Today is Christ the King Sunday, in many the culmination of these past few weeks where we have been discussing Christ’s second coming and what it means for our lives. We spoken about Christ’s hope and expectation that our vigilance for his return would take the form of work for his kingdom, by spreading his Gospel through word and deed by our use of the opportunities given to us. Today is also a day in which words fail me to describe how grateful and amazed I am to be a part of what will soon take place for my stepdaughter and my whole family.

These themes weave together and I feel the Spirit compelling me to be a bit self-indulgent in my message today. I hope you will humor me as I embrace a grand tradition of our evangelical brothers and sisters, the tradition of testimony.

Thirty five years ago, my parents brought a five week old baby to a font very much like this one. It wasn’t wood, it was white marble, the very same that sits in St. Paul, Charleston today. There, that child was baptized, baptized in faith. You see, my parents, by that action, were making a statement about what they believe. Simply put, my parents brought me to that font in confidence that all the gifts God had given to them, life, salvation, strength and courage in adversity, would also be given to me.

I’m certain than in the 35 years since then to now, there were moments where that faith seemed misplaced. I was an angry child, angry at academic expectations that I did feel I could meet. Angry at classmates, who teased and bullied me constantly. Angry at God because he made me a child more interested in books and stories than in sports.

I stayed angry as a teen, for many of the same reasons, and also as an adult. There, it was anger that God took away my dreams, the dream of being the next Bill Gates (or more accurately Richard Garriott, but I suspect few if any of you know who that is.) He also took away the dream of me marrying my high school sweetheart. At that point in my life, during college, I had the freedom to act out on that anger, spending far too many weekends at the bottom of a bottle.

But you know something, there I was, despondent, hurting, and angry for all those years, and yet God was there. He was there in two parents who loved me even if they didn’t always like me very much. He was there in a sister who, for all the times we fought, would have done anything for me if I’d asked and still would. He was there in friends whose loyalty to me never wavered. He was there in teachers and pastors, who did their best to remind me of God’s love no matter how much I refused to listen. And he was there in church members like and including yourselves, whose patience and acceptance spoke volumes about what I had spent so many years trying to reject.

God never gave up on me. And now look. The dreams he took away, He replaced with better ones. Instead of the cutthroat dot-com world, I have a cozy little church in the mountains of the state I love. The sweetheart I lost opened the door for Sarah to come into my life, a far better dream than even I imagined could come true. He’s transformed my anger into passion to do justice for the Gospel. My parents’ faith on that January morning all those years ago was not misplaced. God fulfilled their every hope.

When we read a parable like the one in Matthew about the sheep and the goats, our minds are quick to presume we are the givers, the ones who see those who are naked and in need and then act or don’t act as is their want. I read this story and I am reminded of the times when I was the one who was naked, hungry, and in prison (metaphorically, of course) and someone came to me in love and compassion to put me back on my feet. It was in confidence that there would be such people, who would proclaim the Gospel to me in word and in deed, that my parents baptized me on that cold January morning in 1973.

Every person in this room has such people in their life. If there were not, you would not be here in these pews this morning. Every one of us has been among the hungry and the wanting at some point in our life. Some stories are more dramatic than others, the exact circumstances different from person to person. For some, that hunger is quite literal, a lack of food or basic necessities of life. For others, a hunger for love or peace or something more ethereal. But we are here today because someone saw that need and in the name of Christ came to us to aid and to guide us. It may have been a parent, a teacher, a pastor, a friend, or just someone on the street. But what they did in the name of Christ transformed our lives and brought us to this place and time.

These past two weeks, I’ve been talking about what evangelism is really about. About how we use the gifts and opportunities God gives to us to spread his message of love and salvation. Every single one of us is here because someone else evangelized us. Oh, we may have grown up in the church, but all that is done here means nothing until someone makes it real for us, until someone told us what it was all about.

That someone might even be here today. If they are, take time during our passing of the peace to thank them. If they are not, spare a thought for them during our time of prayer. And also think about who it is that you know that is wanting and hungry, be it in body or mind or spirit, and think about how you might reach out to them and proclaim the Gospel to them by your actions. How you might show them Christ hidden behind your face.

In a few short minutes, we will be baptizing my daughter Emily. We baptize her because we love her. We baptize her because we believe God loves her and that he sent his son Jesus into this world to live, die, and then rise again for her sake. We baptize her in the confidence and hope that there will be people along her journey who will tell that story in word and in deed. You gathered here today will be some of them. Do not hesitate to share and to live that story for her or for anyone else you encounter in your lives. God has given you the power to transform the lives of others. Use it for his glory, amen.