All Saints Lutheran Church
Pastor Raita Neely
Epiphany 1C; January 11, 2004
"Beginnings"  Acts 8:14-17; Luke 3:15-17,21-22

In one of the classic Peanuts cartoons Charlie Brown says to Lucy, "Someone said that all of us should live each day as if it were the last day of our life." "Aaugh!" cries Lucy.  "This is the last day!  This is it!"  She runs away screaming, "I only have 24 hours left to live!  Help me!  Help me!!!  This is the last day!  Aaugh!" Charlie Brown is bewildered but enlightened as he remarks, "Some people just can't handle some philosophies!"  Living each day as if it were the last day of our life is not a bad idea, but living each day as if it were the first day of our life might be a better one.

We are eleven days into a new year and a new year always brings with it exciting new possibilities.  The old year is gone forever, taking with it all mistakes we made and the obstacles we have overcome.  It's a new year and I hope you are excited by the possibilities it brings. So often, our lives are limited by our low expectations.  This is true not only of what we expect of ourselves, but also of what we expect to happen in our world, and what we think might be the purpose of God in our times.

Exciting things are happening in the world.  The NASA space  probe Spirit landing on Mars, sending back images-ready to start the exploration of the crater in which it landed.  A new constitution for Afghanistan , setting up a democratic presidential system-elections in six months - who could have believed it?  India and Pakistan-two nuclear armed nations beginning talks regarding peace - wouldn't it be exciting if they could work out their disagreement with words?  The Korean Presbyterian church here in the cities giving birth to the Church of All Nations - a congregation modeling racial reconciliation, members come in all colors and from all parts of the world.  What an image of the way the church should look!

I think we Christians often get bogged down at the level of morality.  We measure the quality of our life by the number of things we refrain from doing, rather than moving on to the positive righteousness and love that Jesus teaches us.  "Don't tell me what you don't do," a backwoods preacher in another generation once said to his negatively-inclined people.  "The nearest picket fence doesn't do those things either.  Tell me what you do!  Tell me something positive that's happened to you because Jesus is in your life!"

There must be something alive, compelling, persuasive, active in our lives as Christians.  Maybe this day we can covenant to reclaim and live out three key words in our Christian life.  They are positive, aggressive and challenging words.  They come from Scripture and they have never been exhausted.  They are faith, love, and hope.  Let each of us hang on to those words, give them new life and embody  them in this next year.  For each of us that reclaiming will look different.  We live our lives in different places, we have opportunities to meet different people, we have different resources to use on behalf of others, we have been given different talents and different experiences which will make a difference in how we know, experience and share the  love, faith and hope that is in us.  But we all start with the same questions that only you can answer for yourself.

How do you see the future?  How do you see yourself?  How do you see others?  Do you see God's hand at work in your life?  What do you see as you look into this new year?  How might you share Christ's vision for life in the world?  I hope that as you answer these questions for yourself that you will see new possibilities  that will change your life.

We follow Jesus who came into the world that we might have life and live it abundantly.  What does this mean?  Jesus saw different values in people than did his society.  The powers of his world saw children as of no value, to be pushed to the background.  They must have been astounded when Jesus took the children on his knee and blessed them.  The children in our world are not much valued either.  You may say, I value my kids and it's true.  But the children of our world live in poverty, in illness, in fear.  Do you have a heart for the children?  Then love them, and give them hope, you can start here at home with Hospitality House or Families in Need, or you can reach out to the children at Casa Hogar Elim in Mexico , or  help those suffering in Africa through the Stand with Africa program.

Jesus lived in a world where those who were physically or mentally ill or had physical deformities, were told to stay out of the way.  Jesus often stopped to heal, to be with, to encourage those whose life needed wholeness.  We think we have come a long way, yet, why are there so many of the elderly in our nursing homes dying of loneliness?  Why is it so hard for us to speak to those who are suffering?    Do you have a heart for those who suffer?  Then go to them.  Most of the time you don't even have to say anything, just hold their hand and pray for them.

Jesus lived in a world where human prejudice was rampant.  The people of the day knew only one way to deal with those they considered "sinners"  shun them, ignore them, set them apart, don't get involved with them.  Jesus chose to associate with "sinners".  He did not condone their sins, rather he gave them a new vision, a new beginning for their lives.  So a Zacchaeus went up the tree a robber and came down a philanthropist.  The Samaritan woman came to the well thirsty, and walked away overflowing with Christ's love and sharing it with people who had shunned her.  Christ's love has a way of changing things, of giving a new beginning.

So often, our expectations are too small.  We shut God out of too many areas of our lives.  Sometimes we fear that if we let God in, the Lord will make demands on us which we aren't ready to fulfill.  Other times we deprive ourselves of blessings because we simply do not seem to understand that God wants our lives to be full of love, faith, and hope, all gifts given by our generous God.  All gifts we appreciate more and more as we celebrate the beginnings that God' gives and walk our baptismal journey day by day.

I would like to share with you a story that took place in the early nineteen hundreds in the Methodist church in Tinyville, a small town in Mississippi . Their pastor, Brother John had been to the Holy Land and had brought back a jug of water from the Jordan river .  An explosion of baptisms took place as he used this "special" water to welcome many as God's children.  But one day the water was all gone.  It was the day Miss Lucy came to church.  Everybody knew Miss Lucy but it wasn't from church.  She had never before been to church.  People would see her in town.  She was real pretty and wore lots of makeup.  She always dressed in bright colors.  None of the women in town liked her.  Whenever she came into a store, all the women left with their noses so high up in the air you'd think they could have smelled the angel's feet.  The men, however, were always real polite to Miss Lucy, unless their wives were around.  Yeah, she seemed to be real popular with the men.

Miss Lucy hadn't been seen around town for some time, but there she was that Sunday, sitting in the back pew.  The entire Purcell family got up and moved to the other side of the sanctuary when Miss Lucy sat down next to them.  Nobody sat close to her, but everybody did turn around and look at her, not just her, but also her baby.  Somebody went and told the preacher that she was there and he marched right up to her and asked her right off the bat, "This is a holy place.  We don't need the likes of you around!  What are you doing here?" Miss Lucy answered, "I came to see if you'd baptize my baby.  I heard that you had some special holy water, and I kinda thought with Joshua starting out in life with me as his mother, he needed all the help he could get."

"No, I won't baptize your baby!" Brother John said.  "In the first place, I'll bet you don't even know who the father is.  And in the second place, I don't have any more holy water.  We are all out.  But even if I did, I wouldn't waste it on you.  I would save it for one of God's real children."  Then the preacher physically pulled Miss Lucy out of the pew and led her to the door like a dog on a leash with the entire congregation following.  He didn't really throw her and the baby out, but it was close.

It was not a pleasant sight, because a bad storm had developed, and it was raining very hard.  Both Miss Lucy and Joshua were getting soaked to the bone as she just stood there with the saddest eyes you've ever seen, looking at the preacher and the congregation.

Brother John's eight year old son was standing next to him and started tugging on his father's pants leg.  "Look, Daddy," he said.  "I see it, son" the father said.  "It's a terrible sight, isn't it?'

"It sure is, Daddy," the little boy answered.  "Since you wouldn't baptize Joshua, God's gone and done it himself!  And not with no water from the Jordan neither.  God's baptizing him with water straight from heaven!"

There was a moment of silence.  Then the preacher leaned down and kissed the top of his son's head.  He walked out in the pouring rain and stood beside Miss Lucy and Joshua, all three of them just getting drenched.  He put his cupped hands out to collect the raindrops.  And he said, "Brothers and sisters, today is a special day.  This water is the same water with which God waters all the earth. This water is the very same water that falls in the holy Land and fills the Jordan River .  This is indeed holy water, the same water with which Jesus was baptized.  And just as with Jesus through this baptism Joshua is claimed as a child of God."  Then he took the handful of rainwater and dumped it on top of Joshua's head, and said, "I confirm what God has already done.  Joshua, I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." People's mouths were a little too full of humble pie to shout.  But if you listened between the sounds of the pounding rain and clapping thunder, you could hear the people of God whisper a redemptive ...."Amen".

*Good News from Tinyville, O.Wesley Allen, Jr.  Chalice Press. 1999.