Rock Spring Congregational United Church of Christ (UCC)

Genesis 18:1-15
Luke 10:38-42

A little less than a month ago, I traveled from the lush, humid, highly vegetated state of Virginia to the arid, hot, high desert region of New Mexico. As many of you know, I went to take a course at Ghost Ranch on the topic, “Water and a Baptismal Life,” part of a ten year series on Earth-Honoring Faith organized by my former doctoral advisor, Larry Rasmussen. Let me tell you, Northern New Mexico is a great place to reflect on the importance of water! One of the first things the Ranch director told us at orientation was to carry a bottle of water with us at all times to stave off dehydration, and some volunteer at the Ranch had helpfully made up signs to put at all the drinking fountains saying, “Drink me.” But you didn’t really need reminders to remember to drink. After a short walk in the sun, you felt as parched as the ground looked—parched and greedy for pure, clean, refreshing water.

My experience at Ghost Ranch, as well as our recent heat wave, gives me special appreciation for the fine details in our story from Genesis. There’s Abraham, sitting under the oak trees in front of his tent in the heat of the day. Yes, I can feel the heat and the way the shade trees provide some small respite from the relentless rays of the sun. And there come those three mysterious visitors, appearing out of the blue, almost like a desert mirage, and now Abraham is leaping up to greet them, running to meet them and invite them to rest in his shade and to receive his hospitality—the gift of water for their feet and their parched mouths, and some food to restore their strength. Spending a little time in the high desert gives you some appreciation for the life and death importance of hospitality in the arid Judean countryside, where Abraham had settled. Food, water, shelter—Abraham may have made the difference between life and death for these travelers that day.
But of course Abraham wasn’t just entertaining random strangers; the text also tells us that it was the Lord who appeared to him under the oaks of Mamre. Somehow God was either represented by, or mysteriously in the midst of, these three strangers, or angels, or whatever they were. In the words of the well-known Hebrews passage, Abraham was “entertaining angels unawares.”

Perhaps the same could be said of Martha in our gospel story for today. Poor Martha—she really gets the short end of the stick in this passage. Let me tell you a secret: you can learn a lot about a woman by asking her how she feels about this story. Either she identifies with Martha, the worker bee, who resents Jesus’ taking sides with her sister and diminishing her hard work, or she identifies with Mary, the student, the disciple, who found greater meaning in an untraditional female role. It’s true that Jesus was pretty hard on Martha. But maybe it’s because he had such great expectations for her. Perhaps Jesus was being like the Zen Master that raps his prize pupil on the head to get them to wake up to the Enlightenment that is right there in front of them, but which they cannot see. For what did Martha see when Jesus came to her home? Did she see a male authority figure who required traditional female hospitality and service, or did she see the divine presence in Jesus who offered her living bread and living water? Martha did the right thing in offering hospitality to Jesus, for by so doing, she was entertaining God unawares, but Jesus seems to say, you’re missing the point—the hospitality I need is for you to welcome me into your heart, and for you to open your mind to the divine in me—and then, come, follow me. Jesus’ offer to Martha was radical—asking her to give up her old way of life with its gender role strictures and the need to do the right thing, and to be born into a new way of life centered around making room for the divine, and answering God’s call to a more abundant life.

Abraham and Sarah were having a similar problem, back in our Genesis story. God was standing before them, offering them a gift beyond their comprehension, the gift of a child, and the only response Sarah could muster was skeptical laughter—a response mirrored by Abraham, I might add, in the previous chapter, when he too laughed at God’s promise of a son. Walter Brueggeman explains that “The story shows what a scandal and difficulty faith is. Faith is not a reasonable act which fits into the normal scheme of life and perception. Embrace of this radical gospel requires shattering and discontinuity.” As strange as it sounds, “shattering and discontinuity” is one way that we might choose to describe what happens in the sacrament of baptism, which we all had a chance to witness today. Did you notice these words in the baptismal liturgy? “All of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into Christ’s death. We were buried therefore with Christ by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead to the glory of God, we too might walk in newness of life.” Death and resurrection—going under the waters and coming up again—in Christ, a new creation! This is high drama, yet how often do we miss the significance of what we’re doing because it’s so familiar, and maybe for one other reason also—could it be that we suffer from a dearth of water?

One of my favorite images of baptism comes from Marilynne Robinson’s novel, Gilead. In the novel, the old preacher, John Ames, is writing a letter for his young son, a memoir of his life. He writes:
“You and Tobias are hopping around in the sprinkler. The sprinkler is a magnificent invention because it exposes raindrops to sunshine. That does occur in nature, but it is rare. When I was in seminary I used to go sometimes to watch the Baptists down at the river. It was something to see the preacher lifting the one who was being baptized up out of the water and the water pouring off the garments and the hair. It did look like a birth or a resurrection. For us the water just heightens the touch of the pastor’s hand on the sweet bones of the head, sort of like making an electrical connection. I’ve always loved to baptize people, though I have sometimes wished there were more shimmer and splash involved in the way we go about it. Well, but you two are dancing around in your iridescent little downpour, whooping and stomping as sane people ought to do when they encounter a thing so miraculous as water.”

Professor Janet Walton, one of our instructors at Ghost Ranch, must be a kindred spirit to John Ames, even though she is a Catholic sister, for she took us down to the Rio Chama to give her lecture on baptism. She invited the brave among us to venture into the cold, snow-melt waters, and soon about a dozen people were splashing and whooping it up in the miraculous waters of the Rio Chama, which make the desert bloom. But then, she invited one woman to allow herself to be fully immersed in the water, leaning back, going under, and being brought up out of the water, just as though she were being baptized. For just a moment, while we all held our breath, Professor Walton held the woman under the water, a fraction longer than we were comfortable with, before she brought her back up again. Walton wanted us to experience the power of the rite of baptism—for like any true ritual, it carries power—the power of life and death. Water gives life, yes, but it can also drown. It can refresh and renew, but it can also flood.

In our UCC tradition, when the pastor’s hand pours water over a child or adult’s head, we have to use our imagination a bit to remember the meaning of what we’re witnessing since we don’t have the drama of baptism by immersion—but for the Christian, baptism is our rite of initiation, the rite which marks us as God’s own, which initiates us into a life in which we are daily called to die to all that kills abundant life, all that separates us from God—all that turns us away from love of neighbor, or tempts us towards violence, selfishness and injustice. Maybe we should use a little more water to get the point across—water that forms the thin line between life and death. Because when we come out from under that water, we’re a different person, whether we feel like it or not. As the pastor says who gives the blessing after the baptism says, we are now “child of God, disciple of Christ, member of the church.” Member that is, of the universal church—the body of Christ stretching through time and space; we belong to a people, we belong to God; we are no longer wholly our own. That’s why it’s important to speak not just of baptism, but of the baptismal life.

Baptism has the power that all rites of initiation have to impart identity and belonging, to give us a role in community, to place our feet on a path—an established way of life, and to give us a people who will, to put it simply, have our back. I know it can be hard to imagine all that happening when we baptize a baby or small child who may never remember their own baptism. But here’s the beauty of it: the community remembers it for them. And in remembering it for them, we remember it for ourselves. And what is it that we need to remember?

Remember hospitality: As Abraham entertained angels unawares and as Martha welcomed the Christ into her home without fully understanding it, we too play host to God in baptism. For in welcoming that child, or that newly baptized adult into our church family, we welcome God. In the face of the newly baptized person—in Nellie’s face today—we see the face of Christ, for Christ comes to us in every person, waiting to be received, yearning to be listened to, needing to be served. And just as surely, God is host to us, for it is God, ultimately, who acts in baptism—to receive us, to love us, to save us, to fold us into God’s people.

And remember promise: In baptism, God makes promises to us, and we make promises to God. Have you ever thought about the meaning of that phrase, “rite of passage?” Where are we passing over to? Have you ever noticed that at the most important rites of passage in our lives—baptism, confirmation, marriage—we make promises without being sure exactly where they will take us. How will this marriage work out? Will this child we promise to raise as a Christian turn out to be the loving, kind, faithful person we hope for? Will she even still believe in God twelve years from now? We promise holding our breath, don’t we—at least dimly aware of the risks, of the cost of commitment, of the price of failure? If we’re not a little bit afraid of baptism, we’re missing the point!

Think, Rock Spring: you promise to love, support and care for the one about to be baptized. Will you be there to teach Sunday School or the Our Whole Lives, Sexuality and our Faith curriculum? Will you be there when the youth group needs another leader? Will you be there for the parent whose child is deathly ill, on drugs, or suicidal? Will you be there when the child grows up, grows old, and needs the support of the church to accompany them as their world becomes as small as the confines of their nursing home or their room? And what of our own baptismal promises? In our daily lives, are we resisting oppression and evil, showing love and justice, and following in the way of Jesus Christ? These are the tough questions, that can make our head spin. But never fear—what we lack in faith, God makes up for in faithfulness. When we, with Sarah, laugh with despair or derision—at ourselves, at God, at the world that wears us down, God speaks to us and says, “Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?” Or as Jesus put it, “With humans, it is impossible, but for God, all things are possible.”