Not Time To Quit Serving

Rogers man delves into international mission trips after age 90

01/07/2011
By Kaylea Hutson
Special Contributor

At a time in life when many may choose to take things easy, Kenneth Kruger was up for a new challenge: going on an international mission trip.

In fact, since turning 90, the member of Central United Methodist Church in Rogers has taken three such trips—to Chile, Belize and Costa Rica, along with an excursion to Israel.

“I like to see what’s over the next hill,” Kruger said with a smile.

Kruger’s venture into international missions began in 2004, when he talked with Constance Waddell, then co-director of Campamento Metodista in El Tabo, Chile.

After learning about the ministry, he decided to travel to the facility on a trip led by Les Oliver, minister of music and worship at Central UMC.

 “Something was nagging me,” Kruger said. “I thought, ‘I’ve got to do something. I like to see what the other half looks like.’”

During that trip, Kruger helped with painting and general repair projects. He also helped to construct an 18-foot addition to a building.

Since then, his travels have taken him to two Methodist elementary schools in Belize in 2006, and to Alajuela, Costa Rica, in 2010, where he helped construct a fellowship hall and kitchen for a United Methodist Church.

He made the latest trip even though he needed some assistance, which came in the form of a rented walker.

“I [knew] I could do things even though I am walking around with a walker,” Kruger said. “I knew I was adaptable to any kind of work.

“So I just did it.”

Oliver said Kruger is the “youngest” 90-plus-year-old person he knows.

“Our team considers him one of the ‘worker bees’ just like they are,” said Oliver. “He encourages those who are a young 70 that might think they can't do a mission trip. Ken’s attitude is always up, never down.”

Kruger said that during the Costa Rica trip, he helped sift sand to remove pebbles, so team members could use it to build the walls of the new building.

While he enjoyed traveling to other countries, Kruger said he mainly enjoyed meeting the different people—those on the work teams and those they were going to serve.

“I like people,” Kruger said. “When I lived in New York, before I married, I would often sit on the corner and watch people go by.

“People are like you and I the world over, we have the same aspirations and the same thoughts. People are pretty much the same the world over.”

Kruger said the trips have helped him learn how to adapt to the customs found in other countries. They have also given him a new “extended family.”

“I’ve made a lot of friends who have done things for me, without me even asking them to do it,” Kruger said.

Kruger hopes to continue to travel through the mission program at Central UMC Rogers.

“We’ve all been given talents to work with,” he said. “Why not use the talents you have?

“I would like to go as long as I can make it, and can afford it. Why waste what talents I have?”

A native of New York state, Kruger was no stranger to travel before he began going on mission trips. He got a taste of life beyond his hometown while serving in the U.S. Army during World War II.

During his time with the 44th Division, 324th Infantry, Kruger traveled through much of the U.S., France, Germany, Austria, Scotland and Canada.

After Kruger was discharged, he returned to the states through Camp Chaffee in Ft. Smith, Ark.

It was then he met his future wife, Virginia J. Fine. The pair married in 1951 after corresponding by mail. They lived in Long Island, New York for more than 30 years before returning to Northwest Arkansas—and joining Central UMC—after he retired.

“If you had told me, when I was a 15- to 16-year-old kid, that I would travel as much as I have, I would have said you were crazy,” Kruger said. “[I] saw things I never would have seen otherwise.”

Hutson serves as minister to families with children at First UMC Siloam Springs, and maintains the website for the Northwest District, NWDist.org.

Celebrations

Zephaniah 3: 14-20

Philippians 4: 4-7

Luke 15: 1-7

Celebrations

A professor, before handing out the final exam, stood before his class of organic biology students. He said to the students, "First, I want to say that it’s been a pleasure teaching you this semester. I know you all have worked extremely hard and many of you are off to medical school at the end of the summer. I know you are excited that the semester is over. So that no one gets their GPA messed up because you might have been celebrating a bit too much this week, anyone who would like to opt out of the final exam will receive a "B" for the class."

Many of the students clapped their hands and cheered and took the professor up on his offer. Those who took his offer, he dismissed from class. He looked at the handful that was left and said, "Anyone else? This is your last chance." A couple of more took him up on his offer. They were dismissed from class. He looked at the few that were left and said, "I’m glad to see that you believe in yourself. You all have "A’s."

All too often we settle for "B’s" when we could have "A’s." We often settle for the good rather than the best. As a Church or as a Christian, we should settle for nothing less than the best. God wants us to enjoy and experience the best. Now, if we are to have the best, there is a simple requirement. To have the best, we must give our best.

Today we celebrate all the things we have done as a church, because they are good things.  They bring us together as a congregation, they give us purpose, and they are done with the intent of serving God.  We should never diminish the things we have done. But we must step back and ask, how many people have we helped come to Christ, and how many professions of faith can we count? I agree, we may be planting seeds, and we may never know with certainty how many we have reached and helped to know Christ, but we still need to ask the question because, I believe, if what we are doing is truly fruitful for God, we will be able to see tangible effects.

On Christ The King Sunday we embarked on a year of prayer, each of us praying every day for four people to bring them into the Kingdom of God. You are praying to love them into God’s Kingdom.  I hope you are faithful in those prayers because if you are we will celebrate some significant things during this year. What have been your experiences so far with the prayers you have been making?

It is interesting to know that eighty percent of those who do not go to church do pray at times.  It is also interesting to know that eighty percent of the people in the United States are more shy than outgoing. This means that the people you are praying for also pray at least once in awhile.  It is also known that most of them feel lost at times, which is one reason they do pray. But, because most of them are also more shy than outgoing, very few, if any of them are ever going to truly know Christ unless they develop a relationship with someone who already does. 

If you look at your prayer card each time you pray for your four people, you will understand that you are praying for them to develop that relationship, perhaps with you.  This is a form of evangelism.

There were several methods of evangelism used in the life of the early church. The book of Acts contains about thirty five years of the history of the early church. There is preaching evangelism, teaching evangelism, house to house evangelism, literary evangelism and personal evangelism. We must never minimize the importance of one-on-one evangelism. By far, the most effective and lasting evangelism is person to person. We all can't preach to stadiums filled with people, but every one of us can witness to those whom God places in our path. We do that much more with our actions than we ever can with our words.  

In one of his books, Pastor Adam Hamilton offers a set of questions that every Christian should answer. By far the most important one is this:  Why do people need Christ?

                         

For some of you this is a faith struggle. Do you believe what Christ has taught? Before you can develop a relationship with someone else that will draw them to want to know Christ in their lives you have to understand yourself, and your faith. Ask yourself these questions.

Who is Jesus Christ to you? What happens when a person allows Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit into his or her life?  What difference has Christ really made in your life?  How do you exercise your faith in God, how do you live it and is it the way God wants you to live it? How would your life be different if you were not exercising your personal faith in Jesus Christ? Why do you need what Jesus offers?

Once you are certain of your answers to these questions you may find that as your relationship with another person develops they will one day start a discussion with you because they are curious about your faith, which now becomes visible not oral. You will find they have been thinking about their own relationship with, or beliefs about, God, and because they now know you care about them for their sake, they will want to talk with you.  We call that prevenient grace, and each of us is called upon to be an instrument of God’s grace for others. We cannot be such an instrument until we are certain of our own beliefs and living our faith in actions.

Another interesting thing to remember is, no one changes their behavior without a reason. For people who have no church relationship, the most likely reason they will finally come to church is because some significant life event has occurred recently;  loss of a job, new job, marriage, divorce, birth of a baby, loss of a family member or close friend, a move to new location. And, on average, in the United States every person has a significant life event at least once every 18 months.

If you have developed a relationship of trust and friendship with a person, at the time of that significant life event they may come to you. Or at least at that moment, they are more likely to accept an invitation from you to come to a church activity. Not yet to worship perhaps, but to church activities where they will become more comfortable and trusting, and then eventually to worship. Despite their shyness that we talked about, and their lack of knowledge about church that makes them fearful of coming, their trust in you because you have prayed for them, and cared about them for their sake will lead them to accept an invitation to come.

But, it isn’t enough just to inform them. For the eighty percent who are shy, it has to be a true invitation, and it isn’t an invitation unless you say, “Come with me”.  Invitations have to be specific, relational, and personal: “Come to the soup supper with me.”

The only way a church can ever grow in a sustainable way is through developing personal relationships. God has given spiritual gifts to each believer. The gifts are not for personal gain, but to serve and help others. But regardless of our other gifts, each of us, as part of the body of Christ, has the ability to make a new friend, develop a new relationship of trust and caring. Then let God do the rest.

If you pray faithfully for those you have listed, this year we will be celebrating, just as in the parable Jesus told us this morning  We won’t just be celebrating events, but new relationships that bring new found faith, for you and for those for whom you have prayed. You, and they, will be blessed.

Amen

Poverty

Deuteronomy 15: 7-11

2 Corinthians 9: 6-8

Matthew 25: 31-46

Poverty

If you have a dollar bill, I want you to take it out of your purse or billfold and wave it at me. This is not an offering. Your money is safe. What can you buy with that small amount of money? Here in our country that dollar will buy you a McDouble Hamburger. Or a small order of fries. But not both. Could you live on it – if that were your total income? Yet, today, over one billion people on Planet Earth live in absolute poverty, earning less than a dollar a day. Then too, nearly one billion people go hungry and 40,000 children a day die from hunger or hunger-related diseases.

But you may not care too much about the problems of people half a world away. If not, we certainly have enough poverty here at home.  In the United States, one child in five lives in poverty, one child in five is born poor, one in three will be poor at some point in their childhood.

According to Habitat for Humanity, one poor family in seven lives in housing which is severely physically inadequate, having no hot water, no electricity, no toilet, and neither a bathtub or a shower. Here in Morgan County 40% of the housing is physically inadequate, lacking at least two of those basics, and most all of those houses inadequately heated for winter.

Approximately 43.6 million Americans were living in poverty in 2009, up from 39.8 million in 2008. Most Americans (58.5%) will spend at least one year below the poverty line at some point between ages 25 and 75.. Poverty rates among children in single-mother families are particularly striking. 55 percent of such children under six lived in poverty in 1998. The figures were even higher for black children - 60 percent; and Hispanic children – 67 percent.

Let me add a word here about the nation's 300,000 homeless. The homeless population is 43 percent single men, 37 percent families with children, 13 percent single women, 7 percent unaccompanied minors.

Poverty is a big problem, a very big problem. And it is not out there in the distance, it is here around us. It not only means those people caught in poverty are hurting, it hurts our communities, it hurts our economy, it hurts the future of our nation, because it takes away opportunity for children to grow healthy and well educated to make the discoveries and advances we need to continue to be a strong nation.

We are raising far too many children, 3.5 million, in this country in third world conditions. 3.5 million—that is over 3 times the number of people who live in Columbus, Ohio. We have far too many children in our local schools on the free breakfast and lunch program.

While the United States has suffered the worst recession in living memory, I find that I have very few financial concerns. Most of us are in the same position we have more than enough food, warm comfortable homes, plenty of clothing, decent cars, and some small measure of luxuries.

Most Americans believe that a person should enjoy the full fruits of his or her labors, however abundant. Yet, how much is enough, and when does making more and more money become a social injustice? Since 1980, the average net worth of the richest 1 percent of Americans has doubled (to $18.5 million), while that of the poorest 40 percent has fallen by 63 percent (to $2,200).. Thirty years ago, top U.S. executives made about 50 times the salary of their average employees. Now, the average worker would have to toil for 1,100 years to earn what his CEO will bring home in one year.

We now live in a country in which the bottom 40 percent (120 million people) owns just 0.3 of one percent of the wealth, while the top 1% control 42.7% of the nation’s wealth. Data of this kind make one feel that one is participating in a vast psychological experiment: Just how much inequality can our nation endure?  

In 1999, Barbara Ehrenreich, who holds a Ph.D. in Biology, tried an experiment. She changed her clothes and climbed down the social ladder to be a person living on minimum wage; to become a part of the so-called working poor. Being trained as a scientist, she took careful notes. She detailed her experiences in the book Nickel and Dimed. One after another she took six jobs, for a minimum of a month each. She worked as a waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, nursing home aide, and Wal-Mart salesperson. She drove a car, but made herself live each month only on what she could earn – mostly at $6 and $7 an hour. This meant living in the cheapest lodgings--trailer parks, motels, downtown hotels and eating a narrow, bland diet.

Getting a job wasn’t all that difficult. She also considered herself to be an exemplary worker. But her first finding was that it is almost impossible to work for those wages and survive. For instance, monthly earnings as a waitress in Florida were $1,039. The cheapest rental she could find was a $500 efficiency, and food, gas, laundry, utilities and phone and toiletries came to $517, leaving her $22 for everything else. She moved to Maine, hired out as a house cleaner, scrubbing young yuppies’ houses, making $6.65, and paying $480 rent for a room, and so on.

Her second finding was that the jobs often involved exhausting effort, and overtime, and in some jobs she literally worked by the sweat of her brow so that all she wanted to do at night was watch TV over her dinner and fall asleep.

She endured humiliation, abuse, and routine violation of privacy, and sometimes had to surrender basic civil rights. As a waitress she was told that her purse could be searched at any time by management. There were rules against talking on the job. Constant surveillance, being written up by the shift supervisor, and being ‘reamed out’ by managers were all customary parts of the job; also being  subjected to drug tests (which were most humiliating to say the least.) After a while, she felt she was not just selling labor but her freedom and her very life.

I knew little of such poverty, such struggles until last year, when people started coming to Trinity for help. People who were caught in the cracks, making a little too much to get aid from the various agencies and organizations around, but not enough to make it through to the next pay check. A medical bill coupled with an electric bill all at same time, a dead battery in a car, running out of diapers three days before the next pay check. I have seen the faces of local poverty. Except for the clothes, and perhaps teeth that can’t afford a dentist, they look surprisingly like you and me. They come embarrassed to ask for help, but so in need they do. They feel too embarrassed by their clothes and situation to think of coming to church with us, because we look different, we live different. We are worlds apart from them.

When I meet with these people I so often think, “There but for the grace of God go I.” But God’s grace is there for them too.  God’s love is there for them. You and I, knowing God’s love, and living with the abundance he has provided us, are his instruments for extending that love and abundance to them

As Jesus himself told us very plainly, “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” And as St. Paul later admonished us, “Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously.”

I hope each of you will sow generously for the least of these brothers and sisters, for if you do, you are doing it for Christ as well.

Amen

My Personal Opinion about creation and evolution

People ask me at times, “How can you be a pastor and still believe in evolution?”  (This is usually after they learn I graduated with a degree in biology and did my masters work in biological sciences too.)  One clergy from another denomination actually told me that not only could I not be a Christian if I believe in evolution, I am more or less a heretic, leading people astray as well. 

First of all, I do not “believe” in evolution in the same sense that I believe (know with certainty) in Jesus as the Messiah, the Christ, and in God as a God of love. I understand the theory of evolution (which, by the way, happens to be an evolving theory, as are most of the ideas/theories we have and almost universally accept as the way the universe works). I have read Darwin’s stuff on the subject, and much, much more that has been written in journals and books since. Furthermore, I fully understand that to reject the science behind evolutionary theory is to also reject much of modern medicine, a lot of agricultural progress that has helped to continue to feed a growing world-wide population, and much more of science that the critics of evolution accept without question. What we know of DNA and all of genetics, for example are interlaced with the overall theory of evolution. What the critics of evolution also overlook, for example, is that what we know of gravity is still only a theory.

A scientific theory comprises a collection of related ideas, including abstractions of observable phenomena expressed as quantifiable properties, and a theory makes up the entire body of tested work that describes a specific phenomenon, like gravity. It starts with an idea, an hypothesis that has been verified through testing that leads to repeatable results. In other words, for a theory to exist, it must be made up of hypotheses tested over and over again in such a way as to be measureable and repeatable—tested over and over again by many people. It starts out as an idea, an hypothesis, to explain what is being observed, followed by testing in measurable ways to see if the idea is correct. But actually, much of the work in science is devoted to proving the ideas wrong, not so much proving them right. Many of Darwin’s ideas have been found not to hold up as he wrote them, but the overall concept has been thoroughly tested, and continues to be.

Those who so bitterly oppose evolution do so out of fear. Fear of the unknown. Their fear is because they know so very little of science but somehow think science is in competition with faith, and once someone starts to learn about and believe in what science has learned, they will turn away from faith. Perhaps they believe if science is allowed to move forward unchecked it will prove God doesn’t exist as they thought, These are the same beliefs that religious people used against Galileo in 1633 when he was put on trial for his discovery that the earth revolves around the sun, and not the other way around. The vehement lashing out about evolution, and the expenditure of millions of dollars on a “creation museum” that is neither good theology nor in any way scientific, does much to drive thoughtful, educated young people away from church and Christianity.

None of the ideas behind creationism or intelligent design have been tested or hold up under logical scrutiny, and you don’t have to use science to argue against those ideas. First, there are two creation stories in Genesis, back to back, and they conflict. Next the idea of seven of our days for the creation is questionable because in the first creation story there is no day/night as we have it until after God had created the heavens and earth. We are given no indication of how long God waited after that before he created day and night. Further, the sun and the moon were not created to govern day and night cycles until the fourth "day", according to Genesis verses 14 through 16. So measuring time as we do is not possible using the creation story itself. For me, evolution is a process well within the capacity of God's creativity. God created the processes of solar and stellar dynamics, and certainly evolution as a process does not conflict with either God’s capability or his sovereignty.  For me, evolution actually clarifies and makes more understandable God’s creativity.

Genesis was never written to be exact history, and certainly was not written to be a scientific textbook. To assume it was is to lose the real meaning of its poetic message. God created, and he created for a purpose. He created humans for a purpose. He created us to learn, to explore, to search for understanding. He gave us the capacity for ideas and theories, and he gave us the capacity to think logically and to test those ideas. He also gave us the capacity, and the desire, to see purpose for our lives. The fight against evolution smothers that capacity, and kills that desire.

Evolution is not the enemy of faith. Ignorance of science certainly is. I graduated with a degree in biology from a Christian Mennonite College with a very strong science department. I also took a lot of courses in bible and religious studies. In none of those classes, taught by passionately Christian professors, was there ever raised a conflict between science and religion, evolution and faith. My major advisor, a PhD ecologist who served as a missionary for a few years before coming to teach, made it very clear to me when he said “Science can only answer the questions of what is happening and how. It can never answer the question of why. Why is the realm of theology and faith.”  Science deepened his faith, and it has mine as well.

The Constitution, Religion, and Civil Speech

“We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven…We have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God… We have become too proud to pray to that God who made us.” Those words are from Abraham Lincoln.

Within the preamble of all the constitutions of all 50 of our states -- the very first opening sentences—there is the word “God”. Our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution of the United States of America both point to God’s role in our nation’s existence. On the walls of the United States Supreme Court are inscribed the 10 commandments. Our Ohio Statehouse sidewalk has the state motto, “With God all things are possible” inlaid within it.

Now not all of the founders of our country, and certainly not all of the founders of our states held identical beliefs in God. In fact, theologically, they were very diverse in their beliefs. But when they signed on to these documents that give us our governing structures, they signed on to a united belief that a Supreme Being, God, was at work within the nation-building.

By the time Abraham Lincoln took office many of our citizens had lost the spirit of those founding documents. But time and time again our nation has overcome its divisions in a strong effort to protect freedom and democracy and overcome tyranny. As a nation we have faced many hardships and tragedies, and throughout those times, despite our diverse theologies, we have been “one nation, under God.

We are a nation proud of our freedom of speech. We are proud that within our country we can agree to disagree with each other. But I believe we have begun to allow our rights to be eroded away by those who not only wish to disagree with “one nation, under God” but who wish to impose their own beliefs on us. Atheists do not believe in God, but even though atheism is not a religion they do hold a belief that there is no God. Should their belief be imposed upon us? We may believe in and worship God in diverse ways, and understand God in diverse ways, or we may choose not to believe or worship at all, but the Constitution does not permit anyone’s personal beliefs about God, or lack thereof,  to be imposed upon another.

And, what about civility in our free speech? With freedoms come responsibility, and the most important responsibility, whether legislated or not, is the responsibility to not harm others, by our speech as well as our actions. The decline of civility in our speech in this nation, given magnification by the broadness and rapidity of our media, can seem to give license to those who want to act irresponsibly and do harm to those with whom they disagree.

Our government does not require an atheist to worship God, or even to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. No one requires them to accept the 10 commandments, or to sing the National Anthem. We are not a theocracy. Our founders wanted us free to believe as we so choose. But I do not believe they intended for us to totally wipe God from our heritage or our nation in their protection of freedom of religion, nor did they intend free speech to become a weapon to incite irresponsible behavior.

God has given us free will. With that free will we can choose to destroy ourselves, despite God’s love for us. The Constitution gives us free speech, as one of the most important foundation stones of democracy. But with irresponsible use of that freedom we can destroy the democracy, and the very freedom, that the Constitution was written to create and protect.

The Apostle Paul said this in the letter he wrote to the Ephesians: "Let no evil come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God. Put away from you all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and wrangling, and slander, with all malice, and be kind to one another."

We are in a time of national crisis, with economic crisis foremost in most minds. But that crisis can be compounded by incivility. Sound bites, shallow and nearsighted statements, political and religious name calling are no substitute for the serious, responsible, deep thoughtfulness and compassion we need on the part of all of us to not only weather but to rise out of the complex gutter we have been digging for ourselves.

Baptism

Isaiah 42: 1-91

John 5: 6-12

Matthew 3: 13-17

Baptism

Roy Lloyd, a Lutheran minister, once interviewed Mother Teresa. He said that one of his questions and one of her answers stands out in his mind as "a bright sun burning in my mind." He asked her, "What's the biggest problem in the world today?" And she answered, without hesitation, "The biggest problem in the world today is that we draw the circle of our family too small. We need to draw it larger every day."

With all that is evil and wrong in this world today it would be easy to answer that question with a hundred different events. That's what makes Mother Teresa's response so jilting. She is saying that the problem is not so much with the world as it is with us. We need to see more people as our neighbor than we are currently doing. We need to become more inclusive.

I see Jesus doing this in his baptism. In his baptism he included us in his righteousness. He identified with humanity, with our need to be cleansed, and our need to be made pure. If you have been baptized, as a child or as an adult, you have been drawn, by Jesus' baptism, into the circle of God's family. You have been included, and given the opportunity to share in ministry with Christ.

Water has been in the news a lot over the last decade, with Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the Tsunami in Southeast Asia, and the ongoing cycles of drought and floods.  The Western United States witnessed massive flooding over the holidays.  Australia has seen historic flooding even just this week. Even the less dramatic storms and snowstorms that disrupt our daily lives make the news.  Water is part of the drama of our life.  It brings life, but not enough or too much can bring destruction.  In the sacrament of baptism we focus on how Christ said “I am the living water.”

There are two very different ways to think about baptism. The first approach recognizes the time of baptism for an adult as a saving moment in which the person being baptized accepts the love and forgiveness of God. The person then considers herself "saved." He or she may grow in the faith through the years, but nothing which will be experienced after baptism will be as important as that moment of baptism.

Baptism affirms God's love and forgiveness. For an adult it is a time of change, but it is also a time of beginning. As confirmed Christians we are to spend the rest of our lives trying to figure out what that means. Too often people overlook the journey which is to follow baptism.

Within the Methodist tradition, John Wesley taught that in baptism a child was cleansed of the guilt of original sin, initiated into the covenant with God, admitted into the Church, made an heir of the divine kingdom, and spiritually born anew. He said that while baptism was neither essential to nor sufficient for salvation, it was the “ordinary means” that God designated for applying the benefits of the work of Christ in human lives. We say baptism is the outward and visible sign of the inner workings of God. We speak of prevenient grace, the constant desire and working of God to draw everyone into his presence and kingdom.

On the other hand, although he affirmed the regenerating grace of infant baptism, Wesley also insisted upon the necessity of adult conversion. A person who matures into moral accountability must respond to God’s grace in repentance and faith. Without personal decision and commitment to Christ, the baptismal gift is rendered ineffective.

Baptism for Wesley, therefore, was a part of the lifelong process of salvation. He saw spiritual rebirth as a twofold experience in the normal process of Christian development -- to be received through baptism in infancy and through commitment to Christ later in life. Salvation included both God’s initiating activity of grace and a willing human response. With that willing human response, we are to go on striving toward perfection. God has made us to become perfect, but we must make the decision to try, and that is then part of our profession of faith.

For too many people, baptism too frequently carries the connotation of having arrived. Sometimes people say to their ministers, "I want to be baptized and join the church as soon as I get my life in order." Of course, if that is what any of us are waiting on, we will never be baptized. None of us will ever have our lives sufficiently in order to be baptized. Baptism is not something we earn, nor is it a sign that we have found all the answers. Nothing could be further from the truth. Nor is baptism a sure ticket to heaven. It is not an assurance of salvation.

Baptism, and its subsequent confirmation, is a beginning. It is the desire to see the world differently, to see each other differently, and even to see ourselves differently. Baptism is a start, not a destination. For adults, baptism or confirmation call into question our previous lives, it does not bless them. Baptism is not a trial-free membership, but a rite of initiation into a way of life in which Jesus promised there would be trials. For infants, baptism is an acceptance into the body of Christ, the Church, and it carries with it the congregation’s responsibility to help raise the child to know Christ. That is something far too many congregations fail to take seriously enough.

Jesus' baptism serves as a model for our baptism. For Jesus, baptism represents the beginning of his ministry. While some ultimate questions may have been answered when he was with John the Baptist in the Jordan River, Jesus continued to deal with questions and temptations throughout his life. The baptism of Jesus is one of our favorite stories. We love to hear how the heavens opened, to imagine the dove descending, and to hear God's blessing on the Son. We would like to think something like that happens when we are baptized. What we should be prepared for is that our journey of faith, much like Jesus' journey, continues to unfold long after our baptism as we try to discern what our baptism means in our daily living.

Jesus did not have to be baptized to remove original sin. He did not have to be baptized for forgiveness. Nor did he have to be baptized for salvation. He was baptized to be inclusive, to begin his ministry of God’s inclusive love for all of us. H

We can begin to understand more about our baptism by thinking of it in three ways.

First, baptism is about beginning anew. When we baptize a child, we are signifying a new life, a new opportunity for God’s message to be taken to a new generation. We commit ourselves to help raise and nurture and support the child as they grow so they grow in knowledge of God and his work through Christ, to the point of their making their own personal profession of faith at their confirmation.

The second part of baptism is the good news that we have been included. We become part of the family of God, part of the body of Christ.

The third part of baptism is the giving of God’s Spirit. With baptism comes the Spirit, and with the Spirit come gifts to be used in the service of God. But we have to discern those gifts, and then we have to use them. And that is where so very, very often we fail our baptism, and then fail to realize we are not on the journey God intends for us.

God’s presence in baptism is real, but it must be accepted by human faith if it is to transform human lives. Baptism does not convey grace either magically or irrevocably, nor does it grant salvation of itself, but it is a powerful channel through which God has chosen to make grace available to us.

The story is told of a pastor's words to a baby shortly after he had baptized her. No doubt, the minister was speaking as much to the congregation as to the infant. "Little sister, by this act of baptism, we welcome you to a journey that will take your whole life. This isn't the end. It's the beginning of God's experiment with your life. What God will make of you, we know not. Where God will take you, surprise you, we cannot say. This we do know and this we say -- God is with you."

And God will be with us as we live out our baptism.

Amen