William H. Willimon - "Made, Not Born" (January 21, 2001)
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| - | Let us pray the prayer for illumination. | 0:10 |
| Open our hearts and minds, oh God, | 0:15 | |
| by the power of Your Holy Spirit | 0:17 | |
| so that as the word is read and proclaimed | 0:21 | |
| we may hear Your word, | 0:24 | |
| remember our baptism, | 0:26 | |
| and be thankful. | 0:28 | |
| Amen. | 0:30 | |
| The first lesson is from the gospel, | 0:33 | |
| according to Saint Luke. | 0:35 | |
| The fourth chapter. | 0:37 | |
| When he came to Nazareth where he had been brought up, | 0:40 | |
| he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, | 0:43 | |
| as was his custom. | 0:46 | |
| He stood up to read and the scroll | 0:48 | |
| of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. | 0:51 | |
| He unrolled the scroll and found the place | 0:54 | |
| where it was written, | 0:58 | |
| the spirit of the Lord is upon me | 0:59 | |
| because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. | 1:03 | |
| He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives | 1:08 | |
| and recovery of sight to the blind. | 1:11 | |
| To let the oppressed go free, | 1:15 | |
| to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor | 1:18 | |
| and he rolled up the scroll, | 1:21 | |
| gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. | 1:24 | |
| The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. | 1:29 | |
| Then he began to say to them, | 1:33 | |
| today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. | 1:36 | |
| This is the word of the Lord. | 1:42 | |
| - | I remember casually remarking to my mother | 1:53 |
| that of all the courses that I was subjected to | 1:57 | |
| in high school, only one had served me everyday of my life. | 2:01 | |
| Of only one of those courses could it be said | 2:07 | |
| that my life would be different had I not taken it. | 2:11 | |
| That course was typing. | 2:14 | |
| (audience laughing) | 2:18 | |
| And I really mean that. | 2:20 | |
| But then my mother said, | 2:22 | |
| "Well then you should be glad that I made you take it." | 2:24 | |
| "What?" | 2:29 | |
| "Yes? | 2:30 | |
| "You hated it, you had no aptitude for it, | 2:31 | |
| "you wanted to drop it, but I said no, | 2:34 | |
| "we paid the $25, you're going to stay in typing. | 2:36 | |
| "You should thank me." | 2:40 | |
| Isn't that curious that somehow I managed to forget | 2:44 | |
| that my typing was not my choice. | 2:48 | |
| It wasn't my personal achievement. | 2:55 | |
| It was a gift. | 2:58 | |
| It was something that was decided for me, rather than by me. | 3:01 | |
| I don't think we Americans enjoy | 3:09 | |
| thinking of ourselves that way. | 3:10 | |
| All we like to think that we are captains of our fate, | 3:13 | |
| masters of our souls. | 3:16 | |
| I am what I decide. | 3:18 | |
| I am who I choose to be. | 3:20 | |
| I am self-fabricated. | 3:25 | |
| But in our more honest moments, | 3:30 | |
| like the one I had with my mother, | 3:33 | |
| we are forced to admit that our lives | 3:36 | |
| and often the very best part of our lives, are mostly gifts. | 3:40 | |
| A sum of decisions made for us, rather than by us. | 3:46 | |
| So there was that day when Jesus turned to his disciples | 3:54 | |
| in John 5 and said "Remember, you didn't choose me. | 3:57 | |
| "I chose you. | 4:03 | |
| "That you should go." | 4:05 | |
| I say this because in just a few moments | 4:09 | |
| we are going to engage in a very unnatural act. | 4:12 | |
| We're going to bring forward a number of people, | 4:16 | |
| among them a group of infants, | 4:20 | |
| and we're gonna say some words over them, | 4:23 | |
| we're going to douse them with water, | 4:25 | |
| and we're going to make them Christian. | 4:26 | |
| And in our cultural context that is odd. | 4:31 | |
| Most of us are like the old man who was asked, | 4:36 | |
| "Do you believe in infant baptism?" | 4:41 | |
| He said, "Believe in it, hell, I've seen it." | 4:43 | |
| (audience laughing) | 4:46 | |
| Well live, right here in our sanctuary today, | 4:47 | |
| you are going to see baptism, including infant baptism. | 4:50 | |
| And that really goes against the grain of the way | 4:59 | |
| we are trained to construe our lives. | 5:04 | |
| I suppose that most of the sanctioned Christianity | 5:08 | |
| is mainly something that we have decided. | 5:10 | |
| You can hear this in the way people sometimes talk. | 5:15 | |
| "Since I gave my life to Christ. | 5:17 | |
| "Since I decided to follow Jesus. | 5:19 | |
| "Since I took Jesus as my personal savior." | 5:24 | |
| If you notice in today's gospel that Marilyn has read, | 5:29 | |
| Jesus goes to his hometown synagogue. | 5:32 | |
| They don't say to Jesus, | 5:36 | |
| "Well this is student recognition Sunday, | 5:37 | |
| "how has it been for you in college, | 5:40 | |
| "could you share with us some of your personal, | 5:42 | |
| "spiritual experiences?" | 5:47 | |
| No they do what we do, they say, | 5:49 | |
| "Here's the book, read from it." | 5:51 | |
| This is something that comes to us, | 5:54 | |
| rather than from within us. | 5:57 | |
| There's none of this faith that is self-derived. | 6:01 | |
| Somebody had to tell you the story of Jesus. | 6:05 | |
| Somebody had to live that faith before you as exemplar. | 6:09 | |
| We Christians have got a word for that, grace. | 6:14 | |
| Grace means gift. | 6:19 | |
| I know that's why I am a Christian. | 6:25 | |
| I might like to tell you I'm a Christian because | 6:28 | |
| I did a study of all the world's great religions, | 6:31 | |
| comparing their ethical systems, | 6:34 | |
| their theological stances, | 6:35 | |
| and I decided that Christianity is superior, | 6:37 | |
| and therefore, I decided to be a Christian. | 6:40 | |
| But no. | 6:46 | |
| I'm here because I was put here. | 6:48 | |
| When I was about six months old, | 6:51 | |
| on a Sunday afternoon, after a big dinner, | 6:53 | |
| they gathered in my grandmother's living room | 6:56 | |
| and they brought out this silver bowl, | 6:58 | |
| filled it with water, | 7:00 | |
| and this preacher named Forrester put water on my head | 7:00 | |
| and told me I was Christian. | 7:04 | |
| I don't necessarily think that's the way baptism | 7:08 | |
| ought to take place, | 7:10 | |
| but whatever liturgical reservations you may have | 7:11 | |
| about the mode of my baptism, | 7:14 | |
| you at least have to admit it worked. | 7:16 | |
| (audience laughing) | 7:19 | |
| I'm still here. | 7:22 | |
| We call it grace. | 7:26 | |
| Christians believe that we are Christians, | 7:31 | |
| not primarily because of something that we do, | 7:34 | |
| or something that we think, or we feel, | 7:36 | |
| but because of something that God, | 7:38 | |
| in Jesus Christ, has done. | 7:41 | |
| It's something done to us, rather than by us. | 7:44 | |
| We call it grace. | 7:48 | |
| Tertullian, | 7:50 | |
| one of the crabbiest people in the early church, | 7:52 | |
| once said in a treatise, | 7:57 | |
| "You don't get Christians out of people's loins." | 7:58 | |
| Something I would never say in a sermon. | 8:03 | |
| You don't get Christians out of people's loins. | 8:05 | |
| You get them out of the waters of the baptismal fount. | 8:07 | |
| Christians are not born, they are made. | 8:11 | |
| Nobody is a Christian naturally. | 8:15 | |
| It's nothing innate. | 8:18 | |
| You have to make Christians. | 8:21 | |
| This faith has to be told to you, given to you, | 8:24 | |
| lived before you. | 8:28 | |
| It's a gift. | 8:30 | |
| Christianity is not primarily a matter of closing your eyes, | 8:31 | |
| sitting under a tree, | 8:34 | |
| digging down deep for some spiritually uplifting comments. | 8:35 | |
| It's a story that's laid over your life | 8:39 | |
| that makes you who you are. | 8:42 | |
| Now what I'm saying is that in a few moments, | 8:48 | |
| when we baptize these babies in their infancy, | 8:50 | |
| in their dependency and neediness, | 8:56 | |
| they look a lot like you look, | 9:01 | |
| not just in infancy, | 9:04 | |
| but throughout your life so far as your relationship | 9:06 | |
| to God is concerned. | 9:09 | |
| There's nobody here that's ever gonna get so smart, | 9:12 | |
| so faithful, so adept at discipleship, | 9:14 | |
| that you will be able to do it for yourself. | 9:17 | |
| We're always helpless, needy, dependent infants, | 9:21 | |
| so far as our relationship to God. | 9:26 | |
| We're just like a babe in its mothers arms. | 9:28 | |
| Our baptism is therefore a sign, a signal, | 9:33 | |
| among other things, that God loves us enough | 9:37 | |
| to do what we can't do for ourselves. | 9:40 | |
| As Paul put it, Jesus Christ died to save who? | 9:43 | |
| Sinners. | 9:48 | |
| In Jesus Christ, we sinners, inept as we are, | 9:51 | |
| we didn't choose him, he said I chose you. | 9:55 | |
| And it is this God-actedness of baptism, | 10:01 | |
| of the whole Christian life, | 10:05 | |
| that I think is why Luther would talk about baptism | 10:08 | |
| as the Christian's great comfort. | 10:12 | |
| There's nothing very comforting about being told | 10:16 | |
| that you are related to God on the basis of how you behave, | 10:19 | |
| and keeping your slate clean, and being perfect. | 10:23 | |
| Luther said baptism is a reminder though that God helps us | 10:28 | |
| helpless ones in ways that we cannot help ourselves, | 10:33 | |
| therefore Luther says, | 10:38 | |
| "In times of great doubt and distress, | 10:39 | |
| "when you are wandering, | 10:42 | |
| "when you are uncertain about who you are | 10:43 | |
| "and where you're headed, | 10:45 | |
| "touch your forehead where you were baptized, | 10:46 | |
| "repeat the words, baptizatus sum." | 10:49 | |
| I am baptized. | 10:52 | |
| And this is great comfort in life and in death. | 10:54 | |
| Baptism is a sure sign that the same God that has loved you | 10:59 | |
| and worked at you throughout your life will continue | 11:04 | |
| to work with you and draw you in death, | 11:08 | |
| this God will bring you home. | 11:12 | |
| This is comfort because I don't know about you, | 11:15 | |
| but I don't always think like a Christian. | 11:19 | |
| I don't always feel like a Christian | 11:22 | |
| and if you've ever been in close proximity to me | 11:24 | |
| you know that I don't always act like a Christian, | 11:27 | |
| but that is not the basis of my relationship | 11:31 | |
| to Jesus Christ. | 11:34 | |
| That relationship is not based on me and my character, | 11:38 | |
| but on the character of a God | 11:44 | |
| that just loves to save sinners and reach out | 11:46 | |
| to the helpless and to embrace the infants. | 11:50 | |
| So, if you're ever having trouble being a Christian | 11:57 | |
| just touch your forehead, remember your baptism, | 12:00 | |
| and remember you're a Christian because here, | 12:03 | |
| we told you so. | 12:08 | |
| In her wonderful autobiography, | 12:11 | |
| An American Childhood, | 12:14 | |
| Annie Dillard tells about a story, | 12:15 | |
| I think about the persistence of baptism. | 12:20 | |
| Annie Dillard was a smart young thing. | 12:24 | |
| By age 16 she had read all the books in her branch | 12:25 | |
| of the Pittsburgh Public Library, including Nietzsche. | 12:29 | |
| And so she decided at age 16 that this Christianity stuff | 12:33 | |
| was a bunch of hooey, so, one day, | 12:36 | |
| she made an appointment with the kindly, | 12:40 | |
| old assistant pastor at Shady Side Presbyterian Church | 12:43 | |
| and she went down there and she said, | 12:47 | |
| "I want my name removed from the roll of this church. | 12:49 | |
| "I'm no longer a Christian. | 12:52 | |
| "I no longer believe any of this stuff. | 12:54 | |
| "I want my name removed." | 12:56 | |
| The old pastor said, "Okay." | 12:59 | |
| She said, "Uh, you're not gonna try | 13:03 | |
| to argue me into it or something?" | 13:05 | |
| He said, "Oh no, you're a lot smarter than I, | 13:09 | |
| "and if I could argue you into it, | 13:11 | |
| "I'm sure you could argue yourself out of it, okay." | 13:13 | |
| So she said, "So that's all it is? | 13:16 | |
| "I'm no longer a Christian?" | 13:21 | |
| And he said, "Well I said that your name | 13:23 | |
| "is now off the roll of the church, | 13:27 | |
| "I don't know about the rest." | 13:28 | |
| She said, "Well wait a minute. | 13:33 | |
| "I can do what I decide to do." | 13:35 | |
| And he said, "Oh well everybody thinks that at 16, | 13:40 | |
| "but we'll just have to see, won't we?" | 13:42 | |
| She said she walked out, | 13:50 | |
| finding the response of the preacher strange. | 13:52 | |
| She walked out of his office, she was walking down the hall, | 13:56 | |
| she heard the old man say to himself, "She'll be back." | 13:58 | |
| She said she wheeled around, | 14:06 | |
| she stormed back in that office | 14:07 | |
| and she said, "What did you say?" | 14:09 | |
| And he said, "Oh, I just said that I suppose | 14:11 | |
| "you'll probably be back." | 14:16 | |
| And she said, "No I won't. | 14:19 | |
| "This is my life and I'll do what I want to do. | 14:21 | |
| "I'm not gonna be back." | 14:24 | |
| And he said, "Well I know how you feel about these things, | 14:27 | |
| "but who knows how God feels about these things." | 14:31 | |
| She said she stormed out it made her so mad. | 14:34 | |
| She said, "As I write this I'm 45 years old. | 14:39 | |
| "Through a circuitous path, I'm in this faith, I'm back." | 14:47 | |
| Ah, remember your baptism and be thankful. | 14:58 | |
| Amen. | 15:06 |
