Baptized by the Spirit
Rev. Mark Schaefer
Kay Spiritual Life Center
January 11, 2004
Isaiah 43:1-7; Luke 3:15-22
I. INTRODUCTION
As strange as it may seem to us now, when we’re kids, we hate the idea of taking a bath. There’s something about it that little kids can’t stand. Maybe it’s the soap. Maybe it’s because you have to do it. But there’s something about kids and baths that don’t get along.
But generally, people like water. We swim in it. We build our homes near it, and if we can’t then we take vacations near it. The more water the better. A resort with a pool is nice. A lake better. The beach even better. And to top it all off, how about an island completely surrounded by water. Or maybe a cruiseship surrounded by water, with a pool on deck.
So, it should come as no surprise, I suppose that every major religion has a ritual involving water. Often a ritual cleansing with water.
In Judaism to this day, ritual purification by water plays an important role. The mikvah, or ritual bath, was an important part of Jewish life. And it was upon this tradition that John the Baptist built his practice of immersion for the repentance of sins.
II. BAPTISM
It is that baptism for the repentance of sins that we encounter in our text. Jesus comes to the Jordan to be baptized by John, and begins his earthly ministry. For that reason, today is “Baptism of the Lord” Sunday. A commemoration of Jesus’ beginnings by the waters of the Jordan.
Perhaps we do not talk about baptism enough in our churches. We pastors often neglect the language of baptism in our sermons, though we’re better about getting Eucharistic theology, language of communion, of bread and wine, into our preaching. So, it’s not at all surprising that many Christians have a somewhat vague understanding of baptism.
I was once getting my hair cut and the woman cutting my hair was telling me about a relationship she had had with someone who was Jewish. She was saying how important religion had been to her, but wasn’t to her friend. She was concerned that any children they had would be brought up nothing, and she said to me, “A baby should have a bris”—that is, a circumcision—“or be baptized. He’ll need some ‘stamp of approval.’” I just smiled and nodded. I was getting my hair cut—I wasn’t about to launch into a mini-sermon on baptismal theology.
And I’d be fighting an uphill battle anyway. Very many people have that kind of attitude toward baptism. Many couples will come into our churches wanting to get their baby “done”. They’ll be disappointed when the pastor starts to schedule them for a Sunday morning. Couldn’t they just do it privately on their own some time?
A. What baptism isn’t
Many view baptism the way my friend did—as a good luck charm—a get out of jail free card.
In fact, we are told that from a theological perspective, baptism is not necessary for salvation. That catches a lot of people by surprise. But it’s true—we don’t need to baptize sick infants incase they die. It is not something that we need to do in order to be saved.
B. What baptism is
Rather, it is a sign that God makes upon us because we are already saved. Baptism is about something God works within us, a mark upon us as one of God’s people, a sign of our relationship with God. A relationship which precedes the baptism, not one that is created by it. It’s why in our theology we can’t be re-baptized, because we see baptism as something God does once in us.
Baptism isn’t so much a cleansing of oneself, as it is a sign of cleansing by God. When John the Baptist is preaching repentance in the wilderness, he is not offering baptisms in order to cleanse, but as a sign of one’s inward transformation, one’s own repentance.
III. THE SPIRIT
But there’s something else important about John’s baptism… He himself points out that one coming after him will offer a baptism of a different kind. A baptism of Spirit and fire.
What does that mean? A baptism of Spirit and fire? We know what John’s baptism means: we’ve all seen baptisms by water. We know what that looks like. What does a baptism by Spirit and fire look like?
Well some suggest that John is talking about—whether he knows it or not—about the Pentecost, when the Spirit descends on the disciples as “tongues of fire.” It could be an allusion to the event that creates the Christian church. And our baptism certainly functions that way, it is a ritual of initiation into the Church. In order to be member of a congregation, you have to be baptized first. In that way, it functions much like circumcision does in Judaism, as a mark of one’s entry into the community.
But is John talking simply about entry into a community? What does he mean when he says we will be baptized by spirit and fire?
It is important to remember here that in both Greek and Hebrew, the word for “spirit” is the same as the words for “wind” and “breath.”
Have you ever been baptized by wind? A year and a half ago, on the first anniversary of September 11th, the various chaplains gathered on the steps of Kay for an interfaith memorial service. The weather was sunny and bright, but it was not the same weather as that clear blue beautiful and horrifying day had been the year before. It was windy, too. Blustery, you might say.
I sat there on the dais, listening to the words of the other chaplains. It was a quiet morning and other than the words of the speaker, all you could hear were the leaves rustling in the breeze. And there were times when the wind would rush and it blew over you. I felt as if it was the very Spirit of God that day, offering solace and comfort to a people still grieving.
It was calming and soothing. But most of all it was real—it was something you could feel. So much of our understanding of Spirit is that it is something not material, something otherworldly, something internal, personal, metaphysical. And yet the ancients understood Spirit as real—as real as wind, as real as a breath.
Especially as a breath.
At creation, we are told that “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.” God’s Spirit, God’s breath swept over the waters, and then God speaks: “Let there be light.” God creates using speech—breath and Word—and calls all things into being.
Later in Genesis we are told that “the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being”.
God creates life by breathing life into it. Our breath. Our fundamental requirement for life. Spirit. Breath. Our very lives are wrapped up in Spirit.
So when we talk about a baptism by the Spirit, we are talking about receiving a New Creation. Being created again like Adam. Having the breath of life infused into us again. Being filled with new life, transformative life.
IV. CONCLUSION
Sometimes churches will have a renewal of baptism ritual. We did one of those here a couple of years ago. The ritual usually involves sprinkling the congregation with water, and an injunction to the congregation to ‘remember your baptism.’ It’s interesting that we have a ritual that remembers our baptism with water but not one that helps us to remember our baptisms by the Spirit. Perhaps that’s what we need.
Here we are at the beginning of another semester. All rested up from the last one and raring to go, right? Sometimes after a long run you feel a little ‘winded’. You need to catch your breath. Or before you dive into the water, you take a deep breath.
We have the opportunity now to catch our breath, to take that deep breath before the plunge. To remember that God has given us a baptism not only of water, but of Spirit. That God has infused our lives, and the life of the Church, with new life, new vitality. This is our occasion to remember our Spiritual baptisms, to revitalize our lives and that of the community—a community into which Christ himself was baptized. A chance to take to opportunity to reinvigorate ourselves and our community, to remember afresh what it means to be the people of a God who is as close to us as our next breath.
