Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
January 14, 2007

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Today we mark the Baptism of Christ, and in a few minutes we will again participate in a ritual renewal of our baptismal vows. That’s the bit where I sprinkle water on you. So this past week I had occasion to re-read a couple of Bible texts about baptism, the two we just heard read this morning. When I did what struck me in particular was something they both mention that I have never paid much attention to before. In our tradition, and indeed in most Christian traditions, baptism is a once for all thing, a one-step process that we don’t repeat. We do a baptism of water and leave it at that, but in both of these Bible passages baptism is clearly a two-step process. These texts, which are really from one work, since Acts is actually Part II of Luke, speak of two baptisms, not one. In the passage from Acts we read that the people from Samaria to whom Peter and John went had “only” been baptized “in the name of the Lord Jesus.” We’re told that they had not yet been baptized by the Holy Spirit. That happened only after their baptism of water, when the Apostles laid hands on them in a kind of second act of baptism.

We see the same two-stage baptism in Luke’s version of the baptism of Jesus. There, John the Baptist tells the people “I baptize you with water, but one who is more powerful than I is coming….He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” Luke 3:16 NRSV We also read that after Jesus had been baptized—presumably by John with water—the Holy Spirit descended upon him. Even Jesus it seems was baptized first with water and then with the Holy Spirit.

There is no doubt then that Luke speaks of two baptisms, one with water and a second one with the Holy Spirit. The Christian tradition has, however, for the most part, lost that second baptism. I don’t really know why the tradition abandoned that second baptism by the Holy Spirit, although I do have a theory. I can’t prove it, but I like it as a theory. The institutional church, that church of power and control that developed after Christianity became the established religion of the Roman Empire in the fourth century, has always been leery of the Holy Spirit. The reason why it has been isn’t hard to understand. The church, try as it might, cannot control the Holy Spirit; and at some level at least it knows that it can’t. A baptism with water is easy to control. It can be ritualized, and the church can say who gets baptized and who doesn’t. The church can specify what baptism with water means.

Not so with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit blows where it will, touches whom it will, and leads where it will. Institutional Christianity has always been afraid of the freedom the of the Holy Spirit; so it has de-emphasized the Spirit, rendering it in practice if not in theory the poor step-sister of the other Persons of the Trinity, the Father and the Son, to use the traditional language for them. A big part of that process was ignoring the Luke’s baptism with the Holy Spirit and making baptism with water the sole and sufficient baptism.

So we don’t have a sacrament of baptism with the Holy Spirit. Since we don’t we have to ask: Is there still any meaning for us in these Scriptural references to a two-stage baptism, first baptism with water and then baptism with the Holy Spirit? Not surprisingly, I suppose, since I wouldn’t have raised the question if I thought the answer were no, I think that there is. We can get at that meaning by asking why Luke would talk about a two stage baptism in the first place. Again, I don’t really know the answer, but I have a theory. The answer to that question presumably lies where the answers to all religious questions ultimately lie, in the spiritual experience of the people. It seems reasonable to believe that the people’s experience was that an initial baptism with water, important as it was, was not the end of a person’s spiritual journey. Originally baptism was a sign of repentance and of a person’s decision to follow Christ. As such it marked the beginning of a person’s spiritual life as a Christian. It never was the end of that journey. We don’t so much think of baptism as a sign of repentance, but we do think of it as the beginning of a person’s spiritual life as a Christian. Or if it isn’t the actual beginning, in the case of a person baptized as an adult it is a significant milestone on that journey, a beginning of a new stage of the Christian life.

If we stop to think about it, we know as well as Luke did that baptism is not the end of the Christian life. We too know that a lot of learning and a lot of growing remains after we are baptized. We know that we still need the guidance and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit as we continue our lives as Christians. We know that without that guidance and inspiration it is easy for us to stray from a Christian way of life. After we are baptized we still face the temptations that the world always puts in our path. We are still tempted by the lure of violent solutions to problems, material wealth, and worldly acclaim. We need the continual presence of God the Holy Spirit in our hearts and in our lives.

Luke expressed his understanding of that continuing need by speaking of a baptism of the Holy Spirit that followed baptism with water. We don’t have that second baptism, but we can nonetheless open ourselves to the guidance and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit as we seek to live as Christians, to live into our baptismal vows whether we made them ourselves as adults or someone made them for us as children. Our ritual this morning of renewing our baptismal vows can be an occasion for us to do that, for us to open ourselves to the coming of the Holy Spirit upon us to guide our steps and inspire our hearts. Our baptisms were only a beginning. May today be a new step on our journeys, with the help of the Holy Spirit. Amen.