How many of you can remember your baptism? You “cradle” Episcopalians were most likely baptized as infants. You’ve probably seen family photos – “See, there you are in your white baptismal gown!” – but you probably don’t have any direct memories of the event. Some of you were baptized as children old enough to speak for yourselves. You most likely do remember what it felt like to say “yes” to God at that moment. And those of us who were baptized as adults can clearly remember what it felt like to have “the holiest head in town.” A little damp, perhaps, but holy nonetheless. For many adults, even today, consenting to baptism involves a difficult and scary decision. Sara Miles, for example, who described the beginning of her spiritual journey in Take this Bread, led the food distribution ministry of St. Gregory of Nyssa in San Francisco before she was able to commit herself to Christ and put her head under St. Gregory’s fountain-font. Whatever your age, whether you were baptized as an infant, as we will soon baptize little Jackson Boone, whether you were a school-age child, or whether you were an adult, whether consenting to baptism was an easy decision or a difficult one, your baptism was a transformative event. Baptism changed your life. Baptism changed your life more than anything else that has happened to you: more than graduation, marriage, or the birth of your own children, or even the deaths of your loved ones.
The writer of the letter to the fledgling Christian community at Colossae wanted to make sure that these new Christians remembered how decisively their own lives had been changed through baptism. We don’t know who wrote the letter, although scholars are now reasonably certain that it was not Paul himself. Nor do we know exactly when it was written. We do know that Colossae was a Roman city in the eastern part of the empire, the part now in Turkey. It is likely that both Jewish and Greek communities were presen in Colossae, and that the Colossian Christian community included members of different ethnic groups and social classes. From the letter itself we can surmise that, like many other early Christian communities, tensions existed among those attracted to Jewish or Greek philosophies and also within the community among different ethnicities and classes.
In addressing these various tensions, our letter writer had two aims: one was to give these new Christians a lesson in theology that would strengthen their resistance to other religious perspectives, and the other was to remind them of the kind of life to which Christ called them. We’ve had a chance to hear much of the theology in our Epistle readings for the last three weeks. Now in this lection – our last in this cycle from this letter – we hear again a summary of the writer’s theological perspective. The writer assures the Colossians that through the resurrection of Christ, which Christians now share through baptism and through continuing faith and trust, they have a source of their power to live a Christian life. In baptism we have experienced for ourselves, he tells them, the death and resurrection of Christ, and in that experience we too have been completely transformed. In the ancient church, people were baptized naked in big tanks or pools. As they came out of the water they were clothed in a set of new white clothes, symbolizing their new life in Christ. Our writer draws on that image, of the new clothes, to suggest how deep the transformation is that the Colossians have experienced in baptism: “you have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed according to the image of its creator.”
How does the transformation that Christians experience in baptism translate to a new and different life? Our letter writer answers that question in four different ways: maintain, reject, adopt, and place. First, the Colossian Christians are reminded to maintain a heavenly perspective. Realize that a transformation has occurred in your life. Realize that your allegiance therefore is no longer to this world, with its standards and values, but to Christ and his standards and values. Second, the Colossian Christians are reminded to reject the sins of a previous life, or of a life that conforms to the values of this world. Christians are to reject the sins of selfishness and greed, the sins that make my pleasure, my possessions, the sole focus of my life. They are also to reject all those emotions, speech habits, and ways of relating to each other that are hurtful and dishonest: anger, wrath, slander and abusive language. Third, the Colossian Christians are to adopt the virtues of the new life to which they have been called. They are to recognize that they are all one in the church, that ethnic and social differences no longer define them. They are to focus on others, forgiving others, and treating all with sacrificial love. They are to study Scripture, continuing to grow in their formation as Christians, and they are to be faithful in worship, so that Christ can continue to nurture them from week to week. Finally, as Christians they are to place Christ at the very center of their lives. They are to see Christ as the beginning and the end of their spiritual and temporal lives, and they are to express their continuing gratitude for what Christ has accomplished for them and for the world.
Maintain, reject, adopt, and place. Whoa! That’s a tall order, isn’t it? Jackson, are you sure you want to be baptized? Yes, as a community of those committed to Christ, as a community of those baptized into Christ’s Body, we too are called, just as surely as those Colossians were, to maintaining, rejecting, adopting, and placing – as individuals and as a parish. As individuals – and as a parish community – we are called to pursue lives focused not on our own self-aggrandizement, not on how many barns we can build, possessions we can own, or honors we can garner, but on our obligations to others. We are called to forgo all those destructive behaviors that tear a community apart. And we are called to find ways to minister to those around us, to welcome all into our midst, and to aspire to help our parish community begin to mirror the socio-ethnic diversity of the community around us. Most importantly, we are called to keep Christ at the center of our lives. As individuals we are called to nurture our relationship with him, finding those times in our day, week, month, and year when we may fully pay attention to him and his word for us. As a parish, we are to keep our relationship with Christ at the center of our planning and deliberation as a community. We will try to do just that at our parish visioning event on August 20th and 21st. I had a vision for St. Peter’s while I was at my Shalem residency: let St. Peter’s soar. By keeping Christ at the center of our visioning, and by listening to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, God willing we can share that vision! I invite all of you to come to our visioning event! And to the other opportunities we will have this fall to continue discerning the shape of our life together in Christ.
Some of you may have heard of Coventry Cathedral in England.1 It was completed in 1962 to replace the Gothic cathedral that was bombed in World War II. It’s a magnificent building. I have now seen it twice, first in 1964 when it was still very controversial because it was so contemporary, and again in 2005 when it was, if anything, even more magnificent. Towering over the altar of the present cathedral is a wonderful tapestry of the Risen Christ that draws our eyes ever upward, and that reminds us again and again into whose Body we have been graciously incorporated. When the cathedral was first built it was a parish church for the predominantly Christian community that surrounded it. Now its neighborhood includes people of all ethnic groups and faith communities, many of whom are not Christian. Nevertheless, as members of the Body of the Risen One, Coventry parishioners engage in a ministry of hospitality, reconciliation, and service to all. This is the mission to which all of us at St. Peter’s are called, as the rest of the world longs to meet the Risen One in us.
In a few minutes we will welcome Jackson Alexander Boone into that blessed company of all faithful people. Christ will call him, as he calls his parents, sponsors, and us, to accept the transformation wrought in us in baptism. We have all raised with Christ and changed by the waters of Baptism. Let yourself continue to be renewed and transformed into Christ. The old life in you has died, and you have been born again. You have been clothed with a new self. Embrace God’s call with joy.
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1. Thanks to John Shearman, who in his commentary on these lections, reminded me of my own visits to Coventry Cathedral.
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