Baptism: Respect Their Dignity
Lord, take my lips and speak through them. Take our minds and think with them. Take our hearts and set them on fire with love for you. Amen.
For many of us, it’s been a tough time these last three weeks. If you’re someone who voted for Mr. Trump and is happy and hopeful about the promises of the next four years, know that we will be praying for the good of our country and we stand ready to help you rule in a compassionate way. But many of us are frightened by our new reality, that we will be just upending the government. After all, the incoming administration is characterizing it as a ‘hostile takeover’. So maybe we needed to come to church this morning hoping for some encouragement. And what we get from the book of Daniel and the book of Revelation is this fantastical story of Christ the King. Talk of Alpha and Omega. And this man who was as humble as any man could ever be while on earth, is now king of all there is. How could this possibly be relevant to what we are experiencing at the moment? And then I open up today’s program and I see we’ve got baptisms, which is about the most hopeful thing the church ever does.
And imagine my surprise when I realize that it’s in baptism, that the answer to my questions lies. How to understand my life, my Christian life, in the context of our new reality. Let me be clear. In this sermon, I am not talking politics. I’m talking morality and about how God wants us to live our lives. Now stick with me and I promise I’ll get back to baptism. (After I take a drink of water). Surely one takeaway from the election is that in the next few years, the most vulnerable among us will suffer disproportionately more than others of us. I hope and pray I’m wrong. Because even though the Bible and its moral imperatives are sometimes less than clear, there is one indisputable and unassailable truth about God told in both the Old and New Testaments. What is God’s primary concern as communicated through scripture? Spoiler alert: it’s not inflation. It’s not the stock market’s performance and it’s not how recently arrived immigrants are taking jobs white people desperately want.
No, God’s primary concern for you and for me is how we treat the most vulnerable in our midst. Like the poor, like those who are sick or those without health insurance or may soon lose their health insurance, for whom getting sick spells calamity. Like those whose lives, education and votes are under attack as a result of racism and xenophobia. And those who are addicted or lonely, aged, despised and persecuted. And by the persecuted, I don’t mean Christians. We are not persecuted in this country.
Just consider for example, Sarah McBride, the new young congresswoman from Delaware and from the transgender community of which she is a part. Sarah McBride isn’t a cause cèlébre for me. She is a longtime and personal friend of mine. She patiently taught me everything I know about transgender people and their experiences. We were colleagues together at a progressive think tank downtown. Her boyfriend also happened to be on our team, a brilliant young lawyer who fought off cancer and fully recovered. Then a year or so later went to the doctor with a persistent sore throat and was told his cancer had returned and he had two weeks to live. They asked me to marry them, and I did, on that next Sunday. We, colleagues and friends, orchestrated a beautiful ceremony on the roof of their apartment building, because Andy was deteriorating so fast he could never have made the trip elsewhere. It was a heartbreakingly beautiful and sacred wedding. Andy died four days later, and on Saturday we buried him out of St. Thomas Parish in DuPont Circle. And through it all, Sarah was brave and strong and fully present to her beloved husband.
Since I have known her, she has been absolutely committed to public service. I couldn’t admire her more as a human being and as a child of God she is. She is the person some members of Congress are trying to ban from using any women’s bathrooms in the Capitol. The same would go for transgender congressional staffers and interns and pages. There’s talk of extending the ban to all federal office buildings and possibly to the District of Columbia, over which Congress exercises enormous control. The transgender community has been used and mocked and demonized throughout this campaign, using misinformation to stoke up fear and promote animus towards this vulnerable minority who already experiences unheard of levels of violence. And why? For political gain. And the effect? Somewhere right now this morning in Idaho or Mississippi or Arizona, some kid who is wondering about his or her gender identity, sinks a little further into a lonely and dark place, more afraid and isolated than before, perhaps contemplating self-harm. And more convinced that they will never get to live their lives as their authentic selves, beloved by God.
There is no evidence anywhere of men posing as transgender in order to sexually assault women in their bathrooms. None. This is a solution in search of a problem. You know, someone who sees a threat where no threat actually exists, is actually paranoid. The solution to which is not a restrictive bathroom ban, but rather a good therapist. Not for the trans person, but for the paranoid one. Or maybe they just don’t know any better. But listen, willful ignorance can be a way of hating too.
In just a few moments it will be our great honor to baptize these children. And among the first things that we will ask the sponsors of those to be baptized is, ‘Do you renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God?’ I don’t believe anyone is inherently evil because we are all children of God made in God’s image and worthy of God’s love and one another’s love. But children of God can also do evil things. The Bible knows it and God knows it and so do we. Hate is evil. Attacking the vulnerable is evil. Full stop. The Baptismal Covenant wisely acknowledges that evil exists and that we should resist it. It’s the first part of our commitment to God in our baptism.
And the second part of our Baptismal Covenant are the ways in which we promise to behave in the face of evil. Ways that offer hope to the vulnerable and hope for ourselves. That these promises might provide a way for us to remain human in an inhuman time. That may not sound like much considering what we may be up against, but it’s our calling and it is a Godly calling taken upon ourselves in baptism. So here’s the thing. God’s love is ever more expansive, pulling surprising people into God’s embrace after years of being told we didn’t belong. If God has anything to do with it, this community of love is going to grow and widen and deepen and welcome people who aren’t like us. So my advice to you is, ‘get used to it’. Because it’s the way God is and it’s the way God is always going to be. And God is going to undo our penchant for ‘us versus them’ until there is no more ‘them’ just ‘us’.
What we celebrate on this Christ the King Sunday, is that we, you and I, actually know how this is going to end. All this hate and chaos and pain and fear will not prevail because in the end, God wins, and love wins. We may not know when or how. We may have horrible setbacks. We may not live to see it to its conclusion. And yes, there will be times when we will be unhappy, but in the midst of our unhappiness, we are never without hope. And we are sustained by the joy and peace, which comes with knowing that in the end, love wins. You and I are called to join God in that effort. This morning, right in our participation in these baptismal promises, you and I are recommitting ourselves to respect the dignity of every human being. Every human being. Those with whom we agree and those with whom we disagree. And to resist evil whenever it happens.
We will find a way to respect and to love in the face of evil and hate. And in that, we will be saved. Because Christ is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. And God is love. And God’s love eventually wins. So as scripture says, ‘Be of good courage. Hold fast to that which is good. Render to no one evil for evil. Strengthen the faint hearted. Support the weak; help the afflicted; honor all people. Love and serve the Lord, rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit’. And my friends, be assured. By the grace of God and with God’s help, we can do this. We can do this. Amen.