A Letter to Hayden

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
October 8, 2006
The 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time

A Letter to Hayden
Mark 10:13-16
1 John 3:1-3

Dear Hayden,
Today your parents brought you to church to have you baptized.
You were such a good baby;
you didn’t seem to mind having a stranger hold you
and pour water on your head!
You seemed fascinated by all that was going on around you,
and you were a hit with everyone who watched.

A few years from now
you might sit on your mother’s or father’s lap
in front of a computer screen,
and look at pictures your family took of this day:
you with your parents, your brother,
your grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins.
All those people!
You may wonder why all the fuss for a few minutes,
a few words,
and a few scoops of water.

You’d be right to ask.
Why did we baptize you at such a young age,
at a time in your life when you couldn’t really understand,
much less enjoy what was happening?
Your curiosity about your baptism will grow even more
when you learn in Sunday School that Jesus was all grown up
when he was baptized, not even a teenager,
but an adult, and he got to stand in a river,
wade in the water,
and have his head ducked under.

You may wonder why 2,000 years later,
we baptized you on a Sunday morning in church
in the middle of a worship service,
with only a bit of water poured in a bowl.

In Jesus’ day, and for hundreds of years after Jesus’ death
we didn’t baptize babies or children;
We only baptized adults after they professed their faith in Jesus.
It was about a thousand years ago
that we started to baptize babies.
Some churches still baptize only adults.
Other churches baptize babies to assure their salvation,
but that’s not why we baptized you today.
No, God has already taken care of your salvation;
God took care of that even before you were born.

No, we baptized you today because we wanted to say, “Welcome”.
“Welcome” into the community of believers in Jesus Christ.
“Welcome” into the holy catholic church of Jesus Christ:
the universal church of all who profess faith in Christ.
Today, your family grew by millions and millions
as you were welcomed not only by everyone here,
but by new brothers and sisters in Christ
in churches of other denominations,
other languages,
other countries.

That’s why I took you down the steps after your baptism,
and walked with you around the Sanctuary:
so you could meet some of your new brothers and sisters,
your brothers and sisters in Christ
who are part of this church.

Now with all the fuss, all the ceremony,
you might ask your mom or your dad,
“did I get any presents?”
After all, what’s a celebration without gifts?

They will tell you that you received some wonderful presents.
In your baptism God gave you the gift of the Holy Spirit;
In your baptism, God filled you with his Spirit,
his Spirit that will be with you, inside you
all the rest of your life.
You’ll know God’s Spirit is inside you,
because you will feel the Spirit.
It is that feeling that we call love,
that feeling that we call peace,
that feeling that we call assurance.
God’s Spirit will guide you,
lead you, comfort you,
and help you all the days of your life.

Now as wonderful as that gift is,
that’s not the only gift you received.
You also were given the gift of more than 300 godparents today.
Three hundred people who were here with you today,
who promised to help you grow in faith.
Your grandfather asked everyone gathered in this Sanctuary,
whether we “as members of the church of Jesus Christ
promised to guide and nurture you
by word and deed, with love and prayer,
encouraging you to know and follow Christ
and to be a faithful member of Christ’s church.”
And we all said yes;
we all said yes with great enthusiasm,
and when we all said yes, we all became your godparents.

We will each fulfill that promise, that responsibility,
in different ways in the years ahead.
Some may be your Sunday School teachers,
others may help with a choir you’ll sing in,
or a Youth Group you’ll be part of.
We will all help you to know and follow Christ.
We will each try our best to encourage you
to be a faithful member of this church
and a faithful member of Christ’s holy catholic church.

In the baptism service, I said a prayer over the water,
a prayer that the water would be filled with the Holy Spirit.
I asked God in my prayer to wash away
your sins as I put the water on you.
Now, of course you are much too young
to have started building a book of sins.
But you are, after all, a boy,
so the word “sin” will take on
greater meaning with every passing year,
starting in about another year,
when you hit that time
every parent knows as the “Terrible Twos”.

You won’t even be aware of it,
but you will be learning that life is filled with choices,
that each day will be filled with opportunities
for you to decide, to choose:
to choose to be obedient,
or to choose to be disobedient,
And with each decision,
you will choose to sin,
or choose not to sin.

With every choice you make,
with every decision,
you will be doing one of two things:
you will choose to follow God’s commandments
or you will choose to follow your own path.
You will choose to turn toward God,
or you will choose to turn away from God.
And that’s what sin is:
it is anything you do that causes you to turn away from God.
anything you say that causes you to turn
from God’s commandments,
and the teachings of Jesus,
It is anything that causes you not to listen
to that still small voice of the Spirit trying to guide you.

As you go through life, there will be times when
you will choose to be disobedient,
when you will choose not to tell the truth,
when you will chose not to do the right thing.
We all do.
Which means you will sin.
We all sin.
But here’s another gift you received today:
God’s forgiveness through Jesus Christ.
When you make bad choices,
you will disappoint your parents,
but they will never stop loving you,
and they will always forgive you.
And when you sin,
you will disappoint God,
but God will never stop loving you
and God will always forgive you.

Here’s what you should do
when you make a bad choice,
a bad decision,
when you do or say something you know you should not have:
First, acknowledge your mistake:
take responsibility for it.
Say, “yes I did that”; “yes I said that”,
“I know I should not have.
I was wrong.”
Then apologize; say you are sorry,
The promise God gives you through Jesus
is that you will be forgiven,
washed clean;
you will start anew and fresh;
you will be guided back to the path that God wants you on,
that Jesus calls you to follow,
that the Spirit is always gently nudging you to stay on.

As you grow in years, work on growing in faith.
Ask questions, read, listen, learn.
By the time you get to be an adolescent,
you’ll learn that it is easy to dismiss faith,
that it’s easy to think that church is boring
and definitely not cool.
But don’t take the easy path.
Take the harder path of learning,
the harder path of exploration.
Take the harder path of questioning and growing.

And always hang onto just a bit of your childlike innocence,
that look of wonder that was in your eyes today.
With each year, you will struggle to become
more and more independent, and less innocent.
The paradox of faith is that the more dependent you are on God,
the more dependent you are on Christ,
the more independent you will be life.

Hayden, we all marveled today
as we all participated in your baptism
and recalled the promises and the gifts
we each received in our own baptisms.
See what love God the father, God the mother
has given us that we should be called God’s children,
for that, Hayden, is what you are,
that is what I am,
that is what we all are
and that is what we always will be.

To the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,
be honor and glory
this day and always.
AMEN