Next Weeks Lesson / Office of Church Relations

The animated pastor waved over the confirmation students gathered before him. Baptism, he said, is not just the water, but the water together with the Word. It’s like this: See? He took a Bible in his hand and pulled it through the water in the baptismal font sitting in front of him. The water, he said, comes with the word. Baptism is the word made wet; the promises of God coming at you through the font. Baptism, he said, is the promise that the Word of God makes you clean, the promise that you have gone through the waters with Christ, died in them, and come out alive on the other side.

Another pastor at another time spoke with children watching a Baptism of an infant child. “I’m going to make the sign of the cross on the baby’s head—watch,” she said. “And listen to the words that are spoken as I sketch the cross on the baby’s forehead.”

Child of God: you have been sealed with the Holy Spirit, and marked with the Cross of Christ forever.

The pastor looked up to speak with the children gathered in front of the font. It’s like this: See? The cross is on this baby’s head, invisible, but there, and the baby can never, never erase it. He can ignore it. He can act like it’s not there. He can pretend it doesn’t have any meaning in his life. But there it is, on his forehead. Christ has claimed him as his child, and that is a promise this child--and you--can never, never erase.

The waters of Baptism are precious waters: waters, as 1 Peter rejoices, that “now save.” (1 Peter 3:21). By and through them, we receive the promise that Christ is for us, not against. And if Christ is for us, what can we fear that might be against? How can we not but love God, and because of God, our neighbor? How can we not but bear witness to the hope that is within us?

Link to the First Reading

The people of Athens were “in every way very religious” (Acts 17:22). They realized that the objects of their worship were limited, that God surpassed all that they might picture God to be. God was not just an object, not just a mythical creature who appealed to the human gravitation toward power, greed, jealously, lust. God was more than what they might imagine God to be: they even had an altar inscribed to the God “unknown,” the God of which some of their poets had spoken of as being parent of all—the one, the poets had said, of whom “we are indeed. . . offspring.” (Acts 17:28).

Paul uses the given religiosity of the people—and their intelligence--to witness to the God whom they perceived, but did not know. The “unknown God” of their altar, that God is the God “who made the world and everything in it” (Acts 17:24) That God is not appeased by the work of human hands; “as if he needed anything” (Acts 17:25). The unknown God is not swayed by human reaction or gifts—it is he who has made humanity, given life, given “everything” (Acts 17:25). The unknown God gives because God is God, not because humanity can somehow persuade that giving.

The unknown God is thus powerful, but not thereby “far from each one of us” (Acts 17:27). God is found in our own living, moving. God is found in our being “offspring.” Further, Paul witnesses, if we are God’s offspring, God is surely not made like “gold, or silver, or stone, a representation by . . . art and imagination” (Acts 17:29). God is more; God is one who calls humanity to repentance. And that, Paul cries, is evidenced not only by what can be seen by and in and through creation, but through the man Jesus, the one in and through whom the world will be judged, as witnessed by and through his resurrection from the dead.

Questions for Discussion

What do you think persuaded the Athenians to construct an altar to “an unknown god” (Acts 17:23)? Where are such “altars” constructed in society today?
How does Paul use what the Athenians know and believe about God to move toward witness to Christ? What does this imply about the way in which we might be called to witness to him?
How do we continue to make God out to be a representation of “art and imagination?” How does God, in Christ, break any such representation we might make?
How does the gift of Baptism witness to Christ? How can it be used in our common witness to Christ?

Link to the Second Reading

Peter writes these words to Christians who are threatened with persecution for their faith. He begins by setting the stage straight: harm can be around the corner, but what power does it truly have, when it comes as a result of being “zealous for doing right?” Nothing can separate the Christian from the love of God in Christ (Romans 8:39). Better to do what is right for the love of Christ and face persecution, than to do the wrong thing-- shrink from giving “a defense to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in you” (1 Peter 3:15) --for fear of what might result from that confession. For in that hope, and that hope alone, there is power—the power of salvation.

Those who face persecution can look to their Baptism for strength. In a different time of turmoil, God saved eight persons from the flood through the building of the ark. Baptism “corresponds” to this (1 Peter 3:21). Whatever persecution lies ahead, Baptism has provided, already, the power to persevere through it. Baptism “saves” (1 Peter 3:21)—not by taking dirt off the body, but “as an appeal to God for a clear conscience” (1 Peter 3:21). Baptism is the promise that the righteous died for the unrighteous, that the righteous One might “bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18). Having been brought to God through the waters of Baptism, and having received, in and through those waters, the promise that Christ’s resurrection is one’s very own, what reason is there to fear those who threaten to destroy the body, and life? The Christian’s life is hid with God in Christ—the Lord of life, the victor over death.

Questions for Discussion

In what ways has your Baptism provided strength and hope to you in times of turmoil or hurt?
How is the Christian to face times of fear?
Where and how do Christians face persecution? Where and how do we ourselves persecute?
The 23rd Psalm promises that God leads us “beside still waters.” In what ways are the waters of Baptism “still?” In what ways are they anything but still?

Link to the Gospel

Jesus is speaking here to his disciples, promising them the gift of the Holy Spirit after his ascension into heaven. To love Jesus, in his absence, is to keep his commandments—the command to see that he is the “way, the truth, and the life;” (John 14:6); the command to “let not your hearts be troubled” (John 14:7); the command to love one another, even as Jesus has himself first loved.

This would be a lonely and difficult and impossible venture, were it not for Jesus’ promise that he would “pray to the Father,” who would give “another Counselor to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth” (John 14:15). The world will not receive this Counselor, will neither know him or see him, even as the world did not know or see Jesus. But the faithful will know the Counselor, and in this knowing, not be left “desolate” (John 14:18). The faithful will know the presence of Jesus through the Spirit—and receive the assurance, through the Spirit, that because Jesus lives, so shall we, also.

Through the gift of the Spirit, all will be connected—the faithful will know that Jesus is in the Father, and the faithful in Jesus, and Jesus in the faithful.
So connected, we will do as our Lord has bid: “love him” by keeping his commandments. In the process we will find ourselves beloved by the Father and the Son-- and find ourselves seeing, beholding the son, who has, through the keeping of the Commandment to love as he has loved, made himself “manifest” (John 14:21).

Questions for Discussion

The gift of the Holy Spirit is given in the gift of Baptism. How does the Spirit continue to make itself known in the lives of the faithful?
How much do you rely on the Holy Spirit in your effort to love others as Jesus has loved? How might you increase this capacity? What would be the value of doing so?
What are the commandments Jesus gives that we are to follow? How does the Spirit make such following possible?
In what ways is Jesus made “manifest” through the keeping of his commandments?

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