Hello.  My name is Michael and I’m a Sprout Farmer.  Broccoli sprouts to be exact.  At least two harvests a week (I can see you laughing at me for calling them harvests!).   Growing up, sprouts were the farthest thing from my mind.  You see, I grew up on a 640 acre ranch in Oklahoma where we raised cattle, horses, and hogs.  We dabbled in oats and grew all our own hay.  My father would plant vegetable gardens with rows as long as football fields, or at least they felt that long when I had to hoe them.  Between the hay field and the garden, summer days were long and hot.  Fast forward to today and for their wonderful health benefits, I grow broccoli sprouts.  I think my old farming friends would say I have been in the sun to long and would enroll me in Sprouter’s Anonymous.  But there IS a connection between the two and that connection is . . . water.

I know from experience how much water it takes for traditional crops to grow, but I was surprised to find out how much water these sprouts need in order to mature.  After they soak in water for 8 hours to activate the dormant seedlings, you must vigorously wash them every 12 hours (wash, rinse, repeat) for 3-4 days as the seedlings grow and mature into those spicy, healthy, sprouts that we know and love.  And so I am at the sink last week, rinsing my latest batch, watching the seed hulls break away, and I start thinking about baptism. As I wash away, I make the analogy of those little hulls being sin and the water being our baptism that washes it away so the seeds/we can flourish.  And while we are baptized only once, the process goes on each day for our whole lifetime as we continually live into the grace that God has bestowed upon us.

So I grow sprouts and I remember.  I remember that water connects us all.  I remember that many people in the world struggle to get clean drinking water, so I try to conserve.  I remember that though the symbol of water, God has given us new life.  I remember that God has called us to something bigger than we can ever imagine.  I remember my baptism.

Join us this Sunday as we worship and celebrate the Sacrament of Baptism with Isabelle Faye Bohlke.

See you Sunday!