CHRIST CHURCH CATHEDRAL,
Hartford, Connecticut

Epiphany IABC [January 10. 1993]
Canon Richard T. Nolan

     The public high school I attended in Boston was founded in 1635. On the walls of its auditorium were names of some prominent deceased alumni, among them Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Episcopal Bishop Phillips Brooks, and George Santayana. On career days alumni addressed us in that assembly hall; I remember especially Leonard Bernstein encouraging us to consider music and His Eminence John Cardinal Wright expressing hope that we would think about ordained ministry. In the school Catalogue distributed to students each September were names of other alumni for which there was no available auditorium wall space, names such as Joseph P. Kennedy. Luminaries, past and present, seemed to be everywhere. A few catalogue pages beyond were our names, about two thousand high school boys (only boys until coeducation was established in 1972).

     From ever-present, renowned alumni names many of us absorbed an unspoken, perhaps unintended, message: "Go thou and do likewise." Graduates should expect to become, if not famous, at least a "somebody" distinguished by exceptional contributions to humanity. We should justify our existence by making a name for ourselves.

     Those four years were rough! I would leave my home each morning at 7 o'clock and return by 4, then satisfy my parents' and the school's requirement of three hours of homework five nights a week. Of my entering 9th grade class, only a third graduated. Almost not finishing because of poor work in physics and 4th year Latin, I graduated near the bottom of my class! And, all that drudgery for what, just to be a "somebody?"

     In a lighter vein I read recently about a group of college students who were trying to make a name for themselves by sliding down a 200 foot long stretch of canvas covered with multi-flavored Jell-O! These 40 scholars hoped that the world's longest Jell-O slide would earn them a place in The Guinness Book of World Records. How we try to justify ourselves, to become "somebodies," by all sorts of "good works," whether silly or serious!

     I was among those who had missed the point -- both at school and at church (where I was active as an acolyte and in the youth group). I was already a "somebody;" I just didn't know it. On June 20th, 1937, I had become somebody very special; I was named and baptized "Richard Thomas." I didn't have to make a name for myself; I had been given a name and proclaimed a somebody: a unique child of God, worthwhile and already justified.

     My rigorous schooling had not been designed to create a somebody, but to improve our minds and develop our abilities to complete difficult tasks thoroughly, and those goals were worthwhile. My mistake, along with some other students, was to think that I'd be a nobody until I had somehow achieved public recognition, perhaps a mention among celebrated alumni. I just didn't understand the significance of my baptism, my true roots and worth, until some years later.

     Christian Baptism stems from the Jewish Baptism of converts into Judaism. The ritual of immersion in water symbolized the believer's crossing of the Red Sea, an Exodus into the Promised Land, an acceptance of the heritage and hopes of the Jewish people as one's own heritage and hopes. Coming out of the water, the newly baptized was signed as God's sheep, slave and soldier by signing the forehead with a "T" - the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet representing the name of God.

     Jesus' baptism was different. Already a Jew, he accepted baptism to confer new meaning on the ritual: to manifest, to show unmistakably, his own identity as God's son before all Israel and the world. In your Baptism and mine, we too become daughters and sons of God; we become somebody special, a new identity with Jesus our brother. We are born again through and with the Risen Lord and Christ, and we are initiated into God's special family and community, the Christian Church.

     Understanding and living our baptismal identity frees us from constantly trying to justify ourselves, from endlessly trying to be a "somebody." Furthermore, we are freed from a popular astronomer's gloomy belief that "we are nothing special."

     What we do this morning is ancient, yet alive. However, for this sacrament to take hold in our lives, to acquire practical meaning for us, we must be nurtured and informed over and over again. Our Christian family and community, The Episcopal Church, provides nurture, especially through our historic Eucharistic worship, in order to reinforce that we are indeed "somebodies" - each adopted and named "In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." Thanks be to God for these holy gifts of consecrated water, bread, and wine! Amen.