Baptisms of Water and of Fire

Back Last week we learned of the people in a little village in occupied France lining the road and singing A Mighty Fortress is Our God, as their pastors and school teacher were being taken away to an internment camp. Their Christian faith got them in a lot of trouble. What safety or protection does this baptism provide? I believe water baptism does provide protection, but particularly against fire baptism. By fire baptism I mean the testing of our lives. Paul talks about that kind of testing in the Corinthians passage-fire tells us what we are made of. Paul may have in mind a building, even a temple, that he saw burn down so that only a foundation was left. If we are temples of the Holy Spirit-and he believes we are-then baptism is our foundation.



John the Baptist played with water the way we might warn people about playing with fire. He was a man of fire like Elijah, a man of fiery words and sure predictions that Jerusalem would go into the flames. Yet his focus was personal. What is it that has you on fire? If it is sin that is burning you up, come drown yourself in the good flood of baptism water. Jesus will say later that he has a baptism to undergo (Luke 12: 50; Mark 10:38), and we talk sometimes about baptism by fire-initiation by violence-in wartime.



Some of us who saw the Two Towers movie of Tolkien's book, The Lord of the Rings, may remember Gandalf's fall into the abyss with the fire monster as a baptism. Gandalf the Grey, the wizard, appears to fall through infinite space into the depths of the earth and it is an awesome struggle. They think he is lost-but he returns, now clad in white, like the garments of ancient baptism. That baptism prefigures resurrection, the blindingly light figure in the garden (more blinding as back at the Transfiguration). I would have to say, however, that Gandalf's dreadful fight in the abyss is not like baptism in that baptism is self-surrender-even for Jesus. It is the issue of self-surrender to a greater calling that Jesus shares with us-sins are what keep us from the path-that Jesus shares with us. Jesus will face down the wild beasts and the devil in the wilderness after his baptism, so Gandalf's baptism into a monster combat is a different kind of initiation.



It is Matthew's Gospel that gives us John the Baptist saying of Jesus that he will baptize later with the Spirit and with fire. This is an anticipation of Pentecost. Mark does not give us as much dialogue, but he gives a John the Baptist close to nature, instinct, the wild. After baptism, Jesus will be thrown or cast into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit-he has to struggle with the Spirit's great gift of annointing, what form his Messiahship is to take-but Jesus has already met the wilderness in John. We know that John will be a caged animal before his story is over and his head cut off for Salome, but now he is an initiator into wilderness. He has taken a ritual of purification outside holy or homey precincts. But now is not yet the time to go further into Lent, with its temptations and teachings.



The words that connect Alexandra Hoffman's baptism with Jesus' baptism are the words of God's blessing, "this is my dear son, with whom I am well pleased- in whom I delight. For Jesus, this is his true parent speaking and an incredible gift of calling given. The Spirit which comes upon him will be the Spirit of peace, though strong enough to resist every adversary. For Alexandra, the words of baptism move her from the world of her family-where she is her parents' (and grandparents'!) dear child, in whom her family delights, to the greater mystical family of the church. In sexist tradition, the minister or priest takes the child from the mother and returns her to her father, from inside family to outside world. In way more traditional or tribal societies, initiation moves a child from the world of the mothers to the world of the fathers, from home into wilderness.



So what does this baptism do? What kind of tradition does it impart? What kind of protection? Remember that it is an invisible mark-like circumcision? no. Like the brand on a slave? no. Like the tatoo on a soldier, that you might remember from Gladiator? No. The sign of the cross was an annointing, remembering Jesus' Messiahship-(this is where I favor the sign of the cross for all Christians, even though it is a penitential symbol). Nowadays tatoos or even brands might be marks of individuality, but through most of history they have been marks of the collective. The mark of baptism is the mark of a promise. It is a mark of identity aimed at the future. It is not bondage to the past, but rooting in it. The famous phrase of Jaroslav Pelikan comes to mind: traditionalism is the dead faith of the living, tradition is the living faith passed on from the dead. (This passage not preached in full).



Many of you know the answer to the question sometimes asked: why would Jesus need a baptism of repentance? The answer is that baptism is about self-surrender and trust, letting go, as we let go our weight to float in water. Repentance is also about being open to God's Spirit, not being closed off in sin, claiming to be self-directed or self-sufficient but so often just self-seeking. Jesus' self-surrender is solidarity more than repentance. Infant baptism is also about solidarity with the body of Christ, the Church, as it tells us about the parents and god-parents holding and raising this child as a trust to God.



When we pray over that water, setting it aside, like we set aside the bread and wine in consecration-setting it apart for a holy purpose, we are also setting each child aside for a holy purpose. What will her sacred use be? To be truly herself-we are believers in the individual calling-that's not just a liberal desire for our child to be special and above average. It is also for her to be part of a community that is itself "set aside," made holy by God's purpose (the "direction" of sanctification in the Confession of 1967).



Without a community, one has no particular character. We worship God simply because we are God's dear holy ones, with whom God is well-pleased. So when we say that Alexandra will never be alone in the world, that is our perception by faith, but it is also our promise at baptism, before her identity is very formed. Conscience and ethos go together. Ethos comes from the word for what one is accustomed to-one's dwelling or even one's stall. It gives stability and security to our existence. We promise that to Alexandra.



A church is people, as well as that combination of principles and rules, visions and virtues and values. This is why I do not preach ideological sermons, much as I believe our faith has economic and political implications. When those worshippers come in here tomorrow night for the MLK service, many will look at us as the very definition of rich. (My Ph.D. will set me apart from these other ministers as well). But you in this church know that virtually every woman in this congregation has cleaned these floors and polished the pews and cleaned the sinks and the men-some of you haven't worked as hard-but some have trimmed bushes year after year, hauled debris, dug in walks and powerlines, shoveled snow.... If this church has integrity, it is because we know that these people-and not only Jesus the Christ-have sacrificed for it.



Jesus himself did not come just to tell us to love one another. As William Willimon and Stanley Hauerwas and many other theologians of the late 20th century came to realize, the Beatles' all you need is love is wrong. There are many kinds of love, and some are very tough. Jesus came to establish the condition and context and community where love is made possible, even for us sinners. Love is not an abstract command or a syrupy niceness. Love is the ability to handle fire.

Every time we see a baptism we should be a little afraid because we are reminded that the Gospel is about self-surrender, and that we are sharing in Jesus' Journey.



[There was a break in the service here as a member fainted and the congregation joined in prayer. We thank God for the rescue squad and those members with medical skill. That member was back in the same pew the next week, with no sign of continuing difficulty. He had had a hard week of travel in Europe: that is the only explanation for his conking out.]



So what protection does Baptism give us? Well, it does mean more risks, like those French Huguenots in Le Chambon, that little village during WWII, saving Jews as if their own lives depended upon it. We know that somehow those men who were hauled off during the singing of a Mighty Fortress came back, though they were changed by the fires of that war.

But we also have an identity in this community and its protection. What does a community's protection look like? Here is a story from Hugh Kerr (in The Simple Gospel Louisville: Westminster/JK, 1991, pp. 38):



"My earliest childhood memory is of being lost in Chicago near McCormick Theological Seminary. My father was a part-time lecturer ... at the seminary and pastor of the nearby Fullerton Avenue Presbyterian Church. I remember stopping at a fire station and asking for a drink of water. The firefighters must have sensed something was wrong, but I was not old enough to tell them my name or address. After some minutes, as I examined the red hook-and-ladder fire truck, a person whoom I didn't know came along, took me by the hand, and led me back home. Sometime later, I learned that my guardian angel was Andrew C. Zenos, a professor of New Testament at McCormick and a good friend of my father. Maybe he knew that I was missing and simply went out to look for me. Years later, I discovered among some old books I was about to throw out a little volume called The Teaching of Jesus, written by Dr. Zenos, with this frontispiece inscription: To Hugh Thomson Kerr, Jr., on the day of his baptism... with love from the author...."



May we all grow into the promise and protection of baptism, and become promisers and protectors ourselves. Amen.

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