Acts 2:37-42
Tenth Sunday After Pentecost
Sacraments Series
August 13, 2017
First Christian Church
Mahtomedi, MN
Good science fiction should be able to talk about a present issue dressed in futuristic garb. Star Trek has been able to do that for most of its 50 years of existence. There is an episode in the sixth season of Star Trek: the Next Generation, where the captain of the Enterprise, Jean-Luc Picard is captured by the Cardassians, a humanoid race that had uneasy relations with the Federation.
He is taken to an interrogator named Madred. Madred is adpet in the uses or torture and manipulation and it is used to its bone chilling intent in this episode. He uses physical torture, but Madred also used tricks of the mind to get a prisioner to break and that is what he wanted to do to Picard, to break his will. Early in the episode, Picard meets with Madred and the interrogator calmly asks him to look up to the lights in the celing. “Tell me, Picard,” Madred says. “How many lights are there?”
Picard is confused, because it was quite obvious that there were four lights. So, he answered that there were four lights. It was the wrong answer. There were five lights. Madred sends him back for more torture. This wicked game happens again and again. Towards the end of the episode, he is asked one more time how many lights there are. Picard by this time was beaten and battered and it looked like he was going to comply with Madred and tell him there are five lights, to admit that he had been broken by Madred. But just as Picard is going to say something, the session is interuppted; the base where Picard was had recieved word that he was free to go. Picard stands up ready to be head out of the room and away from his captor. Then he stops and turns around. He looks at Madred with fury and states in a loud voice, “THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS!” and then leaves.
Later when Picard is aboard the Enterprise, he confides in Deanna Troi, the ship’s counselor that he was so beaten and broken that to make the pain stop, he was willing to say there were five lights.
Today we are going to talk about baptism and we will be doing it this week and next. We will focus on the story of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came down and set upon the heads of Jesus’ disciples.
When people around them started to question them, Peter tells the crowd about Jesus. He tells them about how Jesus was put to death and is now raised from the dead. The people knew about Jesus, but they saw him as someone the Romans put to death. It was another troublemaker that was stamped out by the Romans. But Peter tells them that this was not the whole story. He starts by sharing a passage from the prophet Joel and links that to Jesus. Peter tells them God’s redemption story and that leads the people to ask what needs to be done.
They had one view of things, but now there was a different view. Where they might have seen themselves as if nothing was wrong, now see they are in need of help. Peter tells them to change their ways and be baptized as a sign of their repentance and God’s forgiveness of sins or salvation of creation.
We think of baptism as an act that takes place with a little or a lot of water and it is that. But in many ways, baptism is a break from the reality we knew into something very different. Those first converts had a certain view of life that they grew up with. They thought they knew who Jesus was, but Peter shares with them a radically different view, one that actually pricked their hearts. Peter had shared with them something different and baptism was the sign that something had changed, someone had changed them.
But the thing is, those first converts all the way up until today, are sometimes charmed by other voices. Those voices tell us that 2 and 2 isn’t four, but five or they tell us that there are five lights instead of four. There are always people who lure us away from God’s truth who are able to alter reality into something else that seeks to separate from God. As 1 Peter 5:8 states, “ Be clearheaded. Keep alert. Your accuser, the devil, is on the prowl like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.”
As I was reading social media and the news sites yesterday regarding the goings on in Charlottesville, it’s easy to see how we can believe a lie. For whatever reason, the people waving those torches this weekend were decieved into believing that there are acceptable people based on skin color and race. Yes, the distrubing pictures of angry white faces are people who have given into evil, but they are also faces of those that have been tricked into thinking that their belief system will bring them salvation, when all it will give them is damnation.
Baptism isn’t something that we do to get on God’s good side. It is something that happens because of what God has done. God chose to love humanity despite the many ways we broke God’s heart. God became human in Jesus in and in Jesus lived and suffered and died seeking to do God’s will in the world.
While baptism is something we do for God, it is something that should change us. Peter called for his listeners to repent, to turn around from their ways of doing things and live into the new reality that they have been introduced into. Knowing Jesus from a different standpoint meant seeing life, our life from a different standpoint. Repentance and baptism meant that these new Christ followers spent their days in the temple worshipping, sharing with each, especially when one had need. Later they were the ones that cared for people who were ill, at time when others would leave people to die. Repentance changed a slaveowner named John Newton to give up his old life and end up writing one of the most well known hymns, “Amazing Grace.”
How has baptism changed us? How do we see life differently?
In most baptismal liturgies, there is the following phrase that takes place as the child or adult is being baptized. It is part of that person’s baptismal vows. This is one example that is used in Disciple congregations and it goes like this:
Do you renounce evil, repent of your sins, and turn to Christ?
I do.
Do you confess that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, and
do you accept and proclaim him to be Lord and Savior of the world?
I do.
The Methodists are bit more verbose on this and I want to share it as well:
On behalf of the whole Church, I ask you:
Do you renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness,
reject the evil powers of this world,
and repent of your sin?
I do.
Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you
to resist evil, injustice, and oppression
in whatever forms they present themselves?
I do.
Do you confess Jesus Christ as your Savior,
put your whole trust in his grace,
and promise to serve him as your Lord,
in union with the Church which Christ has opened
to people of all ages, nations, and races?
I do.
At this time in our nation’s history and in light of this weekend’s actions, I don’t have answers into how we should respond. I’m not here to give a firery sermon. But I am here to remind you of our baptismal vows. Let us learn to renounce evil, or as some versions state, the wiles of the devil. Let us be focused on living for Jesus, to living life in a different way and guard ourselves against the sirens that seek to lure us away as it has those white protestors in Virginia. And let us live our vows that call us to resist evil, and battle injustice and oppression. Let us confess who we are and whose we are. May we be a living witness of God’s love and share that love with others.
How many lights do you see? Don’t let the devil trick you. See the reality around you and live it out in a world that so needs to see it. Thanks be to God. Amen.
The Clockwork Pastor 
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