It is good to be back after vacation in Vermont. Sadly, we can see and feel a time of disunity in our country, a time of racism, hatred and malice in the world at large. These are not easy times. And yet, these are the times when God hast entrusted us with the message of Jesus Christ, of love and healing, forgiveness and compassion when hurricanes make devastation, when terrorists destroy the peace, when the world has seemingly gone mad and we feel unease.
This is the moment we need to remember who we are…
And I think of Norah’s favorite movie – Moana – a story about “the strong-willed daughter of a chief of a Polynesian village, who is chosen by the ocean to reunite a mystical relic with a goddess who brought life to the world. When a blight strikes her island & the waters around the island, Moana sets sail in search of Maui, a legendary demigod, in the hope of saving her people.” (mostly from Wikipedia)
Having watched it a few times with Norah, like 47 times, the story, for me, is really about knowing who you are. Each character in Moana explores that question… they sing about it. It is a tale about their life at the present moment and their connection to those who lived before them.
For to know who we are, is to remember where we came from (our ancestors). The words of the prophet Isaiah to the beleaguered Israelites tells it this way:
Listen to me, you that pursue righteousness, you that seek the Lord.
Look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug.
Look to Abraham, your father and to Sarah, who bore you.’
To the Israelites thinking about a homeland again, considering all that has befallen them – destruction of their sacred sites, exile in a far away land– the words “look to the rock, to the quarry, to your ancestors” is a reminder of who they are. It is to live in hope like the ancestors once did – to remember them and where you are from, for as Isaiah goes on to say…
Listen to me, my people, and give heed to me… for a teaching will go out from me,
and my justice for a light to the peoples. I will bring near my deliverance swiftly.
Pursue righteousness, seek the Lord, for deliverance is close at hand.
This morning, we baptize Samuel Anthony Harris into the Body of Christ.
With his parents (Sarah & Talman) and Godparents, his family and all of us gathered here, we lift him up in prayer, and with holy water and sacred oil he is marked as Christ own forever. This day becomes for him, the day to which he can look, his day of deliverance and hope, his day of love and salvation. Look to the rock. For Samuel, his Christian journey has begun in the body of Christ. But what his and our journey will be, what temptations may come before us, what may arise that challenges our understanding of ourselves and our faith, none of us knows.
Born in what is now Poland, Helmut James von Moltke was a brilliant lawyer and a deeply committed Christian as WW II approached. He realized that the rise of Nazi power would be catastrophic for Germany. In 1935, after completing his studies in law, he refused an offer to become a judge because it would require him to join the Nazi Party. Instead, he began a private law practice in the German capital of Berlin. His firm helped Jews and other persecuted peoples emigrate from Germany. Between 1935 and 1938, while helping German émigrés in the United Kingdom, he studied British law in London and Oxford.Remember who you are. Look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug. Today we bring Samuel into the fold through baptism, may we teach Samuel & Norah & all of our little ones, to remember who they are, like Von Moltke remembered. For all of us bear the marks of Christ, may these little ones grow into this rich faith & join us one day in building bridges of hope in our world, that our hearts, minds and hands may do the work of Jesus, our rock & redeemer.
In September 1939, as the war in Europe escalated, von Moltke was drafted for service with the Abwehr, the German counter-intelligence service, where he served as the resident expert in international law. In that capacity, he traveled extensively and witnessed many human rights abuses in German-occupied Europe. He attempted to persuade others to cease such violence, pleading in an October 1941 letter, "[H]ow can anyone know of these things [the abuses] and walk around free?"
Von Moltke refused to be part of the failed coup to kill Hitler. He felt that the plan, if it succeeded, would make a martyr of Hitler, and if it failed, it would expose the resistance movement. Von Moltke focused instead on opportunities to undermine the Nazi apparatus from within. In his work as legal counsel for the Abwehr, he was able to give early warning to trusted friends about the true state of the war, including the Jewish extermination camps. He got Jews safely deported through legal channels. He also wrote some of the few reports on the psychological trauma suffered by German soldiers who witnessed or participated in mass killings. In his travels throughout Nazi-occupied Europe, he quietly made contact with resistance fighters. He was the guiding spirit behind the "Kreisau Circle," a group of German intellectuals, theologians and aristocrats committed to ending Hitler's rule and rebuilding Germany after the war.
In January 1944, Von Moltke was arrested for his anti-Nazi sentiments and his writings on democracy. He was executed a year later. In his farewell letter to his wife, Freya, von Moltke wrote:
"Your husband stands before [the judge] . . . as a Christian and nothing else . . . Everything which was hidden acquires its meaning in retrospect . . . the refusal to put out [Nazi] flags or to belong to the Party . . . it has all at last become comprehensible in a single hour. For this one hour the Lord took all that trouble . . . We were allowed to symbolize this fact by our shared Holy Communion, which will have been my last . . . The task for which God made me is done."
Remember who you are today. Look to that water in baptism. Look to the rock. Amen.
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