A Voice From Heaven

Davis Community Church
412 C Street, Davis, California 95616
Phone: 530-753-2894, Email:
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Beloved of God, Let Us Love
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Sermon: A Voice From Heaven

Based on Matthew 3:13-17

The Reverend Patricia Hill

Sunday, January 13, 2008

Several years ago, I was working with a church youth group in New York City. Twice a month, our youth group gathered to cook dinner for a group of folks who lived in a residence program of an agency called the Neighborhood Coalition for Shelter. These folks were all formerly homeless and had mental illness as a part of the circumstances that had caused them to be homeless. The Neighborhood Coalition for Shelter identified these individuals as folks who would need some help in remaining off the streets. So they maintained a building with 90 one room apartment units. The residents had individualized contracts, enabling them to pay rent as their various jobs allowed, and conditioned on their participation in whatever program had been established to maintain their health.

When I was at this church, the residence was undergoing a renovation which put their kitchen out of commission. The local churches all agreed to host the residents for dinner one night of the week. My church took Friday nights. The youth group cooked for two of those Fridays and the deacons took the other Fridays. It was important to all of us at the church that this was not simply a soup kitchen. We didn't want to simply serve dinner to these folks and send them off. We wanted to eat with them and enjoy getting to know our guests.

Everyone, youth and residents, wore name tags. And the two groups began to relate to one another far more than anyone would have thought. One of the residents taught the youth to play poker. Another one of them would bring his guitar and the group would sing Woody Guthrie songs after dinner.

One night, while we were eating, we discovered that one of our guests, Mario, was celebrating his 60th birthday. A couple of the teenagers quickly, and not so subtly ran back into the kitchen to transform the cake we had planned for dessert into a birthday cake. While they did so, I began to make some conversation with Mario.

"You're 60 today!" I said. "I can't believe that. You don't look 60 to me."

"I sure am!" Mario retorts. "You don't believe me? I'll show you my birth certificate."

Mario reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out a large bunch of papers. He eventually locates his birth certificate and shows it to me proudly.

"Wow. You carry your birth certificate with you everywhere you go?"

"It's important," Mario says. "I have my baptismal certificate, too. Want to see my baptismal certificate?"

I said that I would. And Mario began to sift through his papers once again and proudly produced his baptismal certificate. As I admired his baptismal certificate, the teenagers arrived with his birthday cake and we all sang happy birthday to Mario.

It seems that 63 years ago, Mario was brought by his parents for baptism at an Episcopal Church on the lower East Side on New York City. Mario was just a baby, only 3 months old. I can only assume that his parents were as proud of him as I am of Emma. That they invited their family and friends. And that the congregation looked forward to welcoming this child and raising this child in God's love.

A priest took this child, Mario, into his arms, and trickled some water on his head. And perhaps those who were listening carefully heard a voice from heaven that declared, "This is my son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased." All who were present proclaimed this truth, that before time began, God loved this child. Before this child had any chance to earn that love or to achieve that love, God declared Mario to be his beloved son.

We take our understanding of baptism from this story we read today of the baptism of Jesus. We understand that through God's grace, we stand alongside Jesus as God declares, "This is my beloved child." This is our Christian identity, the Beloved of God. It is from this story that DCC gets its mission statement, "we are growing in our identities as beloved children of God." And it is the identity we proclaim for all of the world's children as we strive to become "beacons of that love to the whole world."

Of course the difficulty is that as we grow, we sometimes forget that heavenly voice and we begin to listen to other voices that confuse us. Perhaps we hear voices through children's school report cards that tell us that we are not smart enough. As teenagers, we hear voices through the cruelty of other teens that tell us that we are not cool enough--not likeable. As adults, we may hear voices that tell us that we are not successful enough or that we don't have enough money. We often hear voices through media and unkind people that tell us that our bodies are less than beautiful. Somehow God's voice gets drowned out, and we listen to these other voices, and we are tempted to forget who we are. We are tempted to forget that God and a congregation of Christians has claimed us as beloved children of God.

And, of course, we are tempted to forget that God has claimed all people as his beloved children. I'm sure if we spent some time honestly reflecting, all of us could think of someone, or perhaps even a group of people, that we might like to think, were not included under this umbrella of God's love. If we're not attentive, we may find that God's voice gets drowned out by our own, and that beacon of love shines a little less brightly for our world.

What I know of Mario's story is that he, of course, grew up. He went through the New York City school system. He finished high school. And he became a chef in a restaurant. (We eventually figured out with our dinner program that Mario was far happier if we asked him to join us in the kitchen!) And somewhere along the way, he became mentally ill. He wasn't able to hold a job. His parents were deceased. He was an only child. Unable to care for himself, and having no family to care for him, he became homeless and lived on the streets for the next 30 years.

I think of Mario living on the streets for those 30 years. I'm sure passersby called him many things. A bum. Homeless. Panhandler. I'm sure people avoided him. Avoided looking at him. We've all watched as Mario and others are declared to be less than human by our government and our society. We've all watched as our system refuses to provide the healthcare that would prevent someone like Mario from living on the streets. We watch as we under fund programs intended to provide food and shelter for a child of God such as Mario.

Even as Mario heard such voices and lived such a horror, he carried his baptismal certificate and his birth certificate in his pocket. Each paper claiming and identity for him. His birth certificate remembering his parents who named him out of love. His baptismal certificate remembering the God and the congregation who loved him and claimed him. And here we were sitting in a church. A congregation had once again acknowledged Mario's true identity and extended love and care. This one, this beloved baby, this restaurant chef, this mentally ill homeless man, this rescued one now 60 years old sitting in front of me, this one is a beloved child of God .

As we walk through our days this week. As we hear others judge us. Let us listen for God's voice instead. As we hear ourselves disparage another, let us listen for God's voice instead. Jesus walked forward into the Jordan River, as we walk to the baptismal font, as we bring our children to the font, and as we reaffirm our baptism. John put his hands on Jesus, and all those who listened carefully then and all who listen carefully now will hear a voice from heaven say, "This is my son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased." Amen.

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