Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church

Genesis 1:1-5; Psalm 29; Acts 19:1-7; Mark 1:4-11;

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Baptism: what is it? What does it mean? What difference does it make? What images come to your mind? What do you remember about your own? Today is the festival of the Baptism of the Lord, a day to remember Jesus’ baptism and a time to think about our own.

“But,” you say, “I don’t remember my baptism. How can I think on it when I know so little about it?” It would be interesting, if we had the time to do so, to have each of us talk about what we know about our baptisms. For many here, it simply happened–we have a certificate to prove it, somewhere, we think. For others of us, there have been family stories: some of how you howled through the whole thing, so that the minister rushed to get it over as quickly as possible. For others, it was the baptismal dress that you wore, used by generations in your family before you, or the name of the pastor who administered the sacrament–especially if that pastor was beloved or renowned, as has been the case here for some of you.

For some of us it is remembering waiting until we were thought old enough to understand what we were doing–as if anyone really understands all that is going on in baptism–whether seven or twenty-seven. Some of us remember being immersed, some had water poured over our heads. Some of you recall kneeling as a dish of water was produced in order to daub your head, while others have stood before this font as we lifted freshly blessed water and poured it on your head three times, in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, anointed you with oil as we named you Christ’s own forever, and then laid hand on you in final blessing. No one form is better than the other–they are the circumstances and mechanics. But what does it mean? This morning’s lessons give us a series of images that help us think more deeply about what happened to us in those waters, however we received them.

The first chapter of Genesis is the priestly account of how the ancient Hebrews thought about the creation of the world.¹ They were not writing an eyewitness account, but instead shaping a theological statement filled with symbols to tell us what they believed about it. Beside God as the Creator, four dominant images are present: the beginning, a watery chaos, the wind-breath of God, and light. “In the beginning, God....” This is one of the things baptism confesses. There is One in life who comes before us, is sovereign over all, and to whom we are accountable for the gift called “life.” None of us is in this on our own.

God hovers over a formless void, a chaotic, watery deep swathed in darkness, moving over it as a mighty wind. The word in Hebrew can be translated, “wind,” “breath,” or “spirit,”² and here represents God’s life-force and vitality.³ The church will later identify this wind or breath as God’s Spirit–the Holy Spirit. But for the writers of Genesis, it is simply the way they speak about the One who has no beginning or ending, but always, everywhere and for all time “is,” and here undertakes the heretofore unknown, inexplicable activity that only God can undertake–creation, and does so with but a word.⁴ From that moment on, God and creation are bound together by God’s gracious choice.⁵ The cosmos is not exploded out of an initial spark of spontaneous combustion and then left to itself, either to expand eternally until it atomizes into nothing, or to finally reach a point of ultimate expansion and then contract until it implodes back into nothingness. The cosmos is no more its own than you and I are our own. “In the beginning God;” so, too, at the end.

The next image is water; water at the beginning of all things, water at our beginning, and water in the font as our beginning with God. To the ancients, water was a complex symbol. It accompanied the miracle of birth, and was essential to life, but was also believed to be the source of chaos. Water could be destructive, life threatening, and became more so under the cover of darkness. There is a reason ancient mariners did not venture far from shore and preferred safe harbor at night. The biblical writers believed that water was at the core of the created order. The world as they knew it seemed to rest on the waters. Water also surrounded the earth in the heavens, and broke in from time to time. God hovering over water in all of its forms is the writers’ way of reminding us that God is sovereign over all of it. The Source of beginnings is still Master of all, even the chaos that might break against us.

The One in whose three-fold name we are baptized is the One behind and sovereign over all things and beyond our comprehension. Baptism links us to this One, and marks our beginning in a life left, not to itself, but to the gracious concern of God. As God’s presence hovered over the waters at the beginning of life, so, too, God’s presence hovers over the waters of baptism and all who are washed in them, giving not simply spiritual beginnings–light and life–but more: God’s power for new life.

This is what lies behind the question Paul asks the twelve new followers of Jesus he encounters upon his arrival in Ephesus.⁶ “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers?” They reply, “No, what is the Holy Spirit? We have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” Their baptism had simply been a rite of initiation into the church, a sign that because of their repentance, their sins had been forgiven. That is all. Should they have expected more? Do we? Paul asks about their baptism–whose was it? It was John’s.

John the Baptist had spent his ministry in the wilderness of the Jordan proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, and the whole Judean countryside, as well as those in Jerusalem, had flocked to him. Mark portrays John as Elijah,⁷ the one who is to come before the Messiah, and then records John’s words: “The One who is more powerful than I is coming after me... I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”⁸

When John baptizes Jesus, something new takes place that has not happened to the other of John’s followers: God’s Spirit descends upon Jesus and God names him his beloved son. The divine essence and life-force that hovered over the formless void at the beginning, descends on Jesus as he comes up out of the water, marking him as the One in whom God’s essence, life-force and vitality are present and revealed among us. From that moment on, we know who Jesus is and see the presence and saving power of God at work in him, issuing forth from him into the world especially in those who belong to him.

This is what the disciples in Ephesus had missed. They had received only John’s baptism for the forgiveness of sins. Paul baptizes them in Jesus’ name and as he lays hands on them in blessing, the Holy Spirit comes upon them and they erupt in joy, prayer and praise, equipped for the new life to which they have been called.

Christian baptism is about life beyond repentance. It is about repentance, to be sure–turning to a new way of life. But frankly, without the power of God’s Spirit, none of us can do that. Even repentance is the work of God’s Spirit in us. But even then, who of us can, on our own, maintain the kind of life the gospel calls us to, the life I charge each of us to live into at the conclusion of our worship? Only the gift of baptism in Jesus’ name can empower us to do that. For in baptism we die with Christ to sin’s ultimate power–death, and rise with Christ to new life as members of God’s new creation.⁹ We enter Christ’s bloodline; we put Christ on,¹⁰ so that daily we may live out of God’s power and grow more fully into Christ until we become like him.

Baptism is the beginning; the fullness of Christ is the end. In between, we are given this table. Here, in bread and wine, we are nourished and renewed, food that is essential for us and for our spiritual journey. Here, Christ meets us afresh, and continues to give us the gift of himself–the power and presence of God, who is making us anew.

Life in Christ is more than repentance. It is living out of the power of God, given in baptism, so that you and I can become more and more like Jesus now, knowing that, in the end, when he finally returns, we will be found to be just like him.

The Word of the LORD: Thanks be to God!

 

1. The more recent of the two creation accounts in Genesis, Genesis 1, (the older creation narrative being the one in the second chapter) was probably written during the Babylonian captivity in the 6th Century B.C., and shows signs of Babylonian influence, but is structured to say some very different things about God and the world God created.
2. Ruakh, which can also simply mean “air,” depending upon its context. Here, the writers probably intended a combination of “wind” and “breath” as the notion of “spirit” had not yet emerged in Hebrew thought, but would only later come out of a Greek philosophy that believed in a division between spirit and matter that was simply not present in the theology of the priestly writers of this text. However the word is translated, it is intended to convey the presence and power of God at work.
3. Walter Brueggemann, Texts for Preaching; A Lectionary Commentary Based on the NRSV–Year B, (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993), p. 98.
4. Brueggeman, p. 98.
5. Walter Brueggemann, “Genesis,” Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching, (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1982), p. 22-24, 26.
6. The twelve seem to have been converted under the ministry of Apollos, an eloquent man, well versed in scripture, who had been instructed in “the Way” (the name of the early Christian movement), but who knew only of the baptism of John. Consequently, they had been baptized with John’s baptism. See Ephesians 18:25. Read further and you learn that Paul’s colleagues, Pricilla and Aquila, upon hearing Apollos, take him aside privately to explain “the Way” more fully to him.
7. Note that John’s dress and his diet are an allusion to Elijah. See 2 Kings 1:8, or, to the prophets in general, see Zechariah 13:4.
8. Mark 1:7f
9. Romans 6:3-6
10. Galatians 3:27

Related Sermons:

• Life Beyond Repentance - January 8, 2012
• Claiming Your Inheritance - January 8, 2012
• The Eighth Day of Creation-Part II - January 11, 2009
• Of Word and Wind - January 8, 2006
• Bathing in Public - January 12, 2003
• Who is the Holy Bird? - January 9, 2000