The Grace in Which We Stand | A Sermon on NYC Fire Hydrants, Holy Baptism, & Being OK
A Sermon by the Reverend Mother Crystal J. Hardin on The First Sunday after Pentecost (C), June 12, 2022.
Romans 5:1-5
In his Epistle to the Romans, Saint Paul assures us that “since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand” (Rom. 5:1-2).
This grace in which we stand.
And I can’t help but think of a story I read recently in the Guardian. A story I’d like to share with you now.
Edwin Canela sits outside on a white chair on a north Manhattan sidewalk, with an old boombox to his right, and a mini barbeque to his left. He watches on, and smiles as children and adults play in a busted fire hydrant.
He remembers doing this, too, years ago as a kid with his two brothers. He may no longer be dancing in front of hydrants himself, but it is still a summer tradition he cherishes.
“If not, we’re burning up in here,” he says. “Plus, it freshens the air, and the kids love it.”
This from an article titled, “It’s always been there for us: a love letter to New York’s fire hydrants.” [1]
Accompanying the article are numerous and vivid photos showcasing the sheer joy and relief provided by these improvised urban sprinklers.
“Kids dart in and out of the water squealing with happiness, delighting in the thrill of the temporary cool, while mini rainbows rise up to the backdrop of concrete buildings and fire escapes.” [2]
The whole neighborhood, the entire community, taking to the sidewalks and the streets. Domino tables are set up with men gathered round. Intergenerational groups of people enjoying food and cold drinks. Kids on bikes, on foot, slung across makeshift chairs or bouncing a basketball through the spray.
Everyone coming as they are to gather at what one man in the article calls “the poor people’s pool.”
No dress codes. No entry fees. No judgment. Just a neighborhood transformed. Just sweet, sweet unmitigated relief.
Grace upon grace.
This morning, we will welcome three children into the household of God. Miles, Louisa, and Anna. Today they will encounter the waters of baptism, another poor man’s pool to be sure, one that requires nothing of them, nothing of any of us, other than to claim our belongingness to God.
Today they will be sanctified through the waters of baptism as God’s own forevermore. No dress codes. No entry fees. No judgment. Just transformation. Just sweet, sweet unmitigated relief.
God will claim them; God who has been, and will remain in, mad pursuit of them since before time as we know it and until the end of time. The same God pursues us all.
In Baptism, we make a commitment to God to let God have God’s 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 God’s created.
This morning, the parents and godparents of Miles, Louisa, and Anna will make these vows on their behalf –as all you who are witnesses to this blessed event will reaffirm your own vows and make a vow to support these little ones in their lives with Christ.
Of course, not all churches practice infant baptism. The church I grew up in certainly did not. And yet, the baptism of the very young 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” [3].
Jesus says so.
This is the grace in which we stand.
Perhaps in the case of little ones, whether the three we will baptize this morning or the babies and children in your own life, perhaps in their case you believe what I’m saying –that they’re okay now. It’d be hard not to.
But what about each one of us who are a little world-wearier than the youngest among us. Are we okay?
I ask you now to think about someone in your life that you love as close to unconditionally as is humanly possible. Perhaps it’s your child or your grandchild. Perhaps a niece or nephew. Even a godchild. Think of them. Hold their name in your mouth and the feeling of loving them in your heart.
And now I ask you to consider this: that person –your person –was loved before they were even known to you. And when they became known to you, I’m certain you loved them all the more, sometime so much that it felt nearly impossible to contain within the confines of your earthly body.
And if we feel this way about our person, our people, how must God feel about them?
And, when we feel this way about the little ones in our lives, let us be reminded that God loves each of us with the same and even more wild abandon. It’s true.
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 Miles, Louisa, or Anna (or any of us) 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 them, insulate them, or save them from the trials and tribulations of a life well-lived (even though I wish it would with all my heart). 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 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 in which we stand.
Looking through those photographs of New York City –some going back as far as the 50s –it struck me how universal joy is, relief is, grace is. How universal the will to live and, sometimes, how hard fought the right to live.
New York city fire hydrant culture is strong and yet so are the forces of racism, oppression, poverty, gentrification, and classism. Just as all forces of evil remain with us always, despite the grace in which we stand.
Various laws have sought to police black joy, poor joy, in the streets of New York for a very long time, as hydrants began to be locked down and predominately black neighborhoods policed more heavily. Of course, the claim was water waste when really it was something else entirely.
Tension and violence sometimes replacing the joy of a community gathered at the water’s edge, seeking relief from the heat of the day (and relief from life’s unfair and unwarranted hardships).
What does this have to do with Baptism? Everything.
In Baptism, we are reminded that we are okay. Yes. And we are reminded of God’s abundant love and unending grace for us and for all God’s children without exception. In fact, they belong to us. We belong to one another. Are entrusted to one another.
Yes, the forces of evil remain with us despite the grace in which we stand; and yet, they do not get the final word. They cannot have our hope, our faith, our joy. They cannot separate us from the love of God, from the grace in which we stand.
Baptism asks nothing of us, except, of course, that it asks everything. Where there is joy, may we shield it. Where there is grief, may we move toward it. Where there is injustice, may we work to end it. Where there is hate, may we be instruments of peace.
I’d like to end as that same article detailing the history of New York City’s fire hydrants ends:
Looking again at these photos from the NYTimes archives it can be clearly seen “how drastically water can transform a neighborhood that’s desperate for relief.” [4]
In a world desperate for relief, may it be so.
Amen.
*Image from WikiCommons
[1] Rose Hackman, ‘It’s always been there for us’: a love letter to New York’s fire hydrants, The Guardian, 28 July 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/28/new-york-city-fire-hydrants-love-letter.
[2] Ibid.
[3] “The Message of Jesus: An Interview with Robert F. Capon,” Grace Communion International,https://www.gci.org/articles/interview-with-robert-f-capon.
[4] Jeff Giles, “Fire Hydrants Have Been New York’s Cool Solution for 100 Years,” 19 Aug. 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/19/nyregion/fire-hydrants-new-york-vintage-photos.html.
