Sunday, January 12th, 2025: "Gifts: The Gift of Baptism"
The First United Presbyterian Church
“Gifts: The Gift of Baptism”
Rev. Amy Morgan
January 12, 2025
Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
As the people were filled with expectation and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, 16 John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water, but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the strap of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 17 His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
21 Now when all the people were baptized and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, 22 and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
Baptism is a sacrament saturated with meaning (pun intended). The Presbyterian Church’s Directory for Worship says that “The Sacrament of Baptism holds a deep reservoir of theological meaning” (Presbyterians love our puns), “including: dying and rising with Jesus Christ; pardon, cleansing, and renewal; the gift of the Holy Spirit; incorporation into the body of Christ; and a sign of the realm of God. The Reformed tradition understands Baptism to be a sign of God’s covenant. The water of Baptism is linked with the waters of creation, the flood, and the exodus. Baptism thus connects us with God’s creative purpose, cleansing power, and redemptive promise from generation to generation. Like circumcision, a sign of God’s gracious covenant with Israel, Baptism is a sign of God’s gracious covenant with the Church. In this new covenant of grace God washes us clean and makes us holy and whole. Baptism also represents God’s call to justice and righteousness, rolling down like a mighty stream, and the river of the water of life that flows from God’s throne.”
We got all that?
This one paragraph on the theology of baptism references 40 different scriptures from the Old and New Testaments and 7 different Reformed confessions dating from 1560 to 1967. Baptism is also referenced in one of the earliest Christian creeds, the Nicaean Creed of 325, saying simply, “We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.”
The Scots Confession, the earliest Reformed confession in our Book of Confessions, states that “we utterly condemn the vanity of those who affirm the sacraments to be nothing else than naked and bare signs. No, we assuredly believe that by Baptism we are engrafted into Christ Jesus, to be made partakers of his righteousness, by which our sins are covered and remitted.” The Scots could be a little extreme, but they were committed to the claim that Baptism was effectual, it actually did something that mattered. It isn’t just a nice ritual, full of symbolism and even deep meaning. Baptism changes something, makes us part of something new and life-giving and gets rid of things that are destructive and depleting.
The Heidelberg Catechism, written to ease tensions between Lutherans and other Reformed Christians 16th-century Europe, emphasizes the connection between the physical action of being washed by water and the spiritual reality of being cleansed of sin, stating that “Christ instituted this outward washing and with it promised that, as surely as water washes away the dirt from the body, so certainly his blood and his Spirit wash away my soul’s impurity, that is, all my sins.”
But this cleansing isn’t just for the benefit of making us feel spiritually shiny and new. When you get out of the shower, you typically don’t put on the same dirty clothes you took off before you showered. You put on something clean and wear it around. And so the Westminster Confession reminds us that baptism is “a sign and seal of the covenant of grace,” and of “regeneration,” meaning, “giving up unto God, through Jesus Christ, to walk in newness of life.” The Westminster Catechism refers to this “regeneration” as “improving our baptism,” calling it a “needful but much neglected duty,” that involves humility, confession, gratitude, “endeavoring to live by faith” and walking in love, remembering that we are baptized “by the same Spirit into one body.”
The Second Helvetic Confession most directly references our scripture reading for this morning, reminding us that “John baptized, who dipped Christ in the water in Jordan.” John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance, so I often get the question: “Why did Jesus need to be baptized if we believe he was sinless?” Why would a sinless person need to repent and be baptized?
The Confession of 1967 answers with the understanding that “By humble submission to John’s baptism, Christ joined himself to [humans] in their need and entered upon his ministry of reconciliation in the power of the spirit.” What we see in the baptism of Jesus is that baptism is more that just a cleansing from sin. In Jesus’s baptism, God claims Jesus as a beloved child and this prepares and equips him to live out God’s purpose. This is the baptism that Jesus commanded his disciples to practice; this is the baptism the early church carried on; this is the baptism we share today. It is a baptism that is scripturally founded and effectually cleanses us, claims us, and consecrates us for service in the world.
The Directory for Worship describes this service as a life of “deep commitment, disciplined discernment, and growth in faith. The gifts of the Holy Spirit, given with and through Baptism, equip and strengthen us for the challenges of Christian faith and life.”
Today I wanted to do this deep-dive into the scriptural roots, theological significance, and Reformed understanding of baptism because, toward the end of this service, we will be reminded of our common calling in baptism and invited to reaffirm our baptismal vows as our new officers are ordained and installed.
Many of us were baptized as infants and haven’t given it much thought since. Or maybe we were baptized as a youth or adult, but it’s faded from our minds. But Christians over the centuries have given this a lot of thought. They’ve fought and argued about it. They’ve bet their lives on it. They’ve pledged their souls to it.
Baptism may look for all the world like a bit of tap water sprinkled on the head. But if that’s all it is, why do it? Why would Jesus do it? Why would Jesus command his disciples to do it? Why would people ask for it?
Frederick Buechner wrote that in Baptism, “Going under symbolizes the end of everything about your life that is less than human. Coming up again symbolizes the beginning in you of something strange and new and hopeful. You can breathe again.”
When John saw people being suffocated by sin, he offered a baptism of repentance that could let them breathe again. When God saw humanity drifting away from unity with God and each other, Jesus’s baptism confirmed that, in him, we are one family, and we could breathe again, gathered in the arms of a loving God. When we are choking on our inhumanity to one another, baptism restores our relationships so we can breathe again.
Baptism is as life-giving, as renewing, as empowering as breathing. It has been essential to Christians for centuries because it is as if they could not breathe without it.
What if we remembered our baptism this way? What if reaffirming our baptismal vows reminded us to take a deep breath of the abundant life offered to us in Jesus Christ? What if following Jesus in our lives, serving in ordered ministries of the church, and participating in Christ’s reign on earth came as naturally as our breath? What if, when we feel constricted by anxiety, suffocated by shame, gasping from grief, we were assured that in our baptism, God drowned everything that could try to separate us from God’s love, and we could breathe again?
What if all that “deep reservoir” of meaning added up to something as simple, as pure, and as wonderful as coming up for air?
Those who are being ordained and installed this morning to particular ministries in the church have no more spiritual credentials than anyone else. The only thing they need to be called and equipped for this service is their baptism. Their ministry is not a burden placed on them, a heavy responsibility they must endure for their term of service. They are simply being invited live into those baptismal vows in particular ways. They are being invited to breathe.
This is the life we are all called to, in one way or another. In our work, our homes, our neighborhoods, in our families and friendships and encounters with total strangers, we live and breathe that baptismal identity. We know that we are forgiven, renewed, regenerated; we’re “improving our baptism;” we’re cleansed, claimed, consecrated, and committed; we’re fulfilling our baptismal vows - when it feels like we are coming up for air, like we are fully alive and breathing deeply of God’s Spirit of love and peace. This is the gift of baptism. May we give thanks, and just keep breathing.
To God be all glory forever and ever. Amen.
Comments
Post a Comment