Irvin and our Original Oneness: May 17, 2026

Irvin and our Original Oneness

Seventh Sunday after Easter

May 17, 2026

John Bellaimey; St. John’s Linden Hills, Minneapolis

 

Irvin and our Original Oneness

 

I bow to the love of God above us, within us, and between us.  Amen.

 

Twenty-odd years ago, the mother of this morning’s featured guest volunteered in the nursery here. Isabel is the youngest of the three children of Diane Adair and Wayne Jenkins, and has grown up to be a doula, a birth consultant, and nurse. A PhD midwife someday soon, married to the fellow that was, at first, her yoga teacher. Patrick Nelson is also a manager and problem-solver for a big company now. Last fall they moved to Apple Valley, where not so long after that this beautiful baby, Irvin Adair Nelson, was born. And he is our guest of honor, about to become the latest Christian in a two thousand-plus year long chain of baptized people.

 

As we heard in the first reading just now, the first baptized people, the disciples, were still thinking that Jesus was going to get down to his Messiah business of saving Israel. Kicking the Romans out. He’d really been dead for those three days, and he rose from the dead, so they were totally convinced that all his Son of Man and Son of God talk was true. It was really him talking to them, not a ghost.  So now, they asked, are you going to restore the kingdom of Israel?

 

That’s not for you to know, he said in his enigmatic way, the Father is in charge of that. Instead, you are going to receive power when the Holy Spirit comes to you. And you will use that power to change the world! And just in case they thought power was just another one of his metaphors, he was taken up into heaven in a cloud. While their heads were still craned back in shock, two mysterious messengers in white robes asked them why are you still looking up? The word for messenger in Greek is angel.

 

Jesus often called God Father. Daddy, even.

Compared God to a Mother Hen.

+  Parent, Child, Holy Spirit, the breath always cycling through us.

 

We also heard the Gospel. Rex read it from here. It’s a flashback to seven weeks earlier. The night the Romans arrested him. Our storyteller is John, the beloved disciple:

 

[as John] We were at the Last Supper. Halfway through dinner, Jesus stopped talking and tried showing us what he meant about serving one another. He actually washed our feet. It was embarrassing, but he’d been telling us we need to learn humility and care. He sat back down, and shocked us by saying one of us was going to betray him.

 

That’s when Judas got up and went out to do an errand, we thought. Jesus watched him leave, and turned to Peter: don’t think you’re so brave, Peter. Before the night is over, you will pretend you don’t even know me. Three times. Peter protested, but Jesus shushed him: no, you’re all going to leave me. It’s for the best. I am going somewhere you cannot follow. We begged him to explain, and God knows he tried, but words can never express what God is. He said he was going to God’s house and that there are many mansions in it, which made no sense. We were quiet.

 

He said: after he was gone, we would know God because we knew him. Because he was One with God and we were One with him. God was a gardener and he was a vine and we were branches and our actions were fruit. That made sense. He said we were his friends, not his servants. He warned us that someday we’d get kicked out of our communities because of him. He said we were about to go through terrible pain like a woman in labor, but we would be joyful after that. We just kind of listened.

 

He was going away but would return, and would send us an “Advocate,” like we were going to need a lawyer? He was leaving the world, but he had conquered the world. But the Advocate would give us more courage. We didn’t say anything.

 

Then he stopped talking to us and began talking to his Father, out loud so we could remember. He repeated the thing about the Son and the Father being one, and said some more about the world hating us and how he was coming out of the world. So strange. He was begging God to take care of us after he was gone. He didn’t want us ever to lose that Oneness.

 

So let’s have Irvin and all his people come up now and circle around this deep blue bowl.

 

Here’s the last bit of my sermon:  Baptizing a baby is a strange thing, too. It’s about that Oneness that’s so hard to put into words. We used to say it washed away Original Sin, but that’s not quite right. Jesus did that, by being executed and rising again. Sin isn’t a dirty curse to be washed away. It’s separation between us and God. The church does baptism to celebrate our Original Oneness. Our atonement  at-one-ment. Our Forgotten Unity. Our siblinghood as children of God.

 

So we’re not scrubbing away Irvin’s sins or inoculating him against pain, suffering, betrayal, or any of that. We’re welcoming him into the larger family of those who follow Jesus. In a minute, we’ll say the ancient Apostles’ Creed. I’ll splash water onto Irvin’s head and make a little sacramental sign of the cross with chrism on his beautiful brow. Rex will show him a candle, lit from the Easter fire, and then hand it to someone safe. And we’ll all welcome him with words and applause and smiles.

 

Little man, may you grow up experiencing, every day, the universal power of being loved. May you get lots of practice feeling that love, and talking about it, and demonstrating love’s power.

 

May we all teach it to you, not only with our lips, but with our lives.   Amen.

 

10am Service