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Isaiah 42: 1-9

Psalm 29

Acts 10: 34-43

Matthew 3: 13-17

St. Thomas Evangelical Lutheran Church

3800 East Third Street

Bloomington, Indiana 47401

(812) 332-5252

Sermon for the Baptism of Our Lord (January 13, 2008)

Liturgical Color: White

Jeff Schacht

"Out Into the World"

When I met Pierre he was 6 years old. It was the summer of 1990. I was working as a small group leader at the Lutheran Outdoor Ministry Center in Oregon, IL. My life revolved around loving each group of campers that came my way, basking in God's natural creation, and enjoying my new found friendships.

From the moment he stepped onto the dusty parking lot Pierre was mesmerized by his surroundings. To say that his face lit up at the sights around him is not entirely accurate. No, his expression read more as one who was setting foot on a different planet.

And in a sense he was. Pierre came to the camp in one of two busloads of children from Cabrini Green in Chicago, IL. The camp staff spent the first half of the summer preparing us for this visit. If you are not familiar with Cabrini Green, it is (or was at the time at least) one of the roughest housing projects in the country. It is such a dangerous place that even the Chicago police avoid it until daylight. It is the kind of place many in the world would like to ignore in hopes that it would just go away. The children on these buses represented scores of others around the country who are largely forgotten by our society. They were the undesirables...the tough kids...the dirty kids. For some people at the camp this was the week to watch your stuff, keep the fights to a minimum and just do what you needed to do to survive.

I was not one of those people. I lived for showing off this magical piece of property. To share the camp with some poor kids from the city and share God's love with them was something I looked forward to doing. Now I did not think it would be an easy task and it was not. The tiny mosquitoes that simply annoyed me became excuses for them to douse themselves with insect repellent until they were literally dripping with it. The nights were so dark and quiet out in the countryside it was downright scary for the kids and they couldn't sleep. The subsequent crankiness after a sleepless night combined with their poor conflict resolution skills to result in regular fights during the day. But all those troubles paled in comparison to the joy I got in watching little ones like Pierre bound through prairie grasses taller than he was or taking him for his very first swim. Being together in the same group all week we became good buds.

Back at the camp the following summer I very much looked forward to my midsummer chance to see Pierre again. As he bounded off the bus I recognized him immediately. It took a few moments, but he soon recognized me and we talked about his exciting week ahead. I wasn't with his group this time around, but I checked in on him periodically throughout the week just to make sure he was doing o.k.

By my third summer working at the camp I more or less had "Cabrini week" circled on my calendar. I looked forward to seeing my little friend againhoping he would recognize me...anxious to see how he had changed. The buses finally arrived, but my giddy anticipation was crushed because this year there was no Pierre. He would not be coming to camp this summer or any other time. You see, the previous winter he was simply playing in the wrong place at the wrong time. He got caught in the middle of an all too familiar turf war in the projects.

It was a jolt that took me the rest of the summer and longer to recover from. This encounter with a little boy challenged me to examine what I thought I knew about poverty. It opened my eyes to systemic injustice that left him in those circumstances to begin with. It caused me to confront the ideas I had that living my safe, faithfully Christian, yet isolated, life would make everything O.K. It took me one step closer to living my faith out in the world.

This kind of personal encounter also impacted Peter's faith life in today's text from Acts. We certainly know Peter was a good and diligent follower of Christ. We are well acquainted with the account of his presence at the Pentecost. We know he was well versed in the good news of Jesus' resurrection. But it took until this day for him to "truly understand" God's love was subject to no barriers. Yes, even Peter, the one called the father of the church, needed a little nudge in his understanding of what Jesus' ministry, death and resurrection really meant for his life.

Let us look at the events leading up to this morning's lectionary text so we can fully appreciate the remarkable testament Peter proclaims this morning. Earlier in Acts 10 we read of a hungry Peter praying on his rooftop. From there the text's author relates a rather bizarre tale of a trance, a bed sheet coming down from heaven filled with animals of all kinds, and a voice proclaiming to Peter that "What God has made clean, you must not call profane."

While Peter was understandably taking a moment for all of this to sink in, God then told him to go greet some visitors a Roman soldier had sent to him. The soldier, a Gentile named Cornelius, had requested a meeting with Peter. Now if you are up on your Jewish law you know that it is a big no-no for a Jew, like Peter, to enter the house of and consort with a Gentile. But Peter went anyway. His subsequent conversation with Cornelius affirmed his decision to depart so radically from tradition. This man Cornelius was "a devout man who feared God [and] gave alms generously to the people and prayed constantly to God." Rather than being an unclean Gentile undeserving of God's mercy, Peter realizes that the external distinctions we use to separate people are foolish. He finally grasps God's universal love for all people.

So, good for Peter! So far all that we have learned is that some holy Bible guy gets a little more holy. I would suggest, though, that there are other ways this story stands out for us today. For example, look at how it happened. Again, Peter was by all accounts, a man fully dedicated to his faith. Yet despite his devotion it took a personal encounter for God's message to really sink in. With all of that knowledge and experience he could not fully proclaim Jesus as "Lord of all" until Jesus took him someplace unexpected — sharing the table with the unclean...a Gentile.

Our text today serves as a reminder that even though we know the stories...even as we genuinely rejoice in the good news of the empty tombGod is not done with us. God continues working with us and through us. Today we see what happened to Peter when he followed Jesus' lead. If we are to follow Jesus, where will he take us?

That is a question we cannot answer this morning. The best we can do is to be awake and alert to similar surprises. I know it took some time for me to fully realize what God was doing through my encounter with Pierre at LOMC. I went to the camp excited to work at a place that proclaimed its mission "to be the church in an outdoor setting, connecting the Word of God with the world of God." After meeting, and losing, Pierre this took on a much deeper meaning than simply sharing God's natural creation with our campers each week.

From that summer on my faith took on a much more active character. It became much clearer to me that this world of God's needs God's Word to make it whole. It became painfully obvious to me that, as Christians, our lives of faith require much more than laying back and basking in the glory of Jesus' overcoming death on the cross. As Christians, we are to live each day of our ministries in a manner that reflects Jesus' ministry.

It is not a coincidence that this text appears on the day we remember and celebrate the baptism of our Lord; that moment when "God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit." Jesus' baptism marks the beginning of his public ministry. And upon his baptism he did not erect some roadside stand, ala Lucy of the Peanuts comic strip, with a sign announcing "the savior is in"waiting for people to come to him. No, Jesus "went about," as today's scripture says, "doing good and healing all who were oppressed."