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“With You I am Well Pleased,” Rev. Melissa St. Clair, 1/11/15

“With You I am Well Pleased”

A sermon preached at

Heart of the Rockies Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

Fort Collins, CO

by the Rev. Melissa St. Clair

January 11, 2015

It’s a new year.  We have three pastors in new roles and new offices.  We have a new family in our congregation – J-P, Amy, and Erica.  We’re starting new classes on Sunday mornings and Monday nights.  We have a new nursery.  We have new events – Beer & Hymns and the Day of Service – coming up.  We have a new budget to be presented at the congregational meeting on January 25.

Well, the lectionary didn’t want to be left out.  Both our First and Second Testament lessons this morning deal with the new – the newness of creation, of life as we know it.  And the newness of life through baptism, the turning to a new chapter in Jesus’ life – his public ministry.  We read Mark’s account of this:

READ MARK 1:4-11 and GENESIS 1:1-5

My brother became a full-time teacher the year I became a full-time pastor.  We’d both graduated less than 24 hours apart in May, him from college and me from seminary.  It was after my first Christmas in full-time ministry that I went home for the first time after I’d started my first call.  On a whim, I asked my brother if I could tag along to his classroom one morning and observe.

At the time, I was in a clergy residency in Kansas City, serving as an associate minister on staff with several others, supervised by our Senior Minister.  I arrived home for that visit exhausted from 4 services on Christmas Eve and the weight of what I – at the time – considered a huge failure.  I’d asked a member of the congregation that I held in high esteem to lead the children in the service in a song – Children, Go Where I Send Thee.

It was an idea that worked beautifully in my head, and one that the guitarist was excited about.  On that night, however, he got nervous and flubbed a number of the verses.  (It’s one of the those songs that adds on with each verse. In this case, making each new verse even more painful than the last.)

After the service, our third one of the day, after everyone had cleared out of the sanctuary to head home to their holiday meal, I sat on the chancel with our Senior Minister and cried.  I cried because I felt responsible for what had happened – I should’ve had him run through it before the service.  I cried out of embarrassment for the guitarist.  I cried because I was tired and far, far away from my family and as much as I loved my calling, I just wanted to go home.

And when I finally did, I found myself in my brother’s 5^th grade classroom.  It seemed strange to see him in a button up shirt and tie, his employee badge fastened to his belt. My little brother, Mr. St. Clair, responsible for these 24 young minds, bodies, and spirits.  Watching him stand in front of the classroom, it was clear that he was a good teacher.  From the way he commanded attention and kept control, to the compassion he showed for a student who was struggling.

What I saw in him, that’s what I wanted to be – good.  A good pastor.

It took a number of years in ministry to realize that being a “good” pastor couldn’t be my primary aim.  After all, who is to say what’s “good”?  Serving a congregation guarantees that you’ll have at least as many different ideas about what’s “good” as there are people in the pew.

Trying to be “good” was a recipe for exhaustion and exasperation, not excellence.

To be “good” wasn’t a call from God.  To be faithful was.  I knew there would be (and, yes, of course, will be) times when I just flat out get it wrong.  I won’t know something I should, I’ll handle a situation in a less-than-ideal way, I’ll say something I wish I hadn’t, and – as other introverts can relate – I’ll not say something I wish I had. Let’s be real: Any or all of those can happen in any given day let alone over a lifetime of ministry.

For the perfectionist in me, this is a hard pill to swallow.  I want to be good at what I do. Okay, if I’m being honest I want to be great at what I do, but that’s not really mine to measure.

After all, God created us GOOD. We don’t earn “good.”  We don’t work hard for “good.”  We are good.  Very good, in fact.

It’s the first thing we read in scripture –

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, God also created humankind in God’s own image.  God blessed us, and God saw everything God had made, and indeed it was good.  Very good.

That’s how we’ve been created.  It’s not how we’ve acted, not what we’ve achieved, not how we’ve performed, not what’s been recorded on our report card or our performance review.  It’s fundamental to who we are.  It’s God’s imprint on our lives.

We are good. Very good.

That doesn’t stop us from desiring affirmation, however.  We want to hear how good we are, how well we do what it is we do.  We want people to like us.  For those who use social media, how quickly do we become conditioned to those notifications, craving more and more “likes” or “favorites”?  We know, deep down, that affirmation that comes at the click of a button may not mean a whole lot.  But we want it anyway, don’t we?  We want to feel like our voice is being approved of…or at least heard.

It becomes easy for our clamoring for affirmation from others to grow into a cacophony that downs out that divine voice saying, “You are good.  You are very good.”

When Jesus breaks through the surface tension of the waters of his baptism he, too, is reminded of this reality.  “With you I am well pleased,” comes a voice from heaven.  “My beloved, with you I am well pleased.”

We’re cut from that same cloth.

And so our goal, our resolution, our aim need not be to be good.  We are already good.  We are already pleasing to God.

Our goal, our resolution, our aim must be to be faithful.

That was her aim when the 80-year-old woman asked to be baptized.  She had several medical issues, which led her to be terrified of being immersed, which, as a member of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), was her church’s tradition.  That didn’t stop her from insisting to her pastors that she needed to be baptized.  So between all of them – the woman, her pastors, and the elders of her congregation – they came up with a plan.  She’d place her hands in a large bowl full of water as her pastors poured water over her hands.

It wasn’t the way that some would consider “right.”  It wasn’t “traditional.”  (A few phone calls on Monday morning confirmed this.)  And yet – how very faithful.

Perhaps you’ve heard baptism referred to as “fire insurance” – as in, protection against the flames of hell.  I guess you could argue that baptism does provide you protection from fire…for about 15 seconds, or however long it takes the preacher to take you under and get you back up out of the water.

God isn’t in the insurance business.  God created us good.  From the very beginning, from our very beginning, we are good.

God also created us human, so, yes, of course, there’s room for error.  But even that can’t separate us from God, at least on God’s side of the equation.

Think about it.  Think about the heavens tearing apart.

Think about a God who loves us so much that God cannot stand to be separated from us for even one second longer.

It’s no accident that Jesus’ baptism is the very first thing that happens in Mark’s gospel, which he – unlike any of the other gospel writers – actually identifies as a gospel, the Good News.

While it may not be our insurance policy, we know that baptism matters to God.  Our faith calls us to follow Jesus, and Jesus calls us to be baptized.

Jesus’ own baptism is a moment of profound acceptance.   “You are my beloved son. With you I am well pleased.” Wrapped in these words are the blessings of identity, worth, and unwavering regard.[1]

In the act of baptism, we are offered acceptance, not merely affirmation, of our Creator, the same one who created of the Cosmos.  In turn, we are empowered to accept others.  Baptism reminds us that wherever we may go and whatever we may do or have done to us, God continues to love us, to accept us, and to hold onto us.[2]

We are good.  We are very good.

[1] David Lose, Baptism of our Lord B: Baptism and Blessing.  Posted on …in the meantime on January 5, 2015.  Read full post here.

[2] Ibid.