and remember that we are part of God’s work of healing and transforming the world.
I need that now; maybe you do, too.
In a statement responding to the events of this week our Presiding Bishop Michael Curry anchors us in the history of our faith as we face this historic moment, and asks us all to “make a commitment, a renewed commitment, to live the way of love as Jesus has taught us.”
That is exactly what we do in renewing our baptismal covenant today.
And Bishop Curry asks us to act on that by “go[ing] out and bless[ing] somebody. Bless somebody you disagree with. Bless somebody you agree with. But to go out and bless somebody by helping somebody along the way.”
When Bishop Curry says that, I’m reminded that we don’t have to solve a national crisis or cure a deadly illness or produce miracles in one fell swoop.
We do it little by little, in the face of crisis, and in the day to day.
The actions of the way of love, of the baptized life, are usually small: a little stretch for us on our own, within reach because we’re empowered with God’s love and Spirit.
Things like saying “I think it would be wrong to do that” or “I want us to do the right thing” when it would be easier to stay silent and let it go.
Being generous in some small way with a stranger you don’t know; being generous – repeatedly – with a co-worker who irritates you or a friend who can’t keep up.
Admitting our failures and asking forgiveness, one small thing at a time.
Letting someone know you want to pray for them.
Praying, even when you don’t feel like it.
Praying – even just a little – for those who feel like our enemies.
When I do one of those things, I can actually feel God’s love just a little more closely. I can feel just a little more strength, the power to do one more thing, fueled by God’s strength and spirit.
And that makes it just a bit easier to resist the evil in the world that tries to use fear or isolation or resentment to pull us into hate or despair. Just a little bit easier, each time, to face a world that can be dangerous, disappointing, oppressive, or lonely. Just a little bit easier to recognize and be part of the healing, generosity, renewal, connection, grace and love that God has built into us, into all creation.
Our baptism is a gift God gives us not just for weeks like this one, but for any of the weeks or hours or years when we wonder how to respond to betrayal, loss, exhaustion, or evil; when we need transformation, hope, trust and joy.
In those times – and also, maybe especially – in the times when nothing seems to be happening and baptism feels irrelevant, God and the church invite us to renew ourselves in this unbreakable connection of God’s beloved children, in the power of the Holy Spirit washed into our everyday lives.
So let’s practice that now.
Let’s receive God’s gifts of connection and power again today, renewing our baptism in God’s love and strength, for these days and all the days to come.
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