The Best Jubilee of All Time | A Sermon for the Baptism of my Godson
A Sermon by the Reverend Mother Crystal Hardin on the Fifth Sunday of Easter (C) for The Baptism of Byron Warner Franklin at Saint Michael’s Episcopal Church in Arlington, Virginia, May 15, 2022.
Psalm 148; Revelation 21:1-6
In the wee hours of the morning, Roy Thigpen gets a call from his lookout at Manci’s Antique Club tavern in Daphne, Alabama.
“Roy, grab your camera and get over here. We’re about to have the best Jubilee of all time.”
“How do you know?” asks Roy.
“Eels, Roy, eels. I swear I’ve never seen anything like it. The beach is crawling with them.”
Local seers and scientists agree. Tonight’s the night. The seers see it in their tea leaves, read it in their cards, feel it in their bones. The scientists say conditions are right. Incoming tide. Northeast wind. Tepid weather. Plentiful eels (which do happen to be advance scouts for everything else in Mobile Bay).
Tonight’s the night. Flounder, stingray, shrimp, mullet, and crab are going to creep, flop, wiggle, and crawl up in the shallows and on to the beach until the tide takes them back out or people gather them up.
The whole event is called the Alabama Jubilee. It happens along a 20-mile stretch of beach on the east side of Mobile Bay in the Gulf of Mexico and has been happening there for as long as the most ancient local can remember. It comes in the middle of the night, off and on from May to October, three times a week, once a month, once a summer, or, perhaps, not at all. You can watch for it for weeks then turn your back for an hour and miss it.
Pictures of the event record women in curlers and nightgowns knee deep in water and in shrimp. Men who have obviously run from the local watering hole to the Bay’s edge, disheveled and tipsy yet perfectly capable of pulling flounder one after another into large, plastic tubs. Teenagers arriving in beat-up pickup trucks. No one’s going hungry tonight. Everybody’s hollering.
Praise him, heaven of heavens,
and you waters above the heavens.
Let them praise the Name of the Lord;
For he commanded and they were created.
Praise the Lord from the earth,
you sea-monsters and all deeps;
Praise Him! (Psalm 148)
This joyous overflowing of praise and thanksgiving is, of course, from our psalm this morning. I just thought I should clarify that lest you think the community of saints jostling shoulder to shoulder in lower Alabama sing this song of praise as they pluck flounder from the water.
And yet, as young and old, black and white, rich and poor, sober and less so, run towards the water’s edge prepared as best they can be to receive the Bay’s bounty, the hubbub is, in its own way, a song of praise and thanksgiving.
Kings of the earth and all peoples,
Princes and all rulers of the world;
Young men and maidens,
old and young together.
Praise Him!
Hallelujah! (Psalm 148)
Here our psalmist brims over with elation and euphoria and I can’t help but to picture him with closed eyes and open arms, face turned heavenward as the Jubilee’s riches flop and froth at his feet. The water overflowing with God’s creation.
Jubilee! Praise the Lord!
This morning, we will welcome Byron Warner into the household of God. We will bring him to a water filled with riches and sanctify him through those same waters as God’s own, forevermore. God will claim him; God, who has been and will remain in mad pursuit of Warner, and of all of us, since before time as we know it and until the end of time. God who offers abundant riches for all who are willing to pay attention.
In Baptism, we make a commitment to God to let God have His way with us. We commit to offering our very selves to God’s service as members incorporate in the mystical body of God’s Son. We make vows –renunciations of evil and promises of deep goodness, of right relationship with God and all of God’s created.
This morning, Warner’s parents and godparents and all you who are witnesses to this blessed event, will make these vows on his behalf.
Of course, not all churches practice infant baptism. The church I grew up in certainly did not. And yet, infant baptism is a profound testament to God’s absolute grace. In the words of Robert Farrer Capon:
[Baptism] says, “It is done.” It doesn’t say, after this if you do something, then you’ll be okay. [Instead,] it says, “You are okay now, not because you did something or thought something or figured something out, but you’re okay now because Jesus says so” [2]
Jesus says so.
Perhaps in the case of Warner you believe what I’m saying –that he’s okay now. It’d be hard not to. But what about each one of us who are a little world-wearier than dear Warner. Are we okay?
I’d ask you to consider this: that Warner was loved before he was even known to us. And when he became known to us, we loved him all the more. We look at him and we see perfection in the form of a jolly, spicy peanut, one whose future is unknown to us and yet what we know is this: we will love him, adore him, all the days of our lives. And, if we feel this way about Warner, how must God feel about him?
And, when we feel this way about Warner and all the little ones in our lives, let us be reminded that God loves each of us with the same and even more wild abandon.
At the risk of putting myself out of a job, I’ll say this: it’s not religion or any of its extensions that makes you okay with God. It’s God who makes you okay with God. God does it. The Sacrament of Baptism will not cause Warner to be okay in the eyes of God. It will not dispense the love of God where before it was not. It will not perfect him, insulate him, or save him from the trials and tribulations of a life well-lived even though I wish it would. But it will act as a road map home.
You are okay, it whispers. You are beloved, it pronounces. Before you were born I knew you, it says, and I will never leave you, it promises.
“Here is the world,” writes Buechner, “Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Do not be afraid.”
For see,
The home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them.
Do not be afraid, God is a God with us and for us.
In Baptism, God marks us as His own. Forever. Gives us a new family. Gives us a name. Beloved. Quite apart from what we do or don’t do, we are loved in the deepest, truest sense. This doesn’t start at our Baptism, but Baptism names the reality of this unexpected, unwarranted, unending grace.
JUBILEE!!! It’s a shout eagerly awaited every summer by residents of the Gulf Coast. It’s the sound of abundance, of full bellies and a wild ride, and it’s for anyone who will come and claim it. Jubilee!
Southern Living Magazine reminds us that “The name jubilee is derived from the Hebrew word for a trumpet made from a ram’s horn, which was used to signal a kind of homecoming” [3].
Warner, welcome home. Welcome to the household of God. May you always be held by arms that love you completely and unconditionally. And may this day and each day of your life serve as a reminder of God’s abundant grace and unceasing devotion to each of us.
Fellow beloveds, we’re about to have the best Jubilee of all time.
So, come on out. Come on out in your curlers, your waders, your pickup trucks. Come on out from the watering holes. Come on out from bed, from work, from begging, from dreaming. Come on out, all ye servants of the Lord. The time is right. The Jubilee is here. Freedom and forgiveness at the ready for all who would claim it, teeming at your feet, life overflowing from all sides.
Amen.
[1] William Allen, “If You Blink, You May Miss the Alabama Jubilee,” 7 May 1972, archived at https://www.nytimes.com/1972/05/07/archives/if-you-blink-you-may-miss-the-alabama-jubilee-along-the-east-coast.html.
[2] “The Message of Jesus: An Interview with Robert F. Capon,” Grace Communion International, https://www.gci.org/articles/interview-with-robert-f-capon.
[3] Rick Bragg, “The Jubilee: Mobile Bay’s Summer Seafood Phenomenon,” Southern Living Magazine, https://www.southernliving.com/travel/alabama/mobile-bay-jubilee.
