Give thanks.  Praise God.  Praise God’s glory.  St. Paul calls us to worship.  Some people worship justice—as they conceive it.  Some worship love—as they conceive it.  Some people worship knowledge and others worship power—as they conceive them.  Here, we worship God, who conceives us.  God is not the sum of justice plus love plus knowledge plus power.  God is the one who chooses.  God is the one who has already decided.  God is the one whose purposes, whose plans, cannot be ruined, despite all the obstacles people set up between themselves and God’s plans and purposes.  This is good news for us.   God is unstoppable.  God has stopped at nothing to claim us.

This is good news for us because we are living proof that God removes the barriers, and that God continues to remove barriers.  God intends to have direct Communion with us, and He will have it.  Scripture can be our first hint.  As we read Scripture or hear the stories in Scripture, an idea may begin to form in our minds, even in our hearts, that this God Scripture tells us about takes a great interest in people.  We matter to God.  I don’t know how someone could read or hear Scripture and conclude that God takes no interest in people.

We don’t matter to God because any of us are especially brave or strong or tender or smart or wise or talented or beautiful or good.  We matter to God because God claims us as His own.  The history of my life has given God absolutely no reason to have any regard for me.  Far too much of my life abundantly merits God’s strongest disapproval (and more!), yet God has chosen me.  I know He has because there is faith in me, and I didn’t put it there: God did.  God chose me for faith; God chose me for Himself.  That makes me glad beyond words, and it makes me tremble, too.

I don’t tremble because of fear of punishment—my sins are forgiven—astonishing thought!  Never take that thought, that truth lightly!  In Christ my sins are forgiven—all the many ways, many times I chose what sin wanted rather than what God wanted, chose sin knowing it was not what God wanted!  If I were ignorant, that might be grounds for some clemency, but I wasn’t: my heart, my God-touched heart, was telling me what was good and what was not good, yet my sin-stained heart chose not to listen, not to heed God.  How rightly Jeremiah exclaimed, dismayed, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately corrupt; who can understand it?” (17:9 RSV).  I have much to answer for.  “Lord, if you remember sins, who can stand?”

Sisters and brothers, give thanks with a joyful heart, for in Christ, God has blessed us.  Your faith in Christ is the sign that you belong to God.  Faith is a continual, blessed reminder for us, reminding us every day that God has chosen us, in Christ, to be His very own, His treasured possession.  I do rejoice.

And I tremble.  St. Paul reminds us that God has chosen us, in Christ, so “that we would be holy and without fault before Him” (1:4).  Holy and without fault: separate and perfect.  To be separate is to be set apart for God’s special purposes, His eternal, cosmic plan.  Here we are, entirely caught up in eternity already, already part of a plan that encompasses the cosmos.  Staggering!  To be separate is to be out of conformity with the ways of this world, the powers that call sin good and lies truth and that uses all the many weapons in its fearsome arsenal to bring everyone into conformity with its fallen ways.  On the news, we see people up in arms about “fascism.”  Fascism?  How about the fascism of sin?  Brothers, sisters, if sin were not a problem, we wouldn’t have to be here.

God calls us to be out of conformity with the powers of this world and to be conformed to His way.  That marks us.  There will be, and there ought to be, a noticeable difference.  If we claim Christ for ourselves and live no differently from those who want nothing to do with Christ, how is this devotion to God?  God calls us to be perfect.  The perfection God expects of us is the fulfillment of our purpose.  God made us, just as He made everyone, for a reason, so that we all might fulfill His purposes.  What God sought from us was love, praise, and worship, and enjoyment: to share with God in His utter joy in all He has made, to be witnesses to God’s glory, and proclaimers of God’s glory.  God shares creation with mankind: each decade, by God’s grace, we learn a bit more about creation, and now we tell stories that drop God out of creation entirely.

The faithful are treasure houses of the true story, the true treasure, God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  God chose us.  Even before He made the world He chose each of us, knew us and wanted us to be treasure houses of the true story.  His choice is grace because His choice has no basis in, no reference to, no assessment of our worthiness, our merit.  Perfection does not come before God’s choice: perfection is the end result of God’s choice.  God has chosen you.  God will perfect you for His purpose because of His gracious choice.  God’s Grace, not your works.  Praise God for His grace.

Grace comes from love.  St. John tells us, simply, beautifully, wondrously, that God is love.  God who is love loves us, loves everyone.  God will not force anyone to love Him in return, will not force anyone to come to Him.  God does not force.  God creates.  God offers.  God gives grace, gives love, and God creates the faith in us that enables us to receive His grace, enables us to perceive His love, and to return it.  Beloved, how great is the blessing of love received, and given!  I can’t think of many words more powerful, more life-altering, than the words I love you.  About the only words that could come into competition would be “It is finished” (Jn 19:30).  Scripture is God’s love letter to all people.  Christ is God’s gift of love to all people.  The Holy Spirit is God’s assurance of His love.  No matter what happens—and so much can happen!—never forget God’s love for you.  God has a plan, God’s purposes cannot be avoided or ruined, no matter what people and nations and civilizations do to try to undermine God, to put their fallen ways in place of God’s true way.

God sets us free.  In Christ, God sets us free: free from the chains this world had put upon us.  Free from the chains we had made for ourselves, one leaden link, one shameful act, one ugly word after the other—a ponderous chain!  There are those in our denomination who do not like to say that the death of Christ had any significance, except that it was a perfect example of what an oppressive regime does to those who challenge the system.  St. Paul, understanding the clear teaching of Christ, says, quite plainly, that “by the sacrificial death of Christ we are set free, that is, our sins are forgiven” (1:7).

Oh, we may still act as if one sin or another has a hold on us, but the only hold it has on us is the hold our own desires have created, the grip our own stubborn wills refuse to relinquish.  We are free, yet we still behave like prisoners.

And Christ will change us!  The Holy Spirit is changing us by such small, incremental, gracious steps.  Day by day, Lord, day by day.  Blessings, day by day.

Today, we will witness the baptism of three people, three dear saints, three beloved of God, who loves them so much, having known each of them already from before creation, that He sent His only begotten Son to sacrifice his life, his sacred, perfect life, so that these three might live with God eternally.  They already trust in Christ as their savior, and, like all of us (including me!), they have a lot more to learn about God.  They could not come here today, they could not have desired baptism, they could not have had faith, they could not have known God without the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, working in them, already.

Having seen the unmistakable signs of the work of the Holy Spirit in the household of Cornelius, St. Peter exclaimed, “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” (Ac 10:47).

If anyone here has not received baptism by water and the Spirit, child, youth, or adult, 5, 15, 45, or 85, consider carefully, prayerfully, what God may be saying to you, what God is now showing you, today.  St. Paul tells the believers there in Ephesus, “You also became God’s people when you heard the true message, the Good News that brought you salvation.  You believed in Christ, and God has put His stamp of ownership on you by giving you the Holy Spirit He had promised.  The Spirit is the guarantee that we shall receive what God has promised His people” (1:13-14).

So, Kasey, Zoe, and Adysen, today, know for a certainty that God has called you.  In the baptismal waters, God is about to claim you and shower the Holy Spirit upon you in even fuller measure, because God loves you, more than you realize, more than you know.  That love is grace: God’s free gift, freely offered to you.  God is calling you, as He is calling each and all of us, to be holy, devoted to His ways, out of conformity with the ways of this fallen world.  God is calling you, as he is calling each and all of us in Christ, to pray and live for the perfection God will accomplish in us, the fulfillment of His holy, eternal purposes, in us, through Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit.  Give thanks.  Praise God.  Praise God’s glory!

Now to the One who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all we can ask or imagine, to God be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever.