AN INDELIBLE BUMPER STICKER

There's a story about a man who stopped at a traffic light and saw that the car in front of him had a "Honk if you love Jesus" bumper sticker. Playing along, he gently beeped his horn. The elderly woman driving the car in front stuck her head out the window and yelled back at him, "Open your eyes, you jerk! Can't you see the light's still red?"
    
The moral of the story is not that we better not put a bumper sticker on our car that asks others to respond if we don't want the response. Rather the point is that we all wear a bumper sticker on our forehead that says "Baptized Christian." No one can see the sticker, of course. But it is there. My old theology books talk about an "indelible mark" that comes with baptism, a mark that cannot be removed. It can be ignored. But it cannot be removed. We are who we are.
        
And because we are who we are, we invite anyone to call us on it at any time, call on us to live out what we professed through our baptism we would do and what we believe. In essence, what we say to others, because we have been baptized, is: "Honk if you need me. I'll be there." And when they honk, we respond in love and not like the lady in the story.

Yet it is more than that. Baptism not only says that we will be there to respond, and will respond, when someone honks asking for help. Baptism also says that we will go out looking for opportunities to help even when we don't hear anyone honking. Baptism is our ordination into a life of service. In fact, our bumper sticker is very simple: "I am among you as one who serves." That's who Jesus was. That's who we are. No honking necessary.

           
It's easy to forget, sometimes. It's easy to think not kindly about others when they call upon us, upon our time or our talent or our financial resources. I get that way at times when I receive those phone calls from people in need who have no church, who have no use for the church, but who expect that the church, demand that the church, respond to their needs simply because we say that we are a people who serve others in need and they are in need.
           
It is at those times that I forget that I am called to serve first, last and always, even if, especially if that service is not easy, especially when I have judged that the person who wants my service doesn't "deserve" it. There are times people have said to me, "You say you're a what? A Christian? Aren't Christians supposed to help?" I have no comeback, nor will they come back.
 
I know: it's not that simple. Professing our faith, living out our faith is never as simple as honking a horn. It sometimes demands biting our tongue. It often demands giving when we would rather not. It means that demands will be made upon us when we are least prepared to respond, when we would rather do anything else, when what we really want to do is call the person who wants us a "jerk" rather than seeing Jesus in that person. But we are called to be who we say we are.