Found in Fluvanna[1]
Luke 15:1-10
September 15, 2013
Suppose
one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open
country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on
his shoulders and goes home. Then he
calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have
found my lost sheep.’” Luke 15:4-6
An
open letter to Erin on the occasion of her baptism.
Dear
Erin:
We
celebrate with you and your family on one of the most important days of your
entire life. This is a day that we hope
you will want to hear about some day. I
like to think of this day as your spiritual birthday. You won’t, of course, have any direct memory
of your own of what has taken place this morning. I hope that it has been well preserved in
pictures and in the memories of your parents, your brothers and sisters so that
they can tell you all about it.
I
wish that I could be around in twelve years or so—whenever the day arrives in
which you publicly confirm for yourself the promises that your mother and
father have made this day for you. Who
knows where we all will be on that day.
But I would like to share with you now the thoughts, dreams, hopes, and
prayers that I have for you on this important day.
What
happened today? In a way, it really is
very simple. Your parents brought you to
church just as they always do, and mid-way through the service, they brought
you to the front where everyone could see you.
Your brothers and sisters were here too, and some friends that your Mom
and Dad asked to be your “godparents.”
We said a few words, told some stories of our faith, made a few promises
to God and to you. I splashed your head
with water, and I used anointing oil to trace the sign of the cross on your
forehead. We gave a special candle to
your parents. Your sister sang while I
walked around the church with you, proclaiming to everyone that you are a child
of God. It was all done in ten or
fifteen minutes or so.
Or
was it? Maybe from the standpoint of
human time. But in another very real
sense, your baptism is a continuing event that demonstrates to the whole world
the work that God is doing in your life.
We have a special name for this work—this work is called “grace.”
I
could spend lifetimes trying to explain the wonder and mystery of God’s grace,
but in a thousand years, I would only be able to get a good start. But let me try.
Your
baptism is an “outward and visible sign”[2] of the work that God is
doing inside of you—in that deepest part of your soul, a part of you that is
just beginning to develop, where at the age of three months you already are
learning to think and feel and love.
The
grace of God means that God has come looking for you, even though you don’t
even realize yet that you need God.
There
is something about being human that make us want to go our own way. When God made us, God gave us the gift of
free will. This means that as we grow
older, we grow independent and we want our own way—so much so that we wander
off away from God. We have different
names for our wandering—we often refer to this wandering tendency as
“sin.” Sin means that we want our own
way instead of God’s way. At first, this
sin may seem shiny and attractive; but the way of sin leads to brokenness and
death and separation from God.
The
grace of God means that God loves you so much, that even before you were born,
God wanted to heal you and to heal all of us from this brokenness that we call
sin. God took on the form of a little
baby, just like you, a baby boy named Jesus.
As Jesus grew to be an adult, He taught us how to live and how to love,
even when love meant dying for you and for me.
And just when things looked their bleakest, by His resurrection He
showed that not even death itself can overcome the power of God’s love and
grace.
This
Jesus, the One we call the Son of God, invites us to accept His great gift of
love and to follow Him, learning to walk where Jesus walks, to live as Jesus
wants us to live, and to love as Jesus wants us to love—to follow Jesus just as
sheep follow the voice of their shepherd (John
10:5, 16).
Our
decision to follow Jesus as our shepherd is a decision that each one of must make
for ourselves. It is an important
decision—a decision that takes a lifetime and longer to fully understand. Your parents believe that it is such an
important decision that they have said to all of us today on your behalf that
as long as they have anything to do with it, they will teach you to follow
Jesus. They have said “yes” for you this
morning.
But
some day, you have to say “yes” for yourself.
This is a journey that you must learn to take for yourself. And while it seems hard to believe, the
chances are likely that somewhere along the way you will wander off the pathway
and forget to follow your shepherd. You
may become lost, separated from the God who loves you. The miracle of God’s grace is that even when
you make bad decisions and turn the other way, God keeps looking for you. Just as a good shepherd will come searching
for a lost sheep, God will come looking for you, offering to you His grace,
inviting you to come back home (Luke
15:4).
You
might ask why we make such an important decision for you while you are still
young. Shouldn’t we wait until you are
old enough to make up your own mind, when you fully understand these things?
Erin,
the reality is that we never will be old enough or wise enough to fully
understand God’s grace. All of us are
helpless to become by ourselves the people that God wants us to be. All of us, no matter our age, are completely
dependent upon God’s grace to heal us, to forgive us, and to change our
lives. There is no better time, no
better place for us to begin our journeys of faith than right now, right
here—right here in Fluvanna at a church called Cunningham.
I
wish that somehow I could take this moment and bottle it up and save it. But time marches on. Your baptism is not the finish line of your
journey—it is only the starting point.
You have a lifetime of experience lying before you. Experiences of joy and laughter, of music and
dancing. Also experiences of sadness and
pain. You will have times of questions,
of doubts, times when you are afraid.
When these times come to you, I hope you will remember that you will not
be facing those questions, doubts and fears by yourself. Even in times of sadness and pain, you will
not be alone. The grace of the Good
Shepherd who has found you here in Fluvanna will be with you even then, calling
to you to continue in your journey and to follow Him until your journey has
been completed and you have arrived at the place that He has promised to
prepare for you.
Erin,
we celebrate with you the journey of faith that you are beginning. We pray that God’s amazing grace will
continue to follow you and sustain you for all your days, no matter where you
may travel in your life. May you learn
to remember your baptism and be thankful, for you have been found in Fluvanna.
With
love from your friend,
Copyright 2013 by Thomas E. Frost. All rights reserved.
[1]
Preached at Cunningham United Methodist Church in Palmyra, Virginia. During this service, we celebrated the
Sacrament of Holy Baptism for Erin Brannagh La Rochelle, who was born on June
16, 2013.
[2]
John Wesley, “The Means of Grace,” quoted by Gayle Carlton Felton in By Water and the Spirit: Study Guide and Text (Nashville, TN: Discipleship Resources, 1997), 27.
Photo courtesy of Bridget and David La Rochelle.
