Rick Olson, November 18, 2007
In the movie "O Brother Where Art Thou," the none-too-bright prison-escapees are gnawing on a gopher-carcass in the
Delmar is -- to put it charitably -- confused about what exactly baptism means . . . and he's not alone. In fact, he's in pretty good company. Some of the major figures of the church have had the same trouble. If you read Acts, you can see that its author Luke believed that you can't be a Christian without being baptized, and in the Roman Catholic Church to this day, baptism is considered salvific -- that is, you can't have eternal life without it. For example, if a baby is born sickly, you'd better hurry up and baptize it before it dies, lest it go to the outer darkness where, as we all know, there is wailing and gnashing of teeth. Martin Luther, the father of all us Protestants, believed the same thing, but his fellow reformer Ulrych Zwingli disagreed -- the way he saw it, baptism was just a bare sign, something that we do because Jesus told us to "do this in remembrance of me," but for no other reason . . . According to Zwingli, it has no power to save, or do anything else, in and of itself. And this is the way modern-day Baptists -- and most evangelicals -- look at it: we do it because we've been commanded to, and that's reason enough.
But wouldn't you know it, we Presbyterians take a kind of middle way -- we wouldn't want to be extreme or anything -- and it’s a trail blazed by our founder John Calvin, who believed that although baptism isn't strictly salvific, it's not just something we do, either . . . God has a hand in it as well. According to him, it's a "means of grace," a way by which God transmits some of God's grace to us
And, now that you've fallen asleep—is that nodding I see back there?—it begs the question: if folks like Augustine and Luther and Calvin can't get it straight, people who spend their whole lives studying scripture and thinking about such things, what hope do we have? Even though we're not dumber than a bag of hammers like Delmar -- we know we're answerable to the law if we knock over a liquor store or something -- still: how can we -- sitting in the pews, or standing here in this pulpit, for that matter -- figure out what it all means?
Well, maybe if we go to scripture it'll help . . . maybe if we look at Jesus’ baptism we’ll learn a little something about our own. And if we know nothing else, we do know that he was baptized by John the Baptist, who is mightily embarrassed to be baptizing the Messiah: "I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?" See, John thinks that baptizing someone indicates some kind of hierarchical relationship, some kind of power differential, between the baptiz-er and the baptize-ee. And of course, the church has perpetuated this, hasn't it? One of the fights in the our own denomination over the past couple of decades has been over who gets to do the sacraments, including baptism . . . we've got a problem in rural areas – like most of Alabama—where there are a lot of little churches who can't afford a full-time pastor, and our denomination has historically only allowed fully-ordained, seminary-educated pastors -- like yours truly -- to baptize somebody. But this has helped stop the historical spread of Presbyterianism -- it's one reason there's so few of us out in the West -- and it perpetuates the image that us pastors are somehow more powerful Christians or something than our congregations. Sort of like the Catholics believe about their priests, only our theology is all about the priesthood of all believers.
Well. Good sense -- and demographics -- won out, and we have commissioned lay pastors who can baptize folks and serve communion . . . but not before a lot of grousing by pastors -- most of whom should've known better -- about how they went to seminary for three years, scraping and sacrificing and walking uphill through the snow both ways to get to class, and some uneducated . . . person . . . comes along and can all of a sudden do the sacraments . . . and all this from a belief -- embedded in the church system -- that those who get to baptize do so because they're special.
And that's exactly where John is coming from when Jesus comes to be baptized . . . John couldn't for the life of him see himself in a dominant position over the Messiah -- you come to me to get cleansed? It oughta be the other way around . . . But Jesus knows better, and it's the first clue we get that baptism may be more than just a ritual dunking: "Let it be so for now," he says, "For it's proper for us to fulfill all righteousness." Fulfill all righteousness . . . this language of fulfillment is important in the New Testament, it's almost technical talk, and it means for something to come to fruition, often that God's own self has made it that way, has brought it to it's ripe and tasty state . . . and Jesus is saying that something foreordained by God is brought to realization by this act.
Whew! Pretty heady stuff . . . and John can't argue with that logic, can he? So he goes ahead and baptizes Jesus, and then all heaven breaks loose . . . when Jesus comes up from the water, it busts open and the Spirit of God descends on him -- it looks just like a dove! -- and it lands right on him, and a voice from heaven -- and we just assume that it booms, that it's this big, old, deep male voice, but maybe it's not, maybe it's soft and feminine, maybe it's lyrical and magical, maybe it's the voice most dear to each person present -- but whatever it sounds like, what it says is unmistakable -- "This is my son, the beloved, in whom I am well pleased!"
And when Delmar comes up out of that muddy Mississippi river, we don't see a dove or anything, but we do see his face, and it's transformed, he just knows things are different now . . . he knows the truth, that something supernatural -- something outside the bounds of our surface, cause-and-effect world -- has happened to him . . . God's Spirit has come down from heaven and landed on him, soft as a dove, and he has been called a Child of God, he has been called "beloved."
And that, brothers and sisters is what God does for us at baptism, and what God’ll do for little Lilly in just a few minutes. The heavens will open up, the Spirit will come down, light as a feather, and God will call Lilly “beloved.” And a key observation is that John is just a vessel, almost like a conduit, for the work of God through the Holy Spirit. It is God who sends the Spirit, it is God who redeems, it is God who claims the child.
In my younger and more fire-breathing days, I used to say that because it's God that does the work, God could just as easily do it through my cat -- who let me tell you is not a whole lot more intelligent than Delmar -- God could work through my cat to baptize folks if God so desired, but saying stuff like that used to get me in trouble, so I don't say 'em any more . . . but our whole theology of Baptism flows from this one fact: it ain't the church or the pastor or the person being baptized that does the deed -- it's God working through the church and the through the pastor and through the person being baptized. It is God who sends the Spirit, it is God who redeems, it is God who claims the child.
Many protestant denominations practice what they call "believer baptism:" they'll only baptize adults who are past the "age of consent," that is, who know what they're doing. And one of their major criticisms of Catholics and mainline Protestants like us is that we practice infant baptism, and how can a baby know what she or he is doing? But I hope that by now that you can see that the practice flows naturally from our belief that it's God who does the choosing, it's God who does the redeeming . . . and it doesn't require consent or even consciousness on the part of the one being baptized; it is God who claims the child.
But there's a practical problem with infant baptism . . . most folks don't remember it. Oh, you hear from people who claim to remember as far back as birth, but it's not the rule . . . but that's why -- or at least one of the reasons why -- baptism takes place in the community. Every time we witness another's baptism, we in a sense remember our own. We remember that we are redeemed, we are chosen, we are forgiven all our faults and failings and transgression, even if not by the state of
I once preached for a beautiful little Hispanic congregation in Arizona one Epiphany Sunday, in their pink-hued stucco church, and after the sermon there was a baptism, and lined up on one side of the copper font were the child's god-parents, and on the other were her parents, and the minister held the child and said the ancient words, and made the ancient movements, and although I have only a passing acquaintance with Spanish, I understood nevertheless . . . and though that dark-eyed child won't remember the occasion, her parents will, and her god-parents . . . they'll remember the sights and sounds and the words, and they'll think to themselves: "that's how it was for me," and their child's baptism will become their own, and theirs will become hers . . .
And in a few minutes, as we baptize little Lilly, we will relive our own baptisms, and I invite you to reflect upon what it has meant to you over the years, and how you have lived out its promise and obligations . . . reflect as well upon what God has done in and through your baptism, and remember that through it, God has bestowed God’s Spirit, forgiven our sins, and claimed us as his children. Amen
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