Are you able, asked Jesus, to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?
What was so important about baptism? What was at stake in these few drops of water? Why all this fuss over Elliot and Tyler, Alexia and Stella on the day of their baptism?
I will answer those questions, by telling you a story . . . a true story.
Ancient Rome was a man’s world. Jesus grew up as a man in a man’s world. Men wore the pants, so to speak, and men held the purse strings. The paterfamilias, the male head of each household, held absolute power over the members of his household. He owned the women and children under his care as well as the household slaves.
The paterfamilias had the power and the right to disown any member of his own household or to sell them into slavery.
By virtue of the culture into which he was born, Jesus was a paterfamilias.
What does it mean to be a Christian? What does it look like? What do you have to do? What do you have to believe? How do you have to live? What’s the bottom line?
What do you have to believe about Jesus? Must you believe that Jesus is the Son of God and Savior of the world? Or, is it enough to acknowledge that Jesus was one over-the-top, crazy-cool spiritual dude?
What about the virgin birth? The miracles? And those three days in hell before he was resurrected? What’s the bottom line?
Preacher: Alleluia! Christ is risen!
Response: He is risen, indeed! Alleluia!
Is he? Are you quite sure of that? Personally, I would find it a great deal more reassuring if the women who were there that morning—there in the cemetery, there at the tomb—had departed with a bounce in their step, and hope in their hearts, and faith on their tongues.
They did not. They did not skip and prance from the tomb bursting with joy. I wish I could report to you that they had. On the contrary, they fled the tomb, seized with terror.
I begin with a brief paragraph from a recent article in the Boston Globe:
“They see themselves in the images of Trayvon Martin that stare from television and computer screens. They relate to the sting of being ‘suspicious’ for doing little else than just being themselves and they worry that their accommodations to the fears of others won’t be enough to keep them safe - or alive.”*
I need your help. Christianity is not a spectator sport and I need your participation. Shout out the conclusions to these phrases:
Last week I had the great privilege of participating in a conference on race held nearby at Wheelock College. In one small group discussion we quickly found ourselves playing with fire. There were perhaps twenty of us. We were in a classroom, but had arranged our chairs in a circle. We were a multi-cultural, multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-religious, multi-linguistic group who ranged in age from high-schooler to senior citizens.
As some of you know, next Sunday, June 17th, Old South’s Historian, Jeff Makholm, will unveil the portrait of the 20th Senior Minister. (It was intended to take place in February during our 343rd Annual Meeting, but the portrait was tardy and missed the meeting.)
Nancy S. Taylor (the Twentieth Senior Minister) on Thomas Thacher (First) and Samuel Willard (Second)
Over the course of the past seven years I have spent much time in the company of this league of extraordinary gentlemen. I have endeavored to know them, learn from them and, not least, through their sermons and prayers, their deeds and their decisions, gain access to the times in which they ministered.