Acts 2:29-47 "The Spirit's Caress" Scott Hoezee

Have you seen anything unusual lately? Have you recently experienced or witnessed something that really set your tongue to wagging, regaling co-workers, family, and friends with the story? We know what that kind of experience is like, right? Last fall when the towers fell, could you even keep yourself from talking about that? A friend of mine from Princeton visited last October, just over a month after 9/11. We had breakfast one morning and try though we did to incorporate other topics into the conversation, over and again we meandered back to more talk about New York and the still-recent disaster.

"Where were you when Kennedy was shot?" That kind of question is frequently asked because we all have our own stories to tell--personal narratives that locate us in the broader stream of history. When something really big happens, we talk about it, we share our own locations, feelings, thoughts, and sense of shock or wonder. And it doesn't have to be some terrible thing that grabs headlines. Some of you can recall with equal vividness the evening you got engaged to be married, the day you told your parents that you were expecting your first child, the day that child was born.

But have you seen anything or experienced anything unusual like that lately? When you are sitting around at a Memorial Day picnic tomorrow afternoon, will you have any recent experiences that you think would be worth sharing with your other bratwurst-chewing companions? For most of us the answer to that may well be, "Nah. Nothing too amazing has happened to me lately." But is that really true?

What about this morning's worship service? Anything here that you find startling, or at least worth talking about? Did you come here this morning expecting anything unusual? What about what we did at the baptismal font a little while ago? Most of us have seen this before, of course. Those of us with a few gray hairs on our heads have seen it scores of times. After this morning's triple baptism, I have now done nearly 70 baptisms myself since coming to Calvin Church.

Baptisms may always be wonderful, we may always be glad to see this sacrament in action, but you'd hardly call it such an unusual experience as to qualify for conversation fodder for days to come. Truth is, we are unlikely to regale people with the tale of this morning's sacrament while we're downing our potato salad and BBQ spare ribs tomorrow afternoon. In fact, by tomorrow most of us would likely need to be reminded that we saw three baptisms the day before. Otherwise it won't loom large on our mental horizons.

But I wonder if that shows that we're missing something here. What did you experience in your heart and mind a little while ago when you saw these three precious children receive the marks of Christ's death and resurrection? Is it at all striking to you to take helpless children like these and then hear the pastor say, as I did, that we are now introducing them into the rhythms of life, death, and new life? That's what I said. I looked those children full in the face and as a minister of the gospel I declared that something there has to die, something has to give at a very fundamental level of existence. Not to put too fine a point on it, but that's not the typical thing someone says when looking at a baby! The sacramental words of baptism are a far cry from "kitchy-kitchy-coo" and other baby talk.

Did you experience that scandal, that theological bit of startlement? What exactly did we do this morning, and why did we do it? Three different sets of parents came with a child: one couple are brand new members of our congregation, one couple are longtime members, and another couple traveled here all the way from Mississippi because we're still their home church and this is where they want their children baptized. Three different sets of parents, three different stories, three different paths yet somehow all led to this same little patch of real estate and to this small little font. What exactly happened here? Could you tell me if I asked you right now?

We don't often ask why we do something like baptism--we just do it. We end up being like the man who, when asked, "Do you believe in infant baptism?" replied, "Believe in it! Shucks, I've seen it done!" But that was not a very useful answer! The replies we give to questions about the sacraments need to be more reflective.

Because if someone were on the outside looking in at our worship service, there would be a number of features to our gathering that would look similar to practices in other parts of life. It is not unusual to see people gather in large groups. The same thing happens at every sports event, musical concert, fireworks display, and parade. It is a little bit more unusual these days to see people singing in a large group, but even this can be seen elsewhere as when the national anthem is sung before a game or when concert-goers sing along on their old favorites. And although preaching is its own particular form of discourse, it looks a bit similar to someone's giving a speech, and speeches happen everywhere politicians travel and at any number of corporate seminars and conventions.

Yet our gatherings in this place often include also baptism and the Lord's Supper. But that kind of ritual is not at all similar to what happens at your average convention or other public gathering. The sacraments stand out as uniquely Christian. And so an outsider might see me drizzling water onto a baby's head and could then very well ask, "Why do you do that? Why was that necessary?"

What would you say? How would you reply? Would you reach for the Catechism or could you instead describe what was in your heart, what you experienced? Certainly you might say that we do these things because Jesus told us to. As Acts 2 makes clear, baptism and the breaking of bread go all the way back to the very earliest days of the church, all the way back to what some call the church's "birthday" on Pentecost as we celebrated that one week ago. Christian people have always done this, and I suppose that could be part of your answer to someone who wondered why we do these things.

After all, there are lots of gestures that are traditional, and tradition alone explains why we do them. We meet up with someone and we shake hands. In other cultures they do not shake hands but instead put their hands together or they bow or they kiss each other on both cheeks. The meaning of each gesture of greeting is the same, however. These are rituals with little meaning beyond what we ourselves place on them. But our faith says that the gesture of placing water on a baby's head is not something whose meaning is determined by us and so is not something we are at liberty to change, to dispense with, or to alter.

There has, of course, been a long-standing debate in church history as to whether anything really happens in the sacraments. When the minister puts water onto someone, is that the very moment when the person becomes saved? Are the sacraments magic? Or are they just symbols to remind us of stuff that is already true? If I shake your hand, the handshake does not make us friends but instead shows that we already are friends. The handshake doesn't create a friendship but is simply part of the relationship already in place. I can be your friend whether I shake your hand or not. So is that what the sacraments are like--symbols of something that would be true whether we performed the act or not?

These are vital questions. Does anything happen to you because of the sacraments--something that would not happen if you skipped them? I pray your answer is Yes. Because listen: if you think that nothing happens in the sacraments, then there is little reason to celebrate them.

You really do not need the sacraments to remember what is in the Bible. As a seminary graduate, I can tell you all about Jesus and his sacrifice. Some skilled novelist or film maker could convey the truths of our theology in very dramatic and stunning ways--depictions that would stick with you for a very long time. You are not going to learn anything new by watching a baptism or even by participating in communion as we will do next Sunday morning. So if it is just a reminder of what you already know, there are lots of ways to get such reminders--ways that do not require water, bread, and wine.

Yet for a couple of thousand years now the church has insisted on these particular rituals. The church has done so because Jesus commanded us to observe these sacraments. But more than that we believe that the reason Jesus commanded them is because he knew that his Holy Spirit would be at work in baptism and communion to do something for and to us. When the crowds at Pentecost cried out to Peter, "What shall we do!?" Peter told them to be baptized. They had to be baptized because somehow, through repentance and the Spirit, that is how their sins would be forgiven.

Peter didn't say, "First, let me just tell you that your sins are forgiven and then, if you need a little extra drama to back that all up, you can be baptized, too, if you want." Sometimes when you're at a party the host may hand you a plate with a nice big piece of cake on it. He then may say, "Would you like some whipped cream on that?" and maybe you'd say, "No thanks." You can have your cake with or without the whipped topping, it doesn't matter. But listen: baptism is not the whipped topping, the icing on the cake, the cherry on top that is just for decoration and just for show. Baptism is the cake. It is the event through which God's Spirit is active.

And on that first day of Pentecost it didn't matter who you were, either. You didn't have to be good and all nice and buttoned-down first. Baptism would make the difference. Baptism would take care of everything. Even those who are "far off" could be baptized and so forgiven.

Have you ever felt far off from God even when you came to church? Luke wrote both the gospel that bears his name and also Acts. Near the end of Luke's gospel when Jesus is crucified, Luke was careful to tell us that all of Jesus' followers and friends had abandoned Jesus to death and so they watched his crucifixion "from far off." Luke and the others knew what it was like to feel (and indeed to be) far away from God. But baptism drowns those differences. Baptism erases distances of all kinds. You know, we usually build bridges over water because water is the barrier that separates. Lakes Michigan and Huron separate the Lower and Upper Peninsulas, and so the Mackinaw bridges the gap, lets us travel from one place to the other. But baptism is the one time when the water is itself the bridge that brings us closer to the God from whom we feel afar off sometimes.

And once you are brought near to God and given union with Jesus in baptism, you keep communing with him. Somehow the death of Jesus really catches us up by the Spirit. Do you feel the drama of all that when you enter the sacraments? Too often we miss this drama. We look at the surface but miss the inner depths. Flannery O'Connor once wrote a short story in which she wanted to convey the punch of baptism. So in her story "The River" she has a young boy actually drown when he attempts to baptize himself in a river. When someone asked O'Connor why she decided to convey baptism in so traumatic and violent a way, she replied that when dealing with the nearly blind, you have to draw very large, simple caricatures.

O'Connor wanted to shake people out of their bland, suburban acceptance of baptism as a small rite of passage on a par with getting the child's six-month portrait taken at WalMart. Baptism is not something that parents have done for their children--it is something that God does in a traumatic way. The essence of that child is drowned, slain, pulled under the surface of the river of Christ's blood and carried downstream by the current. We all of us die in baptism so that God can then also raise us up to eternal life.

In the sacraments the Spirit works God's wonders, and the Spirit does that in an intimate way. Beyond shaking hands at the door after the service, we don't get much physical contact in worship. We may be physically involved through our singing, clapping, standing, and sitting, but that is still different from being touched intimately. The sacraments do that, though. The water touches us. You saw it this morning. You saw the drips, the babies squirmed to feel it, I even got the parents' shoes a bit wet. The sacraments touch us. In them the Spirit of God caresses us as intimately and as surely as when your spouse wraps his or her arms around you in an ardent hug and kiss.

So let me ask you again: have you seen anything unusual lately? Have you experienced or witnessed anything that was striking enough to set you talking about it for a while to come? I think you have. I think you just did, right here in this place and on this very morning. You caught a glimpse of glory, saw a snapshot of a cosmic and gospel rhythm of life-death-new life. You saw the wonders of God's grace intersect with the lives of some children, and this reminded you that you live at that same gracious intersection every day.

It is a properly life-changing event we saw this morning. Tomorrow is Memorial Day, a time to remember what others gave for our freedom and life. Perhaps one of the best World War II movies ever made was Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan. In the story, a squadron of soldiers is dispatched across France right after D-Day to locate Private James Francis Ryan. All four of his brothers had already been killed in the war, and so General Marshall decides that the last remaining son was going to go home to his bereft mother before she loses him, too.

In the course of saving this one man, most of the original squad is killed in various skirmishes along the way. At the end of the film, as the squad's leader, Captain Miller, is also dying, he looks Private Ryan full in the face and says, "Earn this! Earn this!" But how can a person earn what has already been given to him? He can't. It was a gift that he could not earn before he got it and certainly it makes little sense to talk about earning something after you already get it. That's why we generally don't give people paychecks until after the work is done and the hours are put in. You earn it first. You can't earn it if you already have it in the bank.

But the idea there was that Ryan needed to lead a changed life because of what he had been given. The experience of others sacrificing themselves for the good of Ryan and his mother (whom they never even met) was to be so great as to alter his life's course so that, in a sense, he could earn it, be worthy of it, in retrospect after all.

The sacrifice of Jesus that encountered us again this very morning in water and the Word is like that: Ella, Luke, and Aaron didn't earn the grace they got. They don't even know about it yet! But it's theirs. It really is. Their lives changed this morning, and we should find the experience of having witnessed this to be life-changing in its own way. Everything we do from here on out should demonstrate that we, in some way, understand, we "get it." So if someone were to ask you at a picnic tomorrow, "What's new? Seen anything interesting lately?" you should be able to reply, "Yes indeed. Let me tell you about it!" Amen.