The Rest of the Story

PROPERS:          1 EPIPHANY: THE BAPTISM OF OUR LORD         

TEXT:                 MATTHEW 3:13-17

PREACHED AT HOLY TRINITY, PENSACOLA, ON SUNDAY, JANUARY 12, 2020.

SUMMARY:       Baptism is the full initiation by water and the Holy Spirit into Christ’s Body, the Church.  The bond established by God in baptism is indissoluble. 

                                    

PREACHED EXTEMPORANEOUSLY

            Today is one of the great baptismal feast days of the church year – the First Sunday after the Epiphany, also known as the Baptism of Our Lord.

            Today is a fitting day for Holy Baptism – along with the Easter Vigil, Pentecost. the Sunday after All Saints’, and any day on which the Bishop visits. It is the reason we will renew our baptismal vows in a few moments.

            Baptism did not rise ex nihilo in the early church.  It had been around for many years.  Before it became one of the dominical sacraments – that is, a sacrament instituted by Christ – it had two major threads.

            The first was Baptism of Conversion.  It was a practice used by biblical-era Jews to initiate catechumens – Gentiles studying to join the Jewish faith – into the body of faithful people.  Converts would typically study the Jewish faith and, when adequately prepared, would receive the baptism of conversion.

            Conversion into the Jewish faith – the early thread.

            Then came John the Baptism – a “wild ass of a man”, wearing a leather girdle and eating locusts and wild honey.  He lived, preached, ministered and baptized in the arid desert-like area along the Jordan River in the Judean Wilderness.

            John offered something different.  Something different from the baptism of conversion.  He offered baptism to faithful Jews – offering baptism for the repentance and forgiveness of sins.  People of the covenant community would undergo baptism to cleanse them of their sins.

            Now, of course, that raises the question of why Jesus received baptism.  And as you heard in today’s gospel, John said that he needed to be baptized by Jesus.  Jesus demurred:  We must do this to fulfill all righteousness.

            So, there you have it.  Any other questions would be met with silence – part of the divine mystery.

            So, we have two threads in baptism now – conversion into the community of faith, and for the repentance and forgiveness of sins.  But there’s more…

            We Episcopalians believe that praying shapes believing and that our beliefs can be found in our liturgy, our Book of Common Prayer.  That is certainly true in our theology of baptism.

            Turn to page 306 in the Book of Common Prayer.  There you will find one of the most beautiful and theologically-profound prayers in all the prayer book – the Thanksgiving Over the Water.  I love this prayer.  It says so much in so few words.

            Listen anew to it:

We thank you, Almighty God, for the gift of water.
Over it the Holy Spirit moved in the beginning of creation.
Through it you led the children of Israel out of their bondage
in Egypt into the land of promise. In it your Son Jesus
received the baptism of John and was anointed by the Holy
Spirit as the Messiah, the Christ, to lead us, through his death
and resurrection, from the bondage of sin into everlasting life.

We thank you, Father, for the water of Baptism. In it we are
buried with Christ in his death. By it we share in his
resurrection. Through it we are reborn by the Holy Spirit.
Therefore in joyful obedience to your Son, we bring into his fellowship those who come to him in faith, baptizing them in
the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

            There’s a lot of meat there – a lot of substantive imagery.  It tells us a lot about our theology of baptism.

            First, we are told about God’s movement in creation.  Then we refer to God’s saving action by bringing the people of Israel out of captivity in Egypt, through the waters of the Red Sea, into the Promised Land. And then we are reminded of Jesus’ baptism by John in the Jordan River.

            Then we are told of how all this matters to us.  Going down into the waters of baptism, we going down into the grave with Jesus and when we come out water, we are rising with Jesus in his resurrection.  We have died with Jesus, and we have risen with him – under the movement of the Holy Spirit..  We enter new life.

            So, in addition to the conversion aspect of baptism and the repentance and forgiveness of sins, we add other elements to our understanding of baptism.  We are made new creatures, as in God’s movement in creation.  We are delivered, as through the Red Sea.  And we share in the death and resurrection of Jesus.

            Those are remarkable and profound meanings for a simple liturgical act – a simple act which has life-long and even eternal consequences.

            Yet, there is one additional aspect to baptism that I want to emphasize today.  It is found in the rubrics on page 298 in the Book of Common Prayer – the very first paragraph:

“Holy Baptism is the full initiation by water and the Holy Spirit into Christ’s Body the Church.  The bond established by God in Baptism is indissoluble.”

            Note these tenets of the Church’s teaching about Baptism:

·      It is the complete initiation into the Church; not partial.  Nothing else needs to be done to complete it.  It is the work of water and the Holy Spirit, and not something we do.

·      The bond established by God in Baptism is indissoluble.  In other words, God establishes the bond.  It is God that moves first.  It is something which God does.  And the bond which is established cannot be dissolved.  Once we have become children of God, we are always God’s child.  Nothing we do or say can separate us from that love.

            The act of Baptism seems so simple, so straightforward. It has so much meaning beyond the apparent.

            Now you know the rest of the story.