Formed to Love: Sermon 1 Corinthians 13

Dear God, take our minds and think through them; take our hands and feet and work through them; take our lips and speak through them, take our hearts and set them on fire for you. Amen

In the last few weeks we have talked about our lives as Christians post-baptism. We have discussed our gifts that have been given by the Holy Spirit. We have talked about how each of us are given gifts according to the Spirit and how we must all work together as a united Body of Christ using each of those gifts together. Last week, I gave you a little cliffhanger; I left you with a question. I told you that all of God’s creation is unified under a single purpose and a single reason. Today I hope to answer the age old question why are we here?

Why are we here? Not to mean why are we gathered here in this building on this hour on this day, but instead I am speaking in the abstract, the universal question. Why are we here? Why were we created to inhabit this place, this earth? This is a question that humankind has wrestled with for thousands of years. All of the major philosophers have debated and thought about this question. Some have even said that there is no answer to this question. That everything about the human race is by chance. Some would say that who we are as a species has evolved over millions of years and there is not rhyme or reason to it. It all happened by chance and through the survival of the fittest. That however doesn’t offer much. Science can provide the “how” and the “what” but they cannot figure out the “why”. So some scientists have dismissed the why as irrelevant. Who cares why we are here? We are here and this is all there is and so live life to the fullest. I do suppose that it is somewhat arrogant to make the claim that I have the answer to the greatest question of human existence, but the funny thing is that you have heard this answer before.

Before I give you the answer let’s take a look back at creation and not the one with Adam and Eve and the rest of the gang. I am talking instead about our own individual creation. There is a lot of discussion about when life starts. Does it start at conception or does it start at birth? Is in the first, second, or third trimester? I am not going to get on rant about pro-choice or pro-life, but instead let me offer an illustration from Scripture. Let’s look back on Jeremiah 1:5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” Just like Jeremiah, God knew each of us before we were born, even before we were formed in the womb that is an awesome thought. God had a plan and a purpose for our lives even before we took our first breath of life. There is a purpose for your life; you might have felt for your whole life that you haven’t lived with a purpose or a reason. I tell you today that your life as purpose and there is a reason that each of us was put on this planet.

We are formed to love. Paul talks about this purpose in 1 Corinthians 13. He says that everything that we do should be based on love. We must remember the Corinthians; there were a church that Paul was trying to unite. They were made up of many different kinds of people and they had a difficult time coming and uniting together. Paul tells them they each have specific gifts and that they must work together using the different gifts and they have to work together as a unified body and that there is no small or big jobs instead all have to work together. Paul then gives them the secret to life, that love is the key that brings everything else together. Love is our purpose and love is our reason for being here. They asked Jesus what was the greatest commandment, the greatest of God’s laws and his reply was simply to love.

Paul tells the church then and tells the Church today as well that we can speak in tongues of men and angels, we can have the greatest rhetorical skills and be able to talk anyone into anything, but if we do not have love it is meaningless noise. We can have all knowledge and all reasoning and understanding, but if we do not have love then it is worthless. We can sacrifice our time, money, even our very selves and if we don’t have love then it we have nothing. Do any of the things I have just listed, speaking in tongues, having knowledge and understanding, helping and healing others seem familiar to you? It is because these are the same things that Paul mentions as spiritual gifts in Chapter 12. So we can have all these gifts given to us by the Spirit, but they are worthless without love. What does Paul mean by this? We can use these gifts for many things, good and bad. We can work for ourselves or we can work for others. The point that Paul is trying to make is, where is our motivation? When we do works for the church or for our fellow humankind, are we motivated by love of others or our own selfishness? Are we doing it for the love of God and neighbor or just to get into heaven? If we are to follow use the gifts of the Spirit in the way that God has made for us then it must be done in love.

Now I know what you might be thinking. Here he goes again, talking about love. But love is the central theme to my theology and therefore it is central to my preaching. God’s love for us and the love that we should have for God and for one another is the good news of the gospel and it is the greatest commandment. So Paul tells the Corinthians that love is the key that unites all the works of the church together and I say to you that love is the purpose of humanity, God created each one of us so that we could return God’s love and so that we could love one another. But what kind of love does God call for? There are many types of love. There is romantic love, brotherly-friendship love, there is familial love, but the love that Paul is talking about is agape love, love that is divine in character.

Paul goes on to describe this kind of love. He says that this love is patient. Agape love turns the other cheek and prays for the one’s that do it harm. This kind of love is kind. He offers help to those who need it, but not from a distance. Agape love gets down and dirty to those who are downtrodden, this love doesn’t pass by the leper, but touches his face. The Message Bible says “Love cares more for others than for self” Paul says that this love is not boastful, arrogant, or rude. Agape love does not focus on the self, but has complete attention and care for others. It is not selfish, but self-less. It does not care for praise or reward, but works tirelessly for the common good.

Paul says this love does not insist on its own way, in other words, it is open to new ideas, new concepts, and it is adaptable to change. We are so afraid of change, we grow older and we get set in our ways, our lives become routine and we do not want to do anything to break that routine. We fear anything new because it could be dangerous, we could get hurt. But agape love is bold in the face of the unknown and takes new challenges head on. This love is more powerful that all the dangers the world can throw at it and so it is daring in the midst of darkness.

Paul says that this love does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in truth. This love stands up for truth, stands up for justice, stands up for the oppressed. This love does not simply look with pity on those who struggle, but it struggles alongside them. This love hopes in all things. Even in Darfur, Sudan were hundreds of thousands have been murdered in genocide, this love remains. Even in Central and South America were people have been taken from there homes never to be seen again, this love remains, not only remains, but it grows. It cannot be destroyed and cannot be overwhelmed. This love is eternal. Paul says that all things will pass away. Prophesies will cease, human knowledge will diminish all human endeavors will be gone, the only thing that will remain is love because this love comes from God. God does not love, God is love. God’s very nature, God’s very being is love. Just as God is eternal, so this love will be eternal.

Do you love like this? If you do please come and take over for me, because even as your pastor I have failed to love like this fully. I think we all have failed at some point, but that’s ok. God understands. We work toward that love; we work to what in the United Methodist tradition is known as Christian perfection. John Wesley called Christian perfection, perfect love of God and neighbor. This is our goal in the Church and we work together using our gifts toward that perfect love?

Before we were formed in the womb, God had plans for us, a purpose, a meaning for our lives. It is to love. That is the meaning of life, to love God and to love one another. Oh, if we could do that and see what joy it could bring. If we could treat one another with this kind of love what a glorious thing that would be. We work toward that goal and one day when all weapons of war, when all words of hate and bigotry have ceased, we will all love agape love and we can join together in that great heavenly choir and sing praises of love for eternity. Until then I will close and let us cling this morning with the same words that Paul closes chapter 13 with “And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.”

Let us pray…

Grant, O Lord,

that what has been said with our lips we may believe in our hearts,

and that what we believe in our hearts we may practice in our lives;

through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

I'm Just a Foot: Sermon 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a

Dear God, take our minds and think through them; take our hands and feet and work through them; take our lips and speak through them, take our hearts and set them on fire for you. Amen

We have become almost obsessed with our bodies and body image in this country. All you need to do is turn on the television and you will be bombarded with all kinds of products that will make you thin, younger looking, tan, have clear skin, shiny white teeth, and smell like anybody or anything you want to. The beauty industry is a billion dollar a year business and today it’s not just about hair dye or make up. I’m not saying that trying to better ourselves, especially when it comes to our health, is necessarily a bad thing. However, some people take it to the extreme; they want to change everything about their God created bodies and make them into something else. I According to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, over 3 million Americans have Botox injections in 2005, over 400,000 Americans had liposuction on various parts of their bodies, and over 300,000 women had breast augmentation surgery. This is not taking into consideration the millions of us try new diets and exercise programs each year, another billion dollar industry. have always thought that if people thought about their spiritual selves half as much as they do about their physical selves the world would be a much better, happier, and more just place to live.

Paul takes this section that we read today from his letter to the Corinthian Church and uses the metaphor of the human body to explain the unity of the Church universal, or the Body of Christ. Paul is attempting to bring together the church in Corinth, to unify the people. Let’s, for a moment, get a little background on the geographical and social context within 1 Cor. Ancient Corinth was situated on an isthmus in the Greek peninsula. Because it was on such a thin piece of land between two important bodies of water and because going around the peninsula was both time consuming and dangerous Corinth became and important place for sailors, traders, and merchants. Ships would come into the harbor on one side and during the time of Paul they would unload the ships, place them on rollers and roll them across the isthmus to the other body of water and off they would go. The process would take a few weeks to complete. In the down time, sailors would do what they have become notorious for doing when they come to port and so Corinth was a hotbed for prostitution and other vices. It also meant that Corinth was one of the most diverse cities in the ancient world, people of all backgrounds and cultures would come into town.

The Church of Corinth reflected the diversity of the city. There were Jews and gentiles from all over coming and hearing the gospel of Christ and we all know that some of these groups did not like one another. Along with cultural differences, there were social and class differences, slaves and servants were baptized into the church along with the wealthy. Paul had a challenge to say the least. How does a leader attempt to unite such diversity and not only diversity, but groups of people who truly hated one another?

He tells them that through their baptism they have become new beings with new identities. ^“For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.” He repeats the sentiment in Galatians 3:28 “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.” We are made into one unit through the baptism of the Holy Spirit. The old way of labeling ourselves are not longer useful. We are no longer white, black, Latino, Asian, Republicans, Democrats, old, or young but we are all united as followers of Jesus Christ and that is the only label that matters anymore. All of us are filled with the One Spirit from the One true God. The same Spirit that jumpstarted the Church that Pentecost morning continues to move the Body of Christ.

Paul goes on the use the metaphor of the human body to describe how the Church works or rather how it should work. The human body is a creation, a work of art, a machine whose complexities are beyond anything we can comprehend. There are hundreds of parts on the human body and each one plays an indispensable role to keep us alive and moving. There are millions of members or parts in then Body of Christ and each one has a role to play and each role is indispensable in the growth and action of the Church. Just like in the body there are some parts that are more glamorous than others. We spend a lot of money and time on our hair and ladies spent time “putting on their face”. We pay a lot of attention to our hands and faces. We see them all the time. But what about our feet? How many times a day do you think about your feet? If you are like me, maybe twice, when you put your socks on and then when you take them off again and then the only other time you would think about your feet is if they hurt. Feet are not the most attractive part of our bodies. They kind of just stick out there, some feet are big, some are wide, and sometimes they get stinky, dirty, cracked and dry.

Do you feel like a foot in the body of Christ? You might feel like your work, your efforts go unnoticed or unrecognized by the rest. You might feel neglected, trampled on, and unappreciated. You do the job that no one else wants to do and you do it without complaint or expectations of glory or recognition. Sometimes, just sometimes, you want to just quit, give up, tell the rest of the body “I have been working all these years and nobody notices. I don’t want a parade or a special dinner, but a pat on the back for my dedication wouldn’t be too much to ask. I am not a hand, I don’t get any attention unless I don’t do my job correctly or I forget something and then all I get is fussed at. I don’t want to be part of the body anymore; I’m done, retired, through.” We have all felt like that from time to time, we’ve all wanted to just give up. Think about this for a moment, where would we be without our feet. Have you ever thought about how often we use our feet, to stand, walk, run, kick, our feet pad our bodies from the impact of walking that serve as our very foundation. We need our feet and the Body of Christ needs its feet as well. You are essential to the Body of Christ. The same can be said for all the parts in the Body of Christ, each part, each job is crucial to the development and growth of the Church. We use each gift that has been given to us to do God’s will and God’s work in the world. The point that Paul is trying to make, I think, is that we all have to do our jobs and work together as a unified entity, as a complete unit, united for a single purpose. That is the only way that the Church will not only survive, but thrive.

Have your ever heard the saying “If momma ain’t happy, nobody’s happy”? This means that if the mom or wife figure in the household is unhappy then her unhappiness is felt throughout the house and impacts the lives of all the members of the house. The family unit suffers because a part of that unit suffers. The same is true for the Church. If one person within the Church is hurting then the whole Church hurts with them. “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it…” Martin Luther King had a famous quote that sums up this notion I think, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Where ever a member of the Body of Christ suffers, where ever a child dies from hunger, or a family huddles in a cardboard box in the dead of winter, we all suffer with them. The Body does not function as it should unless all its parts or members are in good condition working together. We are unified and as a unit when one part suffers it is felt by the rest of the Body. But there is a flip side to that coin. As we strive and struggle together and when one part is honored then we are share in that honor. We work in the Church not for individual recognition or success, but for the betterment and success of the community. We are one, united together, we rise and fall together.

Each one of us has a job to do and each of these jobs are indispensable to the Body of Christ and God is so good that he equips us with spiritual gifts to do those jobs. We are equipped for the kingdom and whether we are feet or hands or lungs or knees, or whatever each of us plays a vital role within the Body of Christ. We are united as one and we work for one purpose. All of God’s creation is unified under a single purpose. Do you want to know what that purpose is? Well just like your favorite TV show, you’ll have to come back next, same Bat time same Bat channel to find out.

Let us pray…

Grant, O Lord,

that what has been said with our lips we may believe in our hearts,

and that what we believe in our hearts we may practice in our lives;

through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Equipped for the Kingdom: Sermon 1 Corinthians 12:1-11

Dear God, take our minds and think through them; take our hands and feet and work through them; take our lips and speak through them, take our hearts and set them on fire for you. Amen

I love the Discovery Channel. Angie and my mom would tell you that I watch entirely too much of it, but I have always enjoyed watching something at least partially educational on TV. One of my favorite shows on the Discovery Channel is called Dirty Jobs. The host, Mike Rowe, travels from place to place and documents the dirtiest, nastiest, most unpleasant jobs in America. This ranges from working in a sewer, to being a garbage man, to harvesting crawfish and oysters, all kinds of jobs that most of us wouldn’t dream of doing. The great thing about the show is that it not only focuses on the jobs themselves, but it is really about the people who work those jobs. Those people who wake up each day and go to work and to their jobs in what we would think of as the worst of conditions and they simply do their job and without those people we would not be able to enjoy some of the conveniences in our lives. Remember that saying “It’s a dirty job, but someone has got to do it.”

I think that the same can be said in the Church. The most visible person within the church is the pastor. He or she is the person who preaches the sermons, says the prayers, and visits you in the hospital or at home. The pastor is the person that is looked to when there is trouble or when there is success. However, the truth is that there are many people, both clergy and laity who must work together to make a church not only function, but also to grow. Some of these jobs are not glorious and some of these jobs go completely unnoticed to most of the congregation. We are all given certain gifts. In fact, Paul says that all believers, all Christians, have been given gifts according to the Holy Spirit. That is the Spirit gives each of us spiritual gifts, we don’t get to pick those gifts, but each one is very important and we must all put those gifts together to make the Body of Christ active in the world today.

We don’t talk much about the Holy Spirit in the Methodist church today. Our focus is on Christ and God, and too many times the third member of the Trinity is left to a lesser position. But let’s remember that each part of the Trinity is important and is equal to the others. One is not above or below the other two and all three are present and active within one another. It is the Holy Spirit that empowers us to do the will of God in the world. Everything we do that is good, every commandment of God that we uphold is done through the power of the Holy Spirit. Paul says that even the most basic Christian affirmation “Jesus is Lord” cannot be said apart from the power of the Holy Spirit. If you believe the words of the Apostle’s Creed that we recite each Sunday morning then the Holy Spirit is within you.

If the Spirit is within you then you have been given spiritual gifts. The Greek word for these gifts is charisma, which means “gifts of grace”. This is what spiritual gifts are; they are gifts of God’s infinite grace. There are many different gifts, but they all came from the same Spirit. This was important distinction for the Church in Corinth. This was a Greek city and the Greeks had many gods and goddesses and each one had a different purpose, there was a god of the ocean, a goddess of beauty and love, a god of the moon and sun, a god of the harvest and if you wanted a particular thing or gift you would pray to the specific god. Paul turns the Corinthians on there heads a little bit by saying that all gifts come from the same God and the same Spirit.

Let’s look for a moment at some of the spiritual gifts that Paul describes for the Corinthians. This is by no means an exhaustive list, that is there are other spiritual gifts aside from these listed here. These are among the main gifts. The first we encounter is the utterance of wisdom, not simply to be wise but to speak wisely. The Message Bible calls this “wise counsel”. All of us, I think, have that certain someone we can go to with our problems and they know just what to say to not only make us feel better, but also to inspire us to go great things. These are the people who can take Scripture and make it applicable in our lives in 2007.This is a gift from the Holy Spirit and these people are so crucial to our lives and to our growth as people and as Christians.

The next gift is called the utterance of knowledge; this could also be called the ability of “special knowledge” or “clear understanding”. This is not necessarily would you would call “book learning”. In fact, I know a lot of people with PhDs who don’t have walking around sense. This is instead is the ability to clearly understand the world around us and how if affects each one of us. It is also the ability to be able to understand and to enact that wise advice given to them by the people we have just talked about. This is the gift of knowledge.

Next, we have the gift of faith. Faith is a strange thing because we always assume that it comes from within us. It is something that we have to work for and earn, but instead it is a gift of grace given by God. John Wesley said that God not only gives us grace, but also gives us the faith to respond to his grace. We all have faith, or we would be here this morning. However, have you ever know a person who seemed to have faith that could literally move mountains? Some people stand so strong in their faith that no adversary can knock them down. We look up to these people, but they did not earn this great faith, it is a gift of grace, by the Holy Spirit.

There is the gift of healing. We are sometimes skeptical when it comes to so-called faith healers. We see them all the time on TV. Folks like Benny Hinn and Robert Tilton seem to heal the sick and physically challenged, just with a touch of their hands. Some believe in these people’s abilities and some cast serious doubt on these healings. I have never seen them person, but I have seen another kind of healing. I have seen the power of prayer and the power of a simple touch or hug and how these things can aid tremendously in the healing process. I have seen people whose voice and touch can calm those who are in pain and I have seen how just stopping by for a visit and dropping off some old magazines and books can make some feel so much better.

We don’t put too much credit in miracles anymore. We are a scientific society and we are all from Missouri, we have to see it to believe it. I don’t know about you, but I believe in miracles. I have seen a little baby born 3 months premature, 1 lb 7 oz grow and blossom into a healthy 18 month old little girl who is running around being a terror to her parents. I know that the miracles of modern science are not just coincidences, but are gifts of God. The wisdom of scientists and doctors are not self-made, but are from the Almighty.

Just like miracles, we are skeptical of prophecy as well. When we hear prophecy we either think of those in the Old Testament, Isaiah or Elijah, or we think of modern psychics telling the future. However, prophecy is not limited to telling of the future. In fact, most of the Hebrew prophets did not tell the future, but instead the proclaimed messages from God. They proclaimed the God’s disappointment with the people and God’s future judgment that would come to the people. There are those in modern times with that gift. I don’t feel that I can talk about prophets without talking about Martin Luther King. Tomorrow we celebrate the birthday of this great leader of the civil rights movement. He wasn’t perfect, but he proclaims what we felt was the truth of God that all men and women are created equal, with equal rights. There is so much injustice in the world today and we need a new generation of prophets who will tell the world that this is not what God wants, tell the world that God wants peace. \

These and others are gifts of the Spirit, given by God at God’s choosing. All of these gifts are given by God through the Holy Spirit. One gift is not better than the other and they are not given to make one person better than another. But they are given so that all of the gifts might be used together to what Paul calls the “common good”. We all benefit from it. Spiritual gifts, gifts from the Holy Spirit are not given for individual pursuits. It is about a community living and working together, sharing and loving one another and reaping in the gifts of the members. This is what the church should be doing. Working together, but we will speak more on this next week.

Spiritual gifts are given not for one person, but for the whole. Each of these gifts we looked at today are not done alone, they are all done to someone else, worked within the community. This begins the responsibility of our baptism. We become members of a community, we receive gifts for the benefit of that community, and we must use those gifts for the improvement of that community and the glory of God.

Let us pray…

Grant, O Lord,

that what has been said with our lips we may believe in our hearts,

and that what we believe in our hearts we may practice in our lives;

through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Only The Beginning: Sermon Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

Dear God, take our minds and think through them; take our hands and feet and work through them; take our lips and speak through them, take our hearts and set them on fire for you. Amen

Well, we are almost one week into the New Year, 2007, so I have a question for you this morning. How many of you have already broken your new year’s resolution? I looked around on the internet this week and found a poll about new year’s resolutions, number one is of course to lose weight or quit smoking or become healthier in general, number two was to get out of debt, number three was to get a new job, number four was to become better organized, and number 5 was to run a marathon or become better at a particular sport. The first New Year’s resolutions were done by the Babylonians and there number one resolution was to return borrowed farm equipment.

Why do we make New Year’s resolutions? The beginning of a new year brings with it a seemingly clean slate. A new year is a new beginning and time where we can start over and change some things in our lives. So the first Sunday of a new year is the perfect time to talk about baptism and in fact today is a day that we celebrate the baptism of Jesus and we celebrate our own baptisms. Baptism is a chance for a new beginning and a new start, but it is not like a new year’s resolution, that is broken within a few weeks, but it is a covenant between God and us which can never be broken but always remains.

Baptism is a covenant. The liturgy of baptism in the new UMC hymnal is called a covenant. A covenant is an agreement or you could even think of it as a contract between you and God and also between you and the Church. Baptism is not the first covenant that has been made between God and humanity. The first covenant was initiated between God and Noah, God promised never again to destroy all living things on the Earth in a flood. God commanded Noah to be fruitful and multiply and the rainbow was the sign for that covenant. Another covenant was made between God and Abraham. God promised to be with Abraham and his offspring as long as they remained obedient and God would bless them and give them the promised land of Canaan. The sign of this covenant was in the circumcision of the males in the household. Humanity remained sinful and so God sent the Son to earth to teach and to become the sacrifice of all of humanity and was resurrected through the power of God and because of all of this the gift of the Holy Spirit was given to humanity. God’s promise is that death has been conquered and that this life is not the end. The sign of this promise is the ritual we know as baptism.

So we see that a covenant contains three parts. There is a promise made by God. God will do something. There are responsibilities that we as humans have to fulfill in order to receive that promise from God. Finally, there is a sign that serves as a reminder of the covenant not only for the person who is initiated into the covenant, but to all of those who already within the covenant. A covenant is not is not just an agreement between God and one person, but between God and a community and within the members of the community itself. Baptism is not just between one person and God in that one particular moment, but it is bringing that person into the Body of Christ not just for a moment, but for a lifetime. Baptism is not the end of the journey but just the beginning.

The Baptismal covenant like the other biblical covenants contains elements in the past, present, and future. There is a moment when the covenant begins in the past. There are responsibilities for each person within the covenant in the present and there is a promise for the future. Abraham made the covenant with God at one particular point in the past. The charge that God made to Abraham was to remain faithful to God; this was not just for that point in the past, but for all within the covenant in the present. The promise for the future was that Abraham’s offspring would inhabit the Promised Land and would be blessed by God.

The Baptismal covenant works in a similar manner. The covenant began on the cross and through the resurrection. That was the moment in the past that we remember within the covenant. That was the moment that we celebrate and remember, that is the moment that the covenant became possible. We stand of the promise of God that will come into completion in the future; the promise that all of God’s creation and all of God’s people will become renewed and restored. This is the hope of our faith. For many Christians this is where it ends. We remember the past sacrifice and glorious conquering of death by Christ and we hope and place our faith in the promise that of God’s salvation, and then we have a tendency to forget about our present responsibilities to God’s covenant. We look at baptism as the end of the journey instead of the beginning.

Let us, for a moment; look at the baptism of Jesus. Now there is always the same question about the baptism of Jesus. Why does Jesus need to be baptized? He is without sin. He is God in human form. He doesn’t need to be baptized. John tells this to Jesus. He says it is I that should be baptized by you not the other way around. Jesus explains that it is to fulfill all righteousness. Most people would say that he meant it to be a demonstration of what we should do. But there is also another reason. Jesus, who was God in human form, was becoming part of the covenant, so God is on both sides, he holds the covenant with humanity, but he also became part of the covenantal community with us. The righteousness becomes fulfilled, the covenantal circle becomes complete.

There is another aspect of Jesus’ baptism that we can look toward. Jesus’ baptism came at the beginning of his ministry. This wasn’t a coincidence; there is a reason behind it. The baptism of Jesus was not the end of his journey, his work had only begun. The Spirit descended upon him and empowered him to do the work of the kingdom of God and the will of God. So it is with us. We are baptized and empowered by the Spirit not just to sit idly by, but to do the work of God in the world today. We become part of the past and we hope for the future, but we also must fulfill our responsibilities in the here and now. Baptism is not the end but only the beginning.

When Jesus was baptized, God spoke from heaven and confirmed Jesus’ name and purpose. “And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Isaiah said that God calls us each by name and that we are each created for God’s glory with a single purpose and our baptism is a confirmation of that creation and that purpose. We are living within the covenant of God and we cannot let that be set aside, but instead be active in the covenant and work toward the kingdom of God.

Our baptism brings us into the community of the Body of Christ, through baptism we are brought into the Church. We are not brought in to sit on the sidelines, but to move and act. This season before Lent we will explore our covenantal responsibilities and I hope that we can better work for God in the world and within our own community.

We all make New Year’s resolutions. Usually they are pretty self-centered and self-focused and there is nothing wrong with improving one’s self, however let’s remember our responsibilities as baptized children of God. John Wesley sums up our work pretty well. “Do all the good you can, By all the means you can, In all the ways you can, In all the places you can, At all the times you can, To all the people you can, As long as ever you can.” This is my New Year’s resolution and I hope that it will be yours. And together we can help one another succeed.

Let us pray…

Grant, O Lord,

That what has been said with our lips we may believe in our hearts,

And that what we believe in our hearts we may practice in our lives;

Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.