A Sermon Preached By

Rev. Peter W. Shidemantle

January 8, 2006, Baptism of the Lord

50th Anniversary Sunday

PEBBLE HILL PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

5299 Jamesville Rd., DeWitt, NY  13214

Phone:  315-446-0960     FAX:  446-0672

phillchu@twcny.rr.com     http://pebblehill.presbychurch.org

            What a terrific thing we are able to do here today! Like the old Roman god Janus, we are able to look backward and forward at the same time.  We are looking back in celebration for 50 years of ministry and the people and relationships through which that ministry and that life have been expressed.  And we look forward in anticipation of the next 50 years, another generation of the life and ministry of Pebble Hill Church.  Of course there are many here today who were not around, or not around these parts, at the beginning and in the early years of this church’s life; and it’s probably safe to say that there are not many here today who will be around, or at least around these parts, when Pebble Hill reaches its one hundredth anniversary.  But in, perhaps, the most important way we could think of this, it does not matter in the least that this is so, and it does not detract, in the least, from our celebration today.  In fact, it can only enhance our celebration to see ourselves, gathered here today, as one – both with those who have moved away to other places or passed from us to glory, and with those who are not yet with us, those not yet born, and those, as we like to say around here, who just aren’t here yet – for all of these together comprise, in God’s providence, the “communion of saints” that is the church.

            As our 50^th anniversary committee has been planning for this day and weekend, and for events across this anniversary year they have been conscious of trying to strike a balance between looking back in thanksgiving and looking forward in hope and anticipation.  Without that balance, any group, and especially the church can become either stuck in the past, mired in a kind of nostalgia – which someone has defined as “longing for a past that never was” – or “stuck” in the future in such a way that would deny the present of its meaning and power, because we have not acknowledged and accepted and celebrated all, in the words of a favorite old hymn, the “grace that brought us safe thus far.”  Therefore it is seen that it’s only the future that can redeem us and only hope that can save us.

            The truth, of course, is that we live neither in the past, nor in the future, but only in the present – and even these categories are really not sufficient because the present is the past as soon as we have lived it, and the future is never further away than the next moment, even our next breath. 

            There is a much more sufficient way for Christians to see our lives in God’s providence, and that way is provided through our baptism.  For all who have been baptized, the act itself is past, but the life it gives is always present.  We read this morning from the beginning of Mark’s story about Jesus, which, unlike the other gospels, begins not with his birth, but with his baptism as a full grown adult, by John in the Jordan River.  You might say this is Mark’s Christmas story, if we understand that story to be the birth of God’s new plan of salvation.  As Jesus comes up out of the waters of baptism Mark has it that God declares, “You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.”  It is a new creation, no less than the first creation where God expressed pleasure over each new item in the litany of things God has made.  A new day has dawned, a new time has come.  This is the way in which we are to see our lives as Christians, as part of God’s “new creation” in Jesus Christ.

            What is different about this creation is that it is always new, always present, always working.  The old creation is a gift and a blessing.  Its life, the renewing cycles of the seasons, of birth and dying, the majesty of the universe, the intricate workings of atoms and molecules, the beauty of its mountains and seas, the wonderful diversity of its people – for those of faith the hand of God has woven a delight to God’s eyes, given for the pleasure of humankind.  But look what we have done, the pain and havoc we have wreaked upon the face of the God’s good earth.  We have defaced, we confess, the image of the Creator and spoiled his precious gift.  God has loved us from the start, but from the start we have turned from God, and in our God-given freedom have chosen to be god ourselves.  We have built wonderful cities, but at great price to the welfare of their poorest citizens.  We have created great civilizations, at the expense of those who occupied the land.  We have plumbed the mystery of the atom, and yet unleashed the potential of a terrifying destruction of God’s creation by human hands.

            The old ways aren’t working, and they never have.  Jesus shows us a more excellent way, a still more excellent way - a way that is always new.  It was new 50 years ago and a long time before that, and it will still be new long after we are all gone.  Our baptism marks it.  There is new creation there.  We might not remember the act itself, and even if we do, we may not have been conscious that anything changed there, but in that act we were baptized into Christ’s death so that we might live in his resurrection life.

            We might think of it in the way that we enter the practice of confession and forgiveness that we go through every Sunday morning.  When one of us stands up here and declares that your sins are forgiven, do you notice any change in yourself?  Maybe sometimes you do.  Sometimes the words of our prayer of confession might resonate with your life that week.  But if you’re like me, most Sundays, though I try to pay attention and be sincere in my confession, I don’t normally “feel” that forgiveness.  It’s not like there’s been some kind of spiritual blood transfusion that I can now feel coursing through my veins.

            But when we stand up here and declare and announce that we are forgiven it doesn’t require that.  It simply announces that forgiveness is there, right there, and it’s yours.  That’s what we believe – it’s a blanket forgiveness.  The whole world has been forgiven its sin.  That covers a lot of territory, doesn’t it?  Seems like it leaves a lot of real creeps off the hook.

            But the thing about forgiveness, of course, is that it can’t mean much, if anything, to me unless I come to it and receive it.  And because I have been forgiven I am free to live a forgiven life, to let go of whatever of the past that has held me captive and live into the new life that has been given me.  We should “bear the fruits that befit repentance” – to walk the walk of forgiveness.  Baptism, of which forgiveness is a central part, can be thought of in that same way.  Though we may not remember it, something changed there.  It may have been only a little water sprinkled on our heads – but it is as if we had walked into the waters of the Jordan with Jesus and drowned there – to emerge with him into new life.  But of course like forgiveness it doesn’t mean much unless we give ourselves to it, to live in the new creation, to walk the walk of the children of God.

            Today we mark, and we celebrate, the new beginning that was Pebble Hill Presbyterian Church, when 108 souls gathered in the old house, under the guiding and loving hand of Foss Freeman.  Like all beginnings, it was full of hope and promise.  But all beginnings find meaning after the event.  Marriages can’t be judged on the wedding day.  Every couple is capable of creating a wonderful life together.  But in ten years or so you can start to see what they’ve done with it.  Beginnings, in one sense, are easy.  Any husband can stand in the delivery room and feed ice chips to his wife and say, “You’re doing great, hone.”  Every father looks good holding a newborn, but you can’t judge how good a father you’ve been until you see how hard you’ve worked at it – maybe 20 years.  Studies show that the average tenure for a minister in the United States these days is about four years.  That’s embarrassing for churches and for ministers.  In many of those situations the congregations or the ministers decide too quickly that they need a new start when they haven’t lived out the promise of the old start.

            We celebrate the creation of Pebble Hill Presbyterian Church, but the meaning of that beginning is seen in the signs of new creation that have witnessed to God’s presence and power and love and compassion in Christ ever since: the early gatherings where bonds formed that have remained to this day; the ministries that brought together suburban and inner city children and adults that continue to bear fruit today; the Muppy after school program that brought together kids from different churches and provided such wonderful fellowship for the parents who helped with it; the literacy programs, gardening projects, study and prayer and worship; the music programs; the pastoral counseling and the small groups; the mission trips for youth.  All of these have names and faces attached to them, the procession of saints of whom we have lost too many in these recent years – for all of it, and all of them, we give thanks.

            We are on a journey together, whether we were in on this particular trip at the beginning, or a more recent arrival.  The journey continues.  The true journey of the church begins with our baptism.  We’re handed a map when we are baptized, but we have to take the trip.  For each of us individually, it takes a whole life to finish our baptism, which is complete in death.  For the church, for a church or any church, the journey, hopefully, is across generations - though that is never guaranteed.  Our baptism continues to be given meaning by the journey we are on, by what we think, and feel, and do this day.

            When Martin Luther was tempted to give up on following Christ in the troubled times in which he lived, and which he largely caused, he would sit in his study and repeat to himself, “I am baptized.  I am baptized.  I am baptized.”

            You and I are baptized, and so am I.  Let us remember and renew on this day of celebration that beginning when God’s amazing grace was splashed on us - to claim once again the new creation that claims us, and to walk again in new life. 

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