Psalm 16
Romans 6:3-8

So a baby baptism. Isn’t that a joyous thing? This is new life time of the year and what a beautiful celebration of new life and new life in Christ. Your parents, Sabelle, have chosen to claim you as a child of God , graced by the gift of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Their prayer, their commitment to you, we heard them say it, is to teach you and nurture you so that you will come to a day when you will make the decision for yourself to claim Jesus Christ as your savior. These folks (the congregation) promised as well, speaking on behalf of the whole church.
As you grow, you will be searching and discovering who you are. I’m sure your parents will remind you.
I did to our kids as they were growing up. “Remember who you are,” I’d sometimes say to our children when as kids they headed out the door and into the world. “Remember who you are.” They were Nabors and they had only to take a good look at themselves in a mirror to know they were indelibly marked as Nabors and, I hope, to remember that they were taught our family’s values and expectations of them. They were also Christian; they were taught about love and sin and grace and forgiveness and justice and hope and compassion. I figured that if they remembered who they were, they couldn’t go wrong.
Remember who you are. Good advice.
As you grow up you’ll be trying to figure out your own identity. It is sometimes difficult in modern life amid conflicting claims and messages. There are plenty of folks and philosophies out there just willing to tell us who we are.
Who am I? we say.
“You are mostly a sexual being,” say many of the movies, soaps, commercials and songs. “Your body is the most important thing you possess so love it, decorate it, display it, slim it, trim it, show it off, soften it, tan it, fragrance it, dress it alluringly, make it desirable,.”
Who am I?
“You are mostly brain, mostly a rational, thinking, reasoning being, writing papers, absorbing facts, demonstrating a grasp of knowledge, analyzing, applying that knowledge” says much of our educational and academic system.
Who am I?
“You are mostly a maker and spender of money, a consumer, a producer of goods and services, a credit card holder. You are what you earn and what you can buy; our economy depends on your spending habits,” advertisers and economists tell us.
Who am I?
“You are someone who gets your identity and shapes your life by emulating celebrities, what they do, what they wear, how they live their lives,” pop culture tells us.
Who am I?
“You are mostly a self-centered, autonomous, self-made being. Look out for number one. Look within yourself for the answers to all questions, for all truth,” the modern secular world tells us.
Who am I? is a critical question for you as you grow up. It is also a critical lifelong question and plenty of folks are trying to give us an answer.
But I say to you, your family wants for you to get your answers from God. That’s why they brought you for baptism.
Who am I?
Christian baptism says that you are God’s own and here we make that claim for you publicly and permanently. Baptism says you are somebody, not because you are a sexual being, a brain, a consumer, a celebrity imitation, an ego, but because you are God’s, because Christ gave himself for you, because you are a little lamb of his own flock.
Who am I?
Baptism says you belong and this is where you belong, in a church because you have been properly initiated into the church, that being Christian and being a part of the body of Christ (no matter what anybody else tries to tell you) are not to be separated. It says you belong in the faith community and you are on a life-long journey and they share that journey with you, love and support you on your way.
Who am I?
Baptism says you are someone who acknowledges that the world’s ways are not often God’s ways and neither are yours, that you will sin and fall short of your high calling as a child of the heavenly Father and know it and can’t clean up you act on your own, you can’t clean it up except by the saving, water-cleansing power of Jesus Christ. Baptism says you have the chance in Christ to be cleansed of old ways and being made anew in God’s.
Who am I?
Baptism says you are a child of God, loved and forgiven paid for by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. It says that you are God’s forever. God keeps what God purchases and on the cross an awesome price was paid.
Because of that, you can count on the grace of God to be with you.
In times of great doubt, when struggling through his dark nights of the soul, Martin Luther would sometimes touch his forehead and say to himself, “Martin, be calm. You are baptized.” In times of doubt, inner turmoil, hopelessness and confusion you might do well to touch your forehead and recall that you are baptized and remember who you are.
When you are baptized and you remember who you are, you may hear God calling you to share even your toys, to reach out to classmates who are left out or bullied, to take a stand as a teenager against something you know is wrong, though popular, to be tender with someone who is different., to choose to do something special with your life. You may find it less important to be body, brain, ego, consumer and more important to be a Christian. You may be in church on Sunday mornings when other children are watching cartoons and eating donuts, in church mission trips cooking breakfast when other teens are sleeping in. After all, you are baptized.
Many voices will try to tell you who you are, but if you want to know who you really are, remember you are baptized; when doubts come, and they will, reclaim your baptism in him.
We have just celebrated Easter, a time when little girls traditionally dress in pretty dresses and hunt Easter eggs. You will come one day to know that Easter means so much more than this. You will know it as a season of recalling what Christ did for us. We have just remembered how he was nailed to the cross, how he died and was buried. How he rose again to offer us new life. We have just celebrated the joy of the resurrection.
The Apostle Paul says that when we are baptized in Christ, we enter with him into his death, burial and rise to new life with him. That seems an awful thing to say to a young child, I pray that someday you will come to understand that the simple gesture of baptism means you are raised into new life in Christ. You enter a world where you now live with Christ and Christ with you.
Our granddaughter just turned sweet sixteen yesterday. She has been maturing and discovering who she is – part of which is that she’s a newly licensed driver and excited owner of a “new to her” car. For her birthday, her family gave her things for the car, including the most essential -some money – in bills. Have you seen some of the new bills, colorful, redesigned and of course, watermarked?
With fine quality paper and with money to prevent it from being counterfeited, there is a watermark. On fine paper the watermark usually serves as a brand. On money the watermark establishes true worth, its value; establishes it as genuine, not to be duplicated; on stationery a watermark gives special identity, sometimes it indicates to whom the stationery belongs. It says that this is the genuine article, it is fine, distinctive. The watermark is an identifier and can’t be altered.
Identity, uniqueness, worth, value, belonging.
Sabelle, the water of the baptism into Christ has been placed on your head and you have been indelibly and forever watermarked. And the people of God said, “Amen.”

Sermon preached by Dr. Charlotte D. Nabors
Central Congregational Church, Dallas, Texas
March 30, 2008

Inspired and informed by William Willimon’s Remember Who You Are. Baptism - A Model for Christian Living.