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Pentecost C 2013
Jack Hardaway
Messed up knees
Baptism is either the most important day in our lives or it isn’t.
Our baptismal covenant either means everything or it means nothing.
I have to talk about Flannery O’Connor again, the famous southern fiction writer,
a deeply devout Roman Catholic.
For a while in the 1950s she moved among literary circles in New York and was
at a dinner party with an elite group of writers one night. The writers were talking
about the usefulness of religious imagery in their writing especially the Lord’s
Supper, and that no one really believed that it was anything more than symbolic,
but it was useful.
Flannery O’Connor then very bluntly responded with her thick middle Georgia
accent, “If it is only a symbol, then to hell with it.”
Needless to say she was not invited over again.
She makes an important point.
Either salvation means everything, salvation is for real and is the only thing that
counts or it means nothing at all. If salvation is only a useful metaphor and
symbol then it is a metaphor and symbol that are hollowed out and empty,
meaningless. To hell with it.
Either the sacrament carries the gift and grace of salvation or it is a waste of our
time.
The other great sacrament is baptism. Today is the feast of Pentecost, one of the
great feasts of the Church.
Baptism. It is either the most important day in our lives, or it is worthless. If it is
only a ceremony, if it is only a symbol, then to hell with it.
Ah…but if it is sacrament, if it is the means of God’s Grace, if it is the gift of
unwarranted salvation, then that is a wonderful and awe filled thing, a fearful and
trembling thing, the very grace of God washing over us…
Pentecost.
Baptism.
The Holy Spirit builds her nest in the home and hearth of creation.
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The animating breath of God.
Prophecy to the breath that these bones may live, prophecy to these dead bones,
that they may live.
Today we celebrate something outrageous, something over the top, something
rude, something disruptive, a mighty wind, a holy fire, a divine breath.
We have made promises, we have made covenant with this Spirit that now
inhabits our lives, our community, this parish.
Living in this Spirit doesn’t make us perfect.
We are not those who think we have our act together, who have it all figured out.
No, to live in the Spirit, to be bound in covenant, is to be imperfect.
We are those who excel at messing up and starting over, at making mistakes
boldly and more boldly still trying again.
We have dirty, scabbed and scarred up knees from falling so many times and then
getting up brushing ourselves off and starting over.
This is not about perfection. This is about a certain way of being imperfect, of
failing fearlessly without shame and trying again…
(For the one being baptized, for the parents and God parents, for those graduating
from high school and starting college,) for all of us who breath and have beating
hearts always remember your baptism, remember your baptismal promises, study
them, and know that you will fail tragically and gloriously.
On the other side of failure you will find the sheer and mighty wind of the Spirit,
the grace and the mercy of God, and you will go on to do so again and again,
finding astonishing ways to fail in love and forgiveness and then even more
astonishing ways of encountering God in our human frailty and weakness.
Always remember.
Be experts at scuffed up and bloody knees.
It means everything.