Spanning the Discipleship Distance.
From birth in Christ to living out the Kin-dom reality ...
As (one of the) Lutheran & Anglican minister(s) on the Saugeen Peninsula, the travel to churches on a Sunday provides thinking time. Last Sunday I was in Tobermory, and one message was prepared … then entirely re-organized on the drive before it was delivered - a 50 minute drive gives lots of time to re-think things! The prepared message is included in text today and the delivered message is included as a a sound file link!
In-person, we explore the notion of the scripture forming a bow, drawn taut, that sends us off into discipleship that may sometimes be scary and anxiety-provoking!
.Just because something is well-priced, should we buy it in bulk?
What about if it is free, how much of it should we “use up”?
Where sin sparks grace, does an increase in sin spark an even greater abundance of grace? If so, why not remain in sin?
This is the opening gambit of our Romans reading today “Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound?”
To put the same question another way, given the abundance of God’s grace which is extended to us in Jesus:
In a world beset with greed, the hunger for power and self-righteousness, why do we not just CHOOSE to remain in sin? What makes us CHOOSE something other than sin?
These are complicated questions and Paul’s letter to the Romans, thought to be his final letter, is sometimes experienced as theologically “dense”. Today he is speaking about dying to sin and by our baptism being raised from the dead with Jesus, to walk in newness of life. This whole concept is much easier for me to understand when I think in terms of an actually birth process. So I want to tell you a bit about two newborn babies I once knew.
My two nieces, Rajini and Darshini are probably the closest I’ve come to having children of my own. I regularly felt my sister’s belly as they kicked and moved around inside! I was in the waiting room for both births, I remember holding them both in my arms as babies, marveling at feet that were no longer – heel to toe – than any of my fingers.
As they grew up, there were many times I wished I could protect them from hardship. I wished I could have protected them from the deaths, for example, of their grandfathers. I wished I could have protected them from the various difficulties of the pandemic. In 2020 March, when lockdown began here, Rajini was in university in Waterloo and I was living in Cambridge. Both girls are asthmatic, so knowing COVID had respiratory implications, we worried about them.
The thing is you can’t put a baby back into the womb once it is born!
And it is similar when you are born in Christ. Once born in baptism with Jesus, we cannot be put back into the womb of sin. That isn’t to say we do not sin. However, we cannot go back. We can choose to not keep growing in Christ, but we cannot go back into that womb of sin. Being born in Jesus means that we have entered the community of all those who have been freed from sin. Not just this community of St Edmund’s. Not just the community of believers in Tobermory. Not even just the community of believers on the Peninsula. But ALL believers in ALL time and ALL space – all over the world. We have been born into this body.
Baptism is a birthing through sin, into Christ, into the ever unfolding household or realm of God.
So … can we agree? No going back to the womb.
But I will take you back to 2020. That Christmas, Rajini decided to take the risk of returning to Jamaica for her holidays. School was mostly online, so she wasn’t risking missing much. But it was still in that pre-vaccine time of uncertainty, when:
- There was no guarantee she would be able to travel back as planned.
- Which meant she didn’t know how long she would be leaving her beloved partner, Kevin behind.
- She would have to quarantine for 2 weeks when she got to Jamaica.
- If she got COVID, like so many who did die, there was a risk of death.
But she wanted to see her family, so she made a choice. She chose to travel. Being the dutiful auntie who also didn’t want her taking public transit and increasing her exposure, I picked her up from Waterloo, she spent the night with me and in the morning I drove her to Pearson.
My nieces and I have always been quite close. That night, Rajini had what we call the heebie-jeebies. Her anxiety and fears got the best of her, and I remember holding my niece, a good foot taller than me probably, while she just sobbed and sobbed. I think it was somewhat the proximity of returning home, of returning to where she could, once again, depend on someone else to protect her and look after her. It was also the fear and uncertainty of not quite knowing how this would all go. Would she see Kevin again in a few weeks? Would she get sick and die?
But the desire to be reconnected with her family gave her a courage and an inspiration in the midst of the fear.
Plus, she couldn’t go back to the safety of the womb!
Now, our baptism has birthed us into the body of Christ, by which we know we remain ever connected by the communion of saints – so we do not have to board a plane to be reconnected with our family in Christ.
So what is asked of us? What are we invited into?
As a believer in Jesus, what do you hear in the dark that you might proclaim in the light?
What do you hear whispered that you may proclaim from the housetops?
The Gospel reading is more like a listing of scary things than a listing of promise. And to understand the scary things as promise, we have to see that the scary and difficult choices of Christians are somewhat like the risks of boarding that plane to gain oneness … yes, there might be relatives against relatives … it may not look like peace … it may not be warm and fuzzy and comfy … it will hurt at times, it will be painful at times, it will be uncomfortable at times – because the solace of sinfulness – though still available – is no longer a womb we can occupy. We can choose to be part of the movement of this Kingdom of God, this realm of reunification with goodness.
And to make that choice, like Rajini, we have to face our fears, we have to have courage. And we have to have a faith and trust that we are counted in the household of God – which is worth a lot more than all the Costco bulk purchase deals!
Consider where these scriptures may launch you today!