The Seventh Sunday of Easter

            It’s not often I ignore the lectionary, those scripture readings that are assigned every week, but today we have a special event.  Today we are welcoming four new Christians into our midst. Owen, Sadie, Landry, and Lexi. They will soon be baptized into the community of the faithful, and I think that deserves our attention. 
So I’m going to reach back a few weeks when we had a reading from Acts chapter 8.  Philip encountering the Ethiopian Eunuch.  It’s one of my favorite stories in that book of the early church. And so the story goes that Philip is led to the most unlikeliest of characters, the Ethiopian Eunuch, who happens to be reading from the prophet Isaiah.  Philip goes up to him and asks, “Do you understand what you are reading?” He replies (and I love this), “How can I, unless someone guides me?”  This man, this well educated treasurer of the Ethiopian Queen.  Acknowledges the difficulty behind reading scripture.  Because truthfully, reading scripture is difficult.  It takes context. Knowledge of the history, traditions, politics of the time in which it was written.  You would have to understand the Jewish people, of which the Eunuch is not a part.  You would have to know take other books of scripture, which he does not have. 
So together they read from the Isaiah.  And together they begin to interpret the words of this great prophet.  From there Philip begins telling the Eunuch of the good news of Jesus, his teachings, healings, his resurrection...  And that’s when it happened.  As they were riding along, the Eunuch looked out and said, “Look, here is water!  What is to prevent me from being baptized?”  What is to prevent me from being baptized?
You know baptism is an interesting thing.  We often talk about it as a cleansing, a setting free from sins type of deal.  Or perhaps that moment where you heart is changed, and you find yourself yearning for a relationship with God.  Sometimes, baptism is simply talked about as the entry rite of the Church, or more plainly the membership initiation.  In a way it is all of these things, but the problem with these definitions for baptisms, is that they are all focused on the individual. 
Now don’t get me wrong, this event is about Lexi, Landry, Sadie, and Owen.  But if the question is asked, “What is to prevent me from being baptized?”  It is not your sins, your past, or even your beliefs.  The only thing that has prevented a child of God from being baptized is us, the church.  And you know, sometimes, in the past, we have put provisions on baptism.  You must do this, do that, welcome God in this way, be a certain age. 
Getting back to our story from Acts. If you look in any good bible, you will notice something interesting… it will skip verse 37.  Your bible will go directly from Acts chapter 8 verse 36, “What prevents me from being baptized?”  …straight to verse 38, “And he commanded the chariot to stop, and they both went down into the water, Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him.”   Now there will be an asterisks and at the bottom of your study bible it will say something like, “other ancient authorities add verse 37 which says, “and Philip said, “If you believe with all your heart, you may.” And he replied, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.”  But nearly all modern scholarly bibles NIV, NRSV, even the New King James will put an asterisks saying, “yeah, most biblical scholars omit this.”  You see, it is clear that verse was added by the Church some centuries later, putting stipulations on baptism.  They wanted the baptized to think a certain way, to profess a certain belief.  But the problem is there are not asterisks on God’s Love.  Baptism is about God’s unconditional love fulling encompassing the individual, It’s about us, the church’s undying passion towards those entering our community of Grace.
If you pay attention to our liturgy, to the beliefs spoken, the questions asked, the vows taken… they are asked of you.  All the hard stuff is directed to parents, godparents, and to the congregation as a whole. We are asked to help raise these children in a holy and special way.  Baptism is a challenge that we as the corporate body of Christ undertake.  It’s about our beliefs, our convictions.  It is about about our promise to the newly baptized. That promise that we will raise them in the faith, that we will teach them how to love, show them how to serve, how to confess, wrongdoings, proclaim the good news, and be agents of justice, peace, and dignity for a world so lacking in Christ’s example!
In baptism we are called to commit to the next generation of Christ’s Holy and Apostolic Church.  It’s a tall order, but I know y’all are up to it!  I’ve seen what you have done so far. I have trusted my own with you, I’ve trusted myself with you.  And brothers and sisters, we do not do this alone.  As the waters flow across their head, and the oils sealed upon their skin, they are marked as Christ owned forever.  And once you are marked as Christ owned, like St. Paul said, “I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angles, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor heights, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God.
So today we give thanks, and wait with great anticipation, to see how God will be made manifest in these four beautiful children.  Amen.