Not Timidity, but Boldness

The Liturgical calendar marks today as Baptism of the Lord Sunday.  During my preaching years, it was always one of my favorite Sundays.  I always made it a time for preaching what I prayed would be a strong sermon about baptism and the importance of personal faith in Jesus Christ.  Of course, the liturgy for the day leads the congregation to a moment of baptismal reaffirmation.  I can still see folks moving from their pew to the baptismal font to receive the wet marking of the cross on their forehead in much the same manner as they would come a few weeks later for the imposition of holy ashes.  

What was always most exciting was the moment before folks were touched with the water in an act of reaffirmation.  Before preaching that day, I would always tell folks that at the end of the sermon there would be an invitation given for anyone who had not been baptized to declare their faith in Christ by being baptized.  When I first started the practice, I did not know what to expect.  In the early years, I wondered if anyone would respond to the invitation for baptism.  After a few years, I wondered who would be coming when the invitation was given for never was the invitation given that someone did not come.  Actually, there was one Sunday morning when no one came, but before the evening service that day a man approached me asking if he could be baptized that evening since he could not get himself to move from the pew that morning!   

After over forty years of preaching, I am convinced that preachers need to be more intentional about inviting people to come to Jesus.  I have heard many a preacher offer a great sermon filled with the power of the Spirit and then walk away from the invitation that was hanging in the air.  It is a moment of such loss for the Kingdom.  Those of us who are called to preach are not called to a spirit of timidity, but boldness (II Timothy 1:7).  May boldness once again be the mark of those who dare to preach the gospel.