THE REV. E. WAYNE ROLLINS

​ Some of you know that I’ve gotten a bit involved in raising orchids. I’ve been fascinated by them as I walked by displays in various places, and bought a couple to decorate my home. Keeping them alive seemed to be a continuing issue, so I gave it up. 

When I moved here, I rented a house that has southwestern walls that are all windows. One has a large bay window with a substantial shelf that could be used for seating. I decided to put some plants there that I brought with me, including some herbs that I would use while cooking, another passion I’ve enjoyed through the years. 

I decided to try my hand at orchids again. As most orchid enthusiasts will admit, what begins as an interest can quickly become an addiction. For many, it then became a business. I do have a doctor’s approval for my own addiction. 

The brightest, most showy orchids are often the cattleyas, the flowers sometimes appearing as corsages or in wedding bouquets. Many growers have worked to create hybrids of these, fertilizing one with pollen from a flower of another color or appearance. They collect the seeds and plant them to see what happens. 

Those seeds are as tiny as particles of dust, and can number in the hundreds. But what’s interesting about them is that each seed can produce a plant that after about seven years or so produces a flower that is very different not only from the parent plants, but from others whose seeds came from the same pod. You won’t know exactly what you have until the flower is produced. 

Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth gives us the identity we call “the body of Christ.” And, as you’ll see from today’s Epistle lesson, that body is made up of widely different individuals who sometimes don’t act like they’ve come from the same parentage. I don’t mean they are supposed to all be biological siblings. I mean that, as Paul says, they are born into a new family by virtue of their baptism, adopted as children of God. And, as you might have experienced a time or two, sometimes families don’t get along. 

Paul addresses many issues along the way in this letter, more than I want to cover this morning. When he gets to the most important one, which we again often hear at weddings adorned with displays of orchids and other flowers, we’re reminded of the foundation of our reason for being, the very thing that calls us here and gives us life. 

You’ll remember it with these words. “If I speak with tongues of [humans] and of angels.” Got it? He goes on to say, “but [if I] don’t have love, I am nothing more than a sounding gong or clanging cymbals.”  

You see, it’s not that we agree on everything or even get along 100% of the time. Our reason for being, and something we alone as the body of Christ might be able to teach the world around us, is that our disagreements are met with the same Love that calls us into being and is the foundation of our life as Christ’s church. As we’ll hear especially in the upcoming Lenten season, it very well could be that our cross to bear is Love itself, especially in the face of conflict and division, and, critically, hopelessness. 

We don’t know how the seeds we plant in love might grow and blossom. But it is Love that helps us see the beauty in each one as it grows and blooms. It is love that helps us nurture the growth as we wait for the blossoming that may come only periodically, and that may last only a few days or even just a few hours. But Love calls us to anticipate the next blooming season, until we all burst forth into the blossoming of life with a fragrance that lasts through all eternity. As we wait for that moment, let us anticipate what that might be even as we know we’ll be surprised at its coming in fullness. 
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Love is the foundation of our life together and it is also our invitation to those around us. Our call, if you will, is to invite others into a new life of love that seeks us out, walks with us, even into death itself so that we are led by the outstretched arms of Love into new life, both here and in the age to come. You see, it is in Love, for Love, and by Love, that we ourselves blossom into life that is, each in its own way, lovely 

THE REV. E. WAYNE ROLLINS

​ These Sundays in January always feature call stories. We hear of Jesus’ calling the first disciples, who will make up that group known as “the twelve.” Today we also hear a somewhat different call story, that of the second prophet named Isaiah. It’s not as dramatic as the call of Isaiah number one, but it is a substantial message. 

This prophet isn’t just about calling the descendants of Jacob, named Israel, back into their proper covenant relationship with God. His call is much broader: 
“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” 

We can spend a lot of time on that shift of focus and our presumed interpretations of it. Since a colleague once said she learned in seminary that a sermon should be about two things—it should be about God, and it should be about ten minutes—I’ll jump to the point. 
I want you to consider your own call. Yes, I know we speak that language when we talk about ordained ministry. But we each have times we remember and things we do with our lives that seem much more fulfilling than others. Consider, then, that those moments identify to you the substance of your own “call.” By that, I mean your purpose in life. 

But that, too, is too little a thing. Not that it doesn’t matter, but as followers of Jesus, whom we believe to be The Christ, The Messiah, we live in relationship with each other in ways that extend our personal call stories into a much broader emphasis. 

So, Immanuel Highlands, what is your call? What is your purpose, your reason for being where we are at this particular time? It is too light a thing to focus only on finances or property maintenance. That can be done in pretty much the same way if we didn’t gather here at all, because that emphasis would be the same for other stately, though quasi-religious buildings in other places. We call those mausoleums. 

The call of Jesus of Nazareth is a call to new life. Notice that those he called left what they were doing, and whom they were doing it with, and set out in search of an answer to his invitation to “come and see.” Second Isaiah pretty much faced the same journey. He didn’t know exactly what being a light to the nations might mean, but he had an idea that it was something far greater than setting Israel back on the right course as they anticipate leaving exile to return to what’s left of what they call “home.” 

So, using Jesus’ words, what do you expect others to find when you invite them to “come and see?” First, we have to move beyond the art gallery idea regarding windows and architecture. We are not docents. We are disciples. To drive the point home, answer another question. When did you last make a return visit, let alone a weekly visit, to a familiar art gallery or museum? 

Maybe we are the ones who need to seek the answer to “come and see.” Maybe our complacency, even apathy that things will just keep going along the same as they have for decades, has blinded us to the answer we need to risk finding before we can even begin inviting others to join us. 

Maybe we need to rediscover the life we once found, that still exists, although in different revelations, when we first came and saw. Maybe we haven’t seen for ourselves even yet. But we have many travelers, seekers, if you will, who have joined our journey along the way, so we're not alone. Giving how God often works, they might be the ones who point out to us what was right before our eyes all the time. 
We may go forward in ways we hardly imagined. But if we fail to step out because we fear where we might go, then we risk being little more than the museum or mausoleum others want to avoid. 

I’ve often asked “why are we here?” It’s time to ask loudly, “why should we remain here?” The answer begins to become clearer when we dare to come and see the truth of where we are. 

Are we a light to the Highlands neighborhood? Do our neighbors really care whether we’re here? Or do they stay away because they know we’re here and for some reason don’t want to be part of us? I’ve known the answer to each of those questions to be “yes” in different places. 

We must consider that same answer for ourselves, and if true, begin another task one of the Isaiahs sets before us. Be a repairer of the breach. More to come.

THE REV. E. WAYNE ROLLINS

​ I think there’s an obvious question missing from today’s Gospel. Matthew gives us a more detailed conversation between Jesus and John than the other Gospels. So, when Jesus tells John that he’s presenting himself for baptism “to fulfill all righteousness,” instead of the implication that John says, “oh, okay then,” I think he should have said, “What does that mean?” The answer would have made things a lot easier for preachers who follow them. 

The word “righteousness” has several meanings, one of the most prevalent being “living in right relationship.” It has ministry undertones in other meanings such as justice and charity. However, all of these include the meaning of the festival we just finished celebrating. They are incarnational and require being in relationship with other living things, and not just an individual imputation of what can appropriately be called “self-righteousness.” That is actually just selfishness. 

John’s work, and his chosen location, take an ancient Jewish tradition and expand it beyond the boundaries of Judaism. You may have heard of a mikvah, a pool of water that was part of many homes. A person would enter the pool, walking down steps and through the water and back up steps, usually on the opposite side. Men would bathe in preparation for the Sabbath, women as a rite of purification after their monthly menstrual cycle. Those who for any reason were ritually unclean would enter the mikvah, say, if they came into contact with blood, recovering from illness, or tended to the dead. 

John moves another purpose for the mikvah into the Jordan River. Converts to Judaism, or those whose way of life separated them from the faithful, would enter the mikvah as a sign of ritual cleansing as they joined or returned to the faithful community. 

Jesus was born to a Jewish mother and was circumcized eight days later, keeping the law. He doesn’t need to join that which he was born into, and unless the Gospels are omitting details of a life spent in “riotous living” up until now, doesn’t really need a ritual cleansing. Mind you, a bath every now and then isn’t such a bad thing for communal living, but it’s not the same as cleansing from sin. 

Jesus, Matthew tells us, is here to save his people from sin. His very name, you’ll remember (I hope) means just that. He is on earth to redeem humanity, and to do that, becomes human. What better way to show love and charity toward another than to become one with them? 

Jesus entered the waters of baptism to more fully become just like those he came to save. He shows the definition of righteousness, meaning justice, by submitting to the same ritual as others must also submit themselves. Jesus doesn’t ask anything more of us than that which he expects for himself. Actually, he doesn’t mention baptism again until he challenges religious leaders when they question him. Then there’s what is probably a later addition to Matthew’s Gospel which we call the “Great Commission,” but that includes the Trinitarian formula we use today, and which exists nowhere else in Matthew.

Baptism is our entrance into the community of faith. We bring children to the waters of Holy Baptism as we pledge to love and nurture them as they grow and learn what it means to be faithful. We baptize older children and adults who have pledged to live a life in a different way than before even as we make the same pledge to them as we do to cute babies.

Baptism isn’t so much a quick assurance into heaven as it is a pledge to live together in ways that prevent everything and everyone going literally into hell, whatever form that may take. Like Jesus’ entrance into the fulness of humanity as he came out of the Jordan River, our baptism is a call to live more fully in the community of the faithful, and not as a single individual keeping ourselves more pure than Ivory soap until the trumpet sounds.

When we baptize, we take a person created in God’s image, one whom I believe is already a child of God, and pledge to live together in community in ways that reveal the life of the Incarnate and risen Christ. What that means will take the rest of our lives to discover, no matter where we go. It’s what I call one of the bookends of the church.

The other bookend is what we do when life has ended for one of us and we gather to commend them back to God for safe-keeping for all eternity. We commit remains back to the earth from which we are formed, and which baptism calls us to remember that God loves the earth, too.
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You see, baptism isn’t about getting into heaven. It’s about being in right relationship, living in ways of justice in loving community. Our lives are the revelation of what it means to fulfill all righteousness. Or not.