Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
January 9, 2011

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 commemorate the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist, and as has been our custom for the past several years we will participate in a ritual renewal of baptismal vows. On this day it is particularly appropriate for us to consider baptism, what it is, what it isn’t, why we do it. Baptism is, of course, one of the foundations of the Christian faith. It is a sacrament in every Christian tradition; and in the Protestant tradition it is, along with the Eucharist, one of only two rituals that we consider to be sacraments, to be rituals that bring and reveal God’s grace. In the United Church of Christ baptism is considered mostly to be the sacrament through which a person becomes a part of the Christian community. I’ve preached on that meaning of baptism here before, and we see that meaning every time we do a baptism here in our church, whether the person being baptized is an infant or an adult. Yet as I have considered baptism this past week in preparation for today’s service I have been thinking about the way that, in the Christian tradition over the centuries, baptism has been seen as more than that, has been seen to have greater, deeper significance than that; and it is some of that greater, deeper significance that I want to talk about this morning.

But before I do let me put one traditional understanding of baptism to rest. The Christian tradition, for a very long time, taught that baptism was necessary to salvation. It taught that a soul was saved only if the person was baptized. That, really, is why the tradition started to do infant baptism, and that understanding of baptism is quite simply false. Salvation comes from God and is for everyone. Baptism is a human act, albeit one that we believe reflects and conveys God’s grace. It absolutely is not necessary for salvation. Consider, for example, that there is no indication in the Gospels that Jesus’ disciples were ever baptized. Are we to believe that they weren’t saved? Of course not. So let’s just put that one aside and consider what other meaning baptism might actually have.

To do that let’s turn to Saint Paul, that often maligned and misunderstood pioneer of Christian theology. He taught that baptism has a much more profound meaning than merely being the sacrament through which a person becomes part of the Christian community. It meant that for him, but for him baptism symbolized something far more profound. We see its meaning for Paul in the passage we heard from Romans. In that passage Paul presents baptism as nothing less than a dying and a rising, a dying to an old way of being and a rising into a new way of being. When we are baptized, he says, we are baptized into Christ’s death “so that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.” At another place Paul says that “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.” Galatians 3:27 For Paul, when we rise from the waters of baptism, we have become new people, reborn people, people who have died to the ways of the world and risen into the ways of Christ, the ways of God. For Paul, baptism is a profound transformation of our very nature as human beings. That certainly is a much more profound understanding of baptism that our rather tepid “it is the sacrament by which a person becomes part of the Christian community.”

But notice something about that understanding of Paul’s. It assumes a couple of things about the act of baptism that aren’t usually the case for us. It assumes adult baptism, and it assumes baptism by immersion rather than by mere sprinkling. Both of those things were, of course, the practice in early Christianity. The early Christians didn’t baptize infants. Baptism came for adults after a long period of preparation, usually lasting a least one year. And baptism was by immersion, following the Jewish practice, the practice of John the Baptism, the kind of baptism Jesus had at the hands of John. Now, I don’t know if any of you were baptized by immersion as adults. I know I wasn’t, and those of you whom I have baptized weren’t. Our Congregationalist tradition baptizes by sprinkling, and it baptizes infants as well as adults; but it seems to me that baptism as an adult by immersion must be a much more powerful experience, and it fits much better with Paul’s understanding of baptism as a dying and rising, a dying to an old way of life in the world and a rising to a new way of life in Christ. In immersion the person being baptized is lowered into the water, symbolizing burial. The person rises out of the water, symbolizing resurrection. And all of that is done upon the baptized person’s personal decision to be baptized, to be a Christian, to live a new life in Christ. Now, I’m not going to re-baptize you all by immersion, but I do want to help you experience what that must be like, if you’ve never experienced it, or to help you relive it if you have experienced it. So I invite you to close your eyes and to follow along mentally as I lead you through a mental reenactment of an adult baptism by immersion.

Imagine that you have decided that you want to be a Christian. You have decided to commit your life to Christ and to follow in Christ’s ways. You come to a river with a group of Christians, people you have come to know and to love, people with whom you have studied and from whom you have learned about Jesus Christ and the kind of life he calls us to live. You are dressed in a white baptismal gown, a gown something like this alb that I’m wearing this morning. The minister leads you out into the water. It’s cold, but it’s invigorating. The minister holds you around the waist and supports your head with one hand. He leans you backward toward the water. You feel a little bit scared. What will it be like being under the water? Being under water is dangerous, but it’s exciting too. The minister lowers you into the water. Just before you go under you breathe in deep and hold your breath. Under the water you go. You’re buried in it. You keep holding your breath, hoping that the minister will bring you back up soon. You can’t hold your breath forever. You feel yourself needing to breathe, but you know you can’t. Then, slowly, the minister lifts you up. Out of the water. Back into the air. You breathe deeply again. You’ve been submerged, and you’re come up again. You’ve come back to the land of the living.

Everything looks the same. And yet you know that everything has changed. The symbolic act of being submerged and coming up again fills your heart with the sense that you have died and risen again. The old you, the you that followed the ways of the world, is gone. A new you has come up from the water, a you committed to following the ways of Christ. You know that you went under the water a sinner and came up forgiven. You went under the water as a sinner and came up dead to sin. You went under the water spiritually dead and came up spiritually alive, alive in Christ, alive in the will and the ways of God. Everything looks the same, but you know that everything has changed. You look the same, but you are not the same. In your soul there is no doubt that you are not the same. You are a new creation in Christ. You are a Christian, and the wonder and power of the name of Christ that is now your name too fills you with wonder and with awe. Everything old has passed away. Everything is new. You walk now in newness of life.

That, I think, is the power of adult baptism by immersion, the baptism Jesus knew and Paul proclaimed. Adult baptism by immersion is so physical, so bodily, so sensual, so immediately experienced. It is so emotionally and spiritually powerful. Adult baptism by immersion enacts what our baptism by sprinkling only suggests. It enacts dying to an old self and rising to a new self. It enacts dying to an old life and rising into newness of life.

In a few minutes we will participate in the ritual of renewal of our baptismal vows. We won’t dunk anybody. We will sprinkle. But as I sprinkle you with water from the baptismal font I invite you to imagine yourself going under the water and coming up again. I invite you to imagine dying to an old way of life and rising to newness of life in Christ Jesus. However it is done, that’s the deeper meaning of baptism, at least for adults. It can be the meaning of our reaffirming our baptismal vows, whether we made those vows ourselves as adults or they were made for us when we were infants. So I invite you to come forward, not just to get a little wet but to receive newness of life. I invite you into the life of Christ, the life that is dead to sin, dead to the ways of the world, and alive to God, alive to Jesus Christ. Dead to the world’s ways of greed and violence, alive to Christ’s ways of justice and peace. Come. Come to renew your baptismal vows. Come to newness of life. Amen.