[On this Sunday, we baptized Julia Elizabeth Cheely and Kosorochukwu Uchenna Ukegbu.]

Well, I’m forty-six years old, and I’m getting gray (fast!), so I’m hoping that I’m old enough and gray enough for me to get away with saying things like, "The trouble with kids today . . . ." Only I feel like I should say it with an "old man" accent: "The trouble with kids today . . . ."

Okay, so here goes: the trouble with kids today (well, some kids today) is that all too often they grow up living small lives, lives that don’t transcend the boundaries of their own experience, lives that are about only themselves: "It’s all about me." Their perspective does not go beyond themselves as individuals. They can’t see beyond a circle of light that surrounds them like a spotlight. Their lives are small.

So, when as far as young people can see is the limits of their individual experience, when their view of history begins and ends in their small circle of light, why would we expect them to live as if they were part of a larger, more expansive worldview? Why would we expect them not to be selfish? Why would we expect them not to fall prey to the immediate gratification of drugs, and sex, and a life devoted to the acquisition of wealth and power?

When that happens, when a child grows up with a worldview no larger than himself or herself, it is our fault. We adults, we who are old enough to say, "The trouble with kids today," we are to blame. Because it is incumbent upon us to raise our children to understand that they are part of something so much bigger than themselves.

That is what we are about today. Baptism is about being incorporated into a community that has an expansive worldview. And to get a glimpse of that worldview, we need to understand some history that is outside our individual circle of light. So here goes quick review of some important history.

Human beings had always been a contrary sort, disobeying God from the very beginning. (You remember that incident in the Garden of Eden). But God didn’t give up on them. God chose the Israelites to be God’s special people, and promised to make of them a great nation with a land of their own, and to make them a shining example, a "light to the nations." Then, when they had gotten themselves into a pickle in Egypt, God delivered them from slavery, and led them to the Promised Land.

At that time, they still thought of God as "their" god, as belonging to them, being their particular protector, their bodyguard. They compared Their God to the gods of other tribes and nations. There were lots of gods, they believed, but their God was the best.

But their God was also pretty odd. All the other gods treated human beings like slaves and demanded that these worthless humans serve them in blind obedience. How the puny humans felt about it didn’t matter; how a slave feels is not of great consequence to the master. But the God of Israel was different. The Israelite’s God said that human beings were wonderful, were "good, very good." And their God, the Israelite God, wanted them to be in a loving relationship with God, to make history together in the context of this loving relationship. And their God made demands other gods didn’t make. Demands for justice. Demands for compassion. Demands that the society protect those who could not protect themselves, the so-called "widows and orphans."

But they didn’t listen very well. They kept being rebellious. They turned against God. They betrayed God’s trust; and they turned against one another.

And then one day, a long time ago, almost six hundred years before Christ was born, their worldview was crushed. A Babylonian king named Nebbuchadnezzar utterly defeated them, and they were forced into exile in Babylon. For three generations they wept and remembered their homeland. They were, of course, crushed that their God had been totally "whupped." The neighbor’s god had beaten their God up. And they were terribly afraid, because Jerusalem was where their God lived, and they didn’t see any way they could worship their God if they were somewhere else.

And then an amazing thing happened as a result of that defeat, that humiliating exile. Somehow they realized that their God didn’t just live in Jerusalem; they could worship God even in Babylon. In fact, they came to see that their God didn’t live in any one place; their God was the God of the universe. And, in exile, they realized that their God wasn’t the biggest, baddest god of all the gods. Their God was the only God; the gods of the other tribes and nations didn’t exist. Their God was the God — who created everything. Everything.

And, in the trauma of the exile, they began to realize that "their" God wasn’t theirs at all. God is the God of all people, tribes, languages, and nations. Through the trauma of the exile, they had realized that they were part of something bigger than they had ever imagined, bigger than they could imagine.

After that traumatic, illuminating exile, God called this defeated, disgraced people back home to Jerusalem. "I will restore you," God said, and the Creator of the Universe wooed them home with love songs.

But they still rebelled, still disobeyed. And one day, about three hundred fifty years later, a wild man named John came out of the wilderness, hollering for them to repent, to change their ways. And he baptized in the River Jordan, and many thought he was the one to make things right with God once and for all. But he said, "No, one is coming after me."

And then he came. He went out to be baptized by John — and the heavens were torn apart. He was not what anyone expected, but through him, the barrier between heaven and earth was ripped open. Through him, God would enter the dangerous world; God would pursue us, chase after us, into the perilous enterprise of history. And you know the rest of the story.

That’s a very brief overview of the history of ancient Israel. I told you it would be about things that happened long before we stood in our individual spotlights. And I can hear some young people complaining about being subjected to a history lesson. "Why should we have to study what dead people did?" they’ll say. "What has what they did have to do with us?"

Our obligation to these children, beginning today, is to let them know, in a thousand ways, that the story of the ancient Israelites is not a dead people’s story; it is not "their" story; it is "our" story. They weren’t "those" people; they are "our" people. This is our story.

"Well, it’s still about what dead people did," I can hear a child say. Well, in some sense, yes. But in another sense, we must tell them, make real for them, that this will be the story that forms the fabric of their lives. Because sometime in their lives, these children will find themselves in bondage. Not in Egypt, but maybe to drugs, or alcohol, or affluence, or an eating disorder, or a need for approval, or fear, or insecurity, or illness — I don’t know, but to something. And then they need to remember their story, our story, to remember that God has delivered our people before, and God will deliver them.

Sometime in their lives, they will be tempted to steal, or lie, or to seek revenge, or to act out of self-interest at the expense of those who can’t defend themselves. Have any of us not faced those temptations? They will need to remember their story; that God demands justice, and compassion, and protection for those who can’t protect themselves.

At some point in their lives, they will feel crushed, defeated. They will be in exile; they will feel far from God, and it will seem that all hope is lost. They need to remember our story — that sometimes in exile is where we get our clearest picture of God, and where we learn the most. And they need to remember that if they stay faithful, God will sing them love songs to woo them home.

There will come a time in their lives when these children will think, "Surely God could not love that person or that group." Have any of us been immune to such thoughts? They will have to remember that we are God’s, but God isn’t ours. This is the God of the Universe. And this God is bigger than they can imagine.

They will be human beings, which seems to entail rebellion against God as a requirement to be in the species, so they need to remember a wild man walking out of the desert and shouting for them to change, to turn around, to repent. And, maybe most of all, they need to remember how desperately God loves them, how much God is willing to sacrifice to be with them. The need to remember that a man came, God came, and the boundary between heaven and earth wasn’t carefully divided; it was torn apart, ripped open.

When they are tempted to go for immediate gratification or the avoidance of responsibility (sex, drugs, lies, cheating — we all know what that’s all about), they need to remember that their history doesn’t consist of their little moment in time, their small circle of light; their history, our story, begins like this: "In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light."

Our job with respect to these children does not end with this baptism; it only begins. We baptize them into meaning too deep to fathom, into grandeur too great to behold, into love too profound to ever exhaust; we baptize them today into something unimaginably huge. We cannot let them live small lives, and we must let them see us living lives illumined by the light of Christ.