"New birth is always possible"

Sermon for the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, Year C

The Church of the Epiphany | Washington, DC

Colossians 3:1-11; Luke 12:13-21

“If you have been raised with Christ... Set your minds on things that are above... for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”

Each week, when we gather together in this place, we pass by the baptismal font—located at the rear of the nave. And for some, perhaps when entering or leaving this space, it is a meaningful practice to cross themselves with the holy water located in its basin. The placement of the font provides us a convenient reminder of our baptism—both of its vows and God’s promises.

This morning, our lessons suggest those vows and promises are a matter of life and death...

In the early years of the Church, the symbolism of death and resurrection was embraced as the literal foundation for entering into the Christian life. Baptismal fonts were commonly designed with yonic themes to remind one of fertility and the event of birth. The question a wealthy young man named Nicodemus poses to Jesus comes to mind here: “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” 

Early baptismal fonts were also typically large enough to fully enter into. Which isn’t unheard of today; some of us may even have been baptized in a river or a bathtub or a horse trough. So, yes, indeed, the Church responds: new birth is always possible. 

But this design at once called to mind both a place of birth and of death, a womb and a tomb. The catechumen, or candidate for baptism, would descend down a set of stairs, leading literally below the surface of the ground, and then they were submerged under the surface of the water as though being buried in the ground. Then after their symbolic death they were raised up out of the depths of that water, resurrected into new life—and immediately wrapped in new clothes.

To enter into a new way of living, old habits must be stripped away. And if one wishes to put on a new self and be renewed, some unhelpful patterns will need to be examined and cast aside.

Paul tells the community in Colossae, put to death your greed. Because gathering up possessions beyond one’s need has practical implications for the possibility of renewal.

Anything we turn to for a false sense of security creates an idol between ourselves and God, who is the source of Life. And selfish consumption separates us from one another. So, Paul reminds them of their baptism because the commitment made to the Body of Christ has both spiritual and social implications.

Jesus addresses much the same impulse in our Gospel lesson. Someone approaches him seeking to divide a family inheritance. The cultural practice would prefer rather to keep an estate intact and the wide web of relationship that is attached to and dependent on it.

Family wealth was used in service of preserving community and offering mutual aid, but this person’s sole concern is evidently in disentangling themselves from the many inconveniences of relationship. 

Jesus says, “Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” 

As this response would suggest, separating ourselves from others and accountability to their needs will not lead us into fullness of living—nor will it fulfill any ambitions of greatness. Attempting to be make ourselves great while neglecting others is a fool’s folly.

Putting our greed to death is far from easy. Because it is in opposition to so much that we are encouraged to embrace in this nation. Imagining integrating these teachings may even feel like death. So, let me suggest two ways for how we might “seek things that are above...”

The first is spiritual. Greed takes different forms. Perhaps it is in an attachment to the abundance of power or wealth, or maybe to the importance of our self-image.

Nearly all contemplative spiritual traditions—be they from Eastern or Western religions or other sources—speak to a process of ego death. Practices like meditation or centering prayer facilitate an inner transformation that reshapes the self from merely existing to meet its own concerns to living to serve the needs of others. With time, as master practitioners will attest, spiritual disciplines help us shift from imposing our willfulness on the world (often through opposition) to a way of willing alignment with the creative flow of Spirit. Engaging the needs around us willingly rather than willfully is a subtle but a powerful difference in the posture of our lives—and learning to do so begins in dealing with the ego and its many attachments and idols.

And the second consideration is material. Because cultivating spiritual vitality is critical but there are real concrete, physical implications as a result of unfettered greed. Whether we are willing to die to self-serving desires makes a world of material difference to those who rely on Medicaid and Medicare, to migrants seeking opportunity in a land of abundance, to schoolchildren without food to eat, to families dying of starvation in Gaza. It is a matter of life and death.  

All of this is not a zero sum game though... Placing possessions over the importance of people—all of whom bear the image of God—is indeed of material concern and so much more. The profound dilemma we find ourselves at this moment of history in our nation is also very much of a spiritual nature. Souls are at stake. Especially for those born in this land of abundance.

Now, truthfully, over this week, I have felt troubled by the abrupt ending of our Gospel lesson...

Greed in all of its sinfulness is revealed and confronted, and then Jesus tells a parable of a fool who chooses to indulge worldly wealth over the riches of God. And it then ends—with an untimely death and uncertainty whether there is any good news to be found. Another question posed by Jesus in Mark’s Gospel seems to linger: “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”

It is a question we are a people would do well to reflect on in our common life.

That all might live fully into the joys of new life, together. 

Seek things that are above while this life here on earth. 

Remember your baptism. 

Amen