Many of you know I was gone last Sunday so that I could be present at the baptism of my godson Karl. Now, I may be a little bit biased, but I’m pretty sure Karl is the funniest little guy around. One funny thing about Karl is he is in a bit of a no phase right now. This is pretty common, he’s fourteen months old so “no” is one of the few words he can say with any degree of reliability. He says no a lot, in the place of whatever word he means to say. For example, “Hi Karl,” “no.” Or, “Do you want a snack?” “No” with hands extended to receive said snack. My favorite is when he goes up to something he knows he’s not supposed to be doing, then turns to you and says, “no?” With a question in his voice, like he’s checking in, is this still a no? Playing with your computer, still a no? Jumping off the couch, still a no? Pulling the cat’s tale, still a no? I find it a super adorable trait, but I am not his parents. I’m guessing the constant chorus of no does get a bit old for them.
Karl’s preference for the word no did lead to a humorous moment in the baptism though. If you remember, there’s a part in the service of baptism where the sponsors, parents, and congregation are asked to renounce, to turn away from, a series of things. Do we renounce the powers of this world that rebel against God, do we renounce the ways of sin that draw us from God. The very first question we are asked is if we renounce the devil and all the forces that defy God. So the pastor asked the question, do you renounce the devil, but before the congregation could respond, Karl shouted “nooooooo” at the top of his lungs, much to the delight of the congregation and embarrassment of his parents.
Now in all fairness, Karl’s proclamation really had less to do with the addressed question and more to do with the fact that he was done being held and wanted to be allowed to run in circles around the church. But I, as a proud godparent, thought there was really something profoundly honest about Karl’s answer to the question. Because as Lutherans we believe that baptism is a thing that God does to us, not a thing that we do for God. Yes we bring our children, or ourselves, to be baptized, but the act of baptism is all God. Whether you were baptized as a child or an adult, whether you came to the font willingly or someone brought you, regardless of any doubts or hesitations you may have carried, may still carry, when the waters of promise washed over you, you were claimed as God’s precious child, marked as God’s own. The questions posed before a baptism, the confession of faith are not conditions of baptism; we say those to remind us of what it looks like to live as baptized children. In fact, the confession and forgiveness we often start our worship with is linked to baptism, it is a reminder of baptism. We say the confession and receive forgiveness every Sunday to give us opportunity after opportunity to try again, to start anew, to hear again the words that God said to us at baptism, that we are forgiven, that we are loved. The power of God’s claim on us remains true even as we fall short, when we fail to renounce evil, turn from sin, when our faith waivers. In fact, the power of baptism is that when we sin, when we screw up, when we do all the things that we do as humans, we can come back to the font and remember that there is nothing that God cannot forgive, no place that we can go where God does not follow, because we have been claimed by God in baptism. We come to the font with our brokenness, knowing that God meets us here and through the power of water and promise, binds us back together.
Through the simple act of water and word, God claims us as God’s own. We are baptized once, and it remains true for our entire lives, no matter what happens, that we are God’s child. That is a pretty bold claim we make, maybe even a little unbelievable at times. Which is why we come again and again to gather as a community of the faithful to remind each other of what we may struggle to remember ourselves, that we are God’s chosen people, that we are precious, that we are loved, that we are forgiven, that we are whole, in God’s eyes.
Going to a baptism during the Easter season got me thinking about some of the bold claims of faith we make as Christians. The entire Easter season itself is really a bold claim. Think about it, on the first Sunday of Easter we celebrate that the tomb is empty, and Jesus has risen. We proclaim this promise of resurrection with confidence, and then we spend the rest of the season trying to figure out what this bold claim of resurrection could possibly mean.
The strange boldness of this claim of resurrection is reflected in these first readings of the Easter season. Every Easter season follows this pattern, Easter Sunday, disciples discover the empty tomb, Second Sunday of Easter, disciples gather in upper room, because they are scared and cannot believe the resurrection slash do not recognize Jesus when he appears in their midst. Third Sunday of Easter, Jesus again appears to disciples who, again, do not recognize him. These are the disciples, who had traveled with Jesus, who had known his teachings better than anyone, yet these Easter season readings remind us that this claim of resurrection is so bold, so unexpected, that even Jesus closest followers missed it when it showed up in their midst.
And yet, even though the disciples didn’t recognize Jesus, didn’t understand resurrection, their failure to understand did not stop Jesus from coming among them and bringing them peace. In fact, I think that it was precisely because they did not recognize him that Jesus kept coming among them and kept bringing them peace, until they could recognize him, until they could know that the promises he’d made to them were true.
What these Easter season texts tell us is that missing Jesus’ presence in our lives, that doubting Jesus has—or will—show up, is not antithetical to faith. In fact, doubt is a part of faith. Frederick Buechner called doubt the “ants in the pants of faith. [It is what keeps] it awake and moving.”* Jesus came to the disciples in their doubts, in their fears, and he just kept coming and showing them his hands and his side, and bringing them his peace, until their hearts knew what their minds could not, that Jesus Christ had risen from the dead, and had gone on ahead of them, and would always, from that moment on, be with them and among them. Not always bodily as he had traveled with them before his death, but now, after his resurrection, truly with them. And Jesus just keeps showing up in our lives too. In the water and word of baptism, in the bread and wine of communion, in the gathered community who come together to confess the ways we fall short and hear again the promise that God forgives us, who pray for each other, support one another, and listen together for who God is calling us to be. Faith, fueled by our doubt, by our curiosity and by our desire for understanding, is in the end a journey, not a destination. The resurrected Christ holds out pierced hands to us, inviting us into the dance of relationship with the God whom we cannot see, so that in the journeying we can come to believe.
So when we come together in this place, when we come together as a community of the faithful, we come together, like the disciples, not as a community of people who have all the answers or have it all together, but as a community who is committed to the experience of journeying together. We come together as a community who are fueled by our doubts, by our questions, by the things we know and the things we cannot believe, a community who trusts in the promises God made to us, and a community who holds that trust for each other when our doubts, our fears, our humanity, cause us to miss the risen Christ in our midst.
There’s a line in today’s Gospel reading that I love. After Jesus had appeared to the disciples and said, “Peace be with you,” he showed them his hands and his feet. Then verse forty-one reads, “While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering.” I think part of being a person of faith is walking in the strange tension of joy and disbelief, of wonder and longing, of hope and assurance. So in this Easter season, the question this text leaves me with is what would it mean for us to enter into our questions with joy? How would we live differently if joy was the framework on which we built our faith? If we brought our questions, our fears, the things we cannot know, the paths we wished were clear, to God with joy, trusting that questions and uncertainty are God’s bread and butter, the places where our wonderfully surprising God always chooses to show up.
Since Easter, the back wall of our sanctuary has featured a nine-foot tall waterfall, flowing from behind the raredas, over the place where the torn purple banner of Lent hung, covering the scars with the promise of new life. That water flows through our baptismal font, and then out into the world, reminding us that in these waters we are made new, and from these waters we take this bold claim that has been made to us in the resurrection of Jesus Christ into a world that so desperately needs to know the love made manifest here. The promise that Jesus Christ loves us enough to show up to us again and again, until in our disbelieving, we have joy and peace in his name. Alleluia, Christ is risen. He is risen, indeed. Alleluia, Alleluia. Amen.
*Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC, (Harper & Row, Publishers: New York, NY, 1973), 20
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