sermon preached
at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
by the
Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
The
First Sunday after the Epiphany, January 13, 2019
The water
splashes the baby’s head and a cry fills the room. A teenager dipped backward
into a swimming pool three times comes up again dripping and beaming. A woman steps
down into the muddy waters of the Jordan, her white robe billowing around her.
 |
| Holding my goddaughter Rose, with her other three godparents |
What is
baptism? What is it for? What does it do?
In 1982 in
Lima, Peru, a group of Christian leaders from many different denominations and
from all over the world met as the World Council of Churches. They produced a
document together that includes their definition of baptism, something that at
least most Christians the world over can agree on:
Baptism
is the sign of new life through Jesus Christ. It unites the one
baptized with Christ and with his people … Baptism is participation in
Christ’s death and resurrection (Rom. 6:3–5; Col. 2:12); a washing away
of sin (1 Cor. 6:11); a new birth (John 3:5); an enlightenment by
Christ (Eph. 5:14); a re- clothing in Christ (Gal. 3:27); a
renewal by the Spirit (Titus 3:5); the experience of salvation from the
flood (1 Peter 3:20–21); an exodus from bondage (1 Cor. 10:1–2) and a
liberation into a new humanity in which barriers of division whether of sex
or race or social status are transcended (Gal. 3:27-28; 1 Cor. 12:13). The
images are many but the reality is one.[1]
It’s not a
very tight definition, is it? We could spend all year unpacking the many images
it presents us with. It seems the World Council of Churches decided that it’s
better to present everything baptism could possibly be, rather than limiting
people’s perception in any way.
So it should
come as no surprise to us that, right at the beginning of the Church, there was
already disagreement about baptism. In today’s reading from the Acts of the
Apostles, Peter and John encounter some Samaritan converts who have been
baptized with water in the name of the Lord Jesus. “Not good enough,” they say.
“You need the Holy Spirit to come to you.” Peter and John don’t get the
Samaritans wet again, but they do lay hands on them and pray for the Holy
Spirit to be present in their lives, and that does indeed come to pass. Peter
and John set this community straight about the correct formula for effective baptism.
If this
sounds to you like an argument over the proper recipe for a magic spell, well,
I confess that it sounds like that to me, too. Why would Peter and John assume
that the Holy Spirit was not with
these newly baptized believers? Just because they didn’t ask specifically? Do
we not believe that God is always with us anyway, in everything we do?
Well, yes …
but ritual also matters, not so much to God as to us. We Episcopalians long ago
decided that we recognize as valid any baptism done with water in the name of
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Anyone who baptizes by another
formula, we don’t consider to be Christians. And that’s not actually very
restrictive at all. We welcome as fellow Christians the vast majority of self-proclaimed
Christians throughout the world.
Furthermore,
we understand that baptism needs to be done with the full acknowledgment either
of the person being baptized or the person’s parents. It cannot be accomplished
accidentally, or through manipulation or deceit. And it cannot be accomplished
without a community of faith acting in support. Even in the case of a private
baptism, which is no longer our standard practice, we assume that the intent is
to admit a new person into the Body of Christ.
And like
Peter and John, we don’t re-baptize people. We assume that it “took” the first
time. But we also have rites of renewal that help assure people that the Holy
Spirit is with them. Whether through confirmation, reception into the Episcopal
Church, or any other renewal of baptismal vows, the church has ways of saying
publicly, “Fear not. We are all together in the Body of Christ. We all matter—no
exceptions.”
I find it
crucial that the Lima document makes no mention of baptism rescuing us from
eternal damnation, an unfortunate and flawed understanding of what baptism is
for. Christians of all stripes acknowledge that our salvation lies in the work
of Jesus Christ—not in our own actions. If we said that baptism rescues us from
hell, then it would be all on us to make that happen. Again, it would be a
magic spell. But thankfully, baptism is not “fire insurance.” What would it say
about God if it were?
We can look
to today’s gospel reading for reassurance of this. Did Jesus need to be rescued
from hell through the waters of baptism? Did he need his sins to be washed
away? In other versions of this story, John protests: “Jesus, you should be baptizing me!” No, says Jesus. This is the right
way to go about this.
So baptism,
for Jesus, was not something that brought about his salvation. Rather, it was
his ordination to ministry. Jesus gets wet in the Jordan River, and the Holy
Spirit appears undeniably—in “bodily form,” we hear, and that’s mind-blowing! Then
Jesus is immediately driven into forty days of fasting and temptation in the
wilderness, a vision quest from which he returns to begin his work of calling,
teaching, and healing those around him.
Baptism is our
ordination to ministry as well—not like my own ordination as a priest, but
rather the common ordination that all Christians undergo. In the Episcopal
church, we don’t refer to seminary-trained clerics as “ministers.” We use the
word “ministers” to refer to everyone who is baptized. We all have work to do! If
you are baptized, you are a minister.
Wait, you
ask—even baptized infants are ministers? Well, sure. As a friend of mine once
remarked, “Children do ministry like they do breathing.” My own daughter, at
the age of two and again at the age of three, joined a group of us in El
Salvador to work alongside fellow Christians, and with her blonde hair and
winning smile, she helped breach barriers of language and culture. Older
children would see her and want to pick her up and carry her around. On those
two journeys, we referred to Sarah as our ambassador.
Baptism is what
makes you a Christian. You can trust in Jesus Christ without being baptized—indeed,
that’s how adults come to desire baptism. You can know that you are loved
eternally and never be baptized at all. But baptism ends your time as a solo believer.
You can climb a mountaintop on Sunday morning and fetch yourself a very real spiritual
experience, and there’s nothing wrong with it. But it will not help reconcile
the people of the world to God and to each other. That work must be done in
community with other believers. As another mentor of mine once said, “You can’t
be a Christian in a vacuum.” Baptism is not just about the salvation of individual
souls, but the incorporation of individuals into God’s community. The church is
a messy place fraught with potential and actual conflict. But it’s also where
the real possibility of divine love takes root.
I get many
questions about the relationship between baptism and communion. Should people
who aren’t baptized receive communion? In one sense, there’s some dissonance
there, because we understand communion to be a weekly renewal of our membership
in the Body of Christ. If we haven’t joined the church through baptism, does it
make theological sense to receive? Most Episcopal churches still maintain that
those who aren’t baptized should come forward for a blessing.
But there’s
also a school of thought that says everyone should be welcome, because we can’t
expect people to understand these fine distinctions of theology when they just
want to be fed. The church doesn’t own Jesus, and Jesus doesn’t turn people
away on a technicality. Just recently I’ve been given a new image to help me
understand this perspective: Baptism makes you a member of the family of the
church, and in communion, we share a family meal. We also joyfully feed guests
at the same table.
But guests
aren’t asked to do the dishes; family members are. Once you commit to the
family of the church through baptism, you’ll be given work to do. We prepare
people for baptism with classes and such because we want to make sure they understand
the responsibilities that come with baptism: responsibilities to all the other
members of the family. The project of the church is to act as a sign of God’s
love to the world and to break down walls of hate and division. The God-project is to bring everyone
back together from far away and from the end of the earth, and also to bring in
the people we didn’t even know were missing. Every baptized person has a hand in this.
Well then,
you say. What if I never knew this? What if my parents had me baptized as “fire
insurance” but never really understood the implications? I don’t know if I want
all that responsibility!
To you, I
say: Hear again at these words from the prophet Isaiah. “Do not fear, I have
redeemed you: I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through
the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm
you.” These words came before there was any baptism in the Jordan, before Jesus
came to be in the world. Yet these words are for you. And they are also for an
entire people and an entire world. You have passed through the waters of
baptism to reassure you that all shall be well. And baptism is an invitation to
help make that a reality for everyone else.
And to any
of you here who are not baptized, I say: Pray about it. Ponder the charge that
it represents, and don’t rush. Open up a conversation with me and with other
folks at Good Shepherd about baptism. Let’s talk. Amen.
[1]
From Baptism, Ministry and Eucharist
(also known as The Lima Document),
World Council of Churches, 1982
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