8.28.22 "The Joy of Baptism," Westminster Presbyterian Church, Pasadena, CA

 Genesis 17.7-13; Acts 2.37-42, 16.29-34

[Theme music from “Waterworld”] …

Waterworld … the blue planet, a little blue pebble in the sky … 71% of our earth is water-covered … as for us, we’re a handful of dirt, and 60% water … the creation story begins with the primal waters over which the Spirit hovers … the four rivers that flow out of Eden … Moses and the people cross the Red Sea on their way to freedom … water from a wilderness rock … 40 years later, the Jordan to the Promised Land … centuries later, Jesus baptized in the Jordan River … Jesus, the living water of

God’s love … water transformed into wine at a wedding … the river of life flowing from the throne of God … the waters of birth … the waters of baptism, a cup of cold water … refreshment for a weary body, enough to wash away our sins … water-world … water, water, everywhere … water-world, indeed.

When we turn to the New Testament, baptism marks a new beginning, a new day, a new chapter in God’s long-term plan … be baptized … as Jesus was baptized … 

Jesus steps into the Jordan River … the very first thing he does before anything else … baptized by John … to be one with us, that we might be one with God.

As the early church took root in Palestine, people were baptized to mark a new beginning in their life …

When those early Christians were baptized, they asked about their children, If we’re baptized, what does that mean for our children? Do our children belong to God, too? Or do they have to wait until they’re adults to be baptized?

The Church put on its thinking cap and quickly realized - We have the answer … it’s right here in front of us, our spiritual DNA, the traditions of our faith, the ancient stories … Abraham and Sarah … Moses and the Prophets - the rite of circumcision … in Christ, transformed.

No longer just the male child, but now all the children … the whole household - those by birth, those who work there … no barriers, no boundaries, no restrictions of gender, age, race or status … the love of God for all the world, the world for the love of God … anticipating the great words of the Apostle Paul: There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.

God’s work begins long before any of us know anything about it … an adult may “come to faith,” but long before that adult knew anything about Christ, Christ is at work … God at work, first … it’s never about us … it’s never about our faith, our decision, as if we had anything to do with it … 

We were born not of our own decision or making. And we’re born anew of God’s purpose and power, not of our own decision or making. 

It’s always about God’s love, God’s faithfulness, God’s purpose and God’s goodness … God’s decision … God’s creation, God’s work for our sake, and for the sake of the world.

To God, and to God alone, the glory … Praise God from whom all blessings flow … praise him all creatures here below … praise him above ye heavenly host … praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Some years back, a church called me about a possible interim … in the interview, I was asked, “When did you accept Jesus Christ as your LORD and Savior?”

I replied, “I never did. Because Christ accepted me, and made himself to be my LORD and Savior. And I’ve known that all my life.”

Dear friends, I have but one testimony - it’s not about me, it’s all about God.

Jesus Christ, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, crucified, dead and buried

On the third day, he rose again from the dead and ascended into heaven, from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

Jesus Christ gives his life for us, for all of us … to confirm what God made clear to Abraham and Sarah - a covenant … a covenant to be our God, to be the God of our children, and our children’s children … a decision embedded in the heart of God … before the foundation of the world.

It’s been my joy to offer the water of baptism to countless families … and the joy of baptizing my own children … and baptizing my granddaughter … 

To celebrate the on-going work of God … upon the face of this earth, there will always be a people, a people who sing the songs of Zion, who know the light of Christ, and the great purposes of God … 

What a joy today, to celebrate baptism for Joseph Robert and Spencer Thomas … to celebrate with these children the joy of Christ … and even now, legions of angels attending unto their little souls, the on-going work of God … a work that began in the first moments of creation, a work that continues to this very day … I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit … I baptize you, with water.

Water-world, indeed.

The gift, the glory, the joy of baptism.

Hallelujah and Amen!

May 19, 2019 "Presbyterian Heritage Sunday"

El Monte Presbyterian Church

Psalm 23; Luke 18.31-34

Good morning and God’s peace to all of you.

It’s good to be here … 

Today is Presbyterian Heritage Sunday … 

We celebrate our corporate story, and quite a story it is … it’s a good story, and sometimes a sad story … we’ve done it all … 

From the best of it, to the worst of it … but this much I can say, and say to you with confidence: our Presbyterian story is mostly a good story … a story of faithful people doing their best, relying upon Christ, seeking to make the world better …

We’ve opposed war and sought peace … we’ve struggled for civil rights and these days, we work for environmental justice. 

We’ve built hospitals and schools around the world … we’ve blessed the world with our medical missionaries, educators, preachers and teachers … we’ve done much to touch the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

We’ve done good.

But to every story, a story with many chapters … we’ve had our struggles.

The Presbyterian Church split over the issue of slavery … some of our Presbyterian brothers and sisters thought slavery was a good thing, something to defend … even as the  whole nation was torn apart by Civil War.

And it took us a long time to figure out that gays and lesbians are Christians, too … and have a place at the Table … one of the great joys of my life is that I can now officiate for all weddings, gay or straight.

I remember my first gay wedding … during the ceremony, there was a moment of revelation … “this is just another wedding” …  two people who love one another … who will face all the challenges of marriage and enjoy all of its blessings.

I’m grateful that we Presbyterians finally figured this out … it took us a long time, virtually of all of my career, too long I think, but we did it … we’ve done good on this one.

We’re doing good on immigration issues, too …

Because we Presbyterians recognize the great truth of God’s love for the world.

We are first of all Christians, and then we’re citizens of a nation.

Because we’re Christians first, we see people first, people, real people, mothers and fathers and their children, young people, old people … people, people hoping to find a better life for their children.

Is there anyone here who wouldn’t sacrifice everything for the sake of their children?

When we’re Christians first, before we’re anything else, then our eyes clear, we see people!

We see their hearts, their needs … we don’t worry about borders and boundaries … and for heaven’s sake, we don’t fret and fuss about legal and illegal … those are categories that have no place in the kingdom of God!

When we’re Presbyterians at our best, we rise above the usual ways that people and nations think … we think as Christ thought, as the great prophets thought … we think on a higher plane … we think and live the Kingdom of God.

And that means constant learning … throughout the centuries, we’ve learned a lot about the ways of God, and we are still learning, still growing … still discovering how deep and wide and broad is the love of God in Christ Jesus our LORD.

One of the sayings that come out of our story is this: The church reformed, the church always reforming.

Because God is infinite, Jesus is always out there, ahead of us.

Jesus never said: Come and sit down here - no way … Jesus said, Come and follow me.

Always the road ahead, more to the story.

Our challenge in Christ: to keep on following, following Jesus, toward the Kingdom of God … thy kingdom come, we pray … seeking that which is yet to be … never satisfied with what is, but long for, working for, praying for, the better world.

The Presbyterian Story.

We begin in Geneva, Switzerland, with John Calvin … in the 1530s … and then with John Knox from Scotland … and throughout the British Isles … by the boatload, Presbyterians came to America, with bag pipes and energy … Presbyterians moved around the globe, from Asia to Africa, and throughout the Americas … we are a strong and resilient tradition … we’ve made our mistakes, and we’ve done right and good.

One of the key pieces of our story is a theological idea: the sovereignty of God … 

Whatever the task might be, God does the work, the heavy lifting … all along the way, God saves, God forgives, God paves the way, God opens doors, God gives new life … God at work in all things for good.

When the women came to the tomb on Easter Morn, they wondered who would roll away the stone … but fear not dear ladies, fear not dear people, God rolls away the stone.

I was privileged to attend a Christian High School in Grand Rapids, Michigan … a school of the Reformed/Presbyterian tradition, and one day, in a Bible class, a student from an evangelical church was arguing with the teacher about how salvation comes about … as most evangelicals believe, the student made it clear that he believed salvation is up to the believer … you hear the gospel, it’s up to you receive it, it’s up to you make Christ your savior.

The teacher then added something I’ve never forgotten, something that became a part of my life … the teacher said, Salvation is too important a thing to be left in our hands.

To even think for a moment that we had a hand in our salvation is an insult to the glory of God … never in my life have I ever said to anyone: Let me tell you how I accepted Christ. Because I never have accepted Christ. It was Christ who accepted me, embraced me, loved me, forgave me, and made me a part of God’s work … it was Christ who saved me, then and now, and forever, and it’s Christ still saving me unto to the finishing of God’s work of creation.

Because Christ alone brings about the great work of salvation … though it’s a mystery, it’s a mystery made clear in the love of God … God is trustworthy unto salvation … not only my salvation, but the salvation of the whole world, and our children, and our children’s children … we must never fear for their souls … because God is faithful to us, to them … faithful to creation, every bit of it.

Our hands are not strong enough, good enough, clean enough, to craft the wonder and the glory of our salvation. None of us could ever hang on a cross for the sake of the world … we could only hang on a cross, as did the thieves, as those deserving death; Christ alone hangs on a cross as the redeemer of the world, not deserving death, but giving life.

To God be the glory.

That’s why we practice infant baptism … when we bring a baby or a child to the water of baptism, we offer to the world the clearest picture of grace, a priori grace … the prior grace, the grace that comes before … before anything of our own being or doing … before we know anything about God, before we can do anything for God, before we believe in Jesus, God is already at work … faithfully at work, believing in us with a sovereign mercy … throughout the ages … forever and ever … 

And it’s true for a believer’s baptism … they didn’t decide to become a follower of Christ … that work was done in them already, a priori grace, the prior grace, before they even gave a thought. They didn’t decide to go forward; it was the Spirit that brought to Christ, and it’s Christ who’s brings us to the Father … and in the name the Father, the Son and the Holy, we baptize of any age, but particularly, infants and children, as a perpetual reminder that it is by grace, and grace alone, that we are saved, lest anyone should boast.

The Heidelberg Catechism says it best of all

That I am not my own, but belong with body and soul, both in life and in death, to my faithful savior Jesus Christ.

He has fully paid for my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from all the power of the devil.

He also preserves me in such a way that without the will of my heavenly Father not a hair can fall from my head; indeed, all things must work together for my salvation.

Therefore, by his Holy Spirit he also assures me of eternal life and makes me heartily willing and ready from now on to live for him.

Dear friends in Christ.

Dear Presbyterian sisters and brothers.

With you this day, I give thanks to God for the Presbyterian Story … 

The sovereignty of God … the power of Infant Baptism.

To God be the glory. Amen and Amen!

The Hour Has Come

Psalm 119.9-16; John 12.20-33

March 22, 2018

I like being a Presbyterian.

I was born and baptized a Presbyterian … then grew up in the Dutch Reformed Church … either way, clear and concise is our theology …

Theology is what counts … lots of other things count as well, but at the center of our Presbyterian life is theology - what we say about God, or more precisely what God has said about God … 

By the way, when I say “Presbyterian,” I’m referring to what we were called in England and Scotland in the 1600s, because of our form of government … we are governed by Presbyters, or Elders, and linked to one another by our Presbyteries… other churches were called Episcopal, because they were governed by Episcopoi or Bishops, and were linked together through their bishops … and others were called Congregationalists, because each congregation is unto itself, not linked to any other congregation in any formal sense.

So in England, where the questions of governance were debated and wars were fought over it, the three branches of Protestantism were named: Episcopalians on the one hand, Congregationalists on the other, and in the middle, with elements of both, Presbyterians.

When it comes to Protestants here in America, we’re one of these three groups … sometimes we hear the term “non-denominational,” but what that really means is, “congregational” … Baptists, and Assemblies of God are congregational, and other fundamentalist and evangelical churches, like the megachurches … or church life on TBN and other religious sources, all stand alone, congregation-by-congregation … they have associations, or fellowships, or even create satellite congregations, but they’re not linked together like Episcopalians, or Presbyterians … 

Anyway, when I say “Presbyterian,” it’s a reference to our form of government, how we govern, or manage, the local church, and how we’re linked together … in other words, we are stronger together: we believe that our unity reflects the unity of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit … we believe that our fellowship and community reflects the love of Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit binding us to God and binding us to one another.

Christ prayed that we might be one … and though it’s terribly hard for us human beings to get that worked out, it remains the prayer of Christ, and must be our prayer as well … 

Now, things get a wee bit complicated … on the continent, churches governed as Presbyterians are called Reformed Churches … 

When the Scottish arrived here, they were Presbyterians … when the Dutch arrived here, they were Reformed, and so were the Hungarians and the Germans and the French immigrants …

Many of these churches have since merged into the mainstream of American Presbyterianism … 

Different names, but the Reformed and Presbyterian Churches are governed in much the same way, by Elders, and both share in a common and glorious theology inherited from John Calvin in Geneva Switzerland.

In other words:

We are Presbyterians in our form of government … we are Reformed in our theology … we are Presbyterian and we are Reformed … a strong and vital heritage, something of which all us can be proud, and for which all of us can be grateful.

Our theology always begins with God, with creation … I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth …

Our focus is on God, and then, specifically, what God has done in Christ … and what Christ has done for the glory and the honor of God … it’s all about God … God’s work, God’s purpose, God’s saving grace … we are saved by God, we are preserved by God, we are held and made holy by God … every bit of our faith is God-created … our journey through life is guided and guarded by the Sovereign God, maker of heaven and earth … 

We are bystanders to all of this … we’re not participants in this mighty work of God in Christ … 

We are witnesses to this work … like someone witnessing a glorious sunset …

We are witnesses - we see Christ upon the road to Jerusalem … we walk with him into the Holy City, we might even wave some Palm Branches on Palm Sunday, shout Hosanna, and then, sadly enough, maybe we join the crowd calling for his crucifixion …

Part of our story is sad:

Like Peter, we end up denying Him.

Like Judas, we betray Him.

Like the disciples, we fall asleep in the garden and then we all run away …

We’re not a part of this salvation work … this is God’s work, God’s work alone. The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.

What had to be done, only God in Christ could do … what was needed to bring about the light of a new world, only God in Christ could do … for God alone is the creator of all that is light: the very first thing God said: Let there be light.

For it is the God who said, Let light shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts….

God has done the great work of redemption. What we couldn’t do, God in Christ has done.

Just like Adam and Eve - they come at the end of the story, not before, or even during … they are not self-created, but created by God. God is everything in all of this mighty work.

And by the Holy Spirit, we are caught up and brought into the work of God in Christ … and into fellowship with one another: once we were lost, but now we’re found … to God we belong, now and forever more … there is nothing, nothing anywhere, nothing anyhow, that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our LORD.

And with that, let’s do some practical theology … 

Sometimes people ask, “Are you saved?” When I lived in Oklahoma, I got that a lot. 

Turn on religious TV, and you’re likely to hear someone asking that question.

Here’s my answer: “Yes, I am, because of what God has done in Jesus Christ.”

Not because of anything I’ve done, or have tried to do … 

Not because I went forward in a revival … not because I had a great emotional, spiritual experience at 2:00 in the morning … not because I got baptized in a river, or the ocean, or someone’s swimming pool … not because of anything I’ve done, or anything that I’ve experienced …

Certainly not because of my purity, my goodness, my prayers, my repentance, my tears, or even my faith … which hardly sets any records.

It’s all about God … God in Christ … God did it, God does it, and God will do it.

Are you tracking with me?

This is important.

I recently saw a meme on FB: “The best decision I ever made was to follow Jesus Christ.” Stuff like that drives me crazy … it’s self-congratulating  … something I did … and it’s not true.

It’s not our decision … it’s God’s decision, God’s love … we are saved by grace … not of our own doing, as Paul the Apostle says, lest any of us should boast.

And heaven knows that so much of evangelical Christianity is full of boasting … “I chose Christ” is pure nonsense … no one chooses Christ … no one … it’s God in Christ who chooses us … all of us … everyone of us … all of creation, all creatures great and small.

It’s all about God … God in the morning, God in the evening … God at noontide, God at midnight … 

“I was saved 2000 years ago when Christ died upon the Cross …” said Bishop Fulton J. Sheen.

And even before that, we were saved … remember what the Apostle Paul wrote? 

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world …

It’s God’s decision … when we’re good, and when we’re not … when we’re faithful, and when we’re faithless … when we believe, and when we don’t … when we’re loving and kind, and when we’re little snots.

You see how this works?

The focus is on God … not ourselves … but only God … God in Christ.

Yes, we’re saved … because of what God has done in Christ.

And when we’re clear about God in Christ, then all kinds of things fall into place!

When I die, I belong to God … because in life, I belong to God … before life, I belonged to God … because everyone and everything belongs to God … the living and the dead … the past, present and future … 

Now, at just this point, some evangelical will say, “If we’re saved, no matter what, then I can go out and live my life any ol’ way I please?”

Paul the Apostle dealt with this in his letter to the Romans … the point being,  if you wanna go out from this place today and live like hell, go ahead; give it a try … but guess what? … the Great God Almighty goes with you … remember the Apostles’ Creed? Christ descended into hell, there to set the captives free. 

Even in hell, the love of God in Christ prevails and wins the day … even when we’re stupid and silly and just plain crazy … God’s love wins the battle. Period! All the time, and all the way.

But in reality, who here is going to walk away from God and live like hell? 

Are you prepared to give this all up? To never again sing “Amazing Grace,” or say the LORD’s Prayer? Could you turn your back upon Christ and never utter his name again in faith? Could you walk outta the fellowship of Christ and never again give it a thought?

It doesn’t work that way, does it?

It’s a foolish question … because the love of God in Christ prevails and wins the heart and wins the mind … the love of God draws us upward … when I’m lifted up, said Jesus, I will draw all people to me.

The Gospel News:

We don’t have to worry about our salvation, because our salvation is not ours to worry about - it belongs to God in Christ, and God is pleased to give salvation to us, and to all the world … and what God gives, God preserves … God will see us through, to the end, and beyond.

Dear friends, if any of you should be anxious about your salvation, your eternal destiny, look to Christ and the promise of God the Father in Christ … you are safe in Christ, even if your life is in shambles … Christ surrounds you with his love, even when your faith is battered and broken … his saving love holds you, his redeeming love keeps you … until the end of time and beyond.

Dear friends …

When hour came for the Son of God to be glorified, on that terrible cross, God in Christ worked out the glory of salvation, for the world … all the world … and that includes, you and me.

Dear friends:

To God be the glory.

Hallelujah and Amen!