In just a few minutes, we will baptize Charles Silas Nygard, and our churchwarden, Charles Nicholas Dowen, and I would like to congratulate the Nygard/Rhoades family on their excellent choice of a name.  As taken as I am with Charlie’s first name, it is his middle name, Silas, that really interests me.  He is the first Silas that I have personally known, although I am well familiar with the name.

Silas is a good Biblical name, and we learn all about the bearer of that name from the Book of Acts and St. Paul’s letters.  Silas was a prophet, missionary, and traveling companion of St. Paul’s.  We first meet him in the Book of Acts where he is a prominent and trusted member of the Jerusalem Church.  The leaders of the Jerusalem Church chose him along with a man named Judas Barsabbas to accompany Paul and Barnabas to Antioch to deliver and verbally explain a letter which said that circumcision was not to be required of Gentile converts but that they should observe some Jewish customs.  Later Silas began his career as a missionary.  He accompanied Paul and later Paul and Timothy on various journeys through Syria, Cilicia, Lystra, Phrygia, Galatia, Philippi, and Beroea.  Along the way he was imprisoned, beaten, and driven out of town.  So, Silas is a faithful and heroic figure in the life of the primitive Church.

Here is an interesting thing about Paul and Silas’ association.  Before Paul and Silas became traveling companions, Paul used to travel with the apostle Barnabas and with a man named John Mark.  Does anyone know why they stopped traveling together?  They stopped traveling together because Paul and Barnabas had a big church fight.  Here’s what happened: Paul and Barnabas had been on one missionary journey together, and then Paul got the idea to re-visit all the churches they had founded to see how they were doing.  Barnabas wanted to take John Mark with them but Paul had some kind of grudge against him and did not want to bring him along.  As the Book of Acts reports, “The disagreement became so sharp that they parted company; Barnabas took Mark with him and sailed away to Cyprus.  But Paul chose Silas.”  That’s how Paul and Silas came to travel together.

The Bible is unique, I think, among religious literature in that it delights in recording its heroes’ failures and shortcomings.  It records them again and again not because these are good things but to make a point.  The point is this: Despite our sins and our failures the Gospel message goes forward – it is unstoppable.  The Children of Israel sinned and wandered for 40 years in the desert, yet they reached the Promised Land.  The people disobeyed God, ignored his prophets, Jerusalem was destroyed and the people were exiled, yet 70 years later they returned home.  Paul and Barnabas had a big fight and no longer worked together, yet the Gospel spread throughout the world.  It is human nature to have different points of view and different ideas, and there’s nothing wrong with that.  Communities move forward by discussing and exploring various opinions, reaching a consensus, and moving forward.  Disagreement is only a problem if in our passion we forget that those with whom we disagree are our brothers and sisters in Christ.  Nonetheless – agree or disagree,  with or without our consent -- God’s purposes will not be denied.

At Jesus’ baptism, he saw the Holy Spirit descend on him and heard a voice from heaven saying, “’This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’”  God said those same words when we were baptized, and he will say them today to Charlie.  We are each beloved children of God and brothers and sisters of each other.  As you know, Lisa was pregnant with Charlie all through the hot months of the summer and then in the fall she tumbled down the stairs.  So I think of Charlie as the shake and bake baby.  But here he is, God’s purposes will not be denied.  Here he is ready to take his place in the community of faith.  Ready to take his place is that sacred society which proclaims an alternate vision.  We proclaim a Gospel in which sins are forgiven, people are respected, and which, in its stumbling, fumbling way somehow carries forward the unstoppable love of God. Amen.