24 November 2017

Sermon Proper 12 (Baptism), Year A, Romans 8:26-39, Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

The Gospel you just heard might be one of the times Jesus revealed himself as a subversive. Six times today we hear the phrase, “the kingdom of heaven.” Does it sound like nagging? Do you think Jesus might be making a point here?
These six descriptions of the kingdom of heaven in Matthew’s Gospel might indeed be nagging. It’s possible Jesus’ nagging could be described like this, “Nagging is the repetition of unpalatable truths.” Those unpalatable truths are subversive statements about the kingdom of heaven. They turn inside out what we think we know about the kingdom of heaven and about God.
         We’re about to do something else this morning that is subversive. Some other words we might use to describe why we baptize are words like this. When we are baptized we receive our calling to become a troublemaker, a dissident, an agitator, a revolutionary, a renegade, even a rebel for the kingdom of heaven. Baptism is probably the most subversive or revolutionary thing we do in the church. It puts us squarely in that place between the kingdom of self and the kingdom of God. Baptism makes us subversives for the kingdom of heaven.”[1] 
So what is this subversion called Christianity? And why are we inviting Noah to be a part of this subversive place? By the grace of God, we are called to step ever more fully into whom God calls us to be. And, by the grace of God, we are called to continue recognizing and nurturing the kingdom of God already among us.
This is not something we only do on Sundays or alternate Sundays, or Sunday once a month when things line up for us. If we treated our cars like that we’d run out of fuel more than we’d run our car on the road. And if we treat our spiritual lives like that we will run out of spiritual fuel. Is that what we want? To find we are stranded along the spiritual roadside waiting for Jesus to come by with the fuel truck?
Worshiping together, in all our joys and all our sorrows, refuels us to set aside the kingdom of self and become ministers of Christ in the kingdom of God. Hearing the word, eating the bread and drinking the wine remind us powerfully week after week of who we are and whose we are. This is what we are doing here today for and with Noah. We gather to baptize and welcome Noah into this subversive faith. We repeat our own vows that call us to be a subversive force in the world, to move from the kingdom of self to the kingdom of God. And, as we make that move, we will know at the very core of our being what Paul wrote in his Letter to the Romans:
“For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”[2]
It is Jesus Christ, the first subversive, who fuels our subversion. AMEN.


The Rev Nicolette Papanek
©2017



[1] http://www.christianitytoday.com/pastors/books/contemplativepastor/ldlib17-4.html
[2] Romans 8:38-39

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