at the First Congregational Church of Stoughton

United Church of Christ

This morning, with the baptism of little Madeline, we witnessed, no rather, we participated in one of the most important rituals of the Christian church. Now I know that many of you out there may have twitched a little at the word “ritual.” In the United Church of Christ, as in most mainline Protestant denominations, we steer clear of the word “ritual” and all the pomp and circumstance that we associate with it. The Pilgrim and Puritan forefathers of our modern Protestant denominations may have handed this down to us. After all, it was their goal to “purify” the church of the rituals they saw as superfluous and distracting from the scriptures. Those of us who grew up with this inheritance of simple worship have little emotional attachment to they idea of rituals. Give us our scriptures and reason and casseroles and leave the incense and oils to someone else, someone who’ll appreciate and understand it more.

Because we’re not saying we can’t appreciate the role rituals may play in many peoples’ religious lives, we just don’t really want them ourselves. We don’t want rituals to help us express our faith, in fact they kind of scare us. With our true Puritan roots showing, we down play the ones we have, and yes of course we have them, but we call them “traditions,” way less scary. We understand rituals, as many people do, in the Wikipedia way. As “a set of actions, performed mainly for their symbolic value, which is prescribed by a religion or by the traditions of a community.” Between this wishy-washy way of thinking and the use of the word to describe things like sacrifices, its no wonder rituals have gotten a bad rap over the years. So why do some people still hold them so dear? And what can we gain by broadening our understanding of the word and re-claiming its importance in the life of our Church?

Because rituals, the word and practices it often describes, have a long standing place in our Church’s history. You might say, “we always done it that way.” And rituals are not just something which that old, early, uneducated Church used to express their faith. We have held on to them and made them our own. So what are some of the rituals we still have in our church today? Well first off, we’re all here this morning. Worship is one of our rituals, one where we gather together to praise God. Then of course there’s baptism, like this morning, and communion, confirmation and marriage. Even prayer. Prayer is a ritual we share with so many other faith traditions in which we communicate with God, with something bigger than ourselves. We do this silently or with words, sometimes our own and sometimes words which Christians have spoken for centuries. This morning we all said together the Lord’s prayer, a ritual if I’ve ever heard one. And each week we light candles for our individual silent prayers. This is a new ritual for us, but one that has been used by people of faith for centuries, long before Christians began the practice to remember and symbolize Christ “as the light that shines in the darkness.” And these are just some of the rituals of our community, I’m sure if we thought about it we could come up with many more.

Now as I said, us mainline Protestants don’t often think of these things rituals, but thats what they are. They’re all “actions, performed...for their symbolic value, which [are] prescribed by [our] religion [and] by the traditions of [our] community” But is that all they are? Symbolic actions that we do because we always have? I don’t think so, and I owe this opinion to Wayne Meeks. Now before you start racking your brain to figure out who Wayne Meeks is and if you’re even supposed to know, he is not a figure in pop-culture whose name you should recognize. Not unless you’ve taken early Christian history that it, Andover Newton is the only reason I’ve heard of him. Wayne Meeks is an author and historian of Christian origins and early Church history. He says that ritual “does not only or primarily convey information. It does something.” I gotta say that when I first heard ritual described this way it didn’t make it any less scary. Ritual does something? What does it do? Who does it do it to? But as I got to thinking about our baptism here this morning, Meek’s understanding of ritual kept worming its way back into the forefront of my brain. So I finally decided not to fight it anymore and to think about it. Ritual does something. Ritual does something. Ritual does something. Ritual does something. Ritual does something. Here in this sanctuary this morning, something happened. We performed a ritual of our faith and church tradition and it did something. But what? and to who?

Paul has an idea. In his letter to the Romans which we heard in this morning’s epistle lesson, he asks “Don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.” According to Paul, that’s what happened here this morning. With water and word and a little help from the Holy Spirit, we baptized another sister into Christ’s death. Well when you put it that way, it doesn’t sound so nice. Does that mean we’re all going to be crucified? Suffer? Die? Sounds great, huh? Not exactly. I don’t think that Paul meant to scare us, meant for us to focus on the death and suffering because at the end he reminds us of the most important part of the story: new life. “Just as Christ was raised from the dead...we too may live a new life.” Celebrating all round! No suffering for us, just new life! Maybe...

What new life are we called to through baptism? We are not only baptized into the death and resurrection of Christ, but also into his life. And those are some big sandals to fill. In baptism we are called to live a new life, a life like Christ. Baptism doesn’t end when the ritual is over. It only begins there. Each time we baptize someone new into the life of the Church, we hear and say vows which remind us of the promise and promises of our own baptism: To renounce evil ways and live life in Christ, to teach others of what we believe so that we may share the glory and joy of our faith, with God’s grace upon us to be Christ’s disciples, follow his way and show love and justice. Now, you may be thinking of how much work that sounds like it entails, maybe there is some suffering involved in this after-all. And really, many of us, like Madeline were baptized as very young children or even infants. We didn’t sign on for all this responsibility! But I haven’t gotten to best part yet: we are not alone in this. I don’t just mean that we have God’s help, though we surely do, but we also have each other. Thats what we affirm whenever we undertake the ritual of baptism. We affirm that we will support each other in living out these vows as best we are able. We are initiated into the care of the Church; to care and to be cared for by our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Each time we perform the ritual of baptism we are all changed, not simply the individual or even the family who supports them. That is what this ritual does. It changes us all, over and over again. Each time we hear and say the vows of baptism, we understand them in a new way. We are invited to examine their continued meaning in our lives, how this new baptism affects our own life. For as Paul says, we are all one body in Christ; each new baptism adds a little more to us. In baptism, we are no longer one, but one part of a whole; the body of Christ, the family of the Church. So we don’t take our vows lightly, for they affect us all. Here at First Congregational in Stoughton, we take them so seriously that we don’t expect to you figure it out on your own. We have covenant classes for anyone who wants to baptized and for parents who want to have their children baptized here. We think its important to explain the vows they will take for themselves or on behalf of their child and what they mean. Jim and Barbara understood what they were saying this morning and the commitment they were making to Madeline’s spiritual growth and their own. We have a new set of classes starting this Sunday after worship, for any parents or individuals who wants to see what Baptism would mean for them.

Along with witnessing and participating in baptisms through out the year, once a year here in this church, we are offered the opportunity to reaffirm our own baptism. This year it is on January 10th, and it is a special gift. In remembrance of Christ’s baptism we are given a chance to remember and reaffirm our own. Though many of you were infants at baptism and may not “remember” it, this is an opportunity to reaffirm the choice and vows made on your behalf. If you were baptized as an adult or adolescent this is chance to remember the joy of your choice and also the responsibilities. I do remember my baptism. I was only three, so its a little fuzzy, but its in there as one of my earliest memories. The pastor of the church my mom grew up in and which my grandparents still attended was going to officiate over the ritual. He explained to me what he was going to do and what it meant. At three, I didn’t understand this body of Christ stuff. What I did understand was that this man I did not know was going to put water on my head. So I told my mother that I was going to wipe it off, I’d show him. And sure enough after it was over and while I was still standing in front of the congregation, I discreetly raised my little hand while he was praying and rubbed off the water. My grandmother was embarrassed and horrified and my grandfather had to fight back laughter and my mother still tells the story. Luckily for me, wiping it off doesn’t undo what had already been done through the ritual. For once and for all, better or worse, I was baptized into the body of Christ, into his death and the promise of new life and into the church.

And as I grew older, I laugh at it too. And I try understand what really happened that day; what it really meant. I think I’m still trying to figure that part out. With all of you, I struggle to live each day in accordance to the vows said at my baptism and the vows I say again each time I participate in a new disciple’s baptism. So in January, I will be here for the gift of reaffirming my baptism, this time with a slightly better understanding of what it means. But everyday until then and after then I will try to affirm it by living it. Because, the ritual did something which never ends. And for myself I am glad that it did. I am glad for the gift and even the responsibilities that go along with it. I am glad to have all of you as brothers and sisters, members of the body of the Christ. I am glad to have your help and support in living out the vows we all make in baptism and I am glad to be able to help and support you as well. And because of all this I am glad for the ritual and what it means and what it does. Amen.