A Matter of Choice: Sermon for the Baptism of Our Lord, RCL Year B
Today's lessons are about making choices. Our reading from the Hebrew Scriptures, from the very first book of the Bible is about God’s decision to create ... the choice that began it all.
Although Luke in telling the story of Paul baptizing the disciples at Ephesus doesn't use the word "choose" or "choice", it is clear that both Paul and the Ephesians are making a choice, a choice to for them to become fully members of the Christian community.
And then we have the example set by Jesus who, though he had no need to do so, chose to join with his people and undergo John's baptism of repentance. He sets for all Christians, for all time, the example of choosing the proper path.
Three lessons about choices ... choices are always necessary ... and choices always have consequences.
Eleanor Roosevelt has been quoted as saying this about choice:
"One's philosophy is not best expressed in words. It is expressed in the choices one makes. In the long run, we shape our lives and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility." (Quoted in Tim Kimmel, Little House on the Freeway (Questar 1994), p. 143).
Like the Ephesians to whom Paul was ministering in our reading from Acts, we must each make the choice to follow Jesus. We may have made it initially in our baptism when we followed Jesus' example, or it may have been made for us by others who brought us to the waters of baptism as infants. That initial choice was made, but it is a choice we must make anew each morning. Everyday, we must rise, face the decision: "Will I continue to follow Jesus? Will I follow the proper path? Will I (as Peter put it - 1 Peter 2) fear God and do what is right?"
Back in World War I there was a Chaplain, a "Padre," in the British army named G.A. Studdert-Kennedy. He was known as "Willy Woodbyne" because he had the custom of handing out Woodbyne brand cigarettes to the troops. He was also a poet.
After the war had gone on for some time, he was confronted by a soldier who had suffered a crisis of faith after seeing the horrors of war. Studdert-Kennedy responded to the questions the young man had raised with a poem, which he titled Faith. I want to share that poem with you today:
How do I know that God is good? I don't.
I gamble like a man - I bet my life
Upon one side in life’s great war. I must,
I can't stand out. I must take sides. The man
Who is a neutral in this fight is not
A man. He's bulk and body without breath,
Cold leg of lamb without mint sauce - A fool.
He makes me sick. Good Lord! Weak tea!
Cold slops!
I want to live, live out, not wobble through
My life somehow, and then on into the dark.
I must have God. This life's too dull without,
Too dull for aught but suicide. What's man
To live for else? I'd murder someone just
To see red blood. I'd drink myself blind drunk,
And see blue snakes if I could not look up
To see blue skies, and hear God speaking through
The silence of the stars.
How is it proved?
It isn't proved, you fool, it can't be proved.
How can you prove a victory before it s won?
How can you prove a man who leads,
To be a leader worth the following.
Unless you follow to the death - and out
Beyond mere death, which is not anything
But Satan's lie upon eternal life?
Well - God's my leader, and I hold that He
Is good, and strong enough to work His plan
And purpose out to its appointed end.
I am no fool, I have my reasons for
This faith, but they are not the reasonings,
The coldly calculated formulae
Of thought divorced from feeling - they are true,
Too true for that. There's no such thing as thought
Wich does not feel, if it be real thought
And not thought’s ghost - all pale and sicklied o'er
With dead convention - abstract truth - man's lie
Upon this living, loving, suffering Truth,
That pleads and pulses in my very veins,
The blue blood of all beauty, and the breath
Of life itself.
I see what God has done,
What life in this world is. I see what you
See, this eternal struggle in the dark.
I see the foul disorders, and the filth
Of mind and soul, in which men, wallowing
Like swine, stamp on their brothers till they drown
In puddles of stale blood, and vomitings
Of their corruption. This life stinks in places,
'Tis true, yet scent of roses and of hay
New mown comes stealing on the evening breeze,
And through the market's din, the bargaining
Of cheats, who make God's world a den of thieves,
I hear sweet bells ring out to prayer, and see
The faithful kneeling by the CalvaryOf Christ.
I walk in crowded streets where men
And women, mad with lust, loose-lipped and lewd,
Go promenading down to hell’s wide gates;
Yet I have looked into my mother s eyes,
And seen the light that never was on Sea
Or land, the light of love, - pure Love and true,
And on that Love I bet my life. I back
My mother `gainst a whore when I believe
In God, and can a man do less or more?
I have to choose. I back the scent of life
Against its stink. That's what Faith works out at
Finally. I know not why the Evil,
I know not why the Good, both
Remain unsolved, and both insoluble.
I know that both are there, the battle set,
And I must fight on this side or on that
I can't stand shiv'ring on the bank, I plunge
Head first. I bet my life on Beauty. Truth,
And love, not abstract but incarnate Truth.
Not Beauty's passing shadow but its Self -
Its very self made flesh,
Love realised.
I bet my life on Christ - Christ Crucified
Behold your God! My soul cries out. He hangs,
Serenely patient in His agony.
And turns the soul of darkness into light.
I look upon that body, writhing, pierced
And torn with nails, and see the battlefields
Of time. The mangled dead, the gaping wounds
The sweating, dazed survivors straggling back,
The widows worn and haggard, still dry-eyed.
Because their weight of sorrow will not lift
And let them weep - I see the ravished maid,
The honest mother in her shame, I see
All history pass by, and through it all
Still shines that face, the Christ Face, like a star
Which pierces drifting clouds, and tells the Truth.
They pass, but it remains and shines untouched,
A pledge of that great hour which surely comes
When storm winds sob to silence, fury spent
To silver silence, and the moon sails calm
And stately through the soundless seas of Peace
So through the clouds of Calvary - there shines
His face, and I believe that Evil dies,
And Good lives on, loves on, and conquers all -
All War must end in Peace. These clouds are lies -
They cannot last. The blue sky is the Truth,
For God is love. Such is my Faith, and such
My reasons for it, and I find them strong
Enough. And you?
You want to argue? Well, I can't.
It is a choice. I choose the Christ.
I don't think I can add too much to the Padre's poem. Every day ... it's a matter of choice ... I'm with Willy Woodbyne; I choose the Christ.
Amen.
Although Luke in telling the story of Paul baptizing the disciples at Ephesus doesn't use the word "choose" or "choice", it is clear that both Paul and the Ephesians are making a choice, a choice to for them to become fully members of the Christian community.
And then we have the example set by Jesus who, though he had no need to do so, chose to join with his people and undergo John's baptism of repentance. He sets for all Christians, for all time, the example of choosing the proper path.
Three lessons about choices ... choices are always necessary ... and choices always have consequences.
Eleanor Roosevelt has been quoted as saying this about choice:
"One's philosophy is not best expressed in words. It is expressed in the choices one makes. In the long run, we shape our lives and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility." (Quoted in Tim Kimmel, Little House on the Freeway (Questar 1994), p. 143).
Like the Ephesians to whom Paul was ministering in our reading from Acts, we must each make the choice to follow Jesus. We may have made it initially in our baptism when we followed Jesus' example, or it may have been made for us by others who brought us to the waters of baptism as infants. That initial choice was made, but it is a choice we must make anew each morning. Everyday, we must rise, face the decision: "Will I continue to follow Jesus? Will I follow the proper path? Will I (as Peter put it - 1 Peter 2) fear God and do what is right?"
Back in World War I there was a Chaplain, a "Padre," in the British army named G.A. Studdert-Kennedy. He was known as "Willy Woodbyne" because he had the custom of handing out Woodbyne brand cigarettes to the troops. He was also a poet.
After the war had gone on for some time, he was confronted by a soldier who had suffered a crisis of faith after seeing the horrors of war. Studdert-Kennedy responded to the questions the young man had raised with a poem, which he titled Faith. I want to share that poem with you today:
How do I know that God is good? I don't.
I gamble like a man - I bet my life
Upon one side in life’s great war. I must,
I can't stand out. I must take sides. The man
Who is a neutral in this fight is not
A man. He's bulk and body without breath,
Cold leg of lamb without mint sauce - A fool.
He makes me sick. Good Lord! Weak tea!
Cold slops!
I want to live, live out, not wobble through
My life somehow, and then on into the dark.
I must have God. This life's too dull without,
Too dull for aught but suicide. What's man
To live for else? I'd murder someone just
To see red blood. I'd drink myself blind drunk,
And see blue snakes if I could not look up
To see blue skies, and hear God speaking through
The silence of the stars.
How is it proved?
It isn't proved, you fool, it can't be proved.
How can you prove a victory before it s won?
How can you prove a man who leads,
To be a leader worth the following.
Unless you follow to the death - and out
Beyond mere death, which is not anything
But Satan's lie upon eternal life?
Well - God's my leader, and I hold that He
Is good, and strong enough to work His plan
And purpose out to its appointed end.
I am no fool, I have my reasons for
This faith, but they are not the reasonings,
The coldly calculated formulae
Of thought divorced from feeling - they are true,
Too true for that. There's no such thing as thought
Wich does not feel, if it be real thought
And not thought’s ghost - all pale and sicklied o'er
With dead convention - abstract truth - man's lie
Upon this living, loving, suffering Truth,
That pleads and pulses in my very veins,
The blue blood of all beauty, and the breath
Of life itself.
I see what God has done,
What life in this world is. I see what you
See, this eternal struggle in the dark.
I see the foul disorders, and the filth
Of mind and soul, in which men, wallowing
Like swine, stamp on their brothers till they drown
In puddles of stale blood, and vomitings
Of their corruption. This life stinks in places,
'Tis true, yet scent of roses and of hay
New mown comes stealing on the evening breeze,
And through the market's din, the bargaining
Of cheats, who make God's world a den of thieves,
I hear sweet bells ring out to prayer, and see
The faithful kneeling by the CalvaryOf Christ.
I walk in crowded streets where men
And women, mad with lust, loose-lipped and lewd,
Go promenading down to hell’s wide gates;
Yet I have looked into my mother s eyes,
And seen the light that never was on Sea
Or land, the light of love, - pure Love and true,
And on that Love I bet my life. I back
My mother `gainst a whore when I believe
In God, and can a man do less or more?
I have to choose. I back the scent of life
Against its stink. That's what Faith works out at
Finally. I know not why the Evil,
I know not why the Good, both
Remain unsolved, and both insoluble.
I know that both are there, the battle set,
And I must fight on this side or on that
I can't stand shiv'ring on the bank, I plunge
Head first. I bet my life on Beauty. Truth,
And love, not abstract but incarnate Truth.
Not Beauty's passing shadow but its Self -
Its very self made flesh,
Love realised.
I bet my life on Christ - Christ Crucified
Behold your God! My soul cries out. He hangs,
Serenely patient in His agony.
And turns the soul of darkness into light.
I look upon that body, writhing, pierced
And torn with nails, and see the battlefields
Of time. The mangled dead, the gaping wounds
The sweating, dazed survivors straggling back,
The widows worn and haggard, still dry-eyed.
Because their weight of sorrow will not lift
And let them weep - I see the ravished maid,
The honest mother in her shame, I see
All history pass by, and through it all
Still shines that face, the Christ Face, like a star
Which pierces drifting clouds, and tells the Truth.
They pass, but it remains and shines untouched,
A pledge of that great hour which surely comes
When storm winds sob to silence, fury spent
To silver silence, and the moon sails calm
And stately through the soundless seas of Peace
So through the clouds of Calvary - there shines
His face, and I believe that Evil dies,
And Good lives on, loves on, and conquers all -
All War must end in Peace. These clouds are lies -
They cannot last. The blue sky is the Truth,
For God is love. Such is my Faith, and such
My reasons for it, and I find them strong
Enough. And you?
You want to argue? Well, I can't.
It is a choice. I choose the Christ.
I don't think I can add too much to the Padre's poem. Every day ... it's a matter of choice ... I'm with Willy Woodbyne; I choose the Christ.
Amen.
posted by Father Eric | 5:54 AM
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