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+
[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.”
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