My apologies for the coughing - it developed during the service!
This Sunday, the Church celebrates the baptism of Christ.
St
Matthew tells us how Jesus came to John to ask for baptism.
John,
we are told, demurs, saying that it is Jesus who should be baptizing
him, but Jesus says he wants everything done properly in good order.
And then the voice comes from heaven, saying “This is my Son, the
Beloved, with whom I
am well pleased”
For Jews, baptism was really a
matter of washing.
They had –
and still, as far as I
know, have –
a way of washing in their ritual baths,
which
made them no longer unclean.
But it was not, I believe, until
the time of John the Baptist
that baptism was linked with
repentance.
John had one or two things to say to people who
wanted baptism without repenting,
baptism without tears, if you
like,
calling them “a brood of vipers”,
and reminding
them that just because they were children of Abraham didn’t mean
they were excused from bearing “fruits worthy of repentance.”
In
other words, they had to show their repentance by the change in their
lives, and their baptism was to mark this fresh start.
Now
for me, at least, this raises at least two questions.
Why, then,
was it necessary for Jesus to be baptised, and, secondly, what about
our own baptism?
Why did Jesus have to
be baptised?
He, after all, was without sin, or so we are
told,
so he, alone of all humanity, did not need,
and never
has needed, to repent.
But when John queried him
he said
“Let it be so now;
for it is proper for us in this way to
fulfil all righteousness.”
In other words, let’s observe all
the formalities,
don’t let anybody be able to say I wasn’t
part of the religious establishment of the day.
And,
of course, one other very good reason is that it was an opportunity
for the Father to proclaim Jesus to the crowds thronging the
Jordan.
John probably baptised hundreds of others that day, I
shouldn’t wonder, with Jesus waiting his turn very patiently.
But
it was only when Jesus rose up from the waters of baptism
that
God sent the Holy Spirit upon him in the form of a dove, and said,
out loud,
“You are my Son, whom I
love;
with you I am well pleased.”
God
proclaimed Jesus as his beloved Son.
And then what?
There
was no triumphant upsurging against the occupying power,
no
human rebellion.
Not even a triumphal entry into Jerusalem.
No,
what awaited Jesus after his baptism was forty days in the
desert,
and an almost unbearable temptation to discover the
depths of his powers as God’s Son, whom God loves,
and to
misuse them.
And it was only then, after Jesus had wrestled
with, and conquered, the temptation to misuse his divine power,
that
he could come back and begin to heal the sick,
raise the
dead,
restore sight to the blind
and preach good news to
the poor.
And gather round him a band of devoted followers, of
course, and eventually, the Cross and the triumphant resurrection
from death.
Well, so much for Jesus’ baptism;
what
about ours?
For many Christians, baptism does seem to be
very similar to John’s baptism, a baptism of repentance, of changed
lives,
a signal to the world that now you are a Christian, and
plan to live that way.
But for a great many more Christians,
baptism is something that happens when you are a tiny baby, too small
to remember it.
That’s usually the case for Methodists and
Anglicans, so it applies to us.
I was baptised as a baby and so,
very probably, were you.
Now, some folk say that being
baptised as a baby is a nonsense,
how can you possibly repent
when you are an infant in arms,
and how can other people make
those promises for you?
I think it depends very much on whether
you see baptism as primarily something you do, or primarily something
God does.
The Anglican and Methodist churches call baptism a
Sacrament,
and you may remember the definition of a Sacrament
which is
that a Sacrament is the outward and visible sign
of
an inward and spiritual grace.
The other Sacrament that
Methodist churches recognise is, of course, Holy Communion.
The
Catholic church recognises at least five more,
but as I can
never remember all of them off-hand, I won’t start listing them
now!
The point is, that a Sacrament is a place where we humans
do something and trust that God also does something.
When we
make our Communion, we believe that we are meeting with
Jesus,
communicating, if you like, in a very special way
during
the taking, breaking, blessing and sharing of the bread and wine.
And
in baptism, we believe that God comes and meets with us in a very
special way, filling us with the Holy Spirit.
Yes, even babies
–
do you really have to be old enough to be aware that you are
doing so in order to love God?
I don’t think so!
You
certainly don’t have to be aware to be loved by God,
and
that’s really what it’s all about.
You see, baptism,
like Communion, is one of those Christian mysteries, where the more
deeply you penetrate into what it means,
the more you become
aware that there’s more to know.
You never really get to the
bottom of it.
St Paul goes off in one direction, talking about
baptism being identifying with Christ in his death.
I’m never
quite sure what he is getting at, when he says in the letter to the
Romans,
“Do you not know that all of us who have been baptised
into Christ Jesus were baptised into his death?
Therefore we
have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as
Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too
might walk in newness of life.
For if we have been united with
him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a
resurrection like his.”
I may not have totally
understood Paul there –
who does? –
but it’s
nevertheless part of what baptism is all about.
Another
part of it is, indeed, about repentance and turning to Christ.
For
those of us who were baptised as infants,
someone else made
promises on our behalf about being Jesus’ person, and we didn’t
take responsibility for them until we were old enough to know what we
were doing,
when we were, I hope, confirmed.
We confirmed
that we were taking responsibility for those promises for
ourselves,
we became full members of the Church and, above
all,
we received, once again, the Holy Spirit through the
laying-on of hands.
And so it goes on.
But it’s all
very well me droning on about baptism and what it really means, but
what is it saying to us this morning?
For some of us, our
baptism was more than six decades ago, after all!
For some of
us, it may have been a lot more recent, but you may well not remember
it, even so!
Well, first and most importantly is that
baptism is important for Christians,
as important as the
Sacrament of Holy Communion.
So if for any reason you never have
been baptised,
and you know that you want to be Jesus’
person,
do go and talk to Lena or someone.
The same applies
if you haven't yet been confirmed, but feel you are ready to become a
full member of the Church and ready to take responsibility for those
promises they made on your behalf.
But for the rest of us,
for whom our confirmation is nothing more than a memory, and baptism
not even that, so what?
What does it mean for us today?
I
think that, like so much that is to do with God,
baptism is an
ongoing thing, not just a once-for-all thing.
Yes, we are
baptised once;
St Paul reminds us that there is one baptism,
just as there is one faith, and one Lord.
But when Martin
Luther was quite an old man,
and the devil started whispering in
his ear that he was a rotten human being and God would cast him out,
et cetera, et cetera, you know how he does,
Luther threw his
inkpot at the spot where he felt the voice was coming from, and said:
“Nonsense!
I have been baptised, and I stand on that
baptism!”
Even though that baptism had been when Luther was a
newborn baby,
he still knew that its effects would protect him
from the assaults of the evil one.
As, indeed, it does for
us.
There are times when life seems to go very pear-shaped,
aren’t there?
The 2020s, so far, haven’t exactly been a
wonderful decade.
It sometimes feels that God has forgotten us,
that we are stumbling on alone, in the dark,
totally unable to
see where we are going.
Whether that is true for us as
individuals, or as a church, or even as a nation,
these times
are very hard to deal with and to understand.
All we know is,
they happen to all of us from time to time, and we simply can’t see
the reason from this end.
Of course, we know
intellectually
that God hasn’t in the least bit forgotten
us.
Some folk say these times of darkness are when God is
testing us,
but I’m not sure it’s even that.
It’s
some part of the pattern that we don’t understand,
can’t see
what is happening,
and tend to try to rationalise.
I do
believe that one day we’ll know what it was all about,
and see
how it fitted in.
But our first reading reminds us, when
we are going through these dark patches, that the “Servant”, who
we identify with Jesus these days, even if there was a local
application back at the time when Isaiah was writing, is gentl and
loving: “a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick
he will not quench;” In other words, it doesn’t matter how weak
and feeble your faith – our faith – may be; God will not snuff it
out, but instead encourage it, help it to grow. And help justice be
established in our world once again.
In some way we know
that our baptism is part of that.
As I said earlier, it’s what
they call a mystery;
we’ll never know the whole truth of how
it works, only that it does!
Jesus came for baptism to John, and
from his baptism he was sent into the wilderness to wrestle with one
of his bad times –
another, as we know, was in the Garden of
Gethsemane the night before he was crucified.
And if Jesus can
have bad times, then it’s all right for us to, I reckon!
The
bad times will happen, they happen to everybody.
But we will
not be broken or extinguished; God will be with us.
Life doesn’t
have to be perfect, and nor do we, before we can remind ourselves
that God loves us.
Of course, that love isn’t just warm
fuzzies;
it’s about going out there and doing
something.
Christian love is something you do,
not
something you feel.
But in the dark watches of the night, we
need our warm fuzzies.
And I think God knows that,
which is
why there are those lovely passages in Scripture about how much he
loves us, about how he protects us and cares for us.
