Baptism

Acts 10:34-48, Matthew 3:13-17

January 13, 2008

Rochelle A. Stackhouse

Well, the Iowa caucuses are past as is the New Hampshire primary, and in less than a month Connecticut and 21 other states will hold their presidential primaries. We are well into what will be a relentless barrage of candidate advertisements on TV and radio, those annoying automated phone calls, and every news cast beginning with what candidates did or said. Isn’t democracy grand? With the exception of those of you who may be new to this country or who have just reached voting age, we have seen this before, every four years, in fact, so we think we know how it goes.

But something is different this time, something few of us would have predicted. One of the front runners in the Democratic Party is a man who is bi-racial and whose father is Muslim and African, and the other one is a woman. On the Republican side we have a man who is Mormon, a Baptist preacher, a 71 year old former soldier, and an Italian-American former mayor of New York who is pro-choice! There have always been also-rans in the election process who have not been part of what politics has always looked like in this country, but this time we’re not talking about also-rans. People are included here that the system has not included before. For some people, that is frightening and befuddling. For others it is incredibly exciting and energizing. But it’s something no one had planned for or arranged in advance. It’s a bit of surprise.

In the two baptism stories we read this morning, something similar is going on. John the Baptist had been waiting for Jesus to begin his ministry, but John had assumed that then Jesus would take over the baptism franchise, albeit with a few changes. Instead, Jesus came to John and asked to be baptized. That wasn’t how John thought it should go. Several years later, the disciple Peter thought he knew who the followers of Jesus would be: Jews or those who converted to Judaism. Then he had an invitation from a Roman Centurion, a leader of soldiers who was not a Jew, to come to his home and preach the gospel.

Jesus, Messiah, was not supposed to be baptized; there was no need if the baptism was the one John preached, a baptism to seal repentance of sin. Roman soldiers were not supposed to want to hear the gospel and certainly not supposed to receive the Holy Spirit or be baptized in the name of Jesus. The church sometimes still likes to set boundaries around this sacrament: some say babies should not be baptized or folk who are not members of the church should not be baptized. We’d like to keep this sacrament under our control.

But human control is so not what baptism is about. Here’s an image that really opened up these texts for me this week. It comes from Martin Luther, the 16^th century German theologian. He wrote, “It is not I that baptize, but God and all the angels; they show up on their own.”

So I thought about what that might have looked like. Here’s John at the Jordan River with all kinds of people coming to him, some in tears because of their sins, some eager to get in the river and be washed clean. Moving through the crowd is Jesus. As he nears John by the muddy banks, another set of presences moves in the heavens, unseen to those focused on the water and the charismatic preacher. The angels come slowly, watching, waiting. And a dove hovers over the water, just as at Creation itself. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, John loses control of what is about to happen. Like the others, Jesus goes into the river and rises up, hair and robes dripping. The hovering dove, along with the laughter and delight of all the angels, alights on him. The one who didn’t need to be baptized, who had no need of forgiveness, became one in the waters with all those who did, adding new meaning to John’s ritual. Jesus stretched baptism, so that it was now not just about forgiveness and repentance, but now it was also about becoming one with God.

The baptism’s meaning got stretched again, with Peter in the house of Cornelius, when once again the Spirit and all the angels just showed up all on their own. Peter could not control what happened as he preached that day, for the company of heaven that showed up decided this was the moment to push Peter farther than he thought he could go, in some ways to push Peter out of the way altogether and let the Spirit do its work. Wisely, Peter decided to cooperate with the hosts of heaven, and this sacrament of baptism grew again. Now it was not just about forgiveness and repentance, not just about becoming one with God, but also about becoming one with other people, and especially becoming one with people who are outsiders, different, not those you’d expect to be with in community. Baptism became the way to incorporate new believers into a new kind of community, the community of Christ.

Now I don’t know how many of you had either the experience of Jesus or Cornelius at your baptisms, or have participated in any baptism that was like that. A few times in the 135 baptisms which I have celebrated as pastor or been present for as mother or godmother, I have been acutely aware of the presence of the Holy Spirit, aware of being stretched. But whether or not you remember your baptism and whether or not it felt like some mountaintop experience, these three things happened: forgiveness, becoming one with God, becoming one with a much larger community than you could ever imagine.

So here’s the deal with baptism. The sacrament actually has two meanings. Baptism signifies a one time, unrepeatable liturgical event, when water is placed on one’s head or whole body. But baptism is also, following that event, a state of existence. Once you have been baptized, you are one of the baptized. It is a state of being that we are constantly being called to live into, much as we live into being members of our families or citizens of our country. The event of baptism is not the only opportunity for the Spirit to be manifest in our lives. In Luther’s words, “God and all the angels” can show up on their own at any time in our lives. Remember that this story we tell as the conversion of Cornelius was very much a conversion for Peter as well, some time after the gift of the Holy Spirit was given to him on Pentecost. He was still living into what it meant to be, in John Calvin’s words, “engrafted into the mystical body of Christ.”

Which is why Peter is so dear to me; he is a gift to all of us who have been baptized and are baptized but still don’t always want to open ourselves to the work of the Spirit in us or sometimes in others. Peter is a gift to all of us who want to control how God works in us, or sometimes in others. Peter reminds us that those of us who are baptized have not reached a destination, but are perpetually committed to being on a journey.

When we baptize an infant or child, the parents are asked the following question: “Do you promise, according to the grace given you, to grow with this child in the Christian faith?”

I am beginning to think that we need to ask not only the parents, but all those in the room who are baptized to answer the same question. Do you promise, according to the grace given you, to watch for those times when God and all the angels show up on their own? Do you promise to really receive God’s forgiveness and respond to it with your life? Do you promise to try to discover how you are one with God, where the Spirit is in you? Do you promise to live in communion with those God has chosen to put in your life, even if they don’t seem like people you would choose to be with? Do you promise, like John or Peter or Cornelius or Mary Magdalene or Martha of Bethany, no matter what your age or how long ago your baptism, do you promise to grow in the Christian faith? If you can say, “I do, with the help of God,” then get ready to grow, for God and all the angels are ready for you.