The Third Sunday after Pentecost-The Rev Melanie Lemburg

 The Very Rev Melanie Dickson Lemburg

Third Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 8C

June 29, 2025

 

A letter to Lillian Alice Johnston upon the occasion of her baptism.

 

Dear Lily,

        Today we are celebrating your baptism here at St. Thomas.  Today your parents and godparents are making promises on your behalf about how you will live your life, and we, the gathered congregation, are making promises to support you and them in your life of faith. 

        In baptism, we are acknowledging that God has already claimed you as God’s beloved.  We are all saying “yes” to that belovedness for you, even as you are reminding us of our own belovedness as well.  There’s a saying in the church that “baptism is becoming who you already are.”  You are already God’s beloved, and today, you are becoming God’s beloved as you and those who speak for you say “yes” to your belovedness. 

        In fact, our whole lives of faith are a growing deeper in this becoming who we already are.  It’s what the church refers to as discipleship.  Jesus models for us the way of growing deeper into true belonging as God’s beloved, of becoming who we already are.  He teaches that that becoming is marked by dying to ourselves and our own selfish desires; in living lives of empathy and compassion and forgiveness of and service to others.  The ways that we become who we already are as God’s beloved are encoded in our baptismal covenant.  Our becoming is nourished in prayer, scripture, and sacrament; it is rooted in seeking and serving Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves, asking for and offering forgiveness, repenting and returning to God when we fall away, striving for justice and peace and respecting the dignity of every human being. 

But as we see in our gospel lesson for today, this call to discipleship, the call to continued becoming is not an easy path.  Sometimes it calls us to forsake things that are good in and of themselves; and sometimes we find that if we cling too tightly to these good things they get in the way of our becoming or our growing in our belovedness.  Our hearts can make idols of even the best things in our lives, so that they come between us and God.  And our hearts can also cling too much to the wounds and slights and shadows of the past, holding us hostage for living fully in this present moment.  That’s part of what our becoming is; it is being fully present to God and those in our midst in each present moment.  It’s challenging, uncomfortable work, and so we need each other.  It’s why we gather here week after week together, so we can support one another in our becoming. 

        Today is the beginning of that journey for you, sweet Lily.  Today you begin your becoming.  There will be so many more moments before you when you will be challenged to become more than you already are, to grow deeper in God’s love for you.  These moments of becoming can be deeply unsettling and uncomfortable.  They are filled with both hope and terror, as we leave behind what is old and don’t yet exactly know what is to come.[i]    It is what the apostle Paul refers to when he says that anyone who is in Christ is a “new creation.”  It’s what Jesus is getting at in our gospel reading when he calls the people on the road to follow him in discipleship and then rebukes them for wanting to turn back; even though what they are turning back for is worthy, it divides their hearts and holds them back from following him into their becoming a new creation.

        Lily, today is the first moment of many becomings for you.  There will be so many more than you can ever count.  Any time you stand in the crossroads of such seemingly ordinary things as choosing kindness or forgiveness over retribution or setting aside your own selfish desires to create space and welcome for another.  And of course, there will be bigger moments of becoming as well, times when you stand on a precipice and are called to jump into the unknown; sometimes it will be your choice to jump, and sometimes it won’t. 

        But the truth that undergirds all of this, for you and us, is that you have been, are, and always will be God’s beloved:  marked as Christ’s own forever.  No matter what happens in your life, you will never be alone. God will not forsake you, God’s own beloved.

        We promise to help you remember this, sweet Lily, and we hope you will do the same for us.  May you continue to become what you already are!

Your sister in Christ,

Melanie+

 

 

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[i] A friend of mine recently quoted a line from her favorite Jane Austin book Persuasion in reference to these moments of becoming, saying, “I am half agony, half hope.”