“Now when all the people were baptized, and Jesus also had been baptized ….” What on earth was Jesus doing out there getting baptized? Herod had imprisoned his cousin John the Baptizer, so it had to have been one of John’s disciples who was actually doing it now. Why was Jesus taking the risk? Wasn’t he putting himself in danger by associating with the Baptist’s disciples? And he was a respectable carpenter. Why was he hanging out with tax collectors, prostitutes, trash collectors, liars, thieves, and other broken, marginalized people? What did he have in common with all those poor folks in the line for baptism, people who had to repent over God knows what, people who were lucky to have a cloak to throw over their tunics, and who weren’t always sure where the next meal was coming from?
Why did Trinity Episcopal Church, a small parish in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, hold a Harvest of the Arts on November 17th?1 It so happens that the rector of Trinity, the Rev. Dr. Erin Kirby, had spent the year before being named as rector in a small parish near Oxford, England. “There, she had a chance to participate in harvest celebrations – a long-standing tradition in England – and learn how congregations of all kinds can bring their ‘first fruits’ to God.” Rev. Erin wondered what the parallel might be in Shrewsbury, since it was not in an agricultural area. It also happens that Myriam, a woman from a neighboring parish, was teaching dance in Trinity’s parish hall. Myriam is from Haiti and is passionately interested in the arts. One day she told Rev. Erin that she had heard from her mother in Port-au-Prince that many schools have still not completely reopened since the devastating earthquake three years ago. Children and teachers still don’t have needed equipment or even permanent classrooms.
After much thought, prayer, and discussion, Rev. Erin, Trinity’s music director, and Myriam brought together a committee to plan a Harvest of the Arts. On the big day, a youth liturgical dance group performed in the sanctuary, the Trinity church choir sang, a Trinity parishioner organized a parents-and-kids improvisational dance workshop, and neighboring Lutherans charmed the gathering with the humor of P.D.Q. Bach. Led by a candlelight procession, people then streamed into the parish hall, where a local artists’ guild had set up a gallery. The artists agreed to donate 10% of the sale of their artwork toward the Harvest, which was earmarked for the Haitian partner of Episcopal Relief & Development. The event raised $943, a generous amount for a parish the size of Trinity. More important, the event brought together several faith communities in Shrewsbury and helped U.S. Episcopalians to strengthen their bonds with their sisters and brothers in Haiti.
“…when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying ….” Why did Luke mention that Jesus was praying after his baptism? All four of the gospels tell us that Jesus was baptized, but only Luke tells us that Jesus prayed after his baptism. And why does Luke show Jesus engaging in deep prayer seven more times – in the midst of an active and exhausting ministry? And what did Jesus have to pray about at this point? Wasn’t he the Son of God?
Not much is known about the early life of Brother Lawrence, a French Carmelite lay brother, who died in 1691 at the age of about eighty.2 Born into a working class family in French Lorraine, he served briefly in the army. Although he had no formal education, he had a profound sense of God’s power one winter day, when he contemplated a bare tree and realized that soon it would again be in full leaf. Not long thereafter he joined the Carmelite monastery in Paris, where he spent the remainder of his life, about forty years, working in the monastery kitchen. Brother Lawrence would have died in obscurity, were it for a visitor from the office of the cardinal in Paris, a M. de Beaufort. As de Beaufort spoke with Br. Lawrence, he discovered a depth of spiritual wisdom that astonished him. He began to write down his conversations with Br. Lawrence, eventually publishing them in a book entitled The Practice of the Presence of God.
The title neatly describes Br. Lawrence’s spirituality. His goal was to cultivate a sense of God’s presence with him at all times. Wherever we are, he said, whatever we are doing, we should do our work conscious of God’s loving presence. In that way, we can be in prayer or conversation with God, and all our activities become holy. Br. Lawrence thus made no distinction between traditional practices of worship – saying the daily office, receiving the sacrament – and the work that he himself was engaged in, i.e., chopping vegetables and scrubbing pots. Instead, he counseled us to make our own hearts a place for prayer, to which we could return as often as we would like. Most important, he reminded us that our sanctification does not depend on great works, but rather on grounding all that we do in our relationship with God.
While Jesus was praying, “the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’” What kind of an experience did Jesus have while he was praying? What did he learn about God and himself when he sensed God’s presence and heard God’s affirmation?
In her book Mystical Hope (Cowley Publications, 2001), Cynthia Bourgeault describes her encounter with Frère Roger Schultz, the founder of the Taizé Community.3 Taizé is an ecumenical monastic community that was founded in 1940 in the Burgundy region of France. Open to both Protestants and Catholics, it is also a pilgrimage site, especially for those who know its chant-filled worship. Bourgeault tells us of her encounter with Frère Roger in 1973, an encounter that led to her own conversion and baptism. She was then a graduate student and had gone to Riverside Church in New York City to hear Frère Roger speak. Moved by his simple words of prayer, she pushed forward with the rest of the crowd to meet him. She recalls: “As the wave of people carried me steadily toward him, my panic increased. What would I say when I actually got there? Would I try to tell him all about myself in thirty seconds? Or the opposite—would I just stand there flustered and tongue-tied, wasting his time?” As the line surged forward, she was suddenly face to face with him. And then something totally unexpected happened, something that changed her life forever. “He simply looked at me, his beautifully gentle blue eyes right on me, and asked with tenderness, ‘What is your name?’ ‘Cynthia,’ I said. ‘Oh, it is a lovely name,’ he said, and he looked deeply into me and through me, into depths I never even knew were there. For the next thirty seconds, I had his full attention – perhaps the first time this had ever happened to me in my life, the first time I had ever experienced what it means to be unconditionally loved.” Bourgeault left that encounter with her heart overflowing with hope. She was baptized the following year. She remembers, “It was nothing he said – just the power of the way he was present, his complete transparency to love” (pp. 96-97).
With Jesus, with Myriam and the folks at Trinity Church, with Brother Lawrence, with Frère Roger, and with Cynthia Bourgeault, we too have been baptized. We too have walked through the water and been anointed with the Holy Spirit. We too are called to stand in solidarity with our neighbors, with the neighbors that live across the street, with the neighbors that cycle in and out of our correctional institutions, with our Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, and atheist neighbors, with our neighbors in Haiti, and with our neighbors farther away. With Jesus, Myriam, Brother Lawrence, Frère Roger, and Cynthia Bourgeault, we too have heard the call to ground our work, our ministries, our lives, in prayer, to be conscious of God’s continuing presence with us. With Jesus, Myriam, Brother Lawrence, Frère Roger, Cynthia Bourgeault, and all who call themselves Jesus’ disciples, we too can be assured that God loves us unconditionally, that God has called us all by name, and that we are precious in God’s sight.
In a few minutes, I will invite you to come to the font. I will ask you to renew your baptismal vows. As you do so, remember your call: to solidarity with your neighbor, to prayer, and to trust in God’s love. In the end, there is no more that God asks of you.
1. This story is based on Faith Rowold, “A Harvest of the Arts, for Haiti,” at http://blog.er-d.org/ accessed January 11, 2013.
2. The following is based on Robert Ellsberg, “Brother Lawrence,” All Saints (Crossroad, 2000), 24-5.
3. This account is taken from Synthesis, January 13, 2013.
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