Advent 1c -- Monroe

Notes¹

Opening

We're still in apocalyptic / end times mode this week. This focus on end times is characteristic of the shift from the old church year to the new church year. It is characteristic of the transition between one era and another. From a Christian perspective it marks the transition from the old covenant of ancient Israel to the new covenant of the church founded on the Messiah named Jesus. It applies to the transition of other eras as well. For example from ancient Rome to modern Europe. For example the shift from the primary role that Great Britain had prior to the world wars and the increase of influence of the United States. It seems likely that it accompanies our own time as the influence of the United States declines and that of China increases. Great change brings with it dramatic anxiety and worry, fear, and imaginary enemies.

We live in such times. It applies equally well on a small scale. The transition from childhood to adult hood. The changes that occur when one marries or divorces or loses a spouse. The changes associated with major moves.

Such are the times we live in. It would pay us well to pay attention to the signs of the times.

Parable of fig tree

Be on guard, when you see these things you will know it's about to take place

With the new church year we shift from listening to the Gospel of Mark to hearing from Luke. We don't just start at the beginning though, we will listen to selected passages appropriate for each Sunday in season. Today it is from near the end of Luke's Gospel and we hear Jesus speaking in striking images, appropriate to the apocalyptic tenor of the season.

There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the > earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and > the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is > coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.

"Your redemption is drawing near," he says.

The same Jesus as 2 weeks ago?

This seems utterly opposite (contrary) to what we heard from Jesus 2 weeks ago. When we first heard this apocalyptic theme, Jesus seemed unconcerned with the anxiety of his disciples. The disciples wanted to know about the signs that all around them pointed to an apocalyptic end of things. I suggested that Jesus’ seemingly cavalier attitude to their concerns was a way of saying, “Don’t be concerned about those things. Go forward in faith and trust, like a true child of God.

Here it is Jesus saying, "Look at the fig tree. Read the signs. Look at the evidence all around you.” “When you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near.

Two weeks ago Jesus seem to be saying, "Don’t pay any attention to the signs." Today it’s something like, "Pay attention to the signs why don’t you.” Some of that might be the difference in perspective of the two different Gospels Mark and Luke. But I think we have much to learn from a Jesus who doesn’t tell us what we expect, who surprises us at every turn when we are ready to listen with ears that hear.

Look Back – Look forward

Today Jesus is urging us to make the shift from looking backwards to looking forward. It is helpful and important to look backwards. We learn who we are and who we have been by looking backwards. But we are not only who we have been. We are much more who we shall be. Jesus call us from the nostalgia of looking out of the back of our head at what has been to looking forward with eyes of faith to what shall be.

I remember Soren Kierkegaard's pithy but profound quote: “One can only understand life looking backwards. But life must be lived forwards.”

The logic of that statement is that we cannot live with anything like ultimate understanding. We can only live by faith.

When I look for an image of that kind of faithful living I think particularly of my youngest daughter. We had a game where she would jump off the staircase into my arms. I suppose for her it felt a little like riding a roller coaster but she was only three or four at the time.

She was still small so that I had some confidence I would, in fact, be able to catch her. And she had not yet discovered that the world isn't fair and doesn't always respond with what we want or expect.

In those moments when she was flying through the air she was living by faith.

Looking back – Looking forward

It’s funny to me that those two similar phrases suggest quite different things:

• one evokes a mother in the front seat of the car who can see what her children are doing with eyes in the back of her head. There was a time when I believed that about my mother.
  
• But “looking forward”, is a phrase that means a number of things including the anticipation of something one longs for or hopes for. One “looks forward” to a birthday party or a long awaited vacation. It suggests a deeper emotion, an anticipation, a hope, an expectation of accomplishment. Those are very Advent feelings.

We can look back at what has been these past few years with some understanding. But we can only go forward, toward Advent and Christmas and a new year of unknowns -- only by trust and hope. The good news for us today is that Jesus is urging us to make just such a move.

Serenity Prayer:

… urges us to do just what I have been describing. Look back at what has been, to be sure. But over that we have no control. More important is that which awaits us. That we have some control over.

In its expanded version:

God, give me grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.

Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.

Amen.

The days are surely coming (Jer)

… we hear from the prophet Jeremiah. We can certainly hear that as Christmas is coming. It surely is, Thanksgiving has come and gone. If we listen to the rest of Jeremiah’s words he’s talking about the fulfillment of God’s promise. It is surely coming he says. I could hear that as the birth of Jesus is surely coming, as it did two millennia ago. We could also hear that as God’s promise that our long hoped for future has arrived, almost. It is already but not yet.

We would do well to ask ourselves what is the promise of God for which we would stake our lives? What is it that we know in our bones?

In those days: (He) shall execute justice and righteousness in the land, the psalmist says. Is that the future we would stake our lives on? Is it political? In the psalm it surely sounds like it. Is it interior and personal? Many people through the centuries have understood it that way. Is it that are we all alone in the universe? Or are we all together in the universe? Perhaps it is, as I put it above, “both at the same time.”

There is a story about the people in Wyoming. One of my first priest-mentors said of Wyoming that it was Paradise on earth. He said, “You can tell when you'd crossed the state line from Colorado, because on the Wyoming side, if you waved at someone they would wave back.” I even found that to be true a few times. He said of folks in Wyoming that they were a living paradox. They were both fiercely independent and utterly dependent on one another at the same time.

1. Fiercely independent. Nearest neighbor 25 miles away.
   
2. Knowing also that at any moment their life and existence may depend on that neighbor.
   

Closing

We are bound together and survive together. At the same time each of us must live our own lives on the terms each of us has been dealt.

As Jesus has told us today, live it with hope and expectation, leaning with all you have on the promises of God, that surely are coming.

1 To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul;
my God, I put my trust in you; *
— Psalm 25 Ad te, Domine, levavi

... may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we abound in love for you. And may he so strengthen your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints. Thessalonians

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Footnotes

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1. http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearC_RCL/Advent/CAdv1_RCL.html↩

Christ the King -- Monroe

November 21, 2021: Reign of Christ - Proper 29 (34)

Note: Lectionary

Opening

When I was young I was well aware that the imagination was important at least in school and classes like English. I thought of myself is not very good at using my imagination. I was an oldest child, the namesake of my father, and for my early education I was intent on doing what I was told. It was really not until I was in my 20s that I came to realize how much using my imagination was something that fed me. Even then I thought of imagination as kind of luxury item. At that point the most important thing for me was finding a job and learning how to support myself. By the time I was in my 30s life itself was getting pretty complicated. I came to learn that using one's imagination was an important tool in the therapeutic setting. A healthy use of imagination could help one get well or to cope better with life.

Later still I was introduced to the spirituality of Ignatius of Loyola. His conversion to Christianity was built on his remarkable imagination.¹ Later, in his Spiritual Exercises he integrated the use of “imagination” into an entire life of growing into maturity as a Christian. I have come to see imagination as an absolutely essential part of discerning what it is that God wants us to do with our life.

Imagine that we had been there when our normal sleeping arrangements would have been in an underground cavern: the catacombs of Rome for instance, or in the subways in London under the blitz?

• What is your sense of the goodness of God?
• Do you believe in love?
• What do you want to do when you get out of the darkness?

Imagine that we had been there looking at Jerusalem from a drone's eye view as it burned, as the stones of the Temple fell with an enormous crash onto the pavement below, and as the blood flowed in the streets.

• Would it look like God’s kingdom was at hand?
• What kind of Kingdom would that actually be?
• Would you be tempted to despair? Or to rage?

Imagine that we were there before the cross, as Jesus hung there, gasping for air, finally breathing his last?

• Would it seem as if Jesus was “Christ the King”?
• Would that question itself seem more like a bad joke?
• What do we imagine with a “king” afterall?
• Why did the people of ancient Israel clamor to God that they wanted a “king” like everybody else? And why do people today clamor for the same thing?

Whenever the feast of Christ the King comes around, my imagination travels to images like I have just sketched. I ask myself questions I don’t have easy answers for. I wonder how I’m going to get through the rapid events crashing onto our horizon.

• Thanksgiving ... then in rapid succession ...
• Christmas ... Calendar year ... tax year ...

The busyness of life tends to speed up as the Church turns a corner. One church year ends, another begins.

Agenda / Calendar

The church year comes to an end and the end of the calendar year gathers steam as we approach endings and new beginnings. Each year as I enter this time, I am especially aware that the church follows a different model of time compared to the rest of the world. It is the difference between linear time and circular time. The rest of the world counts off the years, one year after another, after another, …

The church, in contrast, follows time through a series of interconnected circles. The unwobbling center of the church’s time is the Resurrection – Easter. By secular time that varies from year to year. By sacred time, everything else is measured by that anchor.

“Christ the King” is proclaimed in that context. Jesus is “king” in that place and time where the Resurrection is the only thing that matters, where it is the measure of all else, ### Apocalyptic The weeks surrounding this final Sunday of the Church year are marked by images of the end times. We saw that last week. We will see it in the weeks to come as Advent begins. Last week we identified elements of “apocalyptic”. This week we hear from the epitome of New Testament “apocalyptic,” The Revelation to John. Next week, even as we begin to hear the promise of the fulfillment of God’s promise, Jesus will acknowledge “People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.”

This week, we have heard the dramatic and vivid beginning of the Revelation to John. The greeting is as if Christ is entering the universe on a royal coach, fit for the king of the universe. “The firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.”

“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.

Look! He is coming with the clouds …

The Purpose of Apocalyptic is to encourage and build up.

You heard me make that claim last week. There is even more vivid evidence for that claim this week. The dramatic entrance of Christ as a “king of the universe” is followed by a breathtaking claim of the purpose of this king figure:

The king has made us to be a kingdom of priests to serve the godly purposes of our world.

The encouragement intended for each of us in these opening words is to boldly claim that each of us is given an essential role to play in the building up of the kingdom. Each of us is anointed and ordained to contribute to the purposes of the “king.”

Gospel

If I allow myself to imagine myself in the presence of Jesus before Pilate, as we have heard from the Gospel of John, I encounter a “king” unlike what the world expects. "You say that I am king."

But just as the church’s sacred time is not what the world expects, so too “Christ the King” is not what the world expects. Jesus responds that the whole purpose of his life had to do with what was true.

For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.

My imagination allows me to rest in the affirmation that in Christ there is no variable or uncertain truth. The world expects “truth” to serve the demands of whoever carries the power of the moment. Pilate could not recognize the truth because he served the demands of power.

Listen. Listen to the Truth today. Listen with your imagination and test the truth in your heart. If it is Christ that you see and hear, you can be assured that it is true.

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1. Source #### Imagine that we were there?↩

Proper 28b -- Monroe

 

Proper 28b

Notes ¹

The Jesus Movement

The Jesus movement emerged from the much larger Judaism of the first century. It was a time when people had a keen sense that it was the end of everything that they knew. They saw signs for it everywhere. Probably one of the most visible signs of that era was the bloodbath and destruction that the Romans inflicted on Jerusalem in the year 70 A.D.

I sometimes think that the Jesus movement will end at a time when people have a keen sense that the end of everything that we know is fast approaching. I have been aware I'm seeing and feeling that myself. When I was a younger man I couldn't have imagined that I would see the Northwest Passage. The Arctic north was a fabled mythic place and I dreamed of going there one day. In the meantime what has happened is that Mary Pat and I had the opportunity to take an Alaska cruise some years ago and we got to see some of the last glaciers of that part of the world in the process of falling into the ocean. The arctic has become a place where Russia and the US are racing to exploit the newly exposed and valuable mineral deposits.

Having read George Orwell's dystopian novel in junior high, I never imagined that the year 1984 would come and go. But it did.

When I was young I thought of the leaders of our nation as fitting descendants of the legendary heroes who created the country. The capital building was one of the centers of the experiment that we called the United States. It was a sacred building -- not Christian sacred but civil religion sacred. Up until the time on January 6 this year when Mary Pat said, "Quick, Dale, you've got to come see this," I could not have imagined the ransacking of the Capital that we saw this year.

We have become witnesses of these things. I thought I would never see them. They came. And here we are. We wonder, "Are these the signs of the end?"

The passage we've heard from the Gospel of Mark bears evidence of the kind of religious writing that was common to the 1^st century. It's called apocalyptic. Some of the elements of apocalyptic writing are:

• a concern for the end times,
• hyperbole,
• the battle between good and evil,
• dramatic imagery and symbols.

Mark 13, together with its parallel in Matthew 24, bears the markings of apocalyptic writing. The most dramatic example in the New Testament of this style of writing is the last book, the book of the Revelation to John.

I first had a desire to learn about apocalyptic writing when I was still in my 20's. I had read the Bible cover to cover. It left me more perplexed than before. I began to study with more focus. I came to realize that there was a major time gap reflected in the books of the Old Testament versus those in the New Testament. I took a graduate course at Marquette University from a leading scholar of the period. There I came to appreciate that the Catholic Bible, with the pseud-epigrapha (what we call "Apocrypha") did a better job of reflecting the time period of the couple hundred years before Jesus. This was the time of the flowering of apocalyptic literature and expectation.²

“This is but the birthpangs”

Jesus response to his disciples in today's reading immediately reflects a person who was unfazed by the dramatic events going on around him. A perfect image of a holy person. We might well suppose that that had something to do with the charismatic attraction that he held for some people. Jesus said don't worry about the dramatic signs that you may see going on around you. The struggles that you see are but the struggles of a new world emerging from the old. It is new life being birthed from the old

This holy man can see what others around him cannot see. Though destruction may surround him, he is the living epitome of hope. The actual goal you see of apocalyptic writing is to bring hope to the people. It is to encourage them to persevere and to endure when the times are a struggle. Recognizing the reality of suffering the word of hope that it presents is one of Resurrection and new life. It is a promise that is not yet fulfilled but is waiting in the wings to give birth.

In every generation

For every generation the “signs” are real and imminent — but they distract us from what is eternally important. Every generation focuses on what is passing away and not the eternal. It focuses on what is immediately before us and not what is lasting and of eternal significance.

What seems "urgent" has been different through the centuries of Christian life and experience.

• In the first century, a time when followers of Christ were just one group within Judaism and all were members of the same culture, the debate was about what kind of food one was allowed to eat, or what Sabbath actions were prohibited. Jesus pointed in the direction of the eternal.
• In the next several centuries, a time of persecution — what is urgent looked different. Christians were the outcasts in many cases. It was important not to be identified with the ruling culture. The eternally significant may have looked something like dying with integrity and honesty, true faith and trust in God.
• Later, for many centuries Christianity was the dominant cultural power. What was urgent looked different. Conformity and unity could be seen as urgent. On the other hand, suffering to share in Christ's own suffering might be seeing as eternally significant and important. Living life set apart in a monastic setting might be seen as urgent and important.
• In the 20^th century, Christians were persecuted and killed in parts of the world: Soviet Union, China, Africa, just for being Christians. Not unlike those Christians of the 2^nd and 3^rd centuries.
• But also in the 20th century, there were Christians who were complicit in the genocide of European Jews that is popularly known as the “Holocaust.” For such Christians there was an utter failure to see what was of eternal significance. They were able to assist with murder and torture as their most urgent need while being completely numb, to the loss of any semblance of what was suitable for citizens of the Kingdom of God.

Focus on the majors

True Christian faith focuses on the lasting, not the ephemeral.

In the last century, a tool became popular to help us discover what was genuinely eternal and lasting. ³ It had us discern the urgency and importance of a given action. Urgency was something that was immediately pressing and of concern. Important was something that might only emerge in the long run but not be immediately visible.

quadrants

With this tool one imagines a large square with 4 smaller squares within it. A cross, if you will, with a boundary around it.

In the top of the larger square is where everything that is important is placed. In the bottom half is everything that is not important.

The left and right side of the square is divided between what is urgent and what is not urgent.

Thus in quadrant 1 we place things that are crises and emergencies. They present themselves with urgency. Maybe in our present circumstances it is a leaky roof. It's important and it has to be dealt with.

In quadrant 2 we would place things that are important but not urgent. These are all the things that we can persuade ourselves that we can put them off to a later date. They are important however. Things like maintenance. Prevention training. Upgrades.

In quadrant 3 we place things that are urgent but not important. A phone call from a salesman. For some, a Facebook notification. Things that are clamoring for our attention. It was back in the 90's that I became aware that that was a goal of software companies who made their money off of our "facetime." Things that are urgent but not important.

Finally, we have a 4^th quadrant where too many of us spend too much of our time. Things that are not urgent and not important.

Jesus's disciples came to him with signs of the end times all around them. We hear that same kind of noise around us in our own day. They are clearly urgent, but in the light of eternity they are of little significance.

Jesus responded to them, "That's not where you need to be focused. You need to be focused on the needs of the Kingdom -- which lasts forever."

Eternal Significance

How then do we discern what is of eternal importance? In my own life I have often found that what is most important has been there all along. I just needed to see it. Perhaps it was so old it had become invisible to me. It required “rediscovery.” This woman Hannah, whom we meet in today's first lesson from the book of Samuel is a case in point.

I first really began to meet her in my first Hebrew class. 1^st Samuel, chapter 1, is where we began reading. Word by word. Looking up in the dictionary every other one. Happily the language is at an elementary school level of reading difficulty.

Meet Hannah

And prominent in these 1^st two chapters is a woman. She is a woman who cannot bear a child. She is in a marriage that is fraught with conflict and mixed emotions. She takes herself away from the situation and pours herself out before God. She lays herself bare. The priest is of little help -- he is too focused on the urgent matter of "good order" in his temple and around his altar. It may seem important to him but it's not important, only urgent.

What is important is that God is making a grand beginning in this woman. It is the beginning of a new era in the life of Israel. And she has been chosen as an important instrument in beginning it.

In time her focus on the eternal and not just the urgent resulted in the birth of a son, Samuel. Samuel was the pivotal and vital ruler and prophet as the ancient nation of Israel emerged -- remember Jesus referring to "birthpangs" -- from the wandering tribes that Moses had led out of Egypt.

Hannah knew in her heart that she had been touched by eternity and something far bigger than herself was at work. She sang a song: Hannah’s song which was our "psalm for today."

Centuries later Mary same a similar song in similar circumstances. She would be giving birth to the Messiah, and she sang a song. We call it the Magnificat.

The circumstances are not unlike what we saw a couple of weeks ago in the conclusion of the book of Job. The pressing catastrophes of Job's life were put alongside the eternal importance of the creator of all things.

The only thing left was to stop and to give thanks. And that is what Hannah does in her song.

• There is no one like the Lord
• God raises up the humble, the poor, the vulnerable
• God's work is a reversal of what seems urgent and turns it into what is of ultimate concern
• God is at the beginning and at the end. That is the eternal.

He raises up the poor from the dust;
he lifts the needy from the ash heap,

to make them sit with princes
and inherit a seat of honor.

For the pillars of the earth are the Lord's,
and on them he has set the world.

Hannah's song can help us to train for the race that needs to be run for the sake of eternity. The principles articulated there are in fact principles of the kingdom:

• a heart for the poor and outcast
• care for the widowed and orphans
• devotion and trust in the creator of all

Tell me, father, what is important? It is, my child, to "Love the Lord your God, with all your heart, your soul, and your strength. And at the same time to love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophet." Everything else is ultimately unimportant.

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1. Lectionary Page source: The text this week↩

2. www.britannica.com/art/apocalyptic-literature & www.pulpitfiction.com/narrative-notes/2-30↩

3. Eisenhower, quoting Dr. J. Roscoe Miller using a quadrant “Urgent vs. Important” (Eisenhower, quoting Dr. J. Roscoe Miller). Also Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of highly effective people.↩

All Saints Sunday -- Baptism. 2021

All Saints

Opening

Will our children have faith?

A formative book call my teacher from my early ministry. He has asked a fundamental question that has stayed with the church as far as I could tell for 30+ years.

An old joke from 100 years ago ask the question, when is a school not a school? The answer is, when it is a Sunday school.

What the church has done for generations to try to pass on the faith to our children has by and large failed. Right at the present moment even the question of what school is is being fundamentally challenged around the country. We don’t know what a school is for in a time when there is disagreement about what is truth, and truth or falsehood is seen to be for an individual to choose. But if that’s the case it is even more in question how one passes on the faith that gives us life through Jesus Christ.

The basic insight of Westerhoff is to shift the focus of how Christian formation is passed on to our children. In his words, no longer is it helpful or wise to emphasize schools, teachers, pupils, curricula, classrooms, equipment, and supplies. Instead we need to focus our attention on the radical nature and character of the church as a faith community.¹

Westerhoff asks the question whether our children will have faith in the future. His basic answer is that it depends on whether we have faith now. ### Baptism is a community Possibly the most important lesson I have had about baptism in the course of my ministry was discovering the author Vincent Donovan and his book Christianity Re-discovered.

His lessons have to do with basic questions like:

• Is Christian faith just for individuals or is it for the community?
• If it is for the community, as he argues, is baptism about the whole community in its wide diversity? Or is it about a select few who are in the know?
• Is Christianity about passing on a culture and cultural values? Or is it about something else which is more transcendent, more universal, more all encompassing?

Donovan presumed an age old pattern of baptism which culminates a process of deep and thorough formation. At the end of a months long process, he came to the village chief and announced that he was ready to baptize. He identified one person who had not attended any of the meetings, and he would not be baptized. He had spent his time herding cattle. There were another two who had paid attention and learned much of what he talked about, so they would be baptized. This other one did not show enough attention and would not be baptized. And on he went, evaluating each person in the village.

The old man, Ndangoya, stopped me politely but firmly. "Padre, why are you trying to break us up and separate us. During this whole year [in Maasailand, Tanzania] that you have been teaching us, we have talked about these things when you were not here, at night around the fire. Yes, there have been lazy ones in this community. But they have been helped by those with much energy. There are stupid ones in the community, but they have been helped by those who are intelligent. Yes, there are ones with little faith in this village, but they have been helped by those with much faith. Would you turn out and drive off those lazy ones and the ones with little faith and the stupid ones? From the first day I have spoken for these people. And I speak for them now. Now, on this day one year later, I can declare for them and for all this community, that we have reached the step in our lives where we can say, ‘We believe’".

I looked at the old man Ndangoya. "Excuse me, old man," I said. "Sometimes my head is hard and I learn slowly. ‘We believe,’ you said. Of course you do. Everyone in the community will be baptized."² ### Baptism is a Journey The story of baptism is a story about the journey of a community of faith. That journey has lasted for several thousand years and it will continue for an unknown number of years and beyond to where years do not measure time. As Hebrews 12 1 to 2 put it,

12 So then, with endurance, let’s also run the race that is laid out in front of us, since we have such a great cloud of witnesses surrounding us. Let’s throw off any extra baggage, get rid of the sin that trips us up, 2 and fix our eyes on Jesus, faith’s pioneer and perfecter. He endured the cross, ignoring the shame, for the sake of the joy that was laid out in front of him, and sat down at the right side of God’s throne. ### Baptism is not about passing on cultural values. Donovan is among those who have taught us over the last century that there is a difference between cultural values and gospel values. Has he tried to share the good news of the risen Christ in Tanzania he experienced firsthand that often what he was trying to share was European modern values. ### Baptism is cosmic The fellowship all the saints to which Anna Claire and Reid are being initiated today is a fellowship governed by cosmic values. These values honor and respect local values of all kinds of great diversity.

Though they are being baptized in this local community of Saint Paul's episcopal church in Monroe North Carolina, they are at the same time made citizens of the kingdom of God.

I heard a bishop of Aotearoa (New Zealand) speak in Hawai'i. He was a natural story-teller. Clearly a man of God. And I sat at his feet enthralled. He wrote a little book about what it is like being a Christian from the perspective of a Pacific Islander. It took my breath away when he illustrated that for most westerners the ocean was the thing that divides. It makes continents. It separates islands from one another. But from the perspective of his life, the oceans are the thing that connects humans and gives life.

The stories of a boy with a makeshift driftwood canoe anticipating the future; Winston and his father catching fish from the sea to feed their family; the story of a pectoral cross once belonging to St. Peter Chanel being given to Fine Halapua when he was consecrated as an Anglican bishop and now worn by Winston; the sharing of food on the altar of the Anglican cathedral in Suva, Fiji, with people after sheltering from a hurricane; -- these stories and more are parables of hope, grace, ecumenical friendship and generosity. The stories emerge from life in Oceania where the sea is not seen as boundary or limitation but as part of the created order. ³

The baptism that we celebrate today is much more than a once and for all event. It is initiation into a journey that will take a lifetime to complete. The faith that we proclaim here today is not a static faith but a verb. When we say I believe we are addressing God with the word yes. yes we will. Yes we are prepared to follow you. Yes we are prepared to except forgiveness when we fall down. ### Baptism is about what we do We profess a threefold trust in father son and holy spirit.

The promises involved in the baptismal liturgy emphasize that baptism is a journey, it is an action, it is not a set of beliefs, or exclusive set of doctrines.

We are ourselves addressed by a series of questions:

• Will you continue in the apostles' teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of the bread, and in the prayers?
• Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?
• Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?
• Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?
• Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?

And to each of the questions we respond with: I will with God's help.

There is a process of life-long learning that we agree to. And a commitment to finding ways to pass it on to the next generation. At every stage of the way learning can only take place if we are sensitive to age-appropriate methods and we pay attention to whether our words match our actions.

All of us will fall short. All of us must seek forgiveness. Those are the kinds of actions that will speak by themselves. "Proclaim the Gospel at all times and use words if necessary."

"Seek and serve Christ in all persons." That is a formidable thing to agree to. To recognize the likeness of God in all persons! With God's help I may be able to find my way.

To work for justice and peace. Among all people. We will say we will do it. But whence comes such hubris? With God's help I may be able to find my way.

Baptism is cultivating virtues

Promises will be made. A vision of the kingdom will be floated before us today. There is an ancient tradition of 7 virtues which outline the task for all of us:

• wisdom and discernment
• appreciation of justice and equity
• courage, perseverance, stamina to run the race
• humility, prudence, moderation
• faith and trust that God will indeed help us
• hope, seeing the paradoxes of the world as evidence of God's abiding care
• love, for one's self, one's family, one's neighbor, your neighbor's neighbor and so on unto the trillionth generation.

Commission

Anna Claire and Reid have come before us today, through their parents, asking to be included in the fellowship of All the Saints. I will with God's help. That's what we offer Anna Claire and Reid today.

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1. p. 52 Westerhoff, John. Will our children have faith↩

2. p. 92 Donovan, Vincent. Christianity Rediscovered↩

3. 16. vii Halapua, Winston. Waves of God's Embrace; sacred perspectives from the ocean
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