by The Rev. Craig Lemming, Associate Rector of St. John’s, St. Paul, MN
Let us pray: Grant, loving God, that all who are baptized into Christ, will keep our covenant to love all people. In the name of the undivided Trinity. Amen.
Well, beloved spiritual family, it’s that time again. It’s time to do some spiritual winnowing. To get the chaff out of our lives. Saint John the Baptist returns in our appointed scriptures to remind us to get it together. Even though he’s not our more poetic patron Saint John the Evangelist, Saint John the Baptist is God’s prophet who loves us too much to allow us to live with lies and deceptions that are not life-giving. John the Baptist loves us enough to help us reckon with the truth. That Christ baptizes us with the Holy Spirit and fire. Christ’s winnowing fork is in his hand, clearing the threshing floor, gathering wheat into the granary, and burning away the chaff. On this Feast of the Baptism of our Lord, it’s time to get rid of the nonsense in our lives. It’s time to allow the Holy Spirit of Jesus into that innermost threshing floor of our being. To join Christ in gathering in what is good, and true, and beautiful. To let the Holy Spirit burn away the chaff that gets in the way of keeping our Baptismal Covenant to love God and to love all of our neighbors as ourselves. Are we ready to let the Holy Spirit get our spiritual threshing floors cleared and our granaries in order? To gather love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control back into our lives? Get ready, because today’s sermon is about how the Holy Spirit draws us back into a loving covenant with God, with ourselves, and with all of our neighbors through unlikely people, in unexpected places, with unifying spiritual practices.
Why are we focusing on people, places, and practices? Let’s look at today’s Lesson from the Book of Acts again.[1] Now remember whenever we read or hear about Samaria or Samaritans, we imagine the ancient Jewish-Christian people clutching their pearls in horror. Who were the people involved? St. Peter, St. John the Evangelist, and… gasp! Samaritans! What place did this take place? Another gasp! Samaria! What spiritual practice was enacted? St. Peter and St. John lay their hands on Samaritans who receive the Holy Spirit! Triple gasp! My theatrical and histrionic tendencies aside, what does this story teach us? Theologian Willie James Jennings teaches us that “Disciples of Jesus must be convinced not only of God’s love for the world but also God’s desire for all people, especially peoples we have been taught not to desire.”[2] We have all been taught to betray one another across lines of gender, race, and class. Those conscious and unconscious betrayals get in the way of keeping our Baptismal Covenant to love God and all of our neighbors as ourselves. We need the Holy Spirit to burn away the chaff of ignorance and fear so that Christ can gather us into kinship across our multiplicities of difference. The ancient spiritual practice that reminds us to keep this loving word, is Baptism.
How many of you have heard the name William Stringfellow? If you haven’t, Google him after church. A lay theologian, lawyer, and social justice activist who lived with his partner Anthony in the disenfranchised Black community of East Harlem, William Stringfellow was a devout Episcopalian. He believed “baptism is the sacrament of unity – not simply of the church, nor of all Christians, but of all humanity. The relationship of a baptized person to all human beings, and for that matter to all flesh and all creation, is fundamentally transfigured.”[3] In 1963, during the movements for Civil Rights, Stringfellow wrote,
The issue here is not equality among human beings but unity among human beings. The issue is not some common spiritual values nor natural law nor middle axioms. The issue is baptism. The issue is the unity of all humankind wrought by God in the life and work of Christ. Baptism is the sacrament of that unity of all humanity in God.[4]
What chaff is preventing you from this unity? Allowing the Holy Spirit to burn away that chaff is unsettling. The waters of baptism and fire of the Holy Spirit frighten us because they are the birth pangs of new life. New life in kinship with the very people we have comfortably curated our lives to ignore, to forget, and to betray. Renewing our Baptismal Covenant reminds us that baptism into the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus requires us to keep our word. To keep our promises to love God and to love all our neighbors as ourselves, in thought, word, and deed.
The funeral of President Jimmy Carter this week at the Washington National Cathedral reminded us of these baptismal vows. The Episcopal funeral liturgy is an Easter liturgy filled with Baptismal theology. The eulogies bore witness to all the ways President Carter kept his word as a baptized Christian. In 1985, at William Stringfellow’s funeral, the Jesuit priest, social justice activist, and radical pacifist, Daniel Berrigan preached the sermon. Baptism for Stringfellow meant being a non-betraying friend of those society teaches us to despise. Non-betraying Christian friendship is what Stringfellow and his partner Anthony extended to Berrigan when they harbored him as a fugitive in their home in 1970 during Richard Nixon’s presidency. At Stringfellow’s funeral Daniel Berrigan preached:
Christ was our friend, in such a world, in such a lifetime as ours, precisely because [Christ] does not betray. He keeps covenant. He keeps His word, even with us, even when we break covenant, break our word, betray. Christ keeps his Word with the poor, with the blacks, with the women, with the gays, even when all these are betrayed by the church, betrayed by the State, betrayed by racists and sexists and power-brokers and money-grabbers and militarists and office-seekers and property-owners and real-estate-developers and weapon-researchers… [William Stringfellow] kept the Word of God so close, so jealously, with such fervor and attention and acute irony and sense of judgment and anger and reverence and fear and so much more – he kept that Word in such wise that the Word of God and its keeping became his own word and its keeping… And that Word he kept and guarded and cherished now keeps him. This is the way with the Word, which we name Christ. The covenant keeps us who keep the covenant.[5]
Today, people of St. John’s, we covenant with Christ who binds us together in love with unexpected people, in unlikely places, through unifying spiritual practices. We let the waters of baptism and the fire of the Holy Spirit burn away the chaff of racist coloniality’s betrayals that reside in our innermost threshing floors. We invite Christ to once again gather us back into the promises of love we make.
Do not be afraid, the Prophet Isaiah proclaims. As the birth pangs of new life begin again, God makes and keeps these promises:
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.
For I am the Lord your God,
the Holy One, your Savior.
May God’s covenant of love keep us who keep God’s covenant to love.
Amen.
[1] https://lectionarypage.net/YearC_RCL/Epiphany/CEpi1_RCL.html#Nt1
[2] Willie James Jennings, Acts (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Know Press, 2017), 80.
[3] William Stringfellow, Essential Writings: Selected with an Introduction by Bill Wylie-Kellermann (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2013), 31.
[4] William Stringfellow, “Care Enough to Weep,” in Witness, February 21, 1963, 13.
[5] Stringfellow, 233 and 234.
