Baptism

by Robert Hamerton-Kelly

Scripture: Genesis 1:1-5; Mark 1:4-11

"Thou art my beloved Son; with thee I am well-pleased."

-- Mark 1:11

It seems good to take the opportunity of the Baptism of Jesus to remember again the salient elements in the sacrament of baptism and to ask the Holy Spirit to renew our baptismal relationship with God. There are two sides to the sacrament, the outside and the inside; indeed a classic English definition of a sacrament is  “an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.” The inside is the essential side while the outside is contingent, that is, our relationship with God is necessary and indispensable, while whether we have been sprinkled as babies or immersed as adults is optional, certainly not worth dividing the church over. The Apostle Paul seems even to indicate that the ritual itself, in any form, is not essential, when he says that God did not send him to baptize but to preach the Gospel (1 Corinthians 1:17). To be sure, he makes much of the symbolism of baptism elsewhere in his letters, as in Romans 6:1-11, and therefore we must be careful in drawing conclusions about his position on the importance of the rite itself, nevertheless it is clear that for him the inner disposition of faith and our relationship with God, is the essential thing. Let us pay attention first to the text and then apply what we find to our life and conduct.

First we notice that John regards himself as much inferior to the one whose coming he announces; he is not worthy to stoop before him and untie the thong of his sandal. And when this great one arrives on the scene what does he do? He stoops before John and asks to be baptized. Immediately John’s notion of greatness is redefined; greatness has nothing to do with who kneels to whom, who unties sandals and whose sandals are untied. The great example of this power in humility is the event at the last supper, when Jesus girded himself with a towel, took a basin of water and knelt before his disciples to wash their feet. When Peter refused Jesus said, “If I do not wash you, you have not part in me (John 13:8).” Thus we are told that the mighty power of God wants to cleanse us and can only do so by attending humbly to our most intimate needs. John says he is not worthy even to bow before the Christ, and then the Christ arrives and bows before him. Thus God upsets our expectations, and serves us on His terms not ours.

Secondly we notice that John distinguishes his baptism as a baptism of water from Jesus’ baptism as a baptism with the Holy Spirit. We could read this to mean that the baptism with water is no longer necessary because it has been superseded by an inner baptism of Holy Spirit, something like what Paul calls “circumcision of the heart” over against “circumcision in the flesh.” “He is a Jew who is one inwardly, and real circumcision is a matter of the heart, spiritual not literal. His praise is not from men but from God (Romans 2:29).” We could read it that way but I do not wish to startle people by suggesting that the rite of water baptism is merely optional, rather I suggest we read John’s self deprecation as saying that although the outer rite of water is important as an outward and visible sign of our entering into a relationship with God, it is the inner experience that is determinative, and one could, in principle, have such an experience apart from the water ritual, but one should not for that reason refuse the ritual.

I know that this challenges what the great church calls “sacramentalism,” the belief that God has tied the working of his grace to material media, - water and oil for baptism, wine and bread for Eucharist, and I do not wish to deny that in the context of the faith these material substances are bearers of grace. However, I do not believe God has tied his grace irrevocably to certain material media, but rather that the only essential requirement for the reception of grace is the humility to call in faith upon the name of God in Jesus Christ.  This view does rather put the church and its hierarchs in their proper place, sharers of the priesthood of all believers, whose efficacy depends not on institutional status but on divine grace working through faith. Nevertheless, having said all that we should still follow the humility of our Lord who submitted to the rite of water for the sake of identification with God’s people. If it was good enough for Jesus it is good enough for me!

Thirdly, we have in our text an example of what baptism in the Spirit is. “And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens opened and the Spirit descending upon him like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, ‘Thou art my beloved Son; with thee I am well pleased (Mark 1:10-11).’ ” As you leave the sanctuary look at the baptistery and see that text spelled out in the mosaic over the water. It reveals that baptism in the Spirit is hearing God call me by name His own dear child. To everyone baptized here we believe God says, “You are my beloved daughter, my beloved son, and I am delighted that you are who you are. I call you to myself and I call you by your name.’ So when I call out the person’s name while the water runs down the face, it is God calling, God expressing His divine delight, God taking deep satisfaction in this single creature.

Baptism of course links us to creation, especially when the baptized is a baby child, so recently come from the umbilical waters. The Spirit hovers over her like she hovered over the primordial waters and from that dark disorder brought forth light and life. ‘The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light; ‘ and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness (Genesis 1:2-4).” I wonder whether this Genesis passage does not dredge up from the deepest canyons of memory our own first experience of light, our memory of our emergence from the watery chaos of the womb, and register them in these founding words.

This passage in Genesis gives further resonance to John’s contrast between the baptism of water and the baptism of Holy Spirit; the former is the as yet unformed potential, the latter is the actual self, the former is the self that waits to be born, the latter is the new born self in Christ. John’s Gospel (3:3-8) speaks of birth from above, the Apostle of the new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17), both referring to the experience of the faith in Christ that is entailed in the rite of baptism. John, however, demands both water and spirit, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God (3:5).” I suggest that one meaning of this is that it is not enough to be simply alive in the watery chaos as it were; one must progress to the light of the Spirit’s orderly cosmos, from the natural to the Spiritual birth, “…born of the umbilical water and the divine Spirit.”

Let us leave the text there and turn to its application in our lives, and let us focus on this difference between water and Spirit, the distinction John the Baptist first made. Last Thursday in our Bible Study we were discussing the Apostle Paul’s conversion in connection with his teaching that Christ sets us free from the “principalities and powers” of this world. We arrived at the point where we were prepared to allow that it is possible to be a church member, even a diligent church member, for years and years and not progress from water to Spirit. John Wesley called this state the state of the ‘almost Christian,’ but it is of more significance for us that someone not famous in Christian history, one of our contemporaries in the group said that she had been a conscientious Christian for many years before she “saw the light.” This “seeing the light” is an experience many people have: suddenly the Bible speaks to me; suddenly I hear when the liturgy and the preaching speak of God in Christ, those references are no longer formulae but telling facts. Then this group member asked why the many ministers she had heard had not told her of this baptism of the Spirit, and began to re-read old letters and sermons, only to discover that they had told her, but she was not in a position to hear.

I ask you, ‘Where are you on this baptismal spectrum between water and Spirit?’ Are you in a position to hear? When you are you will hear God saying, “You are my beloved child, with whom I am well pleased” You will hear your name, and you will see the light. For that reason we give our baptized people a candle and a Bible; that they may have the light of the Spirit to find the truth of the Word.

Amen.