Sunday, January 11

Today's Readings: Psalm 29: Genesis 1:1-5; Mark 1:4-11; Acts 19:1-7

Here is my reflection/sermon for the day...

On April 1, 2000 a small book by the title “The Ultimate Gift” - written by Jim Stovall - was published. The book told the story of a gentleman named Red Stevens. Red was a man who had a humble beginning in life – and yet he was a person who knew how to make the most of the opportunities that presented themselves to him. He turned a small herd of cattle that he acquired as a young man, into an impressive cattle-ranching business; then he turned around and parlayed those resources into a variety of investments that stretched across several continents.

By the time Red passed away several decades later, about the only regret he had in life had to do with the way he had raised his family. You see Red’s children had known nothing but wealth and extravagance throughout their lives. As a result, they were not only unappreciative of the many blessings they had – each of them had come to expect those blessings.

The story that Jim Stovall told started in the most unlikely of places: at Red’s funeral. And if you had asked any of those attending Red’s funeral that rainy afternoon why someone would call Red’s story “The Ultimate Gift”, they probably would have said the Ultimate Gift represented the huge payout they were expecting to receive at the reading of Red’s will.

Little did they know!

For when the family members arrived at the attorney’s office for the reading of the will, they were in for a rude surprise. For each of them received just a pittance of what they thought they had coming.

This was particularly true for one of Red’s grandsons – a young man by the name of Jason Stevens. Jason had been estranged from his grandfather for years – ever since Red had taken Jason’s father on expedition in which Jason’s father had been killed. Jason blamed Red for his father’s death. Because of that, Jason had shut Red out of his life.

Jason was the last of the relatives to show at the law offices that day. In fact, by the time he arrived – nearly all of his relatives had left. When he finally sat down the attorney slid a plane ticket toward Jason and said, “Your grandfather left you a series of gifts. Here is the first of them.”

Jason was surprised by the attorney’s words since he - like the rest of his relatives – had come to the office expecting his payout to be two things: immediate and complete. It was neither.

What transpired over the course of the story was a series of journeys that Jason’s grandfather took him on posthumously around the globe. Jason spent a month doing manual labor on a cattle farm in Texas, for instance, learning the value of doing an honest day’s work. Jason returned from that first lesson only to find both his condo and sports car repossessed – thrusting him into his second lesson about taking things for granted.

Of all the lessons Jason learned, it was the third lesson that perhaps changed him more than any other. You see in watching Jason from afar over the years, Red knew that Jason had no true friends – only folks that used him for his money. So Red asked the recently impoverished Jason to do the unthinkable: make one true friend in the next thirty days. During that month Jason found his way to a little girl by the name of Emily. It was through the context of that friendship that Jason’s heart was truly opened and his life was transformed.

So by know, I know that by now most of you are wondering what – if anything - Jim Stovall’s story has to do either with today’s theme of baptism or the reading that Marcia shared with us from the Gospel of Mark. Let me take a moment and see if I can help you understand the parallels.

You see when many of us think about the sacrament of baptism, we do so in ways that reflect the attitude of Red’s family members that showed up that rainy afternoon in the attorney’s office. We show up with our hands open, expecting the immediate payout we think we are due.

What we get at that moment of baptism, however, doesn’t usually look like we expect. For the reality of our baptismal experience is that the payout we receive looks a whole lot more like what Red’s grandson Jason experienced – a payout that unfolds slowly over the years through a serious of life lessons to which we are exposed: experiences into which those baptismal waters seep, and quench the thirsting roots of our faith.

The truth is that while we come to the baptismal font expecting to find an ending – what we find in those precious waters is just a beginning.

Think about the baptismal moment in today’s Scripture and what it represented in Jesus’ life. Did it represent an ending of Jesus’ public ministry? No, it represented the beginning. And think of where Jesus’ was swept immediately after his baptismal experience at John’s hand? Was he swept into the heavens for a moment of adulation and glorification? No. He was swept into the desert for an extended period of testing. Those realities can help us think about the role of baptism in new – and challenging – ways.

Friends, on this Baptism of the Lord Sunday, we have an opportunity to think about our own baptisms in new ways. We have a chance today not to try to re-create our baptisms as we might do if they were simply a historical event from our past. Today, we have the opportunity to center ourselves in the on-going work that baptismal water is still doing within us. To use the language from Jim Stovall’s book, we have a chance to contemplate that Ultimate Gift toward which those baptismal waters are carrying us.

To do that, I have a simple request of those of you who have already had your experience at the baptismal font. In recognition of that experience, I’m going to ask you to come forward to the baptismal font at the front of the sanctuary. In that baptismal font you’ll find several rocks. Those rocks represent the rocks that Jesus might have found on the bed of the River Jordan into which he stepped. I’ll invite you to come forward to the font, reach into the water, and take one of those rocks as a reminder of the work that God continues to do within you – the work that you and your loved ones became conscious of at the moment of your baptism. As you pick up that rock, I’ll lay my hand on your forward and give you a word of blessing…

In this moment of remembrance let us do what Jesus did on the day of his baptism: open ourselves to the ongoing work that God is doing within us.

Amen.