Ecclesiastes, by John August Swanson, © John August Swanson Studio, used by permission.
This was my last sermon at Grace Episcopal Church on Bainbridge Island. I was privileged and honored to serve them from late June 2020 until this day, when we baptized two more people (bringing to eleven the number of baptisms while I was interim rector) and celebrated All Saints’ Sunday together. I will miss this good church a lot. I love them.
***
Click here to watch a recording of this sermon.
***
Water divides.
Water cuts.
Water carves giant canyons in the earth. Water marks the borders of states and nations, on this side Israel, on that side, Jordan. Water separates one people from another.
We often imagine our beloved dead across the water. We say “they have reached that other shore.” A friend of mine once said that when his family told his grandmother that she had to move into a nursing home, she said “No, I’m just gonna take my cross and cross on over.” Losing her independence felt like a death to her, and so she thought of rivers and canyons, the living all here, the dead over yonder, across the river. She wanted to go home, and she knew that home was now across the water.
When we baptize, we watch as water does its thing, cutting and dividing, carving and separating. In Baptism we are cut off from our former selves: We now belong to Christ. We have a name, a community, a home on this side of the water.
Baptism separates us from our lesser selves, too: In Baptism we are washed into a new way of living, one that is focused relentlessly on other people, their needs, their hopes, their concerns. The baptismal water carries us away from self-centered anxiety. We sometimes fret and worry, and this is only natural: the water doesn’t make us inhuman. But we worry about more than our own needs, or our own people: the baptized Body of Christ feels Christ’s own compassion for our neighbors who are in deepest need.
Baptism also separates us from death. We are given “a spirit of wisdom and revelation,” as we just heard in the letter to the Ephesians. “The eyes of our hearts are enlightened.” We can see beyond our mortal death to life in Christ, who fills all things. Yes, we will all die. But we are separated forever from hopelessness and despair. Our lives have power and purpose – “We live to the praise of God’s glory.”
But there’s more. Baptism separates us from lonely isolation, and the small dreariness of a community where everyone is the same. We are not a little village at the edge of nowhere, empty of diversity, hostile to outsiders. The community of the baptized flourishes around the globe, pulsing with energy, astonishingly diverse, often contentious, sometimes riven with conflict. (There’s water being divisive again – “riven with conflict”: conflict, like a river, can divide us. At least at first.)
And so, once again, later this morning, we will go down to that river to pray, carrying our siblings Adelaide and Miles with us. They will be doused in the divisive waters of Holy Baptism, separated from their former selves, riven from their lesser selves, carried far across the water, away from hopelessness and despair, away from the powers of Sin and Death, into the community of Christ, the crucified and risen one, the firstborn of the blessed dead, the source of our hope, the one who fills our anxious hearts with courage, the one who gives us the power to live to the praise of God’s glory.
They will need our help. And it is here that I fear I am breaking with grief, because I cannot personally be here to join you in raising Adelaide and Miles in this community. In our most recent leadership meetings at Grace Church, the wardens asked everyone to take a turn saying kind things to me, which was lovely. Uncomfortable! But lovely. And I broke with grief when it was Carol’s turn, because she mentioned her sons, and then I thought of Heather and Joe’s daughters, and Nels and Darice’s daughters, and Dan and Melissa’s daughters, and Erica and Raúl’s children, and the Fitzpatrick family, and Adelaide and Miles, and many other young saints, and how my impractical heart wishes I could be here with you to grow them up, lift them up, launch them, and finally watch as they lead us.
I broke with grief because, once again, water will do its thing: it separates us – literally. All this time I’ve been at Grace Church, I have lived across the chasm of the Salish Sea. I have taken a ferry ride across that water nearly five hundred times, and often I would stand at the shore and look across that water, from both directions: sometimes I’d be on the beach at Fay Bainbridge, looking back at Seattle and wondering what was happening at my home; other times I’d be on 11th and Galer near my house where there’s a grand overlook of Smith Cove and Elliott Bay, and I’d watch the Bainbridge Ferry emerging south from Eagle Harbor, and wonder about all of you.
I will miss you. Maybe that’s the one thing that water can’t cut us off from: the baptismal water doesn’t separate us from grief, at least not until the Last Day, that Great Gettin’ Up Morning. Baptism seems to intensify grief. It does this because in Holy Baptism we draw closer to one another, we rely on each other, we delight in each other, we fall in love. I love you. It was bound to happen: you are so easy to love, and I have a frantic, thirsty kind of love for people. And this kind of love all too easily breaks our hearts.
But Jesus says we who weep are blessed, we are happy. “Blessed are you who weep now,” he says, “for you will laugh.” Now, we know he isn’t just talking about the sadness of endings and departures: there is always a broader ethic in what Jesus is saying, and so we know he is talking chiefly about those who are grieved by injustice and oppression. (Again, in Baptism we are separated forever from a focus on ourselves alone.) But there is a delightful simplicity in his words that somehow gathers us all up into the heartbroken community of laughing ones. Shattered by grief yet stitched back together by Christ, our hearts sing with laughter.
Later on this morning, after the baptisms, I will take the oil of chrism and anoint the foreheads of Adelaide and Miles with the sign of the cross. In that moment I will say, “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.” That is a lot to say. When we talked about it the other day, I told Adelaide and Miles that in Baptism they are joined to the priesthood of all believers, and so they need to be anointed just like priests, prophets, and kings have been anointed in ages past. “You will be members of a royal priesthood,” I told them. “You will be prophets in God’s Church.” Then I said, “You will be sovereigns. Queen Adelaide and King Miles.”
I do not believe this made very much sense. Adelaide was polite as she listened, and I do think she understood much more than she let on. Miles just gave me his million-dollar smile. That old bald guy is talking and we need to sit here while he talks – that much he understood. So you all here at Grace Church, it is your joyful task to teach Adelaide and Miles how to be in this heartbroken community of laughing ones. Place in their hands the holy scriptures. Teach them the Lord’s Prayer and the Ten Commandments. Teach them the Beatitudes, the delightful Good News of Jesus that the poor, those who weep, and all the others will be – are – blessed. They are happy.
Go ahead and teach them the “woes,” too, because Adelaide and Miles have to learn that there are terrible problems in this world, and that people are capable of doing terribly bad things. This heartbroken community of laughing ones isn’t just a partying crowd: Baptism separates us from merely celebrating and eating cake without doing the hard work of beloved community. Christ is risen! But he first was crucified. And so it is that Adelaide and Miles will sometimes be broken in grief.
Yet they will stand tall today and be sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ’s own forever. They will be sovereigns in the royal family of God. And so, as part of our laughter through tears – laughter through tears is a specialty in the community of the baptized – I invite you to do as I do when you find yourself in the presence of these new royals. Bow your heads, reverencing the presence of Christ in them. (It might be overkill to greet them with “Your Majesty.”) Embrace them. Hold onto them. Take good care of them.
I’ll be looking across the water at you, standing on that overlook at 11th and Galer. I will be praying glad prayers of gratitude for all of you.
And my broken heart will be filled with laughter.
***
Preached on All Saints’ Sunday (Year C), November 6, 2022, at Grace Episcopal Church, Bainbridge Island, Washington.
Daniel 7:1-3, 15-18
Psalm 149
Ephesians 1:11-23
Luke 6:20-31