“Tell it again, Ammachi! Tell it again!”
Immigrant families live on story. At least, that was my experience growing up. My grandmother—my Ammachi—left India to join our family in West Virginia when I was 2 years old. And she brought with her a gift: our family’s story. It was a gift more precious than gold or frankincense or myrrh not because the story of our family was particularly remarkable but because it was our story—the story of our family.
In the wintertime, we’d gather by the fireplace to shelter for what passes for cold weather down south. And we’d ask her to tell us the stories again. “Tell it again, Ammachi! Tell it again!”
And so she would tell us the stories again, even though we knew them well. She would tell us some stories reaching far back into the past: about St Thomas the Apostle arriving in India; about Kerala’s Orthodox Christians rejecting the colonizers’ premise that a bishop in Europe was the rightful head of their church.
And she would tell us some stories that were nearer at hand: about how she met my grandfather while studying English, about how they waited 7 years for permission to get married, and then left a newly-independent India to travel the world.
Now, I don’t know how many of those stories were “fact” versus fiction. We didn’t ask her to repeat them because we thought they were some kind of technically flawless reconstructions of events. We asked her to repeat them because the act of rehearsing the stories was a reliable reminder of who we were and where we came from. Every time we asked her to tell us again—every time we rehearsed the story of our family—we experienced it anew, and it changed us.
“Tell it again, Amma! Tell it again!”
We ask the same thing of our Mother the Church, as we sit at her feet through the turning of the seasons. The rhythm of the Church year is a rhythm of rehearsal. When we gather for worship, like we are here today, we’re rehearsing the story of where we came from, so that we can remember who we are, so that we can experience it again, and ultimately so that we can be changed by that story.
We are rehearsing a story first told by prophets who were moved by God’s Spirit to recount what they saw. It’s a story told and retold by generations of our forebears, sharing what they received and experiencing it anew, weaving their own stories into that of the Church, as they cried, “Tell us again! Tell us again!”
It’s the same story we retold on Christmas just weeks ago: a story of God’s own love coming into our midst, of the Creator’s infinite and uncontainable being somehow enclosed in the very finite and created womb of a woman in Galilee.
And it’s the same story we retell again here today, on the Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord: a story of that Divine Word, now fully human, entering into the waters of chaos with us, to draw us to God and to make us new.
This story stretches from the primordial waters of creation; through the hopes of Abraham and Sarah,and the cries of King David, Isaiah, and John; right into the muddy stream of the Jordan River that day, when Jesus of Nazareth stepped into the water and was revealed as God’s Son—the Beloved.
Countless generations have told and retold that story since then, and each time they do, they experience it again. They rehearsed the story in the Sacrament of Baptism, which we are here to celebrate today, as they followed Jesus into the waters of the Jordan, where they were made new by the Spirit and told who they are—God’s child—the Beloved—in whom God is well-pleased.
And we become heirs to that story in Baptism too. When we rehearse this story of God entering Creation, we experience the story anew, and it changes us. We too are reborn in the river with Jesus. We are assured and reminded of where we came from and who we are: the Beloved Child that pleases God.
This story isn’t just some “cleverly-devised myth” to make us feel good, nor is it just a clinically scientific record of events. Mere histories don’t get treasured like a family heirloom and passed down with intimate care like the story we celebrate today. And quaint fictions don’t transform us when we tell them like our mother and fathers have been remade by our story today.
Our story of God entering our midst to restore and unite us—our story is a reliable, Spirit-breathed message that we tell and retell because of its power to change us. The Church—the Body of Christ—has testified to this power among countless generations of our forebears in faith. And we receive this priceless inheritance when we are baptized into that body, when we sit at their feet and say, “Tell it again! Tell it again!”
Today, Clara, you become an heir to that story with us. Today in Baptism, you receive this treasured inheritance. This story will change you. It will intertwine with your story and unite you to Christ, who entered Creation to make each one of us new. And every time you rehearse this story, you will be reminded of where you came from and who you are: that you are God’s Child, the Beloved, in whom God is well-pleased.
Remember this story and the love that surrounds you. And rehearse it with us as we tell and retell it again and again; so that one day you can pass on this precious inheritance when people ask you, “Tell it again! Tell it again!”