Baptism of the Lord Communion Liturgy

This Great Thanksgiving is written by Shannon Sullivan, 2013, for Baptism of the Lord Sunday at Deer Creek United Methodist Church. It is written using language from The United Methodist Baptismal Covenant, The UM Service of Word and Table, and scripture, particularly Isaiah 43:1-7 and Luke's gospel.

Remembering Our Baptism and Holy Communion

It is a holy day indeed when we celebrate our two sacraments together. This morning we remember the sacrament of our baptism as we partake in the sacrament of communion. One celebrates birth and new life, and the other, our continued nourishment and growth as we live into all Christ calls us to be.

RENUNCIATION OF SIN AND PROFESSION OF FAITH

When we approach the font or the table, we first renounce the power of wickedness in our lives. And so, let us confess together:

Nourishing God, you tell us not to fear for you are with us. But we are so full of fear that we cannot love you with our whole heart. We use the freedom and power you have given us, not to resist evil, injustice, and oppression, but to rebel against your love to hurt our neighbors and ignore the cries of the needy. Cleanse us of our fear. Feed us the courage to put our whole trust in your grace.

ASSURANCE

The Holy Spirit has not abandoned us. We are still God's beloved, and the Holy Spirit continues to work within us.

We remember our baptism are thankful!

And now we come to the table, for God continues calling us each by name to bring us into the fullness of the new life we glimpsed at our baptism.

We offer ourselves anew to God, listening for the guidance of the Spirit!

PASSING OF THE PEACE: Now let us share signs of that peace which we find in Christ with our neighbors!

THE GREAT THANKSGIVING

The Lord be with you.

And also with you.

Lift up your hearts.

We lift them up to the Lord.

Let us give thanks to the Lord Our God.

It is right to give our thanks and praise.

It is right, and a good and joyful thing,

always and everywhere to give thanks to you, Almighty God,

creator of heaven and Earth.

In the beginning, darkness covered the face of the deep, but You swept over the face of the waters and brought forth abundant swarms of life. And you blessed them, seeing that it was good. You watered the face of the ground and formed a human creature from the dust and mud, breathing life into it and leading it to life in a garden. You created a second earth creature so it would not be alone, and man and woman were created. But these earth creatures, these humans turned their backs on you, and were expelled from the lush garden.

Yet you did not abandon them then, and you do not abandon us now. Throughout our history, you have come through the sustenance of water and bread to call us back to paradise. In the days of Noah, you saved those on the ark through water, and after the flood you set in the clouds a rainbow. When you saw your people as slaves in Egypt, you led them to freedom through the sea, and then sustained them with manna, bread that covered the dessert like dew. Their children you brought through the Jordan to a land flowing with milk and honey.

And so, with your people on earth and all the company of heaven, we praise your name and join their unending hymn.

Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might,

heaven and earth are full of your glory.

Hosanna in the highest.

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

Hosanna in the highest.

You told us when we pass through the waters, you will be with us. You told us that you love us so much, because we are precious in your sight, you will redeem us. You saved our biblical ancestors and us through water, but the story never ends there. You continue to nourish us through the fullness of time, sending Jesus, nurtured in the water of a womb.

When he grew up, your Spirit descended on him like a dove, proclaiming his belovedness as he emerged from the water. He began his ministry preaching new life because the time of redemption had come. He healed the sick, fed the hungry, and ate with sinners.

Yet so many feared and still now fear the new birth he offers all of us. We reject the fullness of the feast he give to us. And so we turned our backs on Jesus, on the nourishment he offered. And we gave him up to die, even after sitting at table with him.

On his last night with us, Jesus sat at a table and fed his disciples as he feeds us now. He took bread, blessed it, broke it, and shared it with us, saying “This is my body, which is given for you.”

When supper was over he took the cup, blessed it, and shared it with us, saying, “Take, and drink. As often as you do this, remember me.”

The cup reminds us of the new covenant, a covenant by water and the Spirit in which God reminds us again of our belovedness and calls us to new life.

And so, in remembrance of these, your mighty acts in Jesus Christ, we offer ourselves in praise and thanksgiving as a holy and living sacrifice, in union with Christ's offering for us, as we proclaim the mystery of faith.

Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again.

Pour out your Holy Spirit to bless this gift of water and those who receive it. Pour out your Holy Spirit on us gathered here, and on these gifts of bread and wine. May these two gifts, the water and the meal, redeem us again by washing away our sin and filling us with good things.

By your Spirit, incorporate us into God's new creation, making us one with Christ, one with each other, and one in ministry to all the world, until we all come to the table, cleansed of all hatred and sin to welcome all people in joy and thanksgiving as members of the family of Christ. May your spirit work within us, that being born through water and the Spirit, and fed through Christ's body, we may be faithful disciples of Jesus Christ.

And now, with the confidence of the children of God, let us pray for our daily bread, praying the prayer Jesus taught us: THE LORD'S PRAYER

BREAKING THE BREAD

The bread of life.

The cup that saves us, and sets us free.

GIVING THE BREAD AND THE CUP

The table is set and all are invited. In the United Methodist Church, we practice an open table. This means you don't have to be a member, you don't have to be baptized, you don't have to take classes, you don't even have to be in a good mood. You are invited to come and know that no matter who you are and where you are on your journey, you are a beloved child of God and God's grace is sufficient.

As you approach the Table, you will first come to the Font, where you are invited to remember your baptism and be thankful. And, as you remember your birth through water and the Spirit, you will come to the Table, where you will be offered nourishment to sustain you on that journey of new life. You will be offered a piece of bread, which you can take and dip into the cup. Now come with joy to meet God anew.

BLESSING

The God of all grace, who has called us each by name as Beloved, establish and strengthen you by the power of the Holy Spirit, that you may live in grace and peace.

 

Marked by Love

My sermon for Baptism of the Lord Sunday at the Deer Creek Charge United Methodist Churches! I had a woman in her seventies tell me that she had never thought of herself as being Beloved of God before. 

See also my communion liturgy used on this Sunday.

Scripture: Luke 3:15-17, 21-22 (The Message)

The Gospel reading this morning will be from a paraphrase of scripture, Eugene Peterson's The Message. Hear now these words:

The interest of the people by now was building. They were all beginning to wonder, “Could this John be the Messiah?”

But John intervened: “I am baptizing you here in the river. The main character in this drama, to whom I'm a mere stagehand, will ignite the kingdom life, a fire, the Holy Spirit within you, changing you from the inside out. He's going to clean house--- make a clean sweep of your lives. He'll place everything true in its proper place before God; everything false he'll put out in the trash to be burned.”

There was a lot more of this--- words that gave strength to the people, words that put heart in them. The Message!...

After all the people were baptized, Jesus was baptized. As he was praying, the sky opened up and the Holy Spirit, like a dove descending, came down on him. And along with the Spirit, a voice: “You are my Son, chosen and marked by my love, pride of my life.”

Sermon: Marked by Love

Let us pray:

Patient teacher, we praise you for your warm embrace,

that in the midst of our fear and doubt, still youhope,  remind us

of your most important teaching: love.

May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of all our hearts,

guide us all to better understand this teaching.

In the name of Jesus, whom you proclaimed your beloved. Amen.

My sister Kate, the blonde one, really changed the way I look at baptism. It was early two summers ago when we were at Norrisville United Methodist Church and there was a baptism. Now, we were preacher's kids, and preacher's kids who went to multiple services on a Sunday, so when the second service rolls around, you pay a little less attention to what's going on. I was goofing off a bit, but when I happened to look at my sister, she was crying. Now Kate did not use to be a very emotional person. For example: when she and I did a presentation on our mission trip to Bosnia, I cried because the trip had been such a powerful experience and I was so in love with the people we had met there. Her reaction to my tears was to tell me in the car on the way to the next service, “I hope you don't cry this time. That was embarrassing to me.” Kate's a real sweet girl.

So when I saw Kate was crying during the service, I thought she was sick or something; I was very concerned and asked her what was wrong. She said through her tears that she just found moments like this baptism so beautiful because they signify our family growing. She was touched by the love in the room, the warmth and the smiles on everyone's faces that just radiated the power of God's love.

I don't think before this moment I really thought about or at least felt baptism in this way. I confess that I am, to the chagrin of my mother (who is a pastor), a bit of an anabaptist. Anabaptists believe in re-baptism, that baptism should be something you choose as an adult to signify your commitment to a new way of life. I also like the idea of rebaptism because I always wanted to be baptized in a river but can't because I have already been baptized. Total immersion, the kind of baptism when you are dunked under water, just seems very glamorous to me. Now, though there is merit to anabaptist's focus on a ritual to signify a new commitment, less so to my desire for glamor, I think my understanding of baptism before seeing Kate cry missed the point of baptism. Baptism is less about us and the work that we do to arrive at the point of making that commitment to God and more about those words that were spoken as the Holy Spirit descended like a dove upon Jesus on the day of his baptism: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Or, as we read from The Message this morning, “You are my Son, chosen and marked by my love.”

When we think of baptism, we usually think more of washing away our sin than we think of entering into a family. And of course, baptism does symbolize how God cleanses us of our sin and offers us a new life. And baptism, though we only do it once, symbolizes how God offers us new life again and again throughout our lives. But the power of baptism is that it doesn't just offer us a clean slate--- because, let's face it, in The United Methodist church we often [but not exclusively, as we will see today] baptize infants who do not need a clean slate at that particular moment in their lives. The power of baptism is that it marks us as beloved children of God, enveloping us in a love that will never let us go.

Of course, we are marked by God's love even without being baptized, but baptism, like communion, is a physical reminder of God's claim on our lives. In most Protestant churches, we celebrate two sacraments: baptism and communion. [And today, at Deer Creek, we're celebrating both!] Sacrament is a fancy word that means an “outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.” And that definition I just gave was a fancy definition that just means that it is a physical mark that reminds us of God's love for us--- a love that has a past, present, and future component to it. The liturgy tells the story of our past, of those biblical moments that God has acted through water or bread. We are anchored in the present by the physicality of the act, the feeling of the water on our head, the bread in our mouths. And in the practice, we are entering into a future moment, that kingdom on Earth as it is in Heaven that Jesus talks about.¹

So this mark of love is a powerful thing, roots extending deep into our history, branches touching us now, budding into something new as we speak. But it is also a ridiculous claim, isn't it? Couldn't we just say, “Oh, when we read Luke, God is talking about Jesus not all the rest of us”? I just jumped to a big conclusion when I skipped from the water to God's words as the centerpiece of baptism. But friends, this is what the Gospel writer does. In both Matthew and Mark's gospel, there is a little phrase about Jesus coming up from the water that is completely omitted in Luke's gospel. In fact, in Luke's gospel, it doesn't even say specifically that John the Baptist baptized Jesus. It just says, “Now when all the people were baptized, Jesus was baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove.” That's it. One big sentence that reminds us, as Kate's tears reminded me, what baptism is really all about.

And, you may be saying now that neither of these two textual differences, removing John the Baptist from the action and omitting the water, are a huge deal. They certainly don't seem to be a huge deal, except that the effect of them is to remind us that it is not humans who baptize, or humans who choose baptism, but it symbolizes the work God is doing. And it is not the water that is important, but what the symbol ultimately points to: God's love for each and every one of us.

So, yes, though claiming that in saying Jesus was beloved, we all are beloved, seems a bit outrageous, this is what Luke focuses the true meaning of baptism on in his Gospel. And it is this focus on identity proclamation, on naming and claiming that makes all the difference for what we are called to do next. One commentator I read for this week explains:

I am God’s beloved. That’s an outrageous claim. Who am I to deserve God’s love? But that claim, that identity, is what we celebrate with this...story of the baptism of Jesus. We move from Luke’s birth narratives to his account of an adult Jesus in the water of the Jordan, and we hear the words “You are my Son, the Beloved.”

With his identity proclaimed, Luke sets the stage for Jesus’ work in the world. From this identity comes all the rest:

• his audacious claim that God is here, now, within each one of us, if we but have eyes to see, that God claims us all as beloved, if we but have ears to hear;
• his daring promise of justice and compassion, a new way to be found outside the walls of the temple and beyond the influence of empire;
• his healing touch that broke taboos of status and gender and race.

All that comes from this first claim, this foundational identity: you are my beloved.²

This is what baptism is all about, for Jesus, for us. It is about naming who we are and whose we are so that we may go out into the world living into that identity. This is why my sister Kate was so touched that Sunday as we welcomed another child into her true identity as Beloved of God. Baptisms, I saw in that moment, are a time to shower one another in love, to claim one another with love, as God has claimed us.

My mom is having her congregation this morning repeat after her: “I am God's beloved child...called and sent to make a difference in the world.” I thought this was a terrific idea. Being marked with God's love doesn't just end with smiles and a warm feeling, it demands action. So we're all going to say this together: “I am God's beloved child...called and sent to make a difference in the world.”³ Get that stuck in your head this week. Pray those words this week, and as we [remember our baptisms]/[baptize Sue and Patty today]. Can you imagine what the world would look like if we were all rooted in our belovedness? If we all recognized how much God loves us? If we went around acting as the beloved children of God we are?

Let us pray:

Spirit, fill us to overflowing with your love today and everyday. And guide us to love others, to widen the embrace of our church family even more every day. Help us to make a difference in the world, God. In the name of Jesus, Your Beloved. Amen.

1The idea behind this paragraph is stolen a little from my mom's baptism sermon, “A Baptism Shaped Life,” preached at Norrisville and St. Paul United Methodist Churches on 5 September 2010.

2Ann Howard, “Beloved Together,” A Word in Time, The Beatitudes Society, 7 January 2013, http://www.beatitudessociety.org/blog/28-beloved_together.

3Melissa McDade, “Who We Are” preached at St. Paul and Norrisville United Methodist Churches on 13 Jnauary 2013.