Baptized in/for Jesus

=MsoNormal>May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, Our strength, Redeemer and the font of All grace – Amen 

Most of us were baptized as a Baby or young child?

Most of us don’t remember our baptism - I too was baptised as a baby, and I don’t remember it at all…

I am told that there was a heavenly glow about me and that my mother, like Mary, treasured up all these things and pondered over them….

                        Actually I have been told nothing of baptism, probably like most of you

When Jesus came out of the water – the heavens opened, and God manifested in bodily form descended like a dove – and there was a voice of God the Father declaring “this is my Son, in whom I am well pleased”

            And we as Christians claim – claim, that we share in Christ’s baptism

Never heard of anything visibly supernatural ever happening, yet we symbolically ritualize the fact that we share in Christ’s Baptism

So that begs the following questions:

-          What is baptism?

-          Does anything happen at our baptism?

-          And why is Baptism so important to Christians?

I share all of these questions today, because today as the readings would indicate, we celebrate the annual feast of the Baptism of Jesus (or the Baptism of our Lord)

It is also the time of the year we marked the beginning of Epiphany (God’s revelation to the whole world – Gentiles included)

We had baby Jesus only a few weeks ago – and we have ‘fast forwarded’ ahead 30 years to the beginning of Jesus’ adult ministry and His Baptism.

            Time flies when you are having fun!

This is the time of year for annual reports, and as part of my responsibilities I have looked back over the year’s baptisms.

And there has be 13, in 2011 and 51 since I have been here at Farringdon,

And with the over 140 that I was responsible at St. Luke’s – I have shared in the preparations of a lot of people (mostly parents on behalf of their children) for Baptism

                                    With that has come a great many conversations about what Baptism is

What we are told about baptism from the bible - and what the church has since come to understand it to mean – and specifically what baptism means to us now

Since Baptism is the theme for the day I would like to share with you a condense version of the 60-75 minute talk that I have with each family that comes here for baptism.

So what is baptism?

Now when this question first comes up, I am the one that asks this of the family gathered, so that I have an understanding of why they are there.

I get answers like: It is something that you do keep your child safe and in God’s care

Or that it is an initiation rite

Or it is a time when water is sprinkled on someone’s head and their sins are washed away

Or that it is the beginnings of a life with Christ

            To all these answers – I say yes, and then… it is much more!

For Jesus, in each of the Gospel accounts, it marked the beginning of His adult ministry

It was preformed by John the Baptizer (prophet with one foot in the Old Testament and one foot in the New Testament) the voice in the wilderness – calling for a life of repentance and a prophet declaring God’s desire that we prepare a way for the coming of the Lord in our lives

For Jesus, by Matthew’s account – John questioned Jesus whether the roles should be reversed, questioning whether it was appropriate for John to baptize Jesus?

To which Jesus responds “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.”

            …Here we are starting to get to the answers - What is Baptism and why?

To understand this, we need to first understand some Hebrew theology – now don’t be dismayed by the term – theology – it simply means the study of God (and therefore the understanding of God’s relationship to us)

            One of the key principals of Hebrew theology, was that they were the chosen people

                        God, beginning at Abraham, selected them to be His people in the world

To live out a covenant relationship with God and to be a model for all the nations of the world

            They, like us, continually fell short of their portion of the covenant

                        Never-the-less they were the chosen people – they were Israel

When famine occurred in their land – they went down to Egypt, a way prepared by God in the life of Joseph – they flourished there

There they lived for 400 years and after a while the Egyptians forgot their special relationship and made the Hebrew people slaves – and they suffered

Along comes Moses and after several stubbles along the road of his life, he answers the call of God to bring the Israelites out of bondage and into freedom.

Here God performs the most incredible escape route ever

God using Moses’ staff parts the sea and the people walk on dry land – going through the waters

So here we meet up with Jesus and his claim to Cousin John, at His baptism, to ‘Fulfill all righteousness’

The Hebrew people, the Israelites, were the chosen people – set to be a model – a witness to the world of the covenant relationship with God

            They went down to Egypt and began their journey of freedom - going through the waters

And Jesus the Messiah, the perfect Israelite, having escaped, because of Joseph’s vision in a dream, to Egypt as a baby

Then coming out of Egypt and beginning the model life of the perfect Israelite – going through the waters of baptism - to show us a life of freedom – fulfilling all righteousness

Jesus was baptised and so we Christians – followers of the Christ are baptised

            Jesus in ‘fulfilling all righteousness’ left for us an initiation rite to begin our following

                        Scripture reveals to us that it was vitally important that it was a baptism by John

                                    John’s claims were for people to be baptised into repentance 

Repentance is not merely ‘saying your sorry’ – that is a part of it for sure – but, in fact it literately means to turn from one way and turn towards another

So Jesus modeled a baptism of turning towards God’s will and God ways – Baptism is an act of obedience to the will of the Father – and remember the words of God the Father “this is my Son in whom I am well pleased”

            So baptism is also about naming and claiming – Identity - The Father claims the Son

                        And as we share in Jesus’ baptism – we too are claimed by God

I believe that something similar happens between God and us in our own baptisms: 

"This one is mine!"  the Lord exclaims.  "I see my image in her!  Don't you see my image in him?  

And here comes my Spirit, my Spirit to sustain and guide as you go about doing what I put you on earth to do." [1]

That is the reason right before the actual getting wet part, I ask the parents to name the child – to name and to claim the child as God’s

In the protestant church, we believe that there are two sacraments: Baptism and Communion (or Eucharist, or the Lord’s Supper, or whatever term you like)

            Whereby our Catholic brothers and sisters would claim that there are seven sacraments

Baptism and Communion are shared and considered the two most significant sacraments – known as the Domical sacraments – Domina: meaning God

And called as such because our Lord was both baptised and instituted the Lord’s Supper

The other five sacraments are: Confirmation, confession, marriage, ministry to the sick (used to be called ‘last rites’) and ordination

Here like many main-line protestant churches we in fact do all of those special acts – but we don’t quite get as far as calling them sacraments – we might say that they are ‘sacramental in nature’

What is the distinction? And why is that important?

            First, as I said, Jesus participated in both baptism and communion

He wasn’t confirmed, we don’t believe that he needed to confess anything,

He wasn’t ordained (at least not in the way that we do it now),

Although He certainly healed many sick – it doesn’t fit another definition of a sacrament that I will explain shortly

And despite what the ‘DeVinci Code’ says: Jesus was not married to Mary Magdalene

We Protestants can trace our roots to people that Protested against the ways of the Roman Catholic Church and the traditions that had developed at that point in time.

The attempt of the protest was to reform the church – thus the Protestant reformation

However when that proved to be impossible new national churches were born and the focus was on a simpler faith – a faith that believed in the foundational statement “sola scriptura”

This means that: not our individual rationale or our personal experiences of reason

Nor the passing on of traditions of the church

Will be the ultimate deciding factor of what we believe is truth

Solely Scripture – only the divine word of God will be the ultimate test

And since only Baptism and Communion were recorded in scripture as part of Jesus’ life, therefore they are the only two sacraments

Now at this point you might be saying to yourself – wait we do the other five things – why

            So here it might be good to look at a couple definitions of what a sacrament is:

                        First definition: is that a sacrament is a sacred act

Now I find this to be too vague, I believe that every Sunday, in fact everyday we are involved in scared acts – anything that is done to the glory of God: is a sacred act – saying ‘grace’ at meals for example

The second definition is an ancient Christian description of a sacrament as: ‘a visible sign of God’s invisible grace’

In the bread & wine and in the water we have the visible sign, and yet it is God’s grace that is truly at work

It is not about how I hold my hands or even the words that I say – but in fact, it is God that is at work.

And so the other five ‘sacramental in nature’ acts don’t have the same characteristics – there isn’t the same visible sign

There is nothing in confession or prayers of healing or confirmation (we haven’t always given bibles and we haven’t always exchanged rings in marriage)

But all of these five sacred acts are beautiful expressions of the church at work – the church in service to others and by others – so it is great that we do all of these

Now back to specifically Baptism and the belief that “it is a visible sign of God’s invisible grace”

We believe that we are surrounded and upheld by that invisible grace each and every day

Once baptised we share in God’s love in a special way – we are made children of God – not merely part of all of God’s creation, which everything is – but more specifically and special

We are part of the family of God – share ‘by God’s grace’ as Sons and Daughters of God

With each baptism that I am involved in, after the water is sprinkled three times on the child of God’s head (signifying the Father, Son & Holy Spirit)

I then either with water or oil will make a sign of the cross on their forehead and say “I sign you with the sign of the cross and mark you are Christ’s own forever”

God chooses to bring us into the world.  God's grace claims us and reclaims us over and over again.

That is why it is so important that most protest church have public baptismal services

Each time in the words that we all claim – we have the opportunity to remind ourselves that we believe that God believes in us

                                    We state each time the claim of God’s renewing grace

We don't need to get all worked up over whether or not we are adequate or worthy. 

With the exception of Jesus, we are all unworthy and without hope; however, we are saved in God's sovereign mercy.

When I am with a Christian, in their home or hospital bed, when they and I know there time is running short – I can look into their eyes and know that they are sealed by the Love of God – they are Christ’s forever

One of the greatest claims that the Christian faith can make – is that the past need not define the future, by Grace and our acceptance of Grace, God can define our future

So today – we celebrate the Baptism of our Lord

We acknowledge that, like John’s baptisms before that prepared the way, it is a baptism of repentance – of saying your sorry so profoundly that you turn from your sinful ways and turn towards God

We believe that it is a washing away of all our sins and making us – defining us - as clean in God’s judgment

            We claim our faith in Jesus as Lord and claim our role as disciples (followers)

                        We understand that it is an initiation into that role as followers

We are baptized into the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit

            For each and every one - we believe that God is invisibly there

                        That God claims each one of us

That God looks at each one of His children and makes His Claim on us and says “look and him or her, see how my image is in them – there future has begun – the past no longer rules – but, the promise of my salvation

            Baptism is a the beginning of the Gospel (the good news) in our lives

                        And so it is one of THE things that the church is all about

For each and everyone here today who has been baptized Remember, that God’s seal is upon you! – and you are all God’s children

Heavenly Father – we pray - for the baptism of Jesus, when He was made one with us, and for our baptism when we are made one with Him and one another, we praise you, O God.  As we enter a new year, help us to remember whose we are, so that we might glorify and enjoy you forever.  Amen.

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[1] http://day1.org/1678-god_believes_in_you - The Rev. Dr. Joanna Adams