"Baptized Into One Body"
Dr. George Sinclair
Neh. 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10; Ps. 19; 1 Cor. 12:12-31a; Luke 4:14-21
January 24, 2010
My grandson will be baptized this morning. Sean and Shalon are very proud parents.
When he first found out they were pregnant, Sean said they were having a “mutt.” Didn’t matter whether it was a boy or a girl, the baby would be a “mutt.” Patrick looks perfectly fine to me. Sean was talking about Patrick’s rich gene pool which extends to Scotland, Portugal, England, India, Germany, Trinidad, and we’re pretty sure to the Cherokees, though Paula’s never confirmed this, which would well qualify Patrick as a “mutt,” if by “mutt” you mean varied or diverse. Patrick’s religious lineage is also mutt-like including Roman Catholics, Baptists, Methodists and not a few Presbyterians.
Inheritance fascinates me. Right now Patrick’s eyes are blue. I don’t know if they’ll stay blue. They say a baby’s eye color changes. His daddy’s eyes are blue. His mother’s are brown. Three of his four grandparents have brown eyes, which means a recessive gene must have slipped in through his grandmother Monica, whose grandfather had green eyes.
We’ve been trying to figure out who Patrick looks like. His mother says he looks like her sister when she was a baby. Patrick’s hair is brown, but has hints of auburn like his father and great-grandfather. When he’s sleeping Patrick pulls his hair, something his mother did when she was a baby. Patrick has big hands, broad shoulders, a thick chest, and strong legs. We’ve decided he’s going to play linebacker, though I’m holding out for baseball—a pitcher would be nice. Who knows what his wit or disposition will be—maybe like his laidback grandfather Rick or his determined grandmother Paula?
Gene’s are a funny thing. When you think about it, people are funny, not only funny ha, ha, but funny strange, funny peculiar, funny, different. And why shouldn’t we be different? Think about this: from 1776 alone, Patrick has 510 direct ancestors. Just since 1776, Patrick’s genetic code is made up of 255 sets of parents or 510 direct ancestors! No wonder he’s a mutt. Truth is, we’re all mutts.
There are ten quadrillion cells in Patrick’s body. They will be replaced about every 7-10 years. Each of Patrick’s ten quadrillion cells carries his genetic code. That code is comprised by 3.2 billion letters capable of combinations numbering one followed by three billion zeros. That’s a lot of possibility—one followed by three billion zeros—and it explains why there is no other human being on Earth just like Patrick. He is one-of-kind. But he is of a kind. We know that to be true too. He’s of a kind—a human-kind.
99.9% of Patrick’s DNA is just like yours or mine. It’s that one-tenth of one percent which makes him uniquely who he is. People, like snowflakes, are all different. That one-tenth of one-percent packs a wallop, but we’re also all the same—genetically speaking anyway. Shoot, 90% of our DNA is found in mice; 60% in fruit flies, though I know I’ve met some people for which I think it’s must be more like 80-90%!
We’re all alike. We’re all different. Both statements are true, equally true, all of the time. We’re all alike. We’re all different. How do we live with our differences? How do we live with our likeness? The Bible has a unique answer—one drawn not from nature, but revelation: “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.” As the Bible tells it, we are “one in the Spirit.” It’s not nature that allows us to live with our difference. It’s the Spirit.
Globally there are 2.2 billion Christians. We’re divided into 38,000 denominations. God says we’re One. Whether Jew or Greek, slave or free we are one. Though many and though strangely different, we are one because Christ is one. Baptismal water is thicker than blood. Baptismal water trumps all of that stuff about who Patrick looks like or where he’s from and who his mama and daddy are. With God, inheritance doesn’t matter all that much.
Of course, God works through and with and sometimes against what nature and nurture and culture give us. Christians aren’t born or made or discipled in a vacuum. Patrick will never escape the fact that he was born in Mobile (not that he would ever want to!). He can’t erase his birthplace anymore than the DNA that will color his eyes or fix his height or predispose him to music or athletics or academics or none of the above. We don’t choose our genes, but one day Patrick will choose, or not, his baptism. One day he will accept, or not, the name by which he is named. One day Patrick will decide “I belong to the body of Christ” or “I don’t.”
Faith is given. We do all sorts of things to give faith—like teaching our children to pray or bringing them to church and Sunday school or encouraging them to treat others kindly and fairly. We give faith by telling the story of Jesus. Like genetic composition, faith is passed on. It’s given from generation to generation, but unlike blue eyes or brown hair faith does not live by inheritance. In order to live, faith must be embraced. It must be chosen. One day Patrick must decide, “I belong to the body of Christ.”
The opposite of belonging is not belonging. The opposite of belonging is “I don’t fit in. I’m not like them. I don’t think like they do. I don’t act like they do. I don’t believe like they do. I don’t belong to the body.” One day Patrick will have to decide. Everything we’re doing this morning says he belongs. We believe he belongs. God says he belongs. One day he’ll have to choose. One day he’ll have to make up his own mind: “I belong to the body of Christ.”
Some people don’t buy that. For whatever reason, they feel left out or they leave themselves out. That knife cuts both ways, doesn’t it? We can leave ourselves out of the body or let others do that for us. We’ll talk about leaving others out in a moment. Paul starts with the former, with people who for whatever reason say, “I don’t belong.” Paul starts with people who don’t join, who don’t include themselves. Paul wasn’t talking about being joined to a church but belonging to the church—the body of Christ. I don’t know what Paul would say about the Baskin Robbins Church we’ve become. I don’t know what he’d say about our 38,000 flavors, but I am convinced he’d say, “You’ve got to pick one. You’ve got to choose. Not belonging cuts you off from Christ. There are no churchless Christians. When you’re baptized, you’re baptized into Christ’s body which means you’re baptized into the church.”
No, the church does not have a monopoly on God’s grace. And no, the church is not kingdom. But yes, we are baptized by the Spirit “into one body.” If Patrick’s going to follow Christ, one day he’ll have to figure out where he belongs. God’s already said he belongs. God’s says this morning, “You fit here. You belong to me. You’re mine.” One day Patrick will embrace that or not. He doesn’t get to choose his family but he does get to choose the church. And when he does he will not only affirm that he belongs but that others belong with him. The corollary to “I belong to the body of Christ” is “You belong to the body of Christ.”
One summer, I worked construction. The guys at work called me College Boy. I didn’t fit in. My clothes were just as ragged as theirs and at the end of the day my hands were just as dirty and I’m certain I cussed and smoked as much, but at the end of the day I was still College Boy. I didn’t fit in and no matter how hard I tried or what I did I was never going to fit in. I was College Boy. The message was, “You don’t belong.”
“The eye,” Paul says, “cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you.’” Who belongs in the church? We say “everyone is welcome.” Every church wants to be known as the “friendly” church. We put it on our stationary, on our signs out front: “The friendly church where everybody is welcome.” What church doesn’t want to be known as that? All churches want to be welcoming. We all want to be friendly, but are there any rules for membership, any standards, any requirements, any expectations?
I was somewhere the other day, I won’t say where, and the person with me said, “You know those Presbyterians, they’re just laid back Baptists.” I begged to differ but to no avail. Her mind was made up: “Presbyterians are moderates. In all things, middle of the road, neither hot nor cold.” I want to change that image. I am so tired of people thinking we’re all brains and no passion, that we’re so open and accepting that we have no standards. I want to say we’ve been misunderstood, but the caricature is sometimes painfully true. There are Mardi Gras Societies with higher standards—I’m kidding, but barely. The attitude of too many Presbyterians is, “Hey, we’re church, a voluntary organization. Grace is free. God is love. Let’s not judge. Let’s not have any standards.”
Last fall I read an essay by Newsweek’s religion editor Lisa Miller who quoted historian and poet Jennifer Hecht who wrote what Miller describes as “an exhaustive survey of atheism.” Published in 2003, Hecht titled her book, Doubt, A History. (I love it when writers like Hecht use provocative titles like this, as if Christians don’t know anything about doubt, as if atheists are the only ones to experience doubt, but that’s another can of worms for another day.) Anyway, Ms. Miller drew Ms. Hecht into her essay because Hecht, while an atheist like Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, unlike them views religion as useful, which is Miller’s term for how Hecht views religion: useful. Hecht told Miller in a phone interview: “The more I learn, the more complicated things get, the more sympathy I have with religion. I don’t think it’s so bad if religion survives, if it’s getting together once a week and singing a song in a beautiful building, to commemorate life’s most important moments.”
Gosh, I’m so glad Ms. Hecht finds what we do useful. And I’m really relieved that she doesn’t think it’s so bad if we survive. But she’s got us terribly wrong—Christians don’t get together once a week to sing songs commemorating important moments in life. True, some church buildings are beautiful and we do sing songs, some of them are even about remembering important moments, but we’re here for something else. Oh, it’s true enough that even some Christians see church more or less that way—you know, “harmless and don’t get too worked up about it. It’s not like God actually shows up.” But they’re wrong. Church is not just about “remembering life’s important moments.” We’re here to meet God. Our faith turns the world upside down.
My argument isn’t really with people like Ms. Hecht. My argument is with those who belong to the church, with insiders who half believe Ms. Hecht is right; who mistakenly believe that passion makes us narrow minded, intolerant, reactionary, exclusive. You see, I hope that my grandson will stand up in church some day, maybe even here, who knows, and proclaim from the bottom of his heart: “I belong to the body of Christ. You belong to the body of Christ.” I hope Patrick’s baptism so captures his heart that he cannot possibly dream of a world, much less tolerate one, where human beings are left out, excluded, or condemned because they don’t “fit in” by whatever definition “fitting in” happens to be in his day. I hope Patrick’s baptism so grips his soul that when he sees a single human being suffer, he suffers with him and when he sees another rejoice, he rejoices. I hope Patrick becomes the person he is baptized to become. I hope he lives knowing he belongs to Christ and that others belong to Christ with him. I hope he becomes a person who welcomes others with God’s grace that has welcomed him. If he does that, I will be a happy old man and we will have given Patrick a faith worthy of the name of Christ. Amen.