Sunday, October 12, 2025
Proper 23C, 2025
Luke 17:11-19
2 Timothy 1:1-14
I am telling other people’s stories today - stories I have heard in other sermons. One of them is the story a Methodist colleague, David Woody from up at Marion once told. His daddy was a preacher. And Marion is a small town. And when David was a teenager and was leaving the house in the evening to go out with friends, his preacher daddy would say to him, Son! Remember who you are!
This of course, irked the boy. But it also stayed with him. And later he used this story when he became a preacher and he preached on those things we forget about which makes us who we are as Christians.
I was amazed and excited about the serendipity of the readings and the synopses for this morning, in spite of the fact these were not chosen for a baptism. The general synopsis in your bulletin listed, there under the Welcome and Announcements says that “there are multiple miracles” going on in these readings. It points out that “the waters of holy baptism have healed us”.
So, let’s turn to those readings.
In this story about Naaman and Elisha from 2 Kings, Elisha told Naaman to wash in the Jordan seven times to be healed. This reminds me of that commandment from Jesus, which I talked about last week, that we are to forgive each other seven times a day - seven times seven, actually -. But here Elisha said to Naaman, who was suffering with leprosy, "Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean.” But Naaman had a temper tantrum instead. He fussed and cussed and refused and demanded something more grand and dramatic than a swim. Then his servants talked him into this cleansing and he finally relented and was made clean. He was healed in those waters.
Paul writes to Timothy and says in part, “If we have died with him, we will also live with him.” The scholar I read on that one said that the basic message in this passage is to remember and remind - that is, remember the Gospel of Jesus and then remind others. What this reading leaves me wanting to remind you, in short, is that we die with Jesus in our baptism and then we live with him in our faith.
And in this Gospel lesson from Luke, we hear the story of the time Jesus healed ten lepers and only one came back and thanked him. The reminder here that I want to lift up is for us to always be thankful for all the ways we are healed. And also to be thankful of our own baptism.
Our Gospel synopsis tells us today that “Jesus’ mission includes making people clean again”. So I want to focus for a the next few minuets on remembrance and reminding. We remember both Christ’s own Baptism and his sacrificial crucifixion when we baptize a new Christian as we have just done with Grayson.
We tend to think of the moral of this story of the ten lepers as being a reminder of what to do and what not to do. We think that the point of Jesus asking who thanked him and didn’t thank him for this healing was a criticism of us not being thankful enough. We think this means that we should be more thankful and write more thank you notes. We should never be ungrateful like those other nine lepers.
But there is more going on here than that. If we dig a little deeper, we can see that healing does happen whether we thank God or not. But living a life of daily gratitude heals us daily - if we’ll just practice that simple lifestyle.
You’ll likely hear more about this from Jonathan Hamman this afternoon at the installation. That’s at 4:00 today, so please come back for it. But Jonathan asked me to tell him why I chose the readings that are set aside for that service and I wrote him a quick note. Just in case he doesn’t mention it, here is part of what I said in my note to the Dean of our Conference:
I responded to his question about why I love the Gospel reading we will hear him preach on this afternoon, which is the story of the Road to Emmaus. But I started my thoughts in that note saying that I love that Lutheran's give thanks for our baptism so often, that we begin many services with the Thanksgiving for Baptism liturgy and we are constantly reminding ourselves of our baptism. If you come to both services today, you will get to participate in this thanksgiving for our baptism twice!
Baptism is the foundation to all Christian endeavor. We die unto Christ and are raised with Christ before we can do anything else. I love that other traditions like the Baptists wait until their children are old enough to make an adult confession of faith (truth be told, I think infant baptism is based on superstition), but that we are - at least I was - baptized before I could even walk is a reminder of the foundation of our Baptism to our faith. You are marked as Christ’s own and meant to follow him even before you could walk This is also true if you were baptized as an adult.
There is a wonderful image of the healing waters of baptism that takes on the impetus of action in a quote from Episcopal Bishop, John Spong. We are baptized in Christ, we follow him, and there is work to be done, the work of love. Spong put it this way:
If God is the source of love, as I believe God is, then the
only way you can worship God is by loving. Not by being
right, but by loving. By loving wastefully. The image in
my mind [the bishop said] is an old sink in the basement, that you plug up
the drains and you turn on all the [taps] and the water
overflows the boundaries and goes all over the floor and
fills up every crack and cranny… and never stops to ask
whether that crack deserves this living water… You love
because love is what you have to do, not because somebody deserves the love. You love wastefully. ~ Bishop John Shelby Spong
In light of that, let me remind you again of the basic bottom-line meaning about Baptism. Baptism is dying with Christ and rising again with Christ. Yes, that takes some understanding. Yes, that takes a mature level of faith. Yes, Confirmation classes can get young people caught up on the theology and doctrine stuff later. But Baptism, next to the Holy Eucharist, is the most important sacrament we share in the Church.
And this liturgy asks you to consider your own baptism today. As we baptize Grayson, we share together in these Baptismal vows. With that in mind, I invite you to consider this an exercise in identity formation.
Remember that Jesus emptied himself to humanity, became vulnerable and was baptized too, in the muddy waters of the Jordan. Then try to consider a new way of looking at your own baptism. Who you are as a person who is baptized in the name of Jesus. Who we are as a community who has made these vows, over and over again. Where in your life is there room for improvement in the vows that you took, or which were taken for you, when you were baptized? Where in our life as a community do we see the waters of baptism flowing wastefully? And what can we do differently in our new awareness of the true meaning of our baptism? So we, in fact, need to be more thankful to Jesus for our healing?
In Granada, back in the mid 90’s, the 101st had just traveled by air all day and moved themselves from airplanes, across some land to boats and the chaplain ended up at the end of a very long day riding in a very small boat. I can’t remember the details of his story when he told it to me, but for some reason he was with some other officers in a small vessel being navigated by a local guide. They were cruising across a bay into a port where they would rest and begin their work again the next day.
The guide seemed to be eying the chaplain. It may have been because of the crosses on his uniform. The guide seemed to recognize the chaplain as a Christian, a priest perhaps. The guide finally spoke to the chaplain and said this: “Cristo es en el agua.”
Now, my Spanish is not very good but the chaplain’s was good enough that he knew the words the guide had said but he couldn’t make sense of his meaning. He asked the guide to repeat his statement. “Cristo es en el agua,” he said again, “Cristo es en el agua.” The chaplain still wasn’t sure what he meant by that but as they neared the port the guide slowed the vessel and pointed to a unique sight. Under the water, anchored deep in the waters of this bay in Granada was a huge statue of Jesus in orans position, similar to the famous statue over Rio (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, known as “Christ the Redeemer”), though not quite that big and this one is completely under the water. This statue was placed there to bless the fishermen on their way to and from their work. (There are also underwater statues of Jesus in Malta, off the coast of Sicily/Italy, Key Largo, Florida and Croatia.)
“Cristo es en el agua.” Christ is in the water. Christ is in the water.
Christ is in the water of our baptism. The waters of our baptism flow forth through and between us - wastefully. Christ is therefore in the deepest places of our souls. And, as the baptismal liturgy says, “you are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ's own for ever.”
So, remember who you are and be thankful. Remember that the waters of baptism flow freely into every crack and cranny of our hearts. Remember that Christ is in that water. And remember to love others as Christ first loved us.
Amen.
The Rev. Dr. Kathy Kelly