February 2013 Newsletter Article

 Lutheran Church of the Savior Newsletter article for February 2013

Let water be the sacred sign

that we must die each day

to rise again by his design

as foll’wers of his way.

Renewing Spirit, hear our praise

for your baptismal pow’r

that washes us through all our days.

Come, cleanse again this hour.

-          Thomas E. Herbranson “This Is the Spirit’s Entry Now,” ELW 448

Recently, my wife had one of those God-is-working-here-right-now experiences that are the stuff of every pastor’s dreams. A faithful, long-time parishioner questioned her after a sermon, “Am I to understand, Pastor Sarah, that it is God, rather than the person baptized, who does the work in baptism?”

Pastor Sarah replied that, indeed, God is the one doing the work of baptism. We merely receive God’s promise and gift in baptism, and pastors, parents, and sponsors participate in the work of conveying God’s gift and promise.

Tears filled the parishioner’s eyes as she explained to Pastor Sarah that almost fifty years earlier, her son had died before he was baptized. Wracked with grief at the death of her son, she had asked her pastor then what had happened to her un-baptized son. His response: “Well, he wasn’t baptized, so…” The pastor did not have the courage to tell this woman his beliefs suggested that her son was in hell. He let her figure that out on her own. And then, for almost fifty years, she carried with her the weight of her failure to baptize her son, her sin that had doomed an infant to an eternity of separation from God.

Until this sermon from Pastor Sarah in 2013, when this woman heard clearly, for the first time, that God is the one responsible for the work of baptism. That it is God who forgives, and God who promises to stay with a beloved child always. And if God – the God of love and grace and mercy we know through Jesus Christ – is responsible for doing that work in baptism, then couldn’t God offer this eternal gift and promise even outside of the baptismal ritual we experience? Yes, she and Pastor Sarah decided together, God could do that. God could choose mercy, because God’s love for us does not depend on our decisions, or our promises, or on what we do or what we fail to do.

God’s love for us depends on God’s own promise to us, echoing the promise a voice from heaven made to Jesus in his own baptism, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” We baptized in order to clearly hear the promise, in order to receive it and to take responsibility for our response to God’s promise. We respond by to God’s love by loving and serving God and one another. But God’s love does not depend on our response. God’s promise does not depend on our promises. God’s promise comes first. God is the one doing the work; we merely respond to and participate in God’s work.

This last, critical insight extends far beyond baptism. Feeding the hungry is not our work. It is God’s work, and when we recognize that work, or find a place where that work is not currently being done, we respond by participating in God’s work. Teaching children the story of Jesus is not our work. It is God’s work, and when we see what God is doing and respond we become the hands God uses to accomplish it. Celebrating Holy Communion is not our work; it is God’s work, enacting the mystery of Christ’s real presence among us, and we participate by saying the words and singing the songs and eating the bread and drinking the wine. What we do together as church is God’s work.

And if that is not enough, here is the kicker: because all this is God’s work, God’s responsibility, then God is responsible as well for the results of that work. Didn’t feed every hungry person today? You are not responsible for “failing;” rather God will give you another opportunity to participate in that work tomorrow. None of us is responsible for saving another. Salvation is God’s work, already accomplished through Jesus, and we can only respond by telling his story in word and deed to everyone we meet.

On this week’s episode of NCIS (a popular TV show among Americans in general, and, I happen to know, among many LCS members in particular), brilliant, loyal, compassionate Abby is in tears because she thinks she’s not good enough. She cannot right every wrong. She cannot reconcile every estranged family. She cannot make everything right. And if she is not enough to make everything right, why bother to try? Why bother to help or fix anything at all? My wife and I looked at each other and said, “That girl needs some gospel.” She needed to hear exactly this, that none of us needs to be good enough, because God is responsible for God’s work. Abby is a character always doing God’s work, in her own over-caffeinated way. She can give her all in that work because it is not her own, because at the end of the day God is responsible for the completion of that work. She can wake every morning sure of herself as a forgiven, freed-in-Christ child of God, and she can go forth and seek the work, God’s work, in which she can participate on this day.

And so it is with us. Too often we stress ourselves, stretch ourselves, guilt ourselves, hold ourselves to impossible standards because we think everything depends on us. I do it. You do it. Every well-intentioned person does this sometimes, blaming oneself and carrying the weight of failure that can cripple us. When you find yourself feeling this way, take a step back. Take a deep breath, and remember how God sees you. Ask someone else, if necessary. “How does God see me?” God sees you as a beloved child, as a recipient of God’s loving promise of mercy and forgiveness. God sees you as a participant in God’s work of reconciling the world and feeding the hungry and welcoming the stranger and building God’s kingdom. We are not responsible to see the kingdom built. That’s God’s work. We cannot build the kingdom, and yet paradoxically every day we respond to God’s love by doing God’s work by helping to build the kingdom. 

In the hymn quoted above, our part of the work is to die. Not literally. We die each day to sin and stress and suffering, and we rise anew each morning, washed and set free for a life of joyful response to God’s gift, God’s promise of love. 

Thanks,

Pastor Andrew