A Message for Dagny
1 John 5:1-6
May 10, 2015[1]
A
message for Dagny on the occasion of her baptism.
Dear
Dagny:
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. You won’t, of course, have any direct
memory of your own of what has taken place this day. I hope that it has been well preserved in
pictures and in the memories of your parents, your and the rest of the family
so that they can tell you all about it.
What
is so important about this day? I like
to think of it as your “spiritual birthday”—the day that we recognize and
celebrate the grace of our Lord working in you.
It is the day that we recognize that you are not only the daughter of
Cassandra and Chris; you also are a child of God, loved by your Heavenly
Father! We read these words in the Holy
Bible: “See what love the Father has
given us, that we should be called children of God, for that is what we
are.” (1 John 3:1).
I
wish that I could be with you on the day when 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! So 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 sister, Izzy, was here with you, too, and so were your Aunt Amber
and Uncle Jack, and your Grandfather Phil. 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. 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? In a 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 ten 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,
that is just beginning to develop, where at the age of eight 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. 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 could overcome the power of God’s love and
grace.
This
Jesus, the One we know to be the Son of God, invites us to accept His great
gift of love and to follow Him, learning to walk where Jesus wants us to walk,
to live as Jesus wants us to live, and to love as Jesus wants us to love. This is part of what it means to be a child
of God. “Everyone who believes that
Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the parent loves
the child. By this we know that we love
the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments.” (1
John 5:1-2).
Our
decision to follow Jesus is a decision that each one of us has to make for
ourselves. It is an important decision—a
decision that takes a lifetime and more to fully understand. Your parents believe that it is such an
important decision that they have said to God and to all of us today 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.
Why
do we make such an important decision such as baptism 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?
Your
parents make lots of important decisions for you while you are a child. They have been and will decide for you what
you will eat, what you will wear, when you will go to the doctor, and when you
will go to school. Some day, you will
make those decisions for yourself; now, they make those decisions for you.
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. We
never will be old enough or wise enough to fully understand God’s grace. Jesus
Himself told His disciples that they should “Let the
little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these
that the kingdom of heaven belongs.” (Matthew 19:14). There is no better time, no better place for
us to begin our journeys of faith than right now, right here—right here at this
place called Cunningham.
But
some day, you will have to say “yes” for yourself. This is a journey that you must take for
yourself. And while it may seem hard to
believe this morning, 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 will
keep 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).
One
more thing. 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. 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 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.
Dagny, 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 are a child of God.
With
love from your friend,
Pastor
Tom
[1] Preached at Cunningham
United Methodist Church in Palmyra, Virginia.
During this service, we celebrated the Sacrament of Holy Baptism for
Dagny Rose Weber, who was born on September 14, 2014.
[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.
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