Baptism and Betty Rendón

5-26-19

Grace to you and peace from God our creator and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, amen.

If you haven’t already noticed by now, today’s theme is baptism, Baptism, Baptism!!!! All access baptism, all baptism, all the time!!

And you might have noticed that all through the Easter Season, we have begun each service at the font, with a thanksgiving for baptism. And THIS particular service is just FULL of baptism, between our readings for this morning, not to mention and ACTUAL BAPTISM… and not just ONE but TWO new members of the Family of God both here at this church and becoming our siblings in Christ in the sacrament of Holy Baptism!

The sacraments are where the God’s presence intersect our lives. We Lutherans have …. How many sacraments? (Two) Excellent! We “only” have two because our “Recipe” for a sacrament has two parts: a word or promise from Jesus, and a physical item. Do you remember what the other sacrament we celebrate is? (Holy Communion) That’s right! And for Holy Communion, Jesus said this IS my body and blood, given for you… and the physical item is …. (Bread and Wine). For baptism, Jesus said in Matthew, Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them…. And I will be with you.” And the physical item is…. (water) of course.

Holy Communion is what sustains us on this, often difficult, journey of our Christian life… which all begins at Baptism, the welcome into God’s family, into the life Christian community, as we heard with the story of Lydia.

 I love this story, and not just because we happen to share the same name. Lydia is an extraordinary woman. In some footnotes of history, she is known as “the first European convert” because of where she lived… but she SHOULD be known for so much more. We are limited by what the text tells us about her… but even these few details make her amazing. She was definitely a worshiper of God, likely a Macedonian Greek living in Roman town, which already makes her unusual. She ran her own business in purple cloth, a commodity so difficult and expensive to make that only the very rich could afford it.

In charge of her household, she took the initiative to invite Paul and Silas into her home, after “her” entire household had been baptized. This would have included extended family – aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents and grandkids …. also, servants, slaves, and perhaps some of her employees. There is even a chance that Lydia may have been a slave herself at one point in her life. In the ancient world, the common practice was to name your slaves after their country of origin, and Lydia was actually a kingdom in Western Asian Minor, part of modern Turkey.

We can’t know for sure, but it still neat to think about the journey of this faithful women, perhaps from slave to business owner to worshiper of God to baptized follower of Jesus… and eventually the home base of the Christian church in her region which helped to launch the church in Philippi… the community that Paul wrote to in his letter to the Philippians. We have Philippians because of Lydia! All because she – an outsider, prayed next to a river, listened to a preacher, and was baptized.

In baptism, live are forever changed – we are healed, we are made whole, and we become part of the family of God…. No matter what age, social standing, gender identity or sexual orientation, citizenship status, or credit score. All are welcome in the waters of baptism.

This welcoming has just been made real to both Dawn and Stephen this morning, as they were welcomed to THIS Family of God, part of the family of God of all times and in all places. We made promises to walk with them in their baptismal journeys, until, like Kyle in a few weeks, they can claim their faith as their own. But ultimately, we are reminded, every time we see water, of all the ways we are given life… Luther suggests that we recall our baptisms every time we wash our face. And we also remember the promises that GOD has made to US. Not a promise that, once we are baptized, our lives will become all daisies and unicorns. But a promise that we will never have to live this baptismal calling alone.

I want to tell you about a Lutheran Pastor who has been in the news lately, whose life has been very difficult in the last few days and is about to get worse. Pastor Betty Rendón, used to work part-time at Emaus Lutheran Church in Racine, Wisconsin, until she was arrested by ICE on May 8^th.  She fled from Colombia to the US 15 years ago because of violence in her neighborhood and earned her M.Div in Chicago and was appointed by the Bishop of Milwaukee to serve church in Wisconsin until she could become a legal resident, at which point she could be ordained in the ELCA. She, her husband, her daughter, and her granddaughter were dragged from their home in the early hours, still in their pajamas, and later, because the ICE officers failed to secure her home, her house was burglarized. Betty is scheduled to be deported back to Colombia this upcoming week.  

But she is not alone. Pastors and parishioners have been praying for her, calling there representatives on her behalf, and holding vigil at the detention center she is being held at. And her bishop, Paul Erikson, and our presiding Bishop, Elizabeth Eaton have spoken out on her behalf. But it might not be enough to stir the right people to act rightly. But we have to try, and we wait to see if what we have done has been enough. Unfortunately, Betty has had no contact with the outside world, not knowing that she is being fought for and prayed for, and she probably feels completely alone, like the man from our Gospel reading.

This man, waiting, imprisoned by his illness, alone, and friendless, did not expect a man to come along and to ask him an extremely impertinent question – do you want to be made well? OF COURSE, he wants to be made well! He just can’t GET to the healing…. And so, the healing comes to HIM. Jesus tells him to pick up his mat and walk…. And he DOES. No magical waters required.

Another man was also told by Jesus to “take up his mat and walk,” as described in a sermon by Otis Moss III, which I heard at the Festival of Homiletics in Minnesota over a week ago. Pastor Moss reminded us of how important our mats are in the healing process – in both stories the men are healed, but they are commanded to carry their mats along with them – the mats become a reminder – a marker - of who they once were, how far they have come, and who is the one who has done the healing.

Of course, we don’t have physical mats to carry around, as these healed men did. But we do carry a mark, an unseen one, that remains with us after our baptisms to remind us of our identities as baptized and beloved children of God. After Dawn and Stephen were baptized, I drew the sign of the cross on their foreheads, and forever they will be marked as belonging to God. That mark will always be there, and it is still on YOUR foreheads too.  And it will change you forever, like it changed the course of Lydia’s life…. And the lives of those who were baptized as a result of her legacy of hospitality.

We are a people who go through our days both marked by the cross, and still carrying our mats. We are healed, but not made perfect, beloved, but we will still have to navigate the complications of this world. But our baptism mean that we will navigate our daily realities differently. Like the healed man, we carry our mats proudly, unashamed of letting others know that we need God’s help sometimes… dare I say it, even TELLING people about our encounters with Jesus! I like to think that carrying our own mats also gives us compassion to help others carry their own.

And like Lydia, we open our homes and our lives and our buildings and maybe even our country to help further spread this Jesus movement, open to where the Spirit might be leading. So that no one is made to feel abandoned and alone.

I can’t wait to see where God takes Stephen and Dawn as they start their baptismal journeys. But no matter what, how easy or how hard, we all will be with them, and helping them along the way. And God is with us too. Thanks be to God. Amen.