Water is a miracle — we know this in our bones.
Water is everywhere in scripture — God’s creative world building is full of water, as is God’s revision in Noah’s flood.
The Red Sea waters part for the Israelites to pass through into freedom, and then God makes drinkable water for them in the desert.
Humans ourselves are mostly water.
The Earth is mostly covered with it.
Wars are fought over who can control it and who can travel on it.
Our worship this morning has been blessed by the celebration of the waters of baptism.
In the holy trinity of one hydrogen and two oxygen molecules we have seen God at work this morning, and we’re grateful to Raelynn for bringing her family to make promises and intentions to help her begin a faith journey of developing spiritual skills and learning to notice where God is working in her midst.
In the United Church of Christ, we believe that it is sacred and special for parents and godparents and communities to make promises on behalf of infants and children, to lay the spiritual groundwork for these young ones who are not yet ready do their own spiritual journeying. Until Raelynn is approaching adulthood, her parents and godparents will do spiritual work for her, watching for where God’s love is moving in her life and in the collective life of their family and friends.
This all has to do with God’s grace — some people like John Calvin see grace as the unearned and irresistible favor of God that rescues humans from spiritual emptiness. Others like Marilynne Robinson think about grace as a simple and everyday reality that saturates the world and touches all people. They all agree that grace is something special to God, something you can’t earn, something that unsettles and inspires you with love.
We believe in the United Church of Christ that “baptism is an outward an visible sign of the grace of God.”
Like many things in our faith lives, when we look around most people don’t see God’s grace swirling like lightning bugs and sunsets all around us; most people can’t see the Holy Spirit as she hovers through the world; most people don’t see the transformative love of the Gospel when they walk down the street.
But that doesn’t mean they’re not real, or not there.
Look at the poem “Footprints in the Sand.” During happy times of life, the poem’s narrator looks behind himself and sees two sets of footprints where he and God have been walking together by the sea. During the low times, the narrator looks back and sees only one set of footprints. Feeling abandoned by God, the narrator asks, “when I needed you most, why where you were not there?” God says, “when you see only one set of footprints, those are the times when I was carrying you.”
We see grace, and holy spirit, and the gospel’s impact when we see them acting in the lives of other people — we often don’t notice them when they are moving in our own lives — but we can see their reality and impact when they are acting upon and through other people.
In a baptism, we have the opportunity to see all three together — grace, spirit, and gospel — simultaneously acting upon the life of a family and drawing all of us together and deeper into the common good.
In a sense, this is what God is doing in the book of Exodus that we have read this morning. In chapter 19, God tells the Israelites that they have been carried on eagles’ wings, on God’s powerful wings, out of Pharoah’s Egypt and into a new relationship, which we call the covenant. Pharoah wanted to keep the Israelites for himself because they were valuable laborers, but God wants to create a future where the Israelites can flourish on their own terms, if they can agree to certain ground rules.
But of course they fail to follow the ground rules, because being uprooted from your home is hard, and navigating relationships is hard, and the exercising of free will is one of humanity’s oldest favorite things to do.
God begins to treat the Israelites like toddlers — we know from all the infants and toddlers in our lives, a commandment not to touch the hot stove doesn’t work as well as going up to the stove, even when it is cold, and modeling getting burned by the stove and saying “hot” and “ouch.” God wants to keep us safe in the same way, and offers these ten forms of relating to God and to each other that God believes will help keep the people safe:
- Honoring no other Gods
- Rejecting idols
- Not misusing God’s name
- Keeping the sabbath holy
- Honoring your ancestors
- Not murdering
- Not cheating
- Not stealing
- Not lying about your neighbor
- Not coveting your neighbor’s life
These are ten ways of relating with God and with each other that God believes will keep safe these people who have suffered for hundreds of years.
When Jesus comes into the world, he proves that he knows these scriptures of the Israelites foundation, and he knows God’s desire to keep the people safe. Jesus: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law of Moses; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.” He teaches again how to be in relationship with God.
Friends, you are all blessed to be blessings to a world in need of your blessing. And it is on days like today that we remember that we are not alone and that we have not been left bereft — but that God has equipped us through the baptism promises, with grace, and spirit, and gospel love.
And yet much in the world stands against the pursuit of love that Jesus wishes for us. Pharaohs still roam the earth, extracting obedience and planting seeds of anxiety that sprout walls that divide us from each other. We want to live in right relationship with the land and with each other and with God, but sometimes the best faith practices we’ve inherited don’t best serve the sacred ends they seek — through our attempts to become disciples of Christ we are meeting God in the overflowing streams of righteousness and the waterfalls of justice where all things can be made new.
And so we seek to hold these ten Commandments not as heavy burdens, but as lights shining in the darkness leading us to God — roadmaps for living out our baptismal promise in this world — protecting our neighbors, defending the restorative nature of the Sabbath, and honoring God through all that we do — finding God in another land of promise and possibility today.
May it be so.
Amen.
