King George VI of England had a terrible studder. All of you who have seen the movie The Kings Speech know the pain of watching someone studder. It is agonizing. All you want to do is to say their words for them. Poor George, or Bertie as he was called by his loved ones, had to make public speeches and even before his coronation, this was agony for him.
You see, the more that a person struggles with a stutter, the worse the stutter becomes. A person can become literally tongue-tied and unable to speak at all, as if all sound is just blocked from coming out their mouth. They become paralyzed with fear, anger and disgust at their own inability to utter the simplest of phrases. One of my cousins had such a stutter growing up. It was so painful.
Bertie has almost given up hope that his life will be anything more than just pure public pain and embarrassment when he comes to a speech therapist named Lyle Logue. Logue has trouble even keeping Bertie in the room, for he is tired of trying and wants to give up on speech therapy entirely. As a last resort, Lyle does an experiment with Bertie. He puts earphones on his client and plays a symphony loudly in Bertie's ears. As the same time as the music is playing, Lyle asks Bertie to read the To Be or Not To Be Speech from Shakespeare's Hamlet. Bertie cannot hear himself at all. He assumes that he studders as usual. He yanks off the earphones after only a few moments of reading and storms out of Lyle's office. Only months later does he get a chance to listen to the recording that was made and to realize that he read Shakespeare flawlessly for the first time in his life. He read flawlessly because he was listening to the music and not to his own mind.
King David did not have a stutter but he had other problems. He had united all Israel under his reign. He had defeated Goliath the giant and all their enemies. He was loved and popular and everyone thought he was the best King that Israel had ever had (which isnt saying so much since they had only had one other King and his name was Saul and he went insane). David had it all and then he got comfortable and started believing that he deserved it all and he took a woman as if she were his wife when she was married to someone else. And when she got pregnant, he tried to bring her husband home but her husband would not lie with her. So David had the woman's husband killed. Adultery turned to murder. And this was a King who had more wives than anyone alive. But he wanted the one person he could not have.
David began to stumble in his life from this point on. He could not discipline his children. They warred with one another. David became paralyzed in his life. In the reading that we heard from II Samuel, one of David's sons violates his half-sister, David's daughter, and yet David will not punish his son. His boys end up killing each other. It is as if his whole life, which was once a glorious song to God, becomes a stuttering mess. David speaks less and less and becomes a passive, miserable old man who cannot even name hs successor.
Why do we stumble in life? Why do we stutter? King George was punished cruelly by a nanny when he was a little boy. She would pinch him so that he cried when he was with his parents and then she would not feed him. He stuttered because crying or talking had caused him pain. That Nanny, in so many words, was telling him that he was worthless and that he did not have a voice. And he believed her.
And after David's sin, he too began to hear voices telling him that he was not a good man and could not be an adequate father and these voices of self-hatred prevented him from taking charge of his family and protecting them from one another. God forgives David but David does not forgive himself. He becomes paralyzed, silent, passive. And his family is torn apart right before his eyes.
Today we will baptize seven little ones. When Jesus was baptized, God spoke in a voice from heaven. God only did this twice in the course of Jesus' life, once at his baptism and once at his transfiguration and both times, God said the same thing. God says, "This is my Son, the beloved, listen to him." God was telling us that Jesus had a voice and we must hear and follow that voice, for it was the voice of God.
When the waters pour over the heads of these little ones, God will say the very same thing. I think of it as the Song of the Almighty to each beloved child of God. God sings, "You are my Son...You are my Daughter. You are worthy and beloved and you have a voice to be heard."
As these children grow up, no matter how hard you parents work to guide and protect them, they are going to encounter pain and suffering. They will be told that they are not worthy. It will happen in school one day when someone says something mean or they are passed over for a sports team. It will happen when they work hard on an assignment at school but they do not get a good grade. It will happen when they begin to notice that there are people starving in this world and that they dont know how to begin helping. It will happen when they disappoint themselves and realize that they told a lie or let someone down. And the voices of this world will tell them to stumble and stutter, to forget who they are, that they are worthless, that they cannot be forgiven. Sometimes these voices will get so loud that it is hard to hear the song of God. It is hard to remember who you really are, a beloved child of God.
The hardest part of baptism to understand is that you are already loved. God already adores you. It is done. You are God's child. So when the voices of the world get so loud that they make you stumble, dont forget who you are. Put on earphones and listen to the music of your baptism, to the voice of God who has already claimed you. Sit still in prayer, come to church, worship in holiness. Return to the music of your baptism again and again. Remember you are children who belong to God. Ironically, when we focus on God and God's music, we can find our own voice again. No one can silence a person who understands the full implications of their baptism.
Let me say that again...
No one can silence a person who understands the full implications of their baptism.
In the movie The Help, there is a two or three year old girl whose mother is a white Southern socialite. The little girl is heavy set and her mother constantly tells her that she is too fat. The black maid, Abilene, every day and sometimes multiple times a day, will take the little girls aside, hold her in her arms and say, "You is kind. You is smart. You is important."
King David forgot who he was, a servant of God, and that was when he made his greatest mistakes. King George forgot who he was, a child of God with a voice, and he let the fear of his stutter consume his life. Don't let these children ever forget what happened here this morning. Don't let them forget what God is saying to them. Bring them here to church regularly. You will take vows this morning to raise these children in this church. Practice the faith. These children will not be able to remember that they belong to God if they do not listen to God regularly. Come to church and put on the earphones that play the real music, the music that tells these children that they belong to God and that they are called to serve God above themselves. A church body moves us out of self-centered isolation into the realization that our lives are precious and designed to be given in service to God. A church reminds us of who we are. Why do you think that the baptismal font is right there, at the entrance of our Sanctuary? We dont want you to enter this beautiful building without walking right by the place of your baptism and remembering who you are. You belong to God and to no one else. You are a child of God, every single one of you and you have a voice.
