Sunday Sermon

Sermon # 1009
Acts 2:37-42
Dr. Ed Pettus

“For You and Your Children”
Today we celebrate the sacrament of baptism. It is one of our two sacraments we celebrate in the Protestant Church. The other is the Lord’s Supper.

Baptism is the sign and seal of incorporation into Christ. Baptism symbolizes our participation in Jesus’ death and resurrection. It symbolizes the faithfulness of God, the washing away of sin, rebirth, putting on the fresh garment of Christ, being sealed by God’s Spirit, and adoption into the covenant family of the Church. That is a lot of stuff!! One reason we baptize infants is, as the Book of Order states, the baptism of children witnesses to the truth that God’s love claims people before they are able to respond in faith. Before we are even able to respond in faith, God loves us! That means that there is a claim upon our lives in baptism that is at work in us until we reach an age when we choose to respond to that claim, and that claim continues to work through God’s grace even if we delay a response. Our understanding is that God is at work in us whether we realize it or not. God is calling us whether we hear well or not. God is loving us even though we are sinners. God is active in our lives before we are even aware of God’s activity. God is with us even if we have yet to acknowledge God. God keeps God’s promises; God has promised his love, his grace, and his mercy…and so much more.

Some claim that God is at work in all people whether they realize it or not. When we minister to people, share our faith, or call them to follow Christ, we are simply participating in a work where God is already present. We are involved in the ministry of Christ; it is not our own ministry, but Jesus Christ’s ministry. It is part of our call in our baptism to be a part of this ministry…a call that, when we are baptized as infants, we are given opportunity to respond to later in life. One response is to give one’s life to God, what we call “confirmation” in our tradition, but all of us who have been baptized are asked to respond to that baptism throughout our lives. Today is one of those days because today we are all reminded that we are the baptized people of God. We are constantly learning more about the importance and meaning of our baptism.

We are the baptized community in need of ministry and compassion from Christ. Our proper response to the compassionate call of Christ is to attend to our relationship with Christ. Our baptism begins a journey that grows in relationship with God in such a way that we participate in the life of Jesus Christ in the world. Life and ministry is through Jesus in the same way that our prayers are through Jesus or in the name of Jesus. That is what it means to be baptized into the community of faith. Whether we are baptized as infants or as adults, we are acted upon by God to enter a covenant relationship that is initiated by God. Now an infant will not respond to that initiation of relationship until he or she is older and made aware of this act of God. But who are we to deny our children access to the covenant of God?

We can no more deny our infants baptism than a Jew could deny their male infants circumcision. Infant boys in the Jewish tradition are circumcised at eight days old making them a part of the covenant between God and God’s people. The infant knows nothing of this rite at eight days old, but is claimed by the parents and the community of faith as a child of the covenant. We use the same phrase with every infant baptism: “this child is a child of the covenant”.

In Acts 2 there is the account of Peter preaching to the crowd that had gathered on the Day of Pentecost. He presented to them the story of Jesus in relationship to the promises of the Old Testament scripture and when he had finished the word says: “they were cut to the heart…and said…what should we do” (2:37)? Peter’s response informs our theology of infant baptism. He says: “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you, your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him” (2:38-39). The promise is for us and for our children, so we do not deny children this opportunity to receive the promises of God.

Our detractors take this story and turn it into a formula that requires you first repent, then baptism, then the Spirit will come. Obviously infants cannot repent so the thought is they should not be baptized. Let’s look at two other stories in the book of Acts that guard against such formulations.

The first is another scene in Acts 10:44-48 where Peter is preaching Christ and while Peter was still speaking the Holy Spirit came upon those who heard his sermon and they began speaking in tongues and praising God. In this case the pattern is different. It is not a case of repentance, baptism, then receiving the Spirit. There is not even any indication that the hearers had any say so in anything, the Spirit just “fell upon all who heard”. There were Jewish believers with Peter and they were amazed that Gentiles had been touched by the Spirit. Peter basically said that there was no reason not to baptize them and he ordered them to be baptized. If we held to a pattern of repentance, baptism, and Spirit then this story is out of order because the order is Spirit fell, then they are baptized.

The second scene is from Acts 9 where the Pharisee, Saul (who would later be named Paul), was, as the text says: “still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord” (9:1). Paul is on his was to Damascus to find believers when the Lord confronts him on the road and after his conversation with Jesus he is blinded for three days. His companions lead him on to Damascus and he remains blind until a disciple named Ananias came to him. Ananias lays hands on Saul and prays: “‘Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on your way here, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.’ And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes, and his sight was restored. Then he got up and was baptized, and after taking some food, he regained his strength” (9:17-19). Saul regains his sight, the prayer speaks of Paul being filled with the Spirit, and after his sight is restored he gets up and is baptized.

I lift these stories only to demonstrate that baptism, repentance, and the movement of the Holy Spirit are not defined by our attempts to make formulas. We cannot easily claim repentance must precede baptism or that the Spirit will automatically wait to come after someone is baptized or that any other pattern might be applied. Granted the characteristic way we have seen the invitation in scripture is we hear the word, we repent, we are baptized and we receive the gift of the Spirit. But the Spirit works as the Spirit so desires. The Spirit blows where it chooses (John 3:8) and we are not the ones who decide, nor are we the ones who can deny our children the promises given in baptism.

In Luke the disciples try to keep some people from bringing their infants to Jesus so that he might touch them: “But Jesus called for them and said, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it’"(18:15-17). The disciples thought that the babies should not be brought to Jesus. I don’t know if the disciples thought Jesus shouldn’t be bothered with so many children or whether they thought children were not to be included in Christ’s work. Whatever they thought, Jesus received them all.

John Calvin said: “If it is right for infants to be brought to Christ, why not also to be received into baptism, the symbol of our communion and fellowship with Christ? If the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to them, why is the sign denied which, so to speak, opens the door into the church, that, adopted into it, they may be enrolled among the heirs of the Kingdom of Heaven? How unjust of us to drive away those whom Christ calls to himself! To deprive those whom he adorns with gifts! To shut out those whom he willingly receives” (1330)!

The Reformed faith teaches that infant baptism takes as its model the practice of circumcision in the old covenant. The Book of Order says: “As circumcision was the sign and symbol of inclusion in God’s grace and covenant with Israel, so baptism is the sign and symbol of inclusion in God’s grace and covenant with the Church.” The Old Testament is not without its elusions to baptism – perhaps a foreshadowing of the new covenant practice. Paul reflects on the ancestors of the Jews in 1 Corinthians 10:3-4,
“I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ.”
They passed through the water – every Israelite who left Egypt. I suspect there were a few babies in the crowd as they passed through the sea!

Paul also compares baptism to circumcision in Colossians 2 when he says:
“In him [Christ] also you were circumcised with a spiritual circumcision, by putting off the body of the flesh in the circumcision of Christ; when you were buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead. And when you were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in it” (2:11-15).

Now who are we to deny our children this sacrament? The sacraments are larger than us. They are the symbols and signs that say to us more than words, more than feelings, more than our theology, because they attempt to show us something of what God has already done for us. They dare to speak the mystery of faith – that God loves us so much and that God desires so much a relationship with us – that God would take the first step toward us even before we are able to respond. Jesus is the One who loves us before we even know it, before we can even begin to know it. Jesus is the One who gives us his Spirit before we know that he is present. Jesus is the One who works his compassion and love in and through us before we even realize he is here.

Jesus continues to work his ways in us even after we proclaim his presence. Even when we think we know Jesus and know what Jesus might be up to, he is working his mystery in and through us. He is doing something of a miracle in Owen’s life today and something of a miracle in your life today if you are a baptized believer in the person of Jesus Christ. He is working to bring you to a fuller relationship through your baptism, because each one of us shares in the sacrament having passed through the waters, dying with Christ and being raised to new life in him.

When we baptize our infants we promise to look after them in the faith, to show them the love of God that we too are seeking to know and understand. No matter what age we are baptized, we will spend our lifetime learning what our baptism means for us. We are reminded today that we have promised to nurture the baptized – children and adult – to nurture and love one another as Jesus commands.

Today is a day to celebrate. Today is a day to rejoice. Today is the day to baptize another infant and to remember that we together are the baptized community of faith. Amen.