Making a Promise to God:
Honoring our Teachers, Youth Leaders, and Graduates

At 11:00 today we have the baptisms of Alexis Connerty and Fiona Van Nice.

Last Thursday the children in our St. Chrysostom’s Day School were putting on their play, out in the Parish House, The Grouchy Ladybug by Eric Carle:

"But just then a grouchy ladybug flew in from the right. It too saw the aphids ..."

Ladybugs have to learn to get along with other ladybugs who share the same leaf and respect one another and share their aphids, and we human beings need to learn the same things.

The great strong simple point of baptism is to tell us God does exist, there is a God, and God is here, and loves you – and promises to be with you always, present with you, loving you. And God calls you – calls each one of us – to love one another, and to love and show compassion for and respect and care for those in any need.

At baptism the whole congregation makes a promise – long time parishioners and newcomers, all who take part in this service, are asked the question:

Will you who witness these vows do all in your power to support these children in their life in Christ?

(Book of Common Prayer, page 303)

And we all answer “we will.” We base a good deal of what we do in St. Chrysostom’s in our worship and education on fulfilling that promise. We base a good deal of our mission strategy on keeping that promise. It is a promise made by the whole congregation – a promise to provide a welcome into community, a welcome to worship – coming to the altar for communion or blessing, learning prayers and hymns – a welcome to education, learning the stories of Jesus, a welcome to learning to pray, learning to serve.

We honor our high school and college graduates today, and it is very good to remember that – how many years from now? seventeen or eighteen years from now – we will be celebrating these children’s graduations. A five-to-ten-year goal, a twenty-year goal (speaking of their high school graduation) for St. Chrysostom’s Chicago is precisely to provide a substantive education program to support our children in their life in Christ; that woven through soccer and piano, biology and literature, trips to everywhere from China to you name it, will be coming here to the altar in worship, and learning the Bible stories, and what it means to make ethical decisions, and what it means to pray, and how we discern what God wants us to do and be in our lives.

One of our parents asked me to say, in layman’s terms, what Godparents do? How do Godparents, parents, this congregation support these children – all our children? Love them. Take an interest, year by year. Remember them. I love books. Encourage them to be readers, give them books. Make sure worship and education are here for them at each stage of growing up along the way – available and welcoming and loving.  

Today we celebrate the end of our Christian Education program academic year. We honor our church school teachers and youth program leaders and those who make our adult education programs happen. We are so grateful for your faithful leadership.

Today we honor our choirs too. You lead us in praise of God, making an offering of great beauty to God.

Eve and I are off to my Princeton reunion at the end of the month, and I was checking out programs online, and by accident ended up in last year’s schedule when a production was offered of the fascinating-sounding, two-hour summary of Wagner’s Ring cycle set in Texas, Das Barbecü – complete in the old announcement with umlaut on the ü. Well, the ladybugs in Wagner’s Ring certainly disrespect one another and are not about to share the aphids or anything else found on their leaf, certainly not the ring – as a matter of fact, the whole tree goes up in smoke at the end. We are having a barbecue here today to celebrate the end of church school – and may it be a sign of cooking-up caring for one another.

Perhaps better, thinking of Jesus in the Easter story in John, waiting on the lakeshore in Galilee with fish cooking on a fire – may it be a sign of God feeding us, giving us the love of Jesus to give. The most important gifts God gives us by the Holy Spirit are the wisdom and strength and courage to love with Jesus’ love.

Jesus prayed: “The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one…”

In John’s Gospel the glory of God – God’s very nature – is the self-giving love we see in Jesus. And we see that especially when we see Jesus lay down his life for us in love, which is why we always keep the cross before us.

“I have given them.” Jesus, give us the glory of your self-giving love, love that costs something, love that bears all things – given to us always to give away. 

“that they may be one…” Why do we try to understand other Christians? Find what we hold in common with them? Love them? It is to fulfill the prayer of Jesus – it is something meant to be at the heart of our mission.

Last Thursday was Ascension Day, the fortieth day of Easter, and next Sunday is Pentecost, the fiftieth day of Easter, when we celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit, who is God present with us, within us, unseen. In St. Thomas Aquinas, the first gift of the Holy Spirit is wisdom, the wisdom to know how to love, when to love, how to show compassion, how to reach out, how to hold, sometimes how to let go.   

In the Book of Acts we are told the apostles spent the nine days between Ascension and Pentecost in Jerusalem in prayer. We are in those nine days today – I have a special love for this time of prayer.

We are given for our Gospel today the great passage from the 17^th chapter of John, from the prayer of Jesus the night before he died. It is out of order, on the face of it, in the chronology of the story of Jesus, but it is just the prayer for us to be given in these nine days of prayer.

Jesus prayed: “that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them."

May the love at the heart of Jesus, the love between Jesus and the one he called Father, the heart of his prayer, be in us, be given to us – Christ in us – the love of Jesus given by the Holy Spirit – that we may love God, and love one another, and love those in need in the city and world – a great, strong, simple, clear mission, given to us.   

(This sermon was preached by the Rev. Raymond Webster, Rector, in St. Chrysostom’s Church, Chicago, Illinois, on Sunday, May 20, 2007, The Seventh Sunday of Easter Day: The Sunday After Ascension Day, to celebrate the end of the Church School year.)