This is what this blog is all about. This won’t make the sermon. It isn’t even close to having anything to do with Trinity Sunday. I was looking for a quote that I remember (at least I think I remember) from this book. I spent time leafing through the pages, just trying to find that line I so wanted–and really do need–but to no avail.
Instead I came across this.
My church has picked up the idea of building advertising into its return address, so in the upper lefthand corner of its envelopes the name of the church is now followed by “Committed to Social Justice and Spiritual Growth.” Fancifully (but only partly so) I have found myself playing with an alternative wording that would read, “Committed to Making People Real,” for that is not a bad way of describing the religious project; the effort to transcend phoniness. The whole object of religion, it might be siad, is to enable people to come as close as possible to God’s infinite reality. That should be easy, because God is so real that we should respond like iron filings to his magnetic pull. Actually, though, it is difficult, because we are so unreal that there is not much in us for God’s pull to grab hold of. Would it not be refreshing to learn from a church’s return address that it was “Committed to Making People Less Shallow?”
Huston Smith. Why Religion Matters. pg 231.
We do baptisms in the Wando River. We walk out into that river, staring across to the Wando Shipping Terminal. We know that at some point that river just drops off–into deep, deep water! We don’t go out THAT far. It would be too terrifying to go THAT far out.
Perhaps baptism is the symbol of our faith. Even when we don’t know it.
Maybe we should start doing deep-water baptisms!
Didn't Make the Sermon 