Welcome to a new year, and of course a new month. As this is the first Sunday of January we will be gathering to break bread together as we celebrate Communion.
The Scripture Readings this week are:
- Acts 19:1-7
- Mark 1:4-11
The Sermon title is Washed With Spirit
Early Thoughts: Every year we begin January with a remembrance that Jesus was baptized. In part this serves to remind us that we are a baptized and baptizing community. Remembering the act of baptism also serves to reminds us that we are God's Beloved children. As people who have been baptized into Christian faith we have all been washed by water and the Spirit.
Our story from Acts this week intrigues me. For a long time I assumed (always a dangerous thing to do) that baptism was always the same within the Christian community. Certainly it has been the rite of initiation into the community from a very early time. But this week's reading from Acts shows that even then there were differing understandings of how Christian baptism might be done. It seems that in the early days there were still people (in the Christian community) out there baptizing in the same way that John the Baptist baptized. So Paul shares a different teaching, one that has become a norm for Christian baptism and brings the Spirit into the act of baptism.
Do we baptize into John's baptism or into Jesus' baptism?
Jesus, as far as we can tell from reading the Gospel accounts, never performed baptisms himself. However he was baptized [even though Matthew's Gospel seem to suggest there was some scandal about this in the early church -- why would Jesus need to get a baptism of repentance? why would John baptize the one who is greater than John?] and so we are baptized because Jesus was himself baptized.
But our understanding of baptism is different from John's. Especially when baptizing infants/young children we don't really emphasize the "repentance to wash away your sins" aspect. At least I don't. We talk more about initiation, membership in the family of God. We might highlight the idea of that the Holy Spirit is a part of this action, that we invite the Holy Spirit into the life of this person (and by extension re-invite the Holy Spirit into the life of all those members of the baptized and baptizing community). We might not talk about washing clean of sin. We might not talk about dying and rising to new life -- though in practice I think we talk about the new life without the somewhat disturbing talk of dying first. So what do we mean when we talk about being wash with/in/by the Spirit?
I think it is in fact about new/renewed/transformed life. I think it is about being reminded that we are part of the circle of God's Beloved children. I think it is a symbolic action that marks us as a different person, set apart, called to a new way of being. I think it is what empowers us to keep on following The Way of Christ in a world where often we are encouraged to follow a very different path.
THere is a story that Martin Luther, a man who had deep concerns about his sinfulness and worthiness before God, when he felt especially unworthy would simply remind himself that he was baptized. My reading of this story is that he remembered the promises of baptism. He remembered the transformational work of the Holy Spirit. And that made a great difference.
What does it mean to you to remember that you are baptized, born of water and the Spirit?
--Gord
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