Sermon Archive

Today’s Second Lesson rejoices in the faith of the apostle Paul’s young associate, Timothy—his trust in God rooted in the spiritual upbringing Timothy has received from childhood, through the influence of his grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice. (3:14-15; cf. II Tim. 1:5) It is they who have shared with Timothy—through their words, through their deeds—their own faith and the teachings of God found in Scripture, in this way equipping him “for every good work.” (3:17)

And for many of us, too, it’s the case that our journey toward faith in God originated in childhood and has traveled onward from there—for some of us, proceeding smoothly and without interruption; for others of us, proceeding only with a number of intervening diversions and stoppages.

There is nothing that can better remind us of the origin of many of our journeys of faith in childhood than the baptism of an infant, like that of five-month-old Austin Simpson today.

Who knows where little Austin’s journey of faith will take him! Perhaps someday it will lead him in a Sunday School Class to write a letter to God very much like this one, composed by a 12-year-old lad named Sean: “Dear God, Thank you for my parents, my sister Anita, and for my grandma and grandpa. I forgive you for my brother Phil. I guess you didn’t finish working on him.” (David Heller, Dear God: Children’s Letters to God, Bantam Books, 1989, rear cover)

Or perhaps Austin will be led in a Confirmation Class to write a letter to God using such simple and direct words as these, penned by young Herbie: “Dear God, Count me in.” (Eric Marshall and Stuart Hample, Children’s Letters to God, Essandess, 1967, p. 1) Indeed, perhaps it’s precisely these short, very-much-to-the-point words that we should have had Bill Bailey and Joy Rose proclaim today as they were becoming members of this congregation—simply, “Dear God, Count me in.”

You see, it’s in the sacrament of baptism that God says to each of us: “I will be your God, and you shall be one of My people.” (cf. Jer. 31:33)

And it’s in the sacrament of baptism that God begins to write on each of our hearts the new covenant of which our First Lesson speaks—the covenant whose very first commandment is simply this: “Let God love you!”

Just as young Austin has today recognized his parents’ love and let them take him up into their arms without a whimper when they presented him for baptism, so, too, may it happen that in growing up Austin will come to experience and recognize God’s love and, as a man, come to let God’s love enfold him.

Last year we all mourned the death of Fred Rogers, that gentle Presbyterian minister who for decades beamed his love for children out over the airwaves on Mister Rogers Neighborhood. Rogers’s ministry through that program was so powerfully influential precisely because children recognized instantly his love for them, and they let that love enfold them so as to affect and shape their lives.

Yes, it’s through the likes of Mister Rogers and of ever so many other far less famous people in our lives—like the Kindergarten teacher about whom our younger son reported, after his first day at school, “Don’t worry, Mom; the teacher loves kids!”—it’s through such persons as these that God comes to us to enfold us and to write God’s covenant of love on our hearts. It’s through the influence of people like Lois and Eunice of old and like Fred and that teacher in our time and through the influence of our own mothers and fathers and of the members of this congregation and of others like it that we have come to let God love us and that we have come to respond to that love with the words, “Dear God, Count me in!” Yes, the love of God does come to us precisely through the agency of people like Mister Rogers and like so many of the members of this church community—people who themselves have let God love them and are thus able to be God’s love for touching others. These are the agents through whom God finishes working on 12-year-old Sean’s baby brother Phil—and on us, equipping us “for every good work.”

Alongside Mister Rogers, another gentle Presbyterian who’s helped countless Americans to let God love them—another is the author Annie LaMott, whose own journey toward faith in God did not begin from childhood. Now, regular attenders here at Rutgers have heard me before quote from her warm and humorous book Traveling Mercies, in which she recounts her journey toward faith, but the part of that book I want to share with you today is, I believe, a fresh one for all of us. It’s selected paragraphs from her chapter, “Why I Make Sam Go to Church”—Sam being her young son. Listen, please. (Anchor Books, 2000, selections from pp. 99–102)

“Sam is the only kid he knows who goes to church—who is made to go to church two or three times a month. He rarely wants to. This is not exactly true: the truth is he never wants to go.…

“…you might wonder why I make this strapping, exuberant boy come with me most weeks, and if you were to ask, this is what I would say.…

“…I want to give him what I found in the world, which is to say a path and a little light to see by. Most of the people I know who have what I want—which is to say, purpose, heart, balance, gratitude, joy—are people with a deep sense of spirituality. They are people in community, who pray, or practice their faith; they are Buddhists, Jews, Christians—people banding together to work on themselves and for human rights. They follow a brighter light than the glimmer of their own candle; they are part of something beautiful.… [St. Andrew Presbyterian Church] is filled with people who are working for peace and freedom, who are out there on the streets and inside praying, and they are home writing letters, and they are at the shelters with giant platters of food.

“When I was at the end of my rope, the people at St. Andrew tied a knot in it for me and helped me hold on. The church became my home in the old meaning of home—that [‘home’ is] where, when you show up, they have to let you in. They let me in. They even said, ‘You come back now.’…

“Mary Williams always sits in the very back by the door. She is one of those unusually beautiful women—beautiful like a river. She has dark skin, a long broad nose, sweet full lips, and what the theologian Howard Thurman calls ‘quiet eyes.’ She raised five children as a single mother, but one of her boys drowned when he was young, and she has the softness and generosity and toughness of someone who has endured great loss. During the service she praises God in a nonstop burble, a glistening dark brook. She says, ‘Oh, yes.… Uh-huh.… My sweet Lord. Thank you, thank you.’

“Sam loves her, and she loves him.… Every Sunday I nudge Sam in her direction, and he walks to where she is sitting and hugs her. She smells him behind his ears, where he most smells like sweet unwashed new potatoes.”

Here’s in sum what I believe Annie LaMott is saying to us. When young Sam lets Mary Williams and the other good members of St. Andrew Presbyterian Church love him, he is, from childhood, letting God love him. And all of that is finishing God’s work with Sam, equipping him “for every good work,” for finding and keeping in his life “purpose, heart, balance, gratitude, joy.” And that’s why Annie makes young Sam go to church—so that from childhood he may come to experience and recognize God’s love and let that love enfold him so as to affect and shape his life, as God’s covenant of love is being written on his heart.

So I invite the Simpson family and all our other parents to make sure that your children go to church, so that they may begin their journey of faith toward God from childhood. And to all of our visitors and friends who are here today we, like the St. Andrew Presbyterian Church, join in saying, “You come back now!” Yes, we do encourage you to press yourself to keep going to church. For Scripture tells us, and our own experience confirms for us, that it is within a Spirit-filled community of faith like this that God’s love can come to enfold people and equip people for a life with purpose, heart, balance, gratitude, and joy.

Let us pray: