Psalm 139:
1   O LORD, you have searched me and known me.
2   You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from far away.
3   You search out my path and my lying down,
and are acquainted with all my ways.
4   Even before a word is on my tongue,
O LORD, you know it completely.
5   You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
6   Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is so high that I cannot attain it.
7   Where can I go from your spirit?
Or where can I flee from your presence?
8   If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
9   If I take the wings of the morning
and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
10   even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me fast.
11   If I say, "Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light around me become night,"
12   even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is as bright as the day,
for darkness is as light to you.
13   For it was you who formed my inward parts;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.
14   I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
that I know very well.
15   My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
16   Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
In your book were written
all the days that were formed for me,
when none of them as yet existed.
17   How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
18   I try to count them-they are more than the sand;
I come to the end-I am still with you.

Luke 23:46:
46 Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit." Having said this, he breathed his last.

My religious preferences lean toward the simple. Though I love traditional worship, I never have been drawn to elaborate liturgy. Some scholars would tell me that I'm only reflecting my Protestant tradition. Protestants are not liturgical, they say, and therefore not sacramental. The churches of colors and sounds, of incense and pretty robes, of kneeling prayers and required lectionary readings, take more seriously the taste, touch and smell of enacting the Word through sacrament than the Protestant churches that add liturgy only as side dishes to the main course of the Word Proclaimed in scripture and sermon.

Great Protestant theologians like John Calvin, Karl Barth, and D.M. Baillie would object to that assessment. And now that I've uncovered evidence about myself that surprise even me, I also would object to that assessment more strenuously than ever.

A few months ago, I was shocked to discover just how sacramental- and maybe even more to the point of this sermon- baptismal, my theology really is. I was looking through my sermons trying to find a story I needed for a Bible study I was going to lead. My search was unsuccessful, but I wouldn't give up. I quickly glanced through sermon after sermon…., easily at least 50, and probably a lot more. And sermon after sermon, I kept finding places where I spent time reflecting on what it means that we are baptized. The frequent return to the font was evident even in sermons on Sundays when we did not have a baptism.

I was surprised by this, and I've since tried to figure out why I have felt the need to return over and over again to the font. It is not because baptism is something First Presbyterian Church in Kingsport, or Briarwood in Jackson, or Second in Roanoke needed extra help understanding. No, I think the reason is more personal than that. I think it is because I somehow believe that the secret of my identity in Christ- your identity in Christ- is found in the water of the font.

Even saying that doesn't get to the heart of it. That will preach, no doubt about it. This baby is a child of God, redeemed by Christ; now keep your promises and raise her to know that about herself. But more to the sticking point, I think understanding baptism is essential for faith because it deals with the fundamental anxieties that any philosophy or theology has to deal with if they are going to be worth considering. I am going to die. I'm healthy, mind you, but I know that one day I will die. That makes me anxious. And it makes me anxious about how to live, so that when I die it won't be for nothing. Somehow, I've got it in my mind and heart that anxieties about my identity, my living, and my dying are addressed in the mystery of baptism.

It is not just myself I'm concerned about. I'm also concerned about my loved ones. In that concern, I find myself exactly where my parents were when I first was baptized. At my baptism, my parents made a declaration that is important, but hard to truly make. They declared that I didn't belong to them, I belong to God. At my baptism, they had to let me go. Of course, they got me back to raise. Their grip on me was, and still is, a good one, and is a grip I'm grateful for. Still, they knew that their grip would not last. It can not. They had to place me in God's hands.

And I have to do that too. I have to do that with my own children. And I have to do that with my parents as well. Thank God they are both still alive and well, making preparations for the 70 or so family members coming this Thanksgiving to Whinrig, their house in Montreat, with the 80th birthday of my mother and her twin being the added draw. Yet, I know that someday, I'll have to let them go, trusting that God's grip will not let them go. Baptism is an expression of trust in that grip.

This is a conversation I would love to have with Bob Walkup because I think he would have understood what I am trying to say. In fact, I think he would help me understand more of what I'm trying to say. Bob is dead now, a loss to the church because he was one of its shining servants. It isn't ideal, but I'm going to invite him into the conversation the only way I know how, and that is through some stories of his life that set up some reflections from his sermons.

Bob was one of the most eloquent preachers of my father's generation. Baptism figured prominently in his sermons too. Baptized as an infant, he had no memory of the event, but he knew all about it. He knew there was not one baptism that Sunday at the small Presbyterian Church in Senatobia, Mississippi, but two; his and his twin brother, John's. The baptisms had been delayed because his mother had nearly lost her life when they were born. A caesarean section had not gone well, and she was so dreadfully sick that when the baptisms finally took place, she couldn't hold either boy. His father, also in poor health, held both twins in his arms and another minister baptized them.

Bob's parents made promises to raise their boys in the faith, but they probably knew more of what was at stake. Because of their poor health, they probably understood better than most parents who have their children baptized how necessary it was to let their children go and entrusting their boys to God and the nurture of the church.

A few months before the baptisms, immediately following the birth of the twins, Bob's father, prominent Presbyterian minister though he was, had called his wife's father and said, "Mr. Caldwell, you had better come down here. God's gone back on me, and Margaret's going to die." Mr. Caldwell did come down, but as soon as he got off the train he shook his finger in his son in law's face and said, "Walkup, I've come down here to tell you about God. I've come down here to tell you that God doesn't go back on His own. I've known him too long, and I've known him too well." Mr. Caldwell wasn't guaranteeing that his daughter, Margaret, would live, but he was telling his son in law that it was impossible that God would let her go.

Three years after their baptism, Bob and John's father was dead. Four years after that, their mother was dead too. Seven years old, and the boys were released from the physical grip of parents who never wanted to let them go that soon. What was proclaimed at baptism better be true! The spiritual affirmation of baptism was all young Bob had to go on: God was his only parent now, the church was his family. The twins were raised by that same grandfather, Mr. Caldwell, and by their step-grandmother. She was a rather dour Calvinist who was admirable in the keeping of her duties but miserly in her affection; quite the contrast to his overly affectionate mother. Bob fiercely protected his memories of his mother; particularly the kiss Margaret planted on the back of his neck that was then washed away with alcohol to protect him from the tuberculosis that was killing her. He spent the rest of his life, he says, remembering that kiss. He knew in that kiss that he had been loved. He could not listen to Marion Anderson sing, "Sometimes I feel like a motherless child," without crying. All his life, he spent trying to understand what it means to be home, to know the kiss of God.
Fortunately for the church, somehow Bob got it. It meant a great deal to him that his grandfather, who was the affectionate one and who blessedly lived to be 84, would sometimes wipe away his tears when he was remembering his mother and say, "Margaret wanted you to be my boy," Still, he knew that no human grip can last. Bob's favorite parable was the parable of the Prodigal son, and his favorite image in that parable was the younger son being greeted home with a kiss.

Maybe you can understand now why baptism was a celebration for Bob…, and I mean a true celebration, not some trivial party. I'm talking about the kind of celebration when tears are mixed in with the laughter. I am talking about the kind of celebrations some have at Thanksgiving when there comes a point when they remember the ones who are no longer at the table. I am talking about the kind of celebration that is a Christian funeral.

A baptism and a funeral are liturgical twins. Oh, they are not identical. You can tell them apart. Even though both share the DNA of new birth and letting go, the new birth is the more obvious feature of baptism's sunny disposition, and the letting go is the more obvious feature of a funeral's more weathered look. Yet, they are twins. What is essential about one is essential about the other.
In another of his sermons, Bob talked about visiting his aunt in the big city of Memphis, and crossing the busy streets in a panic. More than once, he tried to let go and run for it, but he never could because her grip was always too firm. He went on to say that there had been a thousand times that he has tried to take his hand out of God's but God wouldn't let go. And Bob would look down and see that the hand that was holding him to protect him was pierced with a nail. God's grip is firm even in death.

I told you Bob's story because he understood the true letting go of baptism. He understood that Death is an invited guest at every child's baptism. Our eyes can be so focused on the child we can overlook where Death is sitting in the pews, but he is there. And it is important that he is there, because right there in Death's presence, right there in his face, parents place their child in God's hands and let go. Bob understood that. He lost his parents, and four different heart attacks almost made him lose his grip on his own children. Even so, he was so full of wisdom and humor, one of the funniest men you would have ever known. He embraced life because he had faith that whether he lived or died, he belonged to God… and while his children live, and when they die, they belong to God.

Of course, at a funeral or memorial service, Death is the guest who cannot be overlooked. No one misses Death's presence. We don't have many services anymore with the casket in the sanctuary, and I think that's good. People can get so focused on the casket, they overlook the living presence of another invited guest, the one who already died, and lives again.

The presence of that other guest is what makes funerals just like baptisms. They both are of life and death… and new life importance. The same words need to be said at a funeral as were said at a baptism. This is God's child. God has a grip on that child and God has not, and will never, let go. With the tears that maybe should be in our eyes at the baptismal font, at the gravesite or columbarium wall we place a loved one not in a grave or a niche, but into the nail pierced hands of the one who accepted death… and defeated it. At the Christian funeral, knowing more that life and death are what's at stake, we say, "this child is yours. We entrust this child to your hands that will not let go."


It is hard to let go of loved ones, but when they are let go and placed in God's hands, it is something to be celebrated at both baptisms and funerals. To say what Jesus said at the cross means accepting death. But it also means accepting life with God, life even beyond death. And what is it that Jesus said on the cross? It's the same thing that we should say, either about ourselves or about another, at a baptism or a funeral, "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit." We can say that because we know God's love is a grip that will not let us go.