Wise Investing
A Sermon preached on Sunday, January 13, 2008
by Pastor Terry Davis
First Presbyterian Church, Hartford, CT
Acts 10:34 - 43 34Then
Peter began to speak to them: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality,
35but
in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to
him. 36You
know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus
Christ—he is Lord of all.
37That
message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that
John announced: 38how
God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went
about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was
with him. 39We
are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to
death by hanging him on a tree;
40but
God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear,
41not
to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and
drank with him after he rose from the dead.
42He
commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained
by God as judge of the living and the dead.
43All
the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives
forgiveness of sins through his name.”
Matthew 3:13 - 17 13Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. 14John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” 15But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. 16And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. 17And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
Light candle on pedestal. Pour water into the Font. Remember the song, Jesus lit a candle by the waterside to see the little children were they really baptized.
Since last fall we have been leaving the Baptismal font uncovered and having the Acolytes pour water into the font most Sundays. This is in response to a General Assembly study on worship renewal; our worship team participated in the study and adopted these recommendations of the study in an attempt to help us to renew our understanding of the centrality of Baptism to the Christian life. The study underlines the chatechism’s instructions that we should remember our Baptism.
Unfortunately I have no memory of my Baptism, so it is difficult to remember it. Like many Presbyterians I was baptized when I was an infant. I did growing up hearing the stories about my baptism, how I was born 65 years ago on January 4 and our family traveled to my Grandparents home in Geneva, New York for the following Mother’s day where I was baptized by Dr. Harper in the same Presbyterian Church where my mother had been Baptized.
I do remember seeing the same event take place five years later when my sister was born so at least I can picture the place and circumstances. I know there are others in the congregation who know about the circumstances of their baptism, those who have told me that they were baptized by such and such a minister, several who know that they were Baptized by their grandfather, and a few others who were baptized at a later age so they have actual memories of their Baptism.
While I have no memories of my own baptism I have many memories of baptisms that I have seen and those in which I was the celebrant. Of course I remember our daughter’s baptism and the Baptisms of our oldest grandchild, Hannah. I was telling some people last week about worshipping at First Presbyterian Church in Farmington, MI where our first sanctuary had no running water. Dick Geiger, our pastor came to the Baptismal font ready to baptize an infant one Sunday when he discovered that there was no water in the font. The congregation waited for more than a few minutes before one of the elders could walk to the other building on the property and return with some water for the Baptism. I learned from this experience to always check for water on those Sundays when I am doing a Baptism. What I am less used to checking is to be sure that there is grape juice in the pitcher on communion Sundays and as a result coming to the pouring of the cup and discovering more than once what I discovered last Sunday that there was no juice to pour.
I have many memories of the many baptisms I have done over the years, the children who were still getting dressed or changed when the Baptism was ready to happen, the ones who cried, and others who slept through the whole thing, as well as a few who needed changing immediately after their Baptism.
My most striking memories of baptisms however are not of infant baptisms but those of youth and adults. I remember when I was still a student in seminary and serving a rural congregation that one of the young people in the congregation wanted to be baptized, had never been baptized as an infant. He wanted to be baptized by immersion and I needed to arrange for the moderator of the Church to come for the Baptism since I was not yet ordained, and I needed to make arrangements with the local Baptist Church to use their Church and pool for the Baptism. The moderator, an uptight Presbyterian minister had not only never done an immersion baptism, he had never even seen anyone else do it and he was quite uncomfortable with the situation that his student had gotten him into.
At the Church I served in Louisville we purchased a church building of our own after existing for over 70 years in rented space in a community center. We bought the building from an Apostolic congregation which practiced immersion Baptism so they had constructed a Baptizing pool in this building they had bought from the Methodists years before. Now the pool was not located in the front of the sanctuary with a glass wall high up over the Pulpit as we might see in more affluent Baptist Churches. The pool that we inherited was sunken into the floor of a platform and normally covered by a trap door in a chapel that was located adjacent to the main sanctuary. For immersion baptism we would all process out of the main sanctuary singing Take Me To The Water, and Down by the Riverside and Wade in the Water until everyone got seated or found a place to stand in this smaller chapel.
We were the only Presbyterian Church in the state of Kentucky to have a baptizing pool our members quickly begin to ask to be baptized by immersion instead of by sprinkling or pouring. Butch Shelby was the first person to be baptized in that pool; Butch was in his late 20s at that time and stood at least six foot two inches and towered over his then five foot eight inch pastor. We decided that it might be wisest if one of the elders in the congregation helped with the Baptism and this became the pattern ever since. I learned a lot about immersion baptisms in that pool. I had seen baptisms in Pentecostal and Apostolic Churches before and thought that when the people went down into the water they began to shout because they got the Holy Ghost, but the first time in February I went down those steps into the pool sunk in the ground I understood that they were probably shouting because they were about to freeze to death.
The most memorable Baptism I ever did was for Archie Cross. Archie was a sinner, he would tell you this. He was nearly 80 and had never joined a Church, had never been baptized, but he began to attend our Church where his wife was a member. You would never know that they were a couple, they lived a few blocks from the Church and walked separately, she was there early because she was one of our uniformed ushers, he was part of a group of men who stood out front and smoked cigarettes until the service began and then came in. Archie always sat on the back row. Everyone in the Church knew that Archie was un-baptized, and when the invitation to Christian discipleship was given there were many prayers sent up for Archie. I would ask him when he was going to join the Church; I asked him if he didn’t want to walk down that aisle before he had six men carrying him down the aisle. Archie was there every Sunday; he even visited the sick and shut in members of the Church, some of whom reported to me that when Archie visited them that he said the most beautiful prayer. He told me he was a terrible sinner and had to get right with God before he could be baptized. He would never tell me what he did that made him such a terrible sinner. I know he was a gambler, but so were some of the elders in the Church. From time to time I would see a member’s name or an elder’s name on the police blotter in the paper for illegal gambling, usually cards or dice. He said he was waiting for the spirit to touch him, and then he would come forward. I wanted to rig up some wires to that back pew and shock him out of his seat, make him think that the Holy Ghost had touched, but one Sunday here comes Archie down the aisle ready to give his life, what was left of it, to Jesus, and the next Sunday we went down into that Baptizing pool. He didn’t shout when he went down into the pool, but there were some shouts and a lot of wet eyes in the congregation that Sunday.
Now Butch and Archie and all the teens who I took into that pool over the next 13 years certainly remember their Baptism. I do not think that immersion is necessary; and I believe that there are important reasons to baptize infants, but I do know that people who are baptized by immersion as youth or adults will look back on their baptisms as memorable occasions. I also know that Paul says we are buried with Christ in our Baptism and raised to newness of life, and that immersion symbolizes the burial and resurrection in a way that sprinkling never can.
But for the majority of us who were baptized as infants, how can we remember our Baptism? I don’t think that it is so important to remember the circumstances of our Baptism, but we are called to remember that we are baptized, and that in baptism we receive the assurance, the sign and seal of our cleansing, and our welcome into the household of God. Baptism is the outward and visible sign of God’s amazing grace that claims us as his children, members of his family, even before we know or understand anything about the family of God.
It seems unfortunate to discover that some of the younger members of the Church family know nothing about their baptism, and I discover that there young people who do not even know if they were ever baptized. We who are parents and grandparents need to understand the importance of their children growing up knowing that they have been baptized, knowing they are Baptized, knowing that they are children of God. Children need to know about the promises of God given to them and sealed in this holy sacrament of Baptism and we also need to remember our Baptism, to remember who we are and whose we are.