Immersing Yourself in the Spirit
Rev. Mark Schaefer
Kay Spiritual Life Center
January 13, 2008
Isaiah 42:1-9; Matthew 3:13-17

Is. 42:1                Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
                        my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
            I have put my spirit upon him;
                        he will bring forth justice to the nations.
2             He will not cry or lift up his voice,
                        or make it heard in the street;
3             a bruised reed he will not break,
                        and a dimly burning wick he will not quench;
                        he will faithfully bring forth justice.
4             He will not grow faint or be crushed
                        until he has established justice in the earth;
                        and the coastlands wait for his teaching.
5                Thus says God, the LORD,
                        who created the heavens and stretched them out,
                        who spread out the earth and what comes from it,
            who gives breath to the people upon it
                        and spirit to those who walk in it:
6             I am the LORD, I have called you in righteousness,
                        I have taken you by the hand and kept you;
            I have given you as a covenant to the people,
                        a light to the nations,
7                         to open the eyes that are blind,
            to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon,
                        from the prison those who sit in darkness.
8             I am the LORD, that is my name;
                        my glory I give to no other,
                        nor my praise to idols.
9             See, the former things have come to pass,
                        and new things I now declare;
            before they spring forth,
                        I tell you of them.

Matt. 3:13   Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. 14 John would have prevented him, saying, "I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?" 15 But Jesus answered him, "Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness." Then he consented. 16 And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. 17 And a voice from heaven said, "This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased."

I. BEGINNING

I started out as a child. [1] Perhaps you did, too.

I remember a lot of things from my childhood. I remember the house I lived in until I was five at 375 Parkhurst Boulevard. I remember getting in trouble for using my dad's new screwdrivers as chisels in an archaeological dig on the driveway. I remember a thunderstorm when I was three or four and sitting up with my dad as he taught me how to count the seconds between lightning and thunder. I remember taking swimming lessons with my next door neighbor Jimmy Furillo. I remember this big long couch that we had in that first apartment.

And then there are the things I have no direct recollection of but have been told about or have seen the pictures enough to have created a memory of the event. For example, I have a vague memory--it's probably created--of my mom propping me up in front of the television when I was nine months old to watch the Moon Landing. I have a vague recollection of my father waging war against a wasps' nest in the lawn (the wasps had stung me). It involved a fair amount of gasoline. Actually, I probably don't remember it, but wish I had seen it--the resulting explosion sounds like it was probably pretty cool.

But there is one thing I don't remember at all: my baptism. I was only three months old. I mean, I know it happened. I have a copy of the baptismal certificate right here. (It turns out I was baptized 39 years ago yesterday). But I don't remember the pastor at Trinity United Methodist Church in Buffalo sprinkling me with water. I don't remember him baptizing me in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I don't remember whether I cried.

II. JESUS' BAPTISM

It seems curious that there should be so many of us who might not remember such a significant event in our Christian lives. For us Protestants, we only have two sacraments--Baptism and Communion--and most of us have no memory of one of them. And it's not that baptism isn't significant.

It certainly does have significance. So much so that we get a slightly different telling of the story of Jesus' baptism in Matthew's gospel than we get elsewhere.

Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. 14 John would have prevented him, saying, "I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?" 15 But Jesus answered him, "Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness." Then he consented.

Jesus comes to the Jordan to be baptized and John objects saying that the baptism should be the other way around. It's an objection we don't find in Mark's Gospel, written about a decade earlier. It may be that upon reflection, Matthew, or his community, was somewhat embarrassed by the fact that Jesus was getting baptized by John. It may be that John's objection owe themselves more to Matthew's piety and pen than to the circumstances of Jesus' baptism.

III. WHAT WE'RE SUPPOSED TO REMEMBER

Now, baptism is no small thing. It's significance looms large in Christian thought, although we don't always think the same way about it. And so, every year we come to this time in our life as a congregation, and we read the story of Jesus' baptism and we are told "remember your baptism". What is it were' supposed to remember, exactly? Baptism means a lot of different things to a lot of different people.

A. Cleansing

For many, baptism is first and foremost a cleansing from sin and unrighteousness. We know that we need this. Why Jesus should need it is a mystery to us.

Now, it should be pointed out that this probably wasn't the first time that Jesus was baptized. After all, baptism is a Jewish tradition. Christians like to think that we invented baptism, but we didn't. It was a Jewish thing--they just call it something else.

The mikvah , is the ritual bath in Judaism that is used by men and women to cleanse themselves from ritual impurity. It was not a sinful state to be ritually impure, merely a ritual one--you couldn't worship at the temple or enter into sacred precincts if you were ritually impure. If you were to run out tonight and convert to Judaism--uh, don't by the way--they would make you convince a panel of rabbis that you understood the Torah, if you are a man they would circumcise you, and the last thing they would do is baptize you. They would put you in a ritual bath for cleansing, for admission into the community.

John the Baptist used this ancient tradition of ritual washing to symbolize being cleansed from sin and unrighteousness. For those he baptized, it was a sign of repentance, a sign of seeking to be made pure not only in ritual but in heart and spirit. John says to be more than ritually pure, be spiritually pure also, pure in heart and receive this baptism. Repent and be baptized.

One of our key understandings of baptism is about that kind of repentance. There are plenty of hymns that point to this understanding of baptism: Wash, O God, Our Sons and Daughters and others. Even hymns like Shall We Gather at the River have echoes of the cleansing baptismal font.

B. Confession

Some look at baptism as a confession of faith. Our Baptist brothers and sisters have a different understanding of baptism than Methodists, Episcopalians, Catholics, Lutherans, Presbyterians, and others. For them, baptism is something that you do.

You have to be over 13, old enough to make your own decisions. You have to understand what you're getting yourself into. You go down to a baptistry, or to anywhere there is flowing water like a river, and you are fully immersed. They dunk you. They will point out that "baptism" comes from a Greek word that means "to immerse." (Others will say that it means "to dip" and others even "to marinate"--I find that last interpretation really interesting).

In this understanding, baptism has a sense of something you choose to do. When you are old enough you take this upon yourself and you claim your Christian faith.

And so, perhaps what we are called to remember is the commitment that we have made as Christians.

C. Initiation

Still others view it as a rite of initiation. The United Methodist Church's own materials proclaim: "Through baptism we are joined with the church and with Christians everywhere." It is what is the boundary marker for the church. A synonym of the church is "the baptized".

Perhaps, then, we are meant to remember baptism as our initiation into the covenant people.

John Wesley retained the sacramental theology which he received from his Anglican heritage. He taught that in baptism a child was cleansed of the guilt of original sin, initiated into the covenant with God, admitted into the Church, made an heir of the divine kingdom, and spiritually born anew. He said that while baptism was neither essential to nor sufficient for salvation, it was the "ordinary means" that God designated for applying the benefits of the work of Christ in human lives. [2]

But he also beleived that at some point you had to stand up and claim that baptism. You had to stand up and say, "Yes, this is what I want." We embrace infant baptism in the United Methodist Church, but we encourage the personal conversion, the confirmation, the claiming of that promise for our own.[3] It's why a lot of books that are used for confirmation classes are about remembering your baptism.

Baptism for Wesley, therefore, was a part of the lifelong process of salvation. He saw spiritual rebirth as a twofold experience in the normal process of Christian development -- to be received through baptism in infancy and through commitment to Christ later in life. Salvation included both God's initiating activity of grace and a willing human response. [4]

So, I suppose that's not a bad thing to remember. We need to claim the promise for ourselves. In a few minutes we'll have the opportunity to recite the same baptismal vows that are made at our baptism as infants. It is an opportunity to renew that claim made on us long ago.

IV. BY FIRE AND THE HOLY SPIRIT

There is something more to note as well.

Just before the passage that we read tonight about Jesus being baptized by John, there is another passage that describes how some Pharisees and Sadducees came from Jerusalem to be baptized by John. John uses the occasion to launch into an apocalyptic speech in which he warns this "brood of vipers" about the coming deliverer. He continues:

I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

One of the things that we tend to forget is that when we are baptized, we are not receiving John's baptism. Our baptisms are not simply a ritual bath that cleanses us from impurity, ritual or spiritual. Our baptisms aren't even just a sign of our entry into the covenant people of the Church.

Our baptisms are signs of the baptism that we receive from Christ: a baptism of the Holy Spirit and of fire. This is a baptism that lasts our whole life long. Christ himself as he came out of the water was baptized by the Holy Spirit, descending on him as if it were a dove. And God declares Jesus to be his beloved Son. It is the same with us, we are baptized by water but it is the Holy Spirit's baptism that makes us Children of God.

That is a baptism we can remember . We are not limited by our human memory--our inability to remember back to when we were three months old. This is an experience we continue to have.

We are called to remember the promises made at our baptism and to claim them. What we need to remember is not that we were baptized by water--an event I had to look up. But moreover, we are called to remember that we ourselves are still being immersed in the Spirit.

You and I have been baptized in the Spirit and the fire of God.

• END

We have been baptized with the spirit of life, that gives life to all that lives. We have been baptized with power. And this power is not ordinary power--it is something that gives us the strength to witness to the love of God in the world. (Which is becoming harder and harder to do, isn't it?)

We are given power through baptism because we are not anointed only with water. Wesley was right--God's grace is made available to us through the ordinary elements of water, that we can touch and feel. But also that our whole life in faith is the continual process of being baptized, of being immersed in that Spirit. Part of it is that when we are baptized by that Spirit, we are claimed as children of God, no less than Christ was claimed. We too, are claimed.

That, I submit, is a really important thing to remember. If we're going to remember anything about our baptism, we should remember what those promises were that were made for us at our baptism, and we should remember too that we ourselves have been immersed in that Spirit and that we are continuously immersed in that Spirit.

When we reflect and ask, "How is it that we're supposed to remember this?" it is important to note that when the church says 'remember' it does not mean 'recollection.' That is, remembering one's baptism is not like remembering a trip we all took to IHOP. Or our Alt Break to Cherokee. When the church talks about remembrance, it means re-living.

In the same way that Christ instructed us to celebrate the communion: "Do this in remembrance of me." The way we remember it is to do it. To eat the bread, to drink the wine.

When we remember our baptisms, we don't look up our baptismal certificates (however entertaining that might be). We don't sit and look through the snapshots of our christening. We remember that we are children of God and that we are being continuously immersed in the Spirit of God.

And we act like that's true. We act out a life of one immersed in the Spirit and we live out a life that is full of the Spirit. That is what remembrance is.

We don't simply rebaptize ourselves, or engage in rituals of remembrance, as we will in a few minutes. Rather, we live into the reality that we are immersed in the Spirit of God. That we are surrounded by a God of love and a God of grace, who seeks for us to draw close. Who seeks for us to share in this immersion with all whom we meet. Who gives us the power to stand in the face of injusitices, in the face of hatred and ignorance and the coldness of the world. We are empowered to stand in the face of all these things and live a life that testifies to love.

That is how we are called to remember. That is how we claim for ourselves our immersion in the Spirit.

Notes

[1] I have shamelessly stolen this line from Bill Cosby.

[2] By Water and the Spirit: A United Methodist Understanding of Baptism, http://www.gbod.org/homepage/new_home/baptism/page_1.htm

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

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*Immersing Yourself in the Spirit* Rev. Mark Schaefer Kay Spiritual Life Center January 13, 2008 Isaiah 42:1-9; Matthew 3:13-17 Is. 42:1 Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations. 2 He will not cry or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street; 3 a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice. 4 He will not grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his teaching. 5 Thus says God, the LORD, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people upon it and spirit to those who walk in it: 6 I am the LORD, I have called you in righteousness, I have taken you by the hand and kept you; I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations, 7 to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness. 8 I am the LORD, that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to idols. 9 See, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare; before they spring forth, I tell you of them. Matt. 3:13 Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. 14 John would have prevented him, saying, "I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?" 15 But Jesus answered him, "Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness." Then he consented. 16 And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. 17 And a voice from heaven said, "This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased." I. BEGINNING I started out as a child. [1] Perhaps you did, too. I remember a lot of things from my childhood. I remember the house I lived in until I was five at 375 Parkhurst Boulevard. I remember getting in trouble for using my dad's new screwdrivers as chisels in an archaeological dig on the driveway. I remember a thunderstorm when I was three or four and sitting up with my dad as he taught me how to count the seconds between lightning and thunder. I remember taking swimming lessons with my next door neighbor Jimmy Furillo. I remember this big long couch that we had in that first apartment. And then there are the things I have no direct recollection of but have been told about or have seen the pictures enough to have created a memory of the event. For example, I have a vague memory--it's probably created--of my mom propping me up in front of the television when I was nine months old to watch the Moon Landing. I have a vague recollection of my father waging war against a wasps' nest in the lawn (the wasps had stung me). It involved a fair amount of gasoline. Actually, I probably don't remember it, but wish I had seen it--the resulting explosion sounds like it was probably pretty cool. But there is one thing I don't remember at all: my baptism. I was only three months old. I mean, I know it happened. I have a copy of the baptismal certificate right here. (It turns out I was baptized 39 years ago yesterday). But I don't remember the pastor at Trinity United Methodist Church in Buffalo sprinkling me with water. I don't remember him baptizing me in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I don't remember whether I cried. II. JESUS' BAPTISM It seems curious that there should be so many of us who might not remember such a significant event in our Christian lives. For us Protestants, we only have two sacraments--Baptism and Communion--and most of us have no memory of one of them. And it's not that baptism isn't significant. It certainly does have significance. So much so that we get a slightly different telling of the story of Jesus' baptism in Matthew's gospel than we get elsewhere. Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. 14 John would have prevented him, saying, "I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?" 15 But Jesus answered him, "Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness." Then he consented. Jesus comes to the Jordan to be baptized and John objects saying that the baptism should be the other way around. It's an objection we don't find in Mark's Gospel, written about a decade earlier. It may be that upon reflection, Matthew, or his community, was somewhat embarrassed by the fact that Jesus was getting baptized by John. It may be that John's objection owe themselves more to Matthew's piety and pen than to the circumstances of Jesus' baptism. III. WHAT WE'RE SUPPOSED TO REMEMBER Now, baptism is no small thing. It's significance looms large in Christian thought, although we don't always think the same way about it. And so, every year we come to this time in our life as a congregation, and we read the story of Jesus' baptism and we are told "remember your baptism". What is it were' supposed to remember, exactly? Baptism means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. A. Cleansing For many, baptism is first and foremost a cleansing from sin and unrighteousness. We know that we need this. Why Jesus should need it is a mystery to us. Now, it should be pointed out that this probably wasn't the first time that Jesus was baptized. After all, baptism is a Jewish tradition. Christians like to think that we invented baptism, but we didn't. It was a Jewish thing--they just call it something else. The mikvah , is the ritual bath in Judaism that is used by men and women to cleanse themselves from ritual impurity. It was not a sinful state to be ritually impure, merely a ritual one--you couldn't worship at the temple or enter into sacred precincts if you were ritually impure. If you were to run out tonight and convert to Judaism--uh, don't by the way--they would make you convince a panel of rabbis that you understood the Torah, if you are a man they would circumcise you, and the last thing they would do is baptize you. They would put you in a ritual bath for cleansing, for admission into the community. John the Baptist used this ancient tradition of ritual washing to symbolize being cleansed from sin and unrighteousness. For those he baptized, it was a sign of repentance, a sign of seeking to be made pure not only in ritual but in heart and spirit. John says to be more than ritually pure, be spiritually pure also, pure in heart and receive this baptism. Repent and be baptized. One of our key understandings of baptism is about that kind of repentance. There are plenty of hymns that point to this understanding of baptism: Wash, O God, Our Sons and Daughters and others. Even hymns like Shall We Gather at the River have echoes of the cleansing baptismal font. B. Confession Some look at baptism as a confession of faith. Our Baptist brothers and sisters have a different understanding of baptism than Methodists, Episcopalians, Catholics, Lutherans, Presbyterians, and others. For them, baptism is something that you do. You have to be over 13, old enough to make your own decisions. You have to understand what you're getting yourself into. You go down to a baptistry, or to anywhere there is flowing water like a river, and you are fully immersed. They dunk you. They will point out that "baptism" comes from a Greek word that means "to immerse." (Others will say that it means "to dip" and others even "to marinate"--I find that last interpretation really interesting). In this understanding, baptism has a sense of something you choose to do. When you are old enough you take this upon yourself and you claim your Christian faith. And so, perhaps what we are called to remember is the commitment that we have made as Christians. C. Initiation Still others view it as a rite of initiation. The United Methodist Church's own materials proclaim: "Through baptism we are joined with the church and with Christians everywhere." It is what is the boundary marker for the church. A synonym of the church is "the baptized". Perhaps, then, we are meant to remember baptism as our initiation into the covenant people. John Wesley retained the sacramental theology which he received from his Anglican heritage. He taught that in baptism a child was cleansed of the guilt of original sin, initiated into the covenant with God, admitted into the Church, made an heir of the divine kingdom, and spiritually born anew. He said that while baptism was neither essential to nor sufficient for salvation, it was the "ordinary means" that God designated for applying the benefits of the work of Christ in human lives. [2] But he also beleived that at some point you had to stand up and claim that baptism. You had to stand up and say, "Yes, this is what I want." We embrace infant baptism in the United Methodist Church, but we encourage the personal conversion, the confirmation, the claiming of that promise for our own.[3] It's why a lot of books that are used for confirmation classes are about remembering your baptism. Baptism for Wesley, therefore, was a part of the lifelong process of salvation. He saw spiritual rebirth as a twofold experience in the normal process of Christian development -- to be received through baptism in infancy and through commitment to Christ later in life. Salvation included both God's initiating activity of grace and a willing human response. [4] So, I suppose that's not a bad thing to remember. We need to claim the promise for ourselves. In a few minutes we'll have the opportunity to recite the same baptismal vows that are made at our baptism as infants. It is an opportunity to renew that claim made on us long ago. IV. BY FIRE AND THE HOLY SPIRIT There is something more to note as well. Just before the passage that we read tonight about Jesus being baptized by John, there is another passage that describes how some Pharisees and Sadducees came from Jerusalem to be baptized by John. John uses the occasion to launch into an apocalyptic speech in which he warns this "brood of vipers" about the coming deliverer. He continues: I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. One of the things that we tend to forget is that when we are baptized, we are not receiving John's baptism. Our baptisms are not simply a ritual bath that cleanses us from impurity, ritual or spiritual. Our baptisms aren't even just a sign of our entry into the covenant people of the Church. Our baptisms are signs of the baptism that we receive from Christ: a baptism of the Holy Spirit and of fire. This is a baptism that lasts our whole life long. Christ himself as he came out of the water was baptized by the Holy Spirit, descending on him as if it were a dove. And God declares Jesus to be his beloved Son. It is the same with us, we are baptized by water but it is the Holy Spirit's baptism that makes us Children of God. That is a baptism we can remember . We are not limited by our human memory--our inability to remember back to when we were three months old. This is an experience we continue to have. We are called to remember the promises made at our baptism and to claim them. What we need to remember is not that we were baptized by water--an event I had to look up. But moreover, we are called to remember that we ourselves are still being immersed in the Spirit. You and I have been baptized in the Spirit and the fire of God. • END We have been baptized with the spirit of life, that gives life to all that lives. We have been baptized with power. And this power is not ordinary power--it is something that gives us the strength to witness to the love of God in the world. (Which is becoming harder and harder to do, isn't it?) We are given power through baptism because we are not anointed only with water. Wesley was right--God's grace is made available to us through the ordinary elements of water, that we can touch and feel. But also that our whole life in faith is the continual process of being baptized, of being immersed in that Spirit. Part of it is that when we are baptized by that Spirit, we are claimed as children of God, no less than Christ was claimed. We too, are claimed. That, I submit, is a really important thing to remember. If we're going to remember anything about our baptism, we should remember what those promises were that were made for us at our baptism, and we should remember too that we ourselves have been immersed in that Spirit and that we are continuously immersed in that Spirit. When we reflect and ask, "How is it that we're supposed to remember this?" it is important to note that when the church says 'remember' it does not mean 'recollection.' That is, remembering one's baptism is not like remembering a trip we all took to IHOP. Or our Alt Break to Cherokee. When the church talks about remembrance, it means re-living. In the same way that Christ instructed us to celebrate the communion: "Do this in remembrance of me." The way we remember it is to do it. To eat the bread, to drink the wine. When we remember our baptisms, we don't look up our baptismal certificates (however entertaining that might be). We don't sit and look through the snapshots of our christening. We remember that we are children of God and that we are being continuously immersed in the Spirit of God. And we act like that's true. We act out a life of one immersed in the Spirit and we live out a life that is full of the Spirit. That is what remembrance is. We don't simply rebaptize ourselves, or engage in rituals of remembrance, as we will in a few minutes. Rather, we live into the reality that we are immersed in the Spirit of God. That we are surrounded by a God of love and a God of grace, who seeks for us to draw close. Who seeks for us to share in this immersion with all whom we meet. Who gives us the power to stand in the face of injusitices, in the face of hatred and ignorance and the coldness of the world. We are empowered to stand in the face of all these things and live a life that testifies to love. That is how we are called to remember. That is how we claim for ourselves our immersion in the Spirit. Notes [1] I have shamelessly stolen this line from Bill Cosby. [2] By Water and the Spirit: A United Methodist Understanding of Baptism, http://www.gbod.org/homepage/new_home/baptism/page_1.htm [3] Ibid. [4] Ibid. Back to Sermons page Back to AU UMC Home Copyright © 2008. Mark A. Schaefer. No part of this text may be reproduced or otherwise disseminated without the express written consent of the author.

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