Present Your Bodies

A Sermon delivered to All Saints Anglican Church at the Convent Chapel of St. Mary's Medical Center, Huntington, WV, on the occassion of the Baptism of Margot Caroline Schoew, based on Romans 12:1-8.

Today, we have the great privilege to perform a Baptism! And I think it’s very nice of the Lord to work it out in such a way that it coincides with our Scripture reading from Romans. What we have is a literal demonstration of what it means to ‘present your bodies to God as a living sacrifice’…

As we will see in a few minutes, the parents and grandparents of Margot Caroline Schoew will come forward and present her for Baptism. This is obviously being done on her behalf, on the faith of her parents. Because they are Christians who acknowledge God as their Creator, Savior and Lord, they want to bring this child into the household of faith – so that Margot may be raised in the Family of God, in the “nurture and admonition of the Lord”.

One of the Key things that happens as we perform a Sacrament is that it creates a family relationship where none existed before. Through Baptism, Margot is being welcomed into the family of God; she will become God’s child in a way that she previously was not. She herself will not likely feel any different, nor will her parent’s love change because of Baptism; that love will remain as deep and as intense as ever. And indeed, Baptism is not meant to change our feelings, so much as it meant to demonstrate our obedience to our Creator and Redeemer God.

Jesus’ Example
When Jesus went to John at the Jordan River, he presented himself to God as a living, Holy Sacrifice – acceptable to His Father. This was evidenced by the voice that thundered from Heaven (Mt.3:17) “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well-pleased.” The seal of this pleasure was the descent of the Holy Spirit – who came to rest upon Jesus in the form of a dove. Today we symbolize this very action by the use of Holy Oil to anoint or ‘seal’ the Baptized person in the Holy Spirit and to indicate that a new dimension of familial relationship has been created.

Death and Resurrection
Now the simple medium of Baptism is, of course, water. If we were at the Jordan River we would have some depth of water and we could really see the reality of what Paul means when he says that in Baptism, we go down into the water of death, and are raised to walk in newness of life. (Thankfully we do have some water from the real Jordan to add to our Baptismal font, so it is indeed as if we were in the Jordan…)

In Baptism, we ‘reckon’ or count ourselves to be dead to sin but alive to God; dead to the Kingdom of this world and its ‘gift’: Death, but alive to the free gift of God, eternal life, just as Romans 6:23 tells us: “the wages of Sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” You see, God has beaten the Devil at his own game. The wages of Sin, death, has become the entry, or portal, into Life eternal! Jesus, through his death on the cross, ‘broke Hell wide open’ rising into newness of life. Baptism unites us with him in resurrection, setting us free from the bondage to sin and death.

This is all Objective – outside of ourselves, regardless of how we feel about it. Theologians use the Latin phrase, “ex opera operato” to describe this: It means “by the work done”. In other words, through this outward sign, God does a work of grace inside of us.

Our Response
However, the decision to pursue Baptism is presumed to issue from Faith – faith that God saves us, not water, not priestly actions. And even after Baptism we all still face a daily choice: Will we walk in the newness of life or not? Will we present our bodies to God as a living sacrifice, our spiritual and reasonable worship of God? Will we live as slaves of righteousness or slaves of sin? When Margot is older, she will be asked to make this choice for herself by going through Confirmation – receiving instruction in the Faith and making a public affirmation that she chooses to walk in this newness of life. This is proper, for God has no grandchildren, and he expects us all to walk with him as His faithful children.

Jesus dramatically demonstrated this expectation when he excoriated the Pharisees for pursuing outward signs without having a living inner faith. In Matthew 12:34 and ff he cries out:
“You brood of vipers! How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. 35 The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil. 36 I tell you, on the Day of Judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, 37 for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned. 38 Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered him, saying, “Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.” 39 But he answered them, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah…”

This world is schizophrenic. It wants to see a visible sign of God’s reality and yet it is constructed around a sort of atheism that assumes man can exist autonomously apart from God. Man’s desire for autonomy bred death, and we breathe in the stench of death every day, but the World tells us this stench is Life. There is both an implicit and explicit demand from the world system to conform ourselves to it, not to God. This world system tries to convince us we can live and move and have our being in it, not God. This is the first and most seductive temptation we face - the temptation to be Self-Sufficient. But the effort is doomed because, as Meister Eckhart has said, “For God to be is to give being and for man to be is to receive being.”(Quoted in Merton’s Palace of Nowhere, by James Finley, pg. 73)

Receiving Gifts from God
In God we live and move and have our being. Our job is to consciously and joyfully receive our being from Him. Our very Life is a gift to be received. And as we receive our lives, or ourselves, from God, we then in turn offer them back to God for His use. In this we find our freedom, the freedom to be what we were created to be.

Now here is another aspect of Life that is symbolized in Baptism: We as a congregation participate in receiving this new life, so full of potential. When a friend of mine had a baby, some years ago, I wrote a little song for her son. One of the lines asked the musical question, “…what’s your purpose in this life to be? Will you travel afar or follow the law?...” etc.
We recognize that Margot carries within herself certain gifts to be discovered. Some of these are evident already; most will become evident over time.

As the Church, the family of God, we want to recognize and receive the gifts that Margot brings to us. As she grows, she and we will discover how her gifts can help to build up the body of Christ. She may grow up to prophecy, or to serve, or to teach, to exhort, to give generously, or to lead in some way; perhaps to do works of mercy, or to serve on a prayer team, just as we will participate in that ministry here today. In any case, her gifts will be for the building up of the Body of Christ, not for her own glorification.

A gift is a gift, something we receive. We all need to keep this in mind in order to have a proper estimation of ourselves. We must not fall prey to the temptation of believing that “I am God’s gift to humanity.” – And yet- we are! The very phrase that we use to indicate pride and arrogance is exactly true. We are God’s gift to one another. As people, and as members of the Body of Christ, we are not just containers of gifts: healing, teaching, miracles, etc. We ourselves are gifts from God to one another, and ultimately for God Himself. This is our great joy – to receive the Gifts of God, and then to offer them back to Him in joyful service.

So today, we receive Margot Caroline Schoew. We acknowledge her as one of God’s children, created in His image, and we present her to God to possess as His own creation. We receive her as a gift from God and we are eager to see all that she will become. We call her sister and acknowledge our responsibility to help her grow into all that God intends for her to be. And we rejoice in the opportunity we have to re-commit ourselves to our God, and to walk in newness of Life to the Glory of God the Father. Amen.