At the Baptism of Julian David Simpson
All Saints Church, Worcester
The Feast of Pentecost, May 19, 2024
Good morning, saints. I am Julian David Simpson’s Grampa.
I have other names, of course, other relational words
that define who I am. But this one is pretty special, I have to say. I am
married to Hathy, Julian’s Gramma, who serves on the Altar GuiId here at All Saints.
I’m sort of a Christmas and Easter Episcopalian here.
I invited myself to do the Baptism that will follow
this sermon. I’m so grateful to the rector, Sam Smith, for saying yes and then
for going on to ask me to preach as well while I’m here. Thank you, Sam.
On the one hand, I’ll be doing something in a few
minutes that I’ve done literally hundreds of times before, over 36 years of
ordained ministry. On the other hand, this is unique. When Julian’s father and
godfather were baptized, I decided not to do those, as I wanted to focus on
being the dad on those days. But I’ve learned over the past thirty years or so
how to multitask.
I’ve told parents and godparents over the years that Baptism is not fire insurance, which usually has people scratching their head for a moment. But let me be clear – we aren’t here today “just in case…” or “God forbid...” Julian is already God’s beloved. Full stop.
Rather, we are here
today because Holy Baptism is an outward and visible sign of that truth. Baptism is a sacrament of initiation. It’s about becoming part of a community that stands
for some things in this unsteady and confusing world. It’s not a club; but
rather a community of people trying, with God’s help, to follow Jesus and be his
Body in this world.
The waters of baptism and the Holy Spirit’s presence
among us today creates an extended household of faith. This means that we are called (with
God’s help) to care for one another and to love one another, one day at a time. It
means, to be very blunt, that we are bound together in faith not only with
those to whom we are bound by blood, but with all the little children of the
world to whom we are bound by water and the Spirit.
Baptism is not fire insurance. It calls upon us to
move beyond familial and tribal ties to human ties across the boundaries
of language, creed, or race. I know this is hard – but those kids in Gaza and
Israel and Ukraine and living in poverty around the world and in this city are
also somebody’s child and grandchild, and we will renew our promises today to treat
them all with dignity and respect. I want Julian to grow up knowing that and it’s
our responsibility to teach him that not only by words but by our actions as he
grows into the full stature of Christ, one day at a time.
You likely already know the story told by Luke in Acts
of the coming of the Holy Spirit. And you may also know the story that unfolds
in the Gospel reading. So today I want to focus on those dry bones from Ezekiel.
It’s a vision – a kind of dream. It’s not some zombie apocalypse. It’s an
extended metaphor that comes at a terrible time in Israel’s history, the
Babylonian exile. But it crosses time and space. You don’t need a theological
degree to know what it feels like to be dried up and burned out and as good as
dead and then cry out in desperation: can these bones live? Maybe some of us
are feeling that way right now.
Christian hope is not denial.
I see a lot of denial in the Church and try not to judge it too harshly because
let’s face it, life is hard and the world is a mess in so many ways, and there
is so much hurt and injustice. Sometimes just turning it off is necessary for
survival and I get that. But Christian hope is not denial.
Nor is Christian hope wishful thinking. Wishful
thinking keeps us from engaging, it keeps us spiritually immature. We pray for
God to make things better, we say that it’s in God’s hands, and everything will
be just fine. But Christian hope is not the same thing as wishful thinking. It’s
not even a synonym for optimism, which as Seamus Heaney has put it, expects that
things will just turn out well. Rather, Heaney says that hope is rooted in
the conviction that there is something good worth working for. Hope is about
learning to say, we are willing to be your hands and feet in this world, O God.
Or as Pope Francis has put it: “You pray for the
hungry. Then you feed them. That’s how prayer works.” That short creed sums
it up, I think. Today Julian is being welcomed into a house of prayer, a
community that prays in the quiet of our own hearts and when we gather at our
tables for a shared meal and in the grandeur of places like All Saints. We pray
on our own and we pray in community. We meditate in silence and we sing out with
joy so that in our music, God is glorified. All of our prayers are shaped by
two great commandments: love God, love neighbor. That’s our mission statement,
friends. That is the work God gives us to do. To love God whom we cannot see
and to love our neighbor who is right before our eyes. That’s what Julian now becomes a part of, with
us.
It’s easy to love humankind, generically. Right? It’s
a lot harder to love that neighbor who just cut us off on the Mass Pike and
flipped us the bird. Trust me, and I have some family here today, I’m preaching
to myself here since I live a lot of my life on the Mass Pike and I see a lot
of crazy birds out there. It’s easy to love humankind in general. It’s a lot
harder to love our neighbor who has a political sign in their yard that makes
us angry.
It’s easy for us to make people we don’t like or
understand invisible. But the work of the Church is that when we pray to God for
the hungry, we feed them. We participate in God’s work in the world because we
believe it’s worth it. It’s not magic. It can be transformative and miraculous,
but it’s not magic. We pray for the hungry and then we feed them. We pray for
the sick and then we make a casserole or go visit them in the hospital. We pray
for racial reconciliation, for full inclusion of all God’s children regardless
of their sexual orientation. And then we go out and do what we need to do to
make that more real. We listen and learn and grow. That’s how prayer works. And
when we participate in God’s world in this way, we plant seeds of hope. We
cannot control outcomes or the speed of outcomes. But by sharing in the work,
we cultivate hope in our own lives and in the lives of others.
Patience is not a gift I was born with. In fact I’m an
incredibly impatient person in so many ways. I’m hoping that Julian David got
the genes that lead to being more laid back than I’ve ever been. But I have
learned, as a parent teaching two kids to drive, as a priest helping a
congregation to thrive, and as a canon who thought after ten years or so in
this work we’d have ushered in the Kingdom of God here in Western Mass by now,
that patience is less of a gift most of us are born with and more of a practice
we can cultivate one day at a time. So we do well to remember what Dr. King
said, that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it does bend toward
justice. Today we commit Julian to share this slow work of God with us.
I am not so sure. Julian’s maternal grandfather left
Cuba as Castro rose to power, and his maternal grandmother lived under Franco. Hathy
and I were born into a world where a president was assassinated and then in
quick succession his brother and Dr. King as well. Kent State and Selma and Mai
Lai were in the news. Maybe the world has always been a mess.
Can these bones live?
The work to which the Baptized are called is to be
salt, and light, and yeast in a world that has always needed, and still needs,
some salt, and light, and yeast. It doesn’t take a lot of either to change
things. The late Bishop, Krister Stendahl, said the work of the Church isn’t to
make the whole world into a salt mine. From generation to generation we cannot control
the world or even our own lives. But we can love God and we can love our
neighbor today and then again tomorrow. And we can live in such a way that when
people see us they might love Jesus and not hate the Church.
Can these bones live?
You pray for the hungry. Then you feed
them. This is how prayer works. And if we ever feel
that’s all on us, all on our shoulders, we remember that by the waters of
baptism God keeps calling and claiming and marking and sealing new witnesses by
name. Claimed as God’s own forever, Julian is invited today to share with us in
the work of being light, and salt, and yeast that makes this tired old world
new again. No pressure!
As he grows, I pray that he will
become part of a community of faith that is not afraid of hard questions. I
can’t change the world or immunize Julian David from experiencing all of the
pain that it may bring his way. But I hope that he experiences a community
beyond the parents and family that love him so very much that also will both
love and challenge and sustain him. Although Julian is pretty precocious, even I
know he won’t remember a word of this sermon today. But it’s not the sermon
that matters. What matters is that Graham and Cara and James and Cristina and
all of us here today take vows to live what we profess with our lips, so that
we became an outward and visible sign of what baptism truly means.
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| 4 generations have worn this gown |
