"Remember Your Baptism!"
Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
Rev. Dr. Bruce Epperly, Westmoreland United Church of Christ
Jan. 12, 2025
Do you remember your baptism? Or the baptism of your children or grandchildren or a special friend?
I can recall my baptism; it was the summer of 1961, and every summer our Baptist church in the Salinas Valley of California held revival meetings. We Baptists needed to be revived on a regular basis, it seemed. That year the revival preacher was Leonard Eilers. Eilers was a cowboy evangelist, ministering to stunt men and women and Western actors in Hollywood. He came in his Buick, filled with flyers and signs, offering the “roundup for God.” I remember almost as if it were yesterday, the words of his marquee hymn,
Put your foot in the stirrup
Climb up on the horse
The roundup for God is on.
Somehow, my eight-year-old self was entranced by the message. When the altar call was offered, I came forward with tears in my eyes, made my personal confession, accepted Jesus as my savior, and was baptized the next week, immersed all the way under, by my father Everett Epperly, the pastor of the church.
Now a lot has happened over the past sixty-four years – I’ve journeyed through “many dangers, trials and snares”; I’ve lost and found faith; I’ve married the love of my life (46 years ago, January 13, 1979). celebrated the birth of a child and grandchildren; the adventures of higher education teaching and administration; the joys and challenges of congregational and university ministry; I’ve explored and learned from the many faiths of our pluralistic age; but I still remember my baptism in that small town Baptist church in King City, California.
And, perhaps, like some of you today, I know that I’m here, sharing good news, because once upon a time, I was dipped in the waters of baptism, accepting and claiming my identity as a beloved child of God.
(I want to be clear: Baptism is not a ticket to salvation or necessary for salvation – it is a holy act, and any act of commitment is a holy act. If you are not baptized, you are not second class, and my message applies to your life as well as those who have been baptized. You are loved, period, with or without baptism.)
Throughout the centuries, theologians have described baptism and communion as visible signs of God’s invisible grace. In one way or another, baptism means that you are God’s beloved child, and that God loves you unconditionally and eternally, and there’s nothing you can do to quench that love.
Baptism tells us that God loves us in this world – the world of bodies and economics, of work and foreign policy, of inauguration and protest - as well as the world beyond the grave.
Baptism tells us that salvation is right here in this world – of shepherds and mangers, diapers and taxation, magi and artisans, and peacemakers and Herods. Baptism means that you are God’s beloved child, and that God holds you in God’s heart forever, regardless of who are, what you are, your nation of origin, or where the road of life takes you.
As a theologian, I like to explore the lived meanings of our theological language: and often our language is more radical than we imagine. One of the great theological words is “omnipresence.” When we use the world “omnipresence,” we are really saying, that “God is everywhere,” but more than that we are saying that “God is with us right now,” “God is with you right now,” and “God is with the stranger right now.” And God’s presence in our lives has only one purpose – to love you and bring out the best in you and the world, a world that has the real freedom to say “no” to God.
When Jesus came to the Jordan River to be baptized, God was with him, guiding his steps to the riverside, and God blessed him with the words, “you my beloved child.” Now I believe that God says those same words to each child and adult. The great saint Pelagius, branded as a heretic by those like Augustine who saw original sin as essential to our nature and right doctrine, asserted that you can see God’s presence in the face of every newborn baby. (You have, haven’t you, and surely God celebrates a birth as much as you.) God is love, God’s love is ever-present, and because God is loving, all of us are conceived and born in love, and not sinful from the beginning. Although we make mistakes and are complicit in the evils of the world, God’s love – the image of God in you – is your deepest reality and the challenge to embrace love as your guide in relationships and in the affairs of our nation.
Perhaps you can say to yourself each morning as you look in the mirror: “I am God’s beloved” and “I am the light of the world and I let my light shine.” You are truly blessed to be a blessing, and that means that your little light can pierce the darkness of the days ahead. That we stand with Martin Luther King’s Beloved Community, and not resign ourselves to accepting the division, dishonesty, and destruction, characteristic of many of our political and business leaders. We can’t deny our fear and anxiety about what may come in the future, but God’s moral and spiritual arcs cannot be quenched by the evils we deplore.
One evening after a particularly stressful and conflict-ridden day, Martin Luther King retired for the night. On the verge of falling asleep, he received an angry phone call, threatening his life and the lives of his wife and children. Unable to sleep, King went downstairs to fix a pot of coffee. King describes an unexpected encounter with God, in the midst of his spiritual crisis:
I was ready to give up. I tried to think of a way to move out of the picture without appearing to be a coward. In this state of exhaustion, when my courage was almost gone, I determined to take my problem to God. My head in my hands, I bowed over the kitchen table and prayed aloud…. “I am here taking a stand for what I believe is right. But now I am afraid. The people are looking to me for leadership, and if I stand before them without strength or courage, they too will falter. I am at the end of my powers. I have nothing left. I’ve come to the point where I can’t face it alone.”
As members of twelve-step movements and people in crisis often assert, when you hit rock-bottom, you may discover that you are standing on solid rock! King continues:
At that moment I experienced the presence of the divine as I had never experienced him. It seems as though I could hear the quiet assurance of an inner voice, saying, “Stand up for righteousness, stand up for truth, God will be at your side forever.
Following his experience of God’s still small voice, King affirms, “the outer situation remained the same, but God had given me inner calm.” Three days later, King’s home was bombed. But King remained rooted in God’s faithfulness. His encounter with the divine in the midnight hour gave him strength and faith to face whatever storms would lie ahead not only in the Montgomery Bus Boycott but over the next decade as King championed civil rights of African Americans and called America to seek justice and peace at home and abroad.
Another Martin…the Reformer Martin Luther, after whom King was named, suffered from depression that caused him to question his faith and mission. But, in the deepest moments of depression, the Reformer wrote on his desk, “I was baptized” to remind himself that ultimately our healing and salvation is God’s work and not our own. Regardless of how we feel about ourselves – or how far we have strayed from our dreams or our ideals – we can never fall away from God’s love, nor can anyone else.
Truly this is good news. We are God’s children, and there’s nothing we can do to lose that love, and even when we struggle to do the right thing, or face the uncertainties of our nation or personal life, we are in God’s care. This is good news as we ponder our congregation’s mission. Good news as we revise the words of our purpose statement to reflect God’s call in our time. We are in God’s hands, and God will guide us forward regardless of the outer circumstances of life in America. Remember your baptism. Remember a love that embraces each and all – and go forth sharing the grace you have received.
