Texts: Genesis 1: 1-4; Mark 1: 1-11
Celebrating the Baptism of Jesus
Did you hear the one about the little girl who started crying after she was baptized? The minister asked her why she was upset. “Because,” said the little girl, “you made my parents promise I would be raised in a Christian home. But I want to live with them!”
Some of us aren’t so sure about what it means to be Christian in general, and about what baptism means in particular. That’s partly because there have been from the beginning various practices of baptism and various meanings assigned to baptism.
Some of us were baptized as infants at the request of and with vows made by our parents. Some of us were baptized as older children or adults at our own request and volition. Some of us have never been baptized. Some might even be wondering if this ancient rite has relevance in the year 2012.
Here are just a few reasons some might give for continuing this 2000-year-old sacrament. Which explanation for baptism rings truest for you?
Baptism makes one a member of a church/the Church.
Baptism is the means whereby our sins are forgiven.
Baptism saves us.
Baptism is required by the Church.
Baptism is expected by the family.
Baptism is presumed by the culture.
Baptism was undergone by Jesus and we want to emulate Jesus.
Baptism pictures dying to an old identity and rising again to a new life.
Baptism elicits a family’s commitment to raise a child in the church.
Baptism is a communal rite of initiation.
Baptism is an individual act of conscience.
Baptism is a defiantly counter-cultural act.
Baptism marks our humble commitment to the ways of Jesus.
Baptism conveys God’s grace.
Baptism pictures God’s grace already extended to us.
Baptism pictures our acceptance of God’s grace.
During Sermon Talk Back you may wish to discuss which of these definitions you prefer and why. But one of the reasons the sacraments remain important for progressive Christians is they are—I’m going to use a literary term here—multivalent. That is, they have more than one meaning. We don’t have to choose one interpretation of baptism. In fact, we might use that sacramental moment in our lives as a touchstone for our faith that we return to again and again, but we can understand baptism one way today and another tomorrow. The power of a poem or painting or religious rite lies in the generosity of meanings, in its flexibility of uses and interpretations and applications. That doesn’t mean a particular poem can be interpreted to mean absolutely ANYTHING. But a work of art or a sacrament that stands the test of time has layers and angles that keep it alive and useful.
Baptism, in fact, has even more facets than the ones I just summarized. Baptism in living water remains a generative ritual overflowing with meanings. Though the Church has often been divided over this symbol-- has put dissenters to death over this symbol--baptism remains the outward starting point of Christians’ faith journeys because it is so theologically instructive, rich, and enlivening.
And that is one reason progressive Christians value the sacraments. Dogma gets frozen into rules and truth claims. Dogma is used to define who’s in our tribe and who’s not. Dogma is determined by those who hold power. Dogma can divide.
Dogma and doctrines can resemble arguments, but sacraments are more like art. Doctrines are more left brain. Sacraments, more right brain.
Doctrines pinpoint meanings. Sacraments enlarge meanings.
To articulate a doctrine of baptism or holy communion is to choose one meaning over others. To receive baptism or communion is to participate in an action that retains many possible resonances.
Doctrines are hemmed in and closely guarded. Sacraments are let loose into the world of experience to grow and expand.
Dogma is what is created after sacraments are literalized. Dogma has its place. But postmoderns wonder if spiritual truths and personal experiences are so easily captured in objective language. There are human moments in time that need to be marked as holy. There are human experiences that deserve to be interpreted through the lens our religious traditions.
I elevate the implicit meanings within sacraments and symbols above explicit meanings of doctrine. Of course, I’m oversimplifying this point. After all, people who think words must mean just one thing will also require images to mean just one thing. And I admit that sacraments can also be made divisive and dangerous. Just consider how the 16th and 17th century Anabaptists were persecuted for practicing adult baptism. The name Anabaptist meant “one who is re-baptized.” They were so named because these Christians didn’t find their 1st baptism as infants valid and insisted on a 2nd intentional baptism as adults. Within a few decades, thousands of Anabaptists were executed in Europe, often, ironically, by drowning, which was sadistically called their “third baptism.” Thus, a sacrament intended to celebrate newness of life was twisted into an instrument of death.
Obviously, murder is no true sacrament. Sacraments must be life-giving and freeing. They will remain so if we do not lock them into literalism and law.
One way we at Open Table will keep the sacraments OPEN and free is through less mediated, more spacious ritual. Communion and baptism are framed with some words but also some silence for your own prayer and reflection. Much of the experience is up to YOU. Or between you and God. The minister should have a fairly light touch in the rite. Clergy should not “control” who receives and who does not receive God’s gifts. Further, the Christian faith is not primarily about assenting intellectually to a list of belief statements. It is primarily about relationships with God and with neighbors, about ethical living and serving others.
The primary way I enunciate a theology I invite you to consider is through my sermons. But even if you don’t agree with a particular sermon, you can, I hope, enter freely into the spiritual spaciousness of communion each week. The sacraments should be unfettered by tight clergy control or a theological litmus test. Our celebrations of baptism and communion over the years will you give space for unmediated meditation and meaning-making as we honor both sameness and difference, continuity and change, groundedness in the past and a fresh course to the future of Christianity.
Another way we can keep the sacraments free and vital is to keep them relevant, inclusive, and just. Some of you will recall that the United Church of Christ this past summer entered into an unprecedented agreement with the US Conference of Catholic Bishops as well as with denominations in the Reformed tradition[i]. The agreement allows these denominations to recognize one another’s baptisms. One challenge for this ecumenical agreement focused on the traditional baptismal formula that concludes “in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” A significant number of UCC congregations, while affirming Trinitarian theology, resist patriarchy and have therefore modified that traditional formula to be gender-inclusive. Fortunately, the final agreement permits UCC congregations who choose to participate in this agreement to do so even when their members are baptized with more inclusive words. Like many UCC ministers, I will baptize “in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, one God, Mother of us all.” In this recent ecumenical agreement, tradition was retained—and expanded. Growing understandings of injustices require us to reconsider words so as not to perpetuate prejudices and hierarchy. Symbols will continue to live and will deserve to live if they are themselves life-giving and just.
Our scripture today actually documents an early evolutionary shift in the history of baptism. Here’s evidence that from the beginning of the tradition, there was innovation. I’ve divided the Gospel reading printed in your worship bulletin into three sections to make clearer this shift.
Mark 1:4-6 introduces John as the baptizer. Apparently Jesus’ cousin John had literally made a name for himself as “the baptizer”—had created his signature ritual from existing Jewish water purification rituals. Hebrew scriptures document water purification rites, and as early as 100 BCE there is already the mention of bathing as a means of ritual purification, but around the time of Jesus’s and John’s births “there arose a strong interest in water purification rites among a number of Jewish groups”[ii] . John was just one of many who called for religious renewal through water rituals. But it was John who became so strongly identified with the water ritual he performed that he earned the name “The Baptizer.” Probably Jesus was one of John’s early disciples.
In the next two verses (Mark 1: 7-8) the story teller says John believed another prophet would succeed him and would introduce yet another variation of baptism to surpass John’s baptism. The new baptizer would be “more powerful” because his baptism would be done “with the Holy Spirit.” Do you see the pattern of change embedded in this tradition? John takes an older ritual and varies it for his use, and soon thereafter announces that his version of baptism will be modified and improved upon by another who will come after him.
In the final 3 verses (Mark 1: 9-11), the new baptizer arrives. But first he is baptized in John’s version. The Gospel writer wants us to see that Jesus is in line with John, who is in line with earlier traditions, but Jesus also will take the tradition and put his own stamp on it. Jesus’s baptism will be Baptism 3.0 with the Holy Spirit promised like extra gigabytes of power. There is continuity with the tradition—as well as innovation. If Jesus models for us the life of faith, his baptism surely authorizes us to honor even that tradition through innovation. Jesus appropriated the ancient practice of baptism, the writers of the New Testament interpreted this symbol, and the church institutionalized this symbol; thus baptism is an evolving human expression of an ineffable encounter with the divine. The unfathomable divinity, after all, extends beyond what we mark as sacred with our limited symbol set. We prioritize certain symbols to convey beliefs within a community where these symbols are the common language. But if we say the sacraments cannot be altered in any way, we place them on the altar of idolatry, making the symbols our god. We can stay true to the spirit of a sacrament even if we, for instance, use more inclusive words.
Besides, there are always new ways of being sacramental, of seeing in the tangible world glimpses of God’s grace that is unmediated by language, the sacredness within us and beyond us and all around us. From time to time you and I may develop new traditions or rituals for our use. Our new member litany, for instance, is an Open Table tradition or ritual for us. We don’t pretend to be elevating these new traditions to the level of universal sacraments. And yet let us not be too quick to distance our own local homemade rites from the category of what is sacred.
In a moment we’re going to participate in a new symbolic act, a freshly constructed religious rite. It is not baptism, though it involves water. You might come to the font to touch the water, to dip your finger in the water and then make the sign of the cross on your forehead, to wash your hands in the water, to gaze into the water or blow your breath upon the face of the waters. I’m not going to prescribe in detail what to do or what it might mean to you. I want to give you the chance to create prayerfully a symbol that might open up God's grace to you.
But before concluding this sermon, I don’t want to miss the chance to extend an invitation that you may not have heard from me explicitly before. So cue the choir for the first verse of “Just As I Am.” Just kidding about that. But I’m serious about this. If you have never been baptized—as a child or adult--and if you would like to at least consider baptism, I would love to have a conversation about that with you later. Baptism doesn’t mean you’ve figured out everything about the Christian faith or that you assent to every doctrine. Baptism for you might be a way for you to share a new level of commitment to follow Jesus and to do so among this supportive community of faith. Baptism—by whatever mode you choose--might be your way of getting started on an intentional journey of faith.
Here at Open Table we do not use Christian Baptism as the gateway sacrament to our other sacrament, Holy Communion. We do not use baptism as a tribal totem to mark the clean from the unclean. But let us not minimize what a powerful ritual can mean in one’s faith journey. Let us not underestimate our need for tradition. Let us not miss an opportunity to become for others a signpost of God’s transforming work in our lives. Let us not, Progressive Christians renewing the church, let us not, my friends, throw the baby out with the baptismal waters. As one theologian says, we “come to God, worship God, and experience God through [a] complex of ideas [built upon symbols]. Without the symbols, images, and ideas, faith is but an empty shell”[iii]. The waters of creation in the Genesis myth and the waters of baptism in the Gospel accounts flow together into a living sacrament that can continue to renew us for the journey ahead. Thanks be to God.
PRAYER
Your waters, O God, are ever bracing and refreshing. May we continue to find ways to plunge into the currents of change, to trustingly yield to the buoyancy of your care, to surface again with vigor for a new day. We pray in the name of Jesus, who entered a beloved tradition and altered it with integrity. Amen
I'm searching the Internet for thoughtful and progressive was to baptize our daughter, and would love to include excerpts from this! Thank you!
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