By The Rev. Bernard W. Poppe, RectorOf all the Biblical stories to be scheduled for this day of Baptisms, the sacrifice of Isaac is probably the worst. For those of you not familiar with our system, and perhaps still in shock over the appallingly bad taste of this lesson, let me assure you that it was not by choice but by assignment that this lesson appears.
Our system of readings puts scripture on a three year cycle so that at the end of this time, most of the Bible will have been read and presumably taught about. It's just our luck of the draw that we read about a father being commanded to sacrifice his only son in a rather grim fashion. If the story line of fathers sacrificing sons sounds familiar, this lesson is used in frequent parallel with God's sacrifice of Jesus.
However, before we get carried away with some of the gritty details, let me offer that the word "sacrifice" also means "gift." In Biblical terms the gift of one's life often included death, but I'd like to suggest that the giving of one's life can take other forms.
The four parents of Phoebe and Sienna have sacrificed your lives to have these children and raise them. You have given yourselves to this care and very sacred work. You have declined the many other possibilities open to you, so that you could raise these children. Whether professional options, or traveling, or material possessions -- time spent on yourselves or in any one of so many ways you could have lived your lives without children, you gave those up. You sacrificed them to bring these new lives into the world. You have made commitments to them, to your spouses and families, to the communities of which you'll be part, and to yourselves that you will do this work. And it is a sacrifice.
I would invite you to consider also the possibility that you are offering the sacrifice of your children to the good of the world of which they are now a part and will grow deeper as time goes on.
The Poet and priest John Donne wrote about hearing the funeral bells ringing after the death of a person that no one knew. He mused, "For whom the bell tolls? It tolls for thee." We are so connected to each other that our world is comprised by every living being and it is impacted and diminished by the death of every human being, regardless of who knows them. We ring bells for death, but also for happier occasions like weddings and birth and if we had them to ring, we'd ring them today and proclaim to the world that it has been enriched by the Baptism of these two babies.
Consider that you have made a gift of these babies to the world. As they grow and become young women and take their place in the world, the gifts and talents God has bestowed on them will become more evident and indeed enrich the world.
At some point all parents have to let go of their children, and allow them to make their own way in the world, to make their own mistakes, follow their dreams and meet their own challenges. If I were to ask you now, it would probably seem like a long time before you begin to let go of your children to let them become the adults they are meant to be.
If I were to ask your parents, I suspect they would say it's a lot shorter than you realize. Their sacrifice has been to give the four of you to the world to bring hope and good news and new life into it. Your sacrifice will be to give your children to the world.
Abraham's willingness to give Isaac's life gives a vivid image to the reality of how painful it can be to let go of a child and let them enter into a life that God has called them.
Fortunately for this sermon, the Gospel lesson gives us a much nicer portion of scripture to deal with and far more appropriate. In this lesson Jesus talks about how important it is to show welcome. Welcoming the strangers is a common theme in the Bible and the connection is often made that whoever welcomes a stranger may be welcoming angels unawares. And in another case, a Latin inscription on a building at my alma mater translates to say "A stranger comes, Christ comes." The rewards to welcoming others is to be enriched by the gifts that they are, even more than any gifts they might bring. And Jesus continues to say that "Anyone who gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple - truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward."
I'm sure you give them more than a cup of cold water, and I'm sure that the rewards you feel have already outweighed any sacrifice you made to welcome them into the world. The love of God is like that too. As St. Francis said, "In giving we receive."
God's love welcomes us and brings us into community. Sacrifices we make in the name of God, or in the love of God are both gift to others and reward. Not only do we bring Sienna and Phoebe to the water, we sacrifice them through the act of Baptism by which they "die to sin" as St. Paul says so that they may be resurrected to new life. With al the possible ways you could have chosen to raise these children, you have chosen a Christian path. We initiate them into the life of worship, service, sacrament and discovery. We renounce evil and its manifestations, we embrace the life and teaching s of Jesus, we take hope in His resurrection and hold to the promise that we too will have everlasting life in the love of God, whatever shape that takes. We promise to seek forgiveness when we have made mistakes and to tell others about this faith that means so much to us -- because it just might make the difference in someone else's life that they're looking for.
Today we welcome Phoebe and Sienna in the name of Christ, we offer their lives to God mindful that the world can be a dangerous place. It can also be a beautiful place ful of love and God's grace. Wherever their lives take them, they will know that they are loved and precious in the sight of God, their parents and the community of saints that welcomes them this day. We witness the vows their godparents make and renew these vows ourselves. They are reminders just in case along our life's path, we have forgotten them or let them get a bit rusty. Our sacrifice, our gift, is to live the life God has given us, in a way that honors God's love and reflects it to the world.
Amen.
© 2008 St. George's Episcopal Church, Maplewood, NJ
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