Epiphany 4, Jan 28, 2018 -- St Paul’s

Epiphany 4, Jan. 28, 2018 – St. Paul’s

lectionary

Deuteronomy 18:15–20
1 Corinthians 8:1–13
Mark 1:21–28

Opening

It was last year nearly 2 months ago that I stood in this place and announced that we were going to begin to listen to the gospel of Mark in this the year of Mark. We have worked our way through Advent Christmas and now a good way through epiphany and we’re all the way to the 21st verse in chapter 1. Wow.

Mark the gospel writer who is so spare with his language. the gospel writer who gets right to the point and moves on with a narrative that is fast paced. And in 2 months we’ve still just begun.

• This is the gospel of Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God
• John the Baptist came preparing the way
• John baptized Jesus and immediately Jesus headed off into the wilderness for an intense retreat
• After that intense time of prayer and exercise, Jesus was ready to begin his ministry
• He called some folk to accompany him and share in his work (as we hear today)
• He went to Capernaum, preached, and healed.

In some real way Mark’s gospel portrays Jesus ministry beginning with today’s account of him going before the folks at Capernaum preaching with authority and healing the man with unclean spirits. Really the rest of Mark’s gospel is going to continue with that theme: Jesus teaches with authority and he performs Miracles with power and he does it over and over again until finally He was in such trouble with the authorities – Jewish and Roman – that there was nothing left to do but get rid of him.

Often when I am talking about the gospel of Mark I emphasize that his gospel was written with one primary purpose in mind and that is to bring about a change of heart, a change of life, in the people he met so that they would put their whole life and trust into the hands of this Jesus, the Messiah the Son of God. The gospel was written down so that everyone who hears the gospel will be challenged to change their life, to repent and follow the Messiah.

It is as if with each episode we hear in the gospel Mark is behind the scenes asking the question of us, are you ready now? Are you ready now to give it all to Jesus?

change with grace and power ?

I once had an exchange with a priest that was rather heated. In later years we became good friends and minister to one another. but at this point early in our relationship I made the claim that the heart of the Christian Life is to bring about change, conversion, in our life.

I later realized that the priest I was speaking to imagined that what I meant was the same thing as the common message of Protestant evangelical Christians. She thought she knew what I meant by conversion.

What I had in mind and what I believe to this day is that the gospel calls each and everyone of us from the place where we are to a new place that goes by many names. I’ll call it today the place where there is a peace which passeth all understanding.

The fact is that none of us is in that place now. all of us long to be in that place. And in order to get there each one of us has to give up the person we have been and become a new person. To make a change in our life. To become more and more like this one who calls us to conversion.

Only say the word, Lord, and I shall be healed

As a part of my own personal devotions as I celebrate Eucharist, I include a prayer that used to be part of the Catholic liturgy. The words were changed in 2011 – the Vatican was imposing it’s view of what the prayer ought to be so that all 1 billion catholics would be praying the same thing. At the point at which one is prepared to come forward for communion the old liturgy said, “ Lord I am not worthy to come before you but only say the word and I shall be healed.”

The overhaul had been in the works for a decade, and was “aimed at unifying the more than 1 billion Catholics worldwide with a translation that is as close as possible to the original Latin version.”

The new words became, “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.” The words themselves are based on a passage from the gospel of Matthew (8:8) in which Jesus entered a man’s home and healed his servant. blog

And I of course have no need to say the words from the Roman liturgy in any case. I say them to myself as I am preparing and washing my hands before the Eucharistic prayer begins because they have spoken to me of my need for healing and Christ’s power to heal whatever it is in me that needs to change, to be healed.

Maybe I’m a curmudgeon. Maybe I’m just rigidly conservative. Though I don’t think I’m either one of those things. But I think the effort to unify the text across all languages for Catholics results in a much weaker prayer. Sometimes I need to be healed of my headache. Sometimes it is the wandering mind, focused more on what I am going to do later in the day or on our cruise in the spring. Sometimes I need to be healed of body, mind, and spirit. Sometimes in ways I can’t even articulate.

So I pray, Only say the word, Lord, and I shall be healed. In whatever way I need to be healed right at this moment. If it’s an unclean spirit that needs to be cashed out do it. I am ready to be changed. I am ready to be healed. Even when I’m not ready I pray the words and trust that God will do the work.

Paul’s admonition

The words we hear from Paul this morning were in fact spoken many years before the gospel of Mark was written. they were written as Paul and his fellow workers we’re planting the seeds of what would become the church to which Mark and Matthew and Luke and John would write their Gospels. Paul’s words were spoken to people who had experienced the profound healing of which the gospel speaks.

Paul’s passage sounds like it’s about fasting, being a vegan or not, whether we eat at a fancy restaurant or McDonalds, or about idols.

It’s really about the broader subject of caring for our fellow pilgrims. Being unwilling to knowingly cause scandal or offense. Being united in spirit and body.

The nature of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist has famously been argued over almost throughout the life of the church. Over the centuries and millenia there has scarcely been a controversy as passionate and long-lasting as the nature of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist.

It has divided Protestants and Catholics, conservatives and progressives, Orthodox and heterodox.

Paul’s words to us urge us to give up controversy for the sake of the well-being of the community. as if to say, Is Christ present by what used to be called transubstantiation? Is Christ present symbolically? Is Christ present in the community and not just in the bread and the wine?

I had a teacher in seminary who when he was teaching us about these debates within the life of the church said something I have never forgotten. And it has been a light for me ever since. He said, you know, no one has ever argued for the Divine absence in the Eucharist. What we have all argued over is the nature of Christ’s presence.

How crazy is that? Jesus the son of God the Messiah is right here in our midst. And we argue over such unimportant things. every conflict over non-essentials weakens the witness of the church.

To the point

Our reading from Mark’s gospel takes us directly to the point. it is not whether or not we are filled with an unclean spirit. it is that each of us needs to be healed in some way or another. It is that each of us comes in need of change in order to be like Jesus himself. Each of us comes with the need to give ourselves completely to this one who Mark calls the Son of God.

It is not ours to say that it needs to be done this way and not that way. What is ours is to say I am yours, my Lord and my God.

Conversion

homily-baptism-of-lord-jan-7

Homily: Baptism of the Lord

St. Paul’s, Monroe * Jan 7, 2018

Bump into baptism

[Image of retreat center east of Chicago and small church ministry] … having coffee with the designer of the chapel and the font.

The font was so refreshing with water running down a little rivulet into a small pool. You could easily put your hand down into the water – make the sign of the cross.

The architect told me he wanted people to bump into their baptism the moment they entered his chapel.

I immediately latched onto that phrase and thought “How perfect.”

I first bumped into my baptism with Owen’s baptism (my first child), then subsequently at the baptism of Julian, then their sister Miriam, etc.

Once my life reaches its end, my hope is that I will have not just bumped into my baptism but I will have lived into the fullness of it.

Jesus baptism marks the beginning of his ministry

Jesus’ baptism by John is at the beginning of all the gospels. The gospels are not reporting to us biographical data about Jesus. They are preaching to us the good news of God’s work in the life of God’s people.

They are good news For people who need good news.

They are not biographies, they are proclamations, intended to create followers of the Risen Lord – otherwise known in later years as Christians

They all place this baptism at the beginning of the Good News

As a great bible story-teller once put it, while telling the story of the whole Bible – “The Bible begins like all good stories begin, with ‘Once upon a time…’”

So with the Gospels and their Good News, they begin the way the gospel has to begin – with Jesus’ baptism by John The evidence from the gospels demonstrates that the early church Gospel story-tellers were in fact scandalized by this part of the story, the part about Jesus being baptized by John at the beginning of his ministry.

Imagine: at the very beginning, from the very beginning, the Gospel has caused a scandal.

We might suspect, then, that where the gospel no longer scandalizes, it may have lost its connection to its origins.

The scandal in the case of the baptism is that Jesus – whom John himself said he had come to prepare the way for – he was but a servant to the one who was to come after – that it was John who baptized Jesus. The lesser, as it were, baptizing the greater.

The Scandal

It has taken me a long time to begin to appreciate the central role baptism plays in our vocation as Christians. In fact I am very much still learning.

Many years ago I was introduced to a phrase that sort of captures my gradual learning about baptism. Baptism, a teacher of mine said, is not the end of something – at least in the sense that you’ve arrived at that point. Our whole life after baptism, he said, is living into our baptism.

At least in my life, this has had enormous significance and I would say also enormous consequences. It turns out Baptism matters.

It has been a journey from thinking of baptism as somehow a ticket to heaven – preventing children from limbo or worse. That was the level I knew and thought about baptism when my first child was born. I didn’t really know anything beyond some kind of folklore version of the meaning of baptism. I thought I should get Owen baptized so that he will be saved.

Without knowing, of course, what that meant.

By the time my 2nd child was born and had major surgery before he was 2 weeks old and we were planning to baptize him at Easter in 2 months but it now appeared that having him baptized instead on Pentecost like his brother was a better idea and I had to be an MC at my first funeral the first funeral I had ever been to was one I MC’ed, attended by 2 bishops and many priests and we carried the coffin of the 2 year old who had died tragically to the cemetery while the bell tolled and I wondered with my seminary teacher what if Julian my son had died before he was baptized –

Well, things happened with a lot of intensity to cause me think in new ways about about Baptism.

It turns out that lots of people were thinking about the meaning of baptism. Even more, as I would say today, Christians have been thinking hard about baptism from the beginning. Baptism is like really really important for Christians.

It’s one of the things that has divided Christians over the centuries. It’s the reason that in the early years people would wait until their death bed to get baptized.

After Jesus was baptized, he went off on retreat and prayed. That’s what we call the temptation in the wilderness. When he returned he preached his first sermon. It started off with the words: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.”

Baptism. Spirit. Prayer. Preaching.

Baptism isn’t so much about salvation – at least from Jesus’ perspective – as it is about what we might call ministry and vocation. Jesus’ ministry and vocation began with his baptism.

That’s a clue for us in trying to understand our own baptism. It is, I have come to believe, the beginning of our vocation and ministry as Christians. Not so much about what we will be doing in life eternal as it is about what our life needs to be about now.

Along the way in my own journey to understand baptism, someone pointed out that for the first few hundred years of the church people would spend – 1, 2, 3, or more years – preparing for baptism. It was a big deal. People prepared for baptism about like people prepare for ordained ministry in our day.

Ministry of all the baptized

Baptism launched Jesus’ ministry. Perhaps we ought to think of it along the same lines for us. It is the beginning of call, of a vocation, – the calling to be a Christian.

It may turn out that the most important thing that can happen to anyone is their baptism. All the other things that have become a part of the Church – ordination, preaching, bishops, priests, deacons, altar guild, vestry – all of that is not as important as the one thing that binds us together. Baptism. And it all began with Jesus’ baptism by John.

Holy Spirit

As Jesus’ baptism is understood in the context of the Spirit – the Spirit about which Isaiah spoke centuries before, and which settled on Jesus to give him the authority of the Father – so we ought to understand our own Baptism as being stamped with the Holy Spirit.

This is not a gentle thing, a peaceful, predictable thing. Our lives are hardly ever gentle, peaceful, and predictable. The meaning of our baptism is not gentle, peaceful, and predictable.

It is wild like the Spirit. It is not to be controlled like the Spirit is not controlled. It is unpredictable like the Spirit is unpredictable.

Wild Goose image of Holy Spirit

Throughout history there have been groups of Christians who have discovered the beauty of a life lived on God’s terms. The Celtic Christians of the early middle ages was one such group. some language for it

They understood from Scripture and from their own life experience that God was not someone we bend to our wants and desires, but rather someone who was beyond our control. Someone who we would need to pursue rather than subdue.

Interestingly, the ancient Celtic people saw the Holy Spirit not as a hovering white dove but as a “wild goose.” The meaning behind this peculiar choice is because they saw how the Holy Spirit has a tendency to disrupt and surprise. The Holy Spirit moves in our lives in an unexpected fashion, similar to the actions of a wild goose. source

We are made in Christ to fly not walk about

Living into our baptism, like Jesus living into his, means living heroic lives. The calling requires extraordinary lives of blessing, forgiveness, service, prayer.

“Come to the edge,“ he said.
”We can’t, we’re afraid!“ they responded.
”Come to the edge,“ he said.
”We can’t, We will fall!“ they responded.
”Come to the edge," he said.
And so they came.
And he pushed them.
And they flew.”

― Guillaume Apollinaire

This life lived with the Holy Wild Goose can look like many different things. But tame and boring it is not. Some traditional characteristics include:

Corporal Works of Mercy

• To feed the hungry.
• To give water to the thirsty.
• To clothe the naked.
• To shelter the homeless.
• To visit the sick.
• To visit the imprisoned, or ransom the captive.[19]
• To bury the dead.

Spiritual Works of Mercy

• To instruct the ignorant.
• To counsel the doubtful.
• To admonish the sinners.
• To bear patiently those who wrong us.
• To forgive offenses.
• To comfort the afflicted.
• To pray for the living and the dead.

It’s not an exhaustive description of the wild adventure the life of the baptized Christian is meant to be. But it begins to describe it.

Your Calling at St. Paul’s

You are calling a priest to your parish. I would urge you to look to your baptism for guidance and discernment.

Choose a leader who seeks to serve not dominate. Find someone who knows that to be a Christian is to fly. Seek a rector who knows first hand that to be a Christian is sometimes wild and sometimes not, but always an adventure.

Trust that the one who comes will have a real attraction for Wild Geese, unpredictable, honking, geese.

You will have found someone who is living into the fullness of his baptism.

homily-baptism-of-lord-jan-7

Homily: Baptism of the Lord

St. Paul’s, Monroe * Jan 7, 2018

Bump into baptism

[Image of retreat center east of Chicago and small church ministry] … having coffee with the designer of the chapel and the font.

The font was so refreshing with water running down a little rivulet into a small pool. You could easily put your hand down into the water – make the sign of the cross.

The architect told me he wanted people to bump into their baptism the moment they entered his chapel.

I immediately latched onto that phrase and thought “How perfect.”

I first bumped into my baptism with Owen’s baptism (my first child), then subsequently at the baptism of Julian, then their sister Miriam, etc.

Once my life reaches its end, my hope is that I will have not just bumped into my baptism but I will have lived into the fullness of it.

Jesus baptism marks the beginning of his ministry

Jesus’ baptism by John is at the beginning of all the gospels. The gospels are not reporting to us biographical data about Jesus. They are preaching to us the good news of God’s work in the life of God’s people.

They are good news For people who need good news.

They are not biographies, they are proclamations, intended to create followers of the Risen Lord – otherwise known in later years as Christians

They all place this baptism at the beginning of the Good News

As a great bible story-teller once put it, while telling the story of the whole Bible – “The Bible begins like all good stories begin, with ‘Once upon a time…’”

So with the Gospels and their Good News, they begin the way the gospel has to begin – with Jesus’ baptism by John The evidence from the gospels demonstrates that the early church Gospel story-tellers were in fact scandalized by this part of the story, the part about Jesus being baptized by John at the beginning of his ministry.

Imagine: at the very beginning, from the very beginning, the Gospel has caused a scandal.

We might suspect, then, that where the gospel no longer scandalizes, it may have lost its connection to its origins.

The scandal in the case of the baptism is that Jesus – whom John himself said he had come to prepare the way for – he was but a servant to the one who was to come after – that it was John who baptized Jesus. The lesser, as it were, baptizing the greater.

The Scandal

It has taken me a long time to begin to appreciate the central role baptism plays in our vocation as Christians. In fact I am very much still learning.

Many years ago I was introduced to a phrase that sort of captures my gradual learning about baptism. Baptism, a teacher of mine said, is not the end of something – at least in the sense that you’ve arrived at that point. Our whole life after baptism, he said, is living into our baptism.

At least in my life, this has had enormous significance and I would say also enormous consequences. It turns out Baptism matters.

It has been a journey from thinking of baptism as somehow a ticket to heaven – preventing children from limbo or worse. That was the level I knew and thought about baptism when my first child was born. I didn’t really know anything beyond some kind of folklore version of the meaning of baptism. I thought I should get Owen baptized so that he will be saved.

Without knowing, of course, what that meant.

By the time my 2nd child was born and had major surgery before he was 2 weeks old and we were planning to baptize him at Easter in 2 months but it now appeared that having him baptized instead on Pentecost like his brother was a better idea and I had to be an MC at my first funeral the first funeral I had ever been to was one I MC’ed, attended by 2 bishops and many priests and we carried the coffin of the 2 year old who had died tragically to the cemetery while the bell tolled and I wondered with my seminary teacher what if Julian my son had died before he was baptized –

Well, things happened with a lot of intensity to cause me think in new ways about about Baptism.

It turns out that lots of people were thinking about the meaning of baptism. Even more, as I would say today, Christians have been thinking hard about baptism from the beginning. Baptism is like really really important for Christians.

It’s one of the things that has divided Christians over the centuries. It’s the reason that in the early years people would wait until their death bed to get baptized.

After Jesus was baptized, he went off on retreat and prayed. That’s what we call the temptation in the wilderness. When he returned he preached his first sermon. It started off with the words: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.”

Baptism. Spirit. Prayer. Preaching.

Baptism isn’t so much about salvation – at least from Jesus’ perspective – as it is about what we might call ministry and vocation. Jesus’ ministry and vocation began with his baptism.

That’s a clue for us in trying to understand our own baptism. It is, I have come to believe, the beginning of our vocation and ministry as Christians. Not so much about what we will be doing in life eternal as it is about what our life needs to be about now.

Along the way in my own journey to understand baptism, someone pointed out that for the first few hundred years of the church people would spend – 1, 2, 3, or more years – preparing for baptism. It was a big deal. People prepared for baptism about like people prepare for ordained ministry in our day.

Ministry of all the baptized

Baptism launched Jesus’ ministry. Perhaps we ought to think of it along the same lines for us. It is the beginning of call, of a vocation, – the calling to be a Christian.

It may turn out that the most important thing that can happen to anyone is their baptism. All the other things that have become a part of the Church – ordination, preaching, bishops, priests, deacons, altar guild, vestry – all of that is not as important as the one thing that binds us together. Baptism. And it all began with Jesus’ baptism by John.

Holy Spirit

As Jesus’ baptism is understood in the context of the Spirit – the Spirit about which Isaiah spoke centuries before, and which settled on Jesus to give him the authority of the Father – so we ought to understand our own Baptism as being stamped with the Holy Spirit.

This is not a gentle thing, a peaceful, predictable thing. Our lives are hardly ever gentle, peaceful, and predictable. The meaning of our baptism is not gentle, peaceful, and predictable.

It is wild like the Spirit. It is not to be controlled like the Spirit is not controlled. It is unpredictable like the Spirit is unpredictable.

Wild Goose image of Holy Spirit

Throughout history there have been groups of Christians who have discovered the beauty of a life lived on God’s terms. The Celtic Christians of the early middle ages was one such group. some language for it

They understood from Scripture and from their own life experience that God was not someone we bend to our wants and desires, but rather someone who was beyond our control. Someone who we would need to pursue rather than subdue.

Interestingly, the ancient Celtic people saw the Holy Spirit not as a hovering white dove but as a “wild goose.” The meaning behind this peculiar choice is because they saw how the Holy Spirit has a tendency to disrupt and surprise. The Holy Spirit moves in our lives in an unexpected fashion, similar to the actions of a wild goose. source

We are made in Christ to fly not walk about

Living into our baptism, like Jesus living into his, means living heroic lives. The calling requires extraordinary lives of blessing, forgiveness, service, prayer.

“Come to the edge,“ he said.
”We can’t, we’re afraid!“ they responded.
”Come to the edge,“ he said.
”We can’t, We will fall!“ they responded.
”Come to the edge," he said.
And so they came.
And he pushed them.
And they flew.”

― Guillaume Apollinaire

This life lived with the Holy Wild Goose can look like many different things. But tame and boring it is not. Some traditional characteristics include:

Corporal Works of Mercy

• To feed the hungry.
• To give water to the thirsty.
• To clothe the naked.
• To shelter the homeless.
• To visit the sick.
• To visit the imprisoned, or ransom the captive.[19]
• To bury the dead.

Spiritual Works of Mercy

• To instruct the ignorant.
• To counsel the doubtful.
• To admonish the sinners.
• To bear patiently those who wrong us.
• To forgive offenses.
• To comfort the afflicted.
• To pray for the living and the dead.

It’s not an exhaustive description of the wild adventure the life of the baptized Christian is meant to be. But it begins to describe it.

Your Calling at St. Paul’s

You are calling a priest to your parish. I would urge you to look to your baptism for guidance and discernment.

Choose a leader who seeks to serve not dominate. Find someone who knows that to be a Christian is to fly. Seek a rector who knows first hand that to be a Christian is sometimes wild and sometimes not, but always an adventure.

Trust that the one who comes will have a real attraction for Wild Geese, unpredictable, honking, geese.

You will have found someone who is living into the fullness of his baptism.

baptism-lord-2018.md

Homily: Baptism of the Lord

St. Paul’s, Monroe * Jan 7, 2018

Bump into baptism

[Image of retreat center east of Chicago and small church ministry] … having coffee with the designer of the chapel and the font.

The font was so refreshing with water running down a little rivulet into a small pool. You could easily put your hand down into the water – make the sign of the cross.

The architect told me he wanted people to bump into their baptism the moment they entered his chapel.

I immediately latched onto that phrase and thought “How perfect.”

I first bumped into my baptism with Owen’s baptism (my first child), then subsequently at the baptism of Julian, then their sister Miriam, etc.

Once my life reaches its end, my hope is that I will have not just bumped into my baptism but I will have lived into the fullness of it.

Jesus baptism marks the beginning of his ministry

Jesus’ baptism by John is at the beginning of all the gospels. The gospels are not reporting to us biographical data about Jesus. They are preaching to us the good news of God’s work in the life of God’s people.

They are good news For people who need good news.

They are not biographies, they are proclamations, intended to create followers of the Risen Lord – otherwise known in later years as Christians

They all place this baptism at the beginning of the Good News

As a great bible story-teller once put it, while telling the story of the whole Bible – “The Bible begins like all good stories begin, with ‘Once upon a time…’”

So with the Gospels and their Good News, they begin the way the gospel has to begin – with Jesus’ baptism by John\

The evidence from the gospels demonstrates that the early church Gospel story-tellers were in fact scandalized by this part of the story, the part about Jesus being baptized by John at the beginning of his ministry.

Imagine: at the very beginning, from the very beginning, the Gospel has caused a scandal.

We might suspect, then, that where the gospel no longer scandalizes, it may have lost its connection to its origins.

The scandal in the case of the baptism is that Jesus – whom John himself said he had come to prepare the way for – he was but a servant to the one who was to come after – that it was John who baptized Jesus. The lesser, as it were, baptizing the greater.

The Scandal

It has taken me a long time to begin to appreciate the central role baptism plays in our vocation as Christians. In fact I am very much still learning.

Many years ago I was introduced to a phrase that sort of captures my gradual learning about baptism. Baptism, a teacher of mine said, is not the end of something – at least in the sense that you’ve arrived at that point. Our whole life after baptism, he said, is living into our baptism.

At least in my life, this has had enormous significance and I would say also enormous consequences. It turns out Baptism matters.

It has been a journey from thinking of baptism as somehow a ticket to heaven – preventing children from limbo or worse. That was the level I knew and thought about baptism when my first child was born. I didn’t really know anything beyond some kind of folklore version of the meaning of baptism. I thought I should get Owen baptized so that he will be saved.

Without knowing, of course, what that meant.

By the time my 2nd child was born and had major surgery before he was 2 weeks old and we were planning to baptize him at Easter in 2 months but it now appeared that having him baptized instead on Pentecost like his brother was a better idea and I had to be an MC at my first funeral the first funeral I had ever been to was one I MC’ed, attended by 2 bishops and many priests and we carried the coffin of the 2 year old who had died tragically to the cemetery while the bell tolled and I wondered with my seminary teacher what if Julian my son had died before he was baptized –

Well, things happened with a lot of intensity to cause me think in new ways about about Baptism.

It turns out that lots of people were thinking about the meaning of baptism. Even more, as I would say today, Christians have been thinking hard about baptism from the beginning. Baptism is like really really important for Christians.

It’s one of the things that has divided Christians over the centuries. It’s the reason that in the early years people would wait until their death bed to get baptized.

After Jesus was baptized, he went off on retreat and prayed. That’s what we call the temptation in the wilderness. When he returned he preached his first sermon. It started off with the words: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.”

Baptism. Spirit. Prayer. Preaching.

Baptism isn’t so much about salvation – at least from Jesus’ perspective – as it is about what we might call ministry and vocation. Jesus’ ministry and vocation began with his baptism.

That’s a clue for us in trying to understand our own baptism. It is, I have come to believe, the beginning of our vocation and ministry as Christians. Not so much about what we will be doing in life eternal as it is about what our life needs to be about now.

Along the way in my own journey to understand baptism, someone pointed out that for the first few hundred years of the church people would spend – 1, 2, 3, or more years – preparing for baptism. It was a big deal. People prepared for baptism about like people prepare for ordained ministry in our day.

Ministry of all the baptized

Baptism launched Jesus’ ministry. Perhaps we ought to think of it along the same lines for us. It is the beginning of call, of a vocation, – the calling to be a Christian.

It may turn out that the most important thing that can happen to anyone is their baptism. All the other things that have become a part of the Church – ordination, preaching, bishops, priests, deacons, altar guild, vestry – all of that is not as important as the one thing that binds us together. Baptism. And it all began with Jesus’ baptism by John.

Holy Spirit

As Jesus’ baptism is understood in the context of the Spirit – the Spirit about which Isaiah spoke centuries before, and which settled on Jesus to give him the authority of the Father – so we ought to understand our own Baptism as being stamped with the Holy Spirit.

This is not a gentle thing, a peaceful, predictable thing. Our lives are hardly ever gentle, peaceful, and predictable. The meaning of our baptism is not gentle, peaceful, and predictable.

It is wild like the Spirit. It is not to be controlled like the Spirit is not controlled. It is unpredictable like the Spirit is unpredictable.

Wild Goose image of Holy Spirit

Throughout history there have been groups of Christians who have discovered the beauty of a life lived on God’s terms. The Celtic Christians of the early middle ages was one such group. some language for it

They understood from Scripture and from their own life experience that God was not someone we bend to our wants and desires, but rather someone who was beyond our control. Someone who we would need to pursue rather than subdue.

Interestingly, the ancient Celtic people saw the Holy Spirit not as a hovering white dove but as a “wild goose.” The meaning behind this peculiar choice is because they saw how the Holy Spirit has a tendency to disrupt and surprise. The Holy Spirit moves in our lives in an unexpected fashion, similar to the actions of a wild goose. source

We are made in Christ to fly not walk about

Living into our baptism, like Jesus living into his, means living heroic lives. The calling requires extraordinary lives of blessing, forgiveness, service, prayer.

“Come to the edge," he said.
“We can’t, we’re afraid!” they responded.
“Come to the edge,” he said.
“We can’t, We will fall!” they responded.
“Come to the edge,” he said.
And so they came.
And he pushed them.
And they flew.”

― Guillaume Apollinaire

This life lived with the Holy Wild Goose can look like many different things. But tame and boring it is not. Some traditional characteristics include:

Corporal Works of Mercy

• To feed the hungry.
• To give water to the thirsty.
• To clothe the naked.
• To shelter the homeless.
• To visit the sick.
• To visit the imprisoned, or ransom the captive.[19]
• To bury the dead.

Spiritual Works of Mercy

• To instruct the ignorant.
• To counsel the doubtful.
• To admonish the sinners.
• To bear patiently those who wrong us.
• To forgive offenses.
• To comfort the afflicted.
• To pray for the living and the dead.

It’s not an exhaustive description of the wild adventure the life of the baptized Christian is meant to be. But it begins to describe it.

Your Calling at St. Paul’s

You are calling a priest to your parish. I would urge you to look to your baptism for guidance and discernment.

Choose a leader who seeks to serve not dominate. Find someone who knows that to be a Christian is to fly. Seek a rector who knows first hand that to be a Christian is sometimes wild and sometimes not, but always an adventure.

Trust that the one who comes will have a real attraction for Wild Geese, unpredictable, honking, geese.

You will have found someone who is living into the fullness of his baptism.