People are naturally drawn to mystery. We search out the unexplained to marvel, and to perhaps look for an explanation.
That’s the way it was with John, the baptizer. He was the eccentric priest-turned-prophet who turned his back on prestigious service in the temple to become the voice crying in the wilderness, preparing the way of the Lord. His rough-sewn camel hair garment and living-off-the-land lifestyle reminds everyone of the stories they've heard of Elijah. And that, in turn, reminds them that Elijah is supposed to come before the Messiah, who is just about due according to Daniel’s prophecy. John feeds the speculation by continually speaking of the “one coming after me.”
People were drawn from all over Judea to the wilderness to see and hear John. They know there is a coming Messiah but they really don’t know what to expect. It is somewhat a mystery. A divinely concealed truth that cannot be understood until God chooses to reveal it.
John is known as the baptizer because that is his trademark. Everyone coming into the new kingdom, John insists, arrives through a baptism for repentance. “I baptize you with water,” John says, “but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” Baptism with water is the symbol our commitment to life change, of separating from the old and being born anew. Baptism with the Holy Spirit means the power and grace to be transformed into the image of God.
The word baptism comes to us from the Greek. It means to totally immerse. It’s original use described a sinking ship. The ancient Jews baptized pagan converts to Judaism through an immersion initiation rite. They entered a mikveh, or baptismal pool and a priest officiated a rite of spiritual cleansing. It was also a graphic symbol of death, burial, and resurrection.
John adapted this hallowed observance to the kingdom of the coming Messiah. He took people down to the river and presided over their entrance into the kingdom, their new birth. And people came from all over to repent of their sins and prepare for the Messiah.
Mark tells us Jesus made the 70-mile hike from Nazareth to the back-side of the Judean desert to be baptized by John. He was the carpenter of Nazareth, making a good living making furniture and building homes from stacked rock. Like John He is rough-hewn, muscular from hard work and weather-worn from sun and wind. He has rough hands with callouses and sores to prove he is a member of the working class. He looks nothing like the wimpy caricatures on the walls of Aunt Mae’s Sunday school class.
Jesus stood in line to be baptized. Mark reports that when John immersed Jesus, he came up out of the water and saw the heavens open up, and the Holy Spirit descending on him like a dove. Then a voice from heaven thundered, “You are my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.” Jesus was anointed with the Holy Spirit for the work he was about to do. It is a pivotal point and transition in his life and ministry.
For Jesus baptism represented change, although he did not have to repent of anything. Jesus never went back to the carpenter shop, but relocated to Capernaum, became a rabbi and prophet, and took on disciples to apprentice them in the ways of the kingdom.
We also come to the waters of baptism to signify change in our lives. It is an important part of teaching and our liturgy. The early church practiced baptism with flowing, “living” but readily adapted to aspersion or pouring over the head when water wasn’t plentiful. Candidates for baptism publicly renounced the devil and works of darkness, and took on a new covenant with God and each other. We also enter a covenant so important and so binding that we would rather die than break it.
We believe God is somehow sovereignly present at baptism, interacting with the water and with us. He receives us into his kingdom, and he begins the process of renewal through the new birth. We don't quite understand it because it is a mystery, a divinely concealed truth we must accept by faith. At baptism God speaks over the waters, just as he did at creation, and recreates us into his image and likeness. He baptizes us with his Holy Spirit.
Our baptism should initiate a time when we become totally sold out, dead to self, and living unto God alone. We become, as the apostle Paul said, living sacrifices: holy, acceptable to God. We pledge to reject the works of darkness and withstand temptation and opposition to the kingdom. We set aside our ambitions, our own desires, and we submit to the will of the Father.
Baptism is so solemn and full of the presence of God that we don’t repeat it at whim. But we do remember it. We remember it with renewal services and by the constant reminder of our baptism from the placement of the baptismal font. During a recent trip to England I could not help but notice and be drawn to the ancient baptismal fonts in the doorways of grand cathedrals and country churches.
Every year at this time many churches have a baptismal renewal or remembering service, as we will today. As you renew your baptismal covenant, remember your baptism as ...
- a turning point in your life
- a time of dying to self and raising to new life in Christ
- a time of remembering and renewing binding covenant promises you made or were made in your behalf
- a time of receiving the Holy Spirit to empower and enable you to live out your covenant promises
- a time to remember the tremendous sacrifice Jesus made for you on the cross so that you could come into God’s kingdom.
Almighty God, who at the baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan proclaimed him your beloved Son and anointed him with the Holy Spirit: Grant that all who are baptized into his Name may keep the covenant they have made, and boldly confess him as Lord and Savior; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen. (Collect for The Baptism of the Lord, BCP, alt.)
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