Call You By Name
Isaiah 43:1-7; Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
January 10, 2010
Baptism and communion, our two sacraments in the Protestant tradition, are frequently dismissed as ancient relics of a dead culture, with no real meaning anymore. Nothing really happens, you get wet and then dry off; you eat a token amount of food and fruit of the vine, which doesn’t satisfy your thirst or your hunger. Sacraments are a waste of time.
Could have fooled me yesterday on Victoria Avenue in front of the church or at the Fieldhouse when the Olympic Torch Relay arrived in Regina. Some form of the Torch was lit on top of Mount Olympus in Greece a while back and in various incarnations - or is it conflagrations - it has appeared all over Canada. A pilgrimage indeed in which at its climactic moment last night at the Sportplex, a total of 50 people were listed as carrying the sacred flame for some distance. It is a great honour to be selected, not much short of being an athlete actually competing in the Games. Everybody does it differently, but there is a combination of joy, excitement, a notable amount of reverence and respect. Nobody does that anymore, except during a sacrament - which is exactly what the Olympic Torch Relay is. It is a symbolic action that points towards a meaningful part of life, and the more different ways it means something to people, the more important and sacramental it becomes.
What is so sacramental about the Olympic Torch? While commercialism is taking its chunk out of the Olympic spirit, the Olympic spirit still retains an essential place in the heart of many people around the world, symbolizing world peace where people are united by their sport, not divided by their national affiliations. It represents a striving for excellence that does not come overnight, and the opportunity comes only once an Olympiad, once every four years. Faster, higher, stronger are the Olympic trinity of aspirations.
Do not get me wrong, I am not being cynical; I have spent the better part of my life pursuing this particular sacred pilgrimage for myself and for others. But I am sad and wistful when I hear and see so many people proudly, yea arrogantly, declare that they do not need any religious sacramental stuff in their lives and then fill their waking moments with all manner of rituals and ceremonies that supposedly indicate something important. We are not human if we never engage in some kind of sacred action that does not do anything in the present, but points to a better future. Human life is one sacrament followed by another; we are obsessed with sacrament.
We have just celebrated one of the most ancient sacraments. Baptism is rather unremarkable in what it is actually doing. There is some water, the baptized person becomes wet, and then dries off, with no residual marks or scars. Even the verb, “to baptize,” is a plain transliteration of the Greek word used in the New Testament that means “to wash,” or “to immerse,” yet we have endowed it with a special meaning and context.
John was doing it first. The Baptist starting preaching a pretty dire message, baptizing people for the forgiveness of their sins, probably building upon a custom for some Jews to have a ritual bath each year to wash away the previous year’s sins. You can’t preach like that and engage in such a provocative ritual as baptism and not have people then talking about your candidacy for the Messiah. John fended them off, and made them look forward to someone else who was definitely coming, someone John seemed to know well.
I’m just baptizing with water, he declared emphatically, but this guy will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. That sounds pretty strong. All we can think of is getting wet, but there’s that other part about the Holy Spirit and fire does not sound friendly.
The Eastern Orthodox observe that this is a rare Biblical event in which all persons of the Trinity are present at the same time. God the Father is a voice, “You are my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased”; the God the Holy Spirit descends like a dove upon Jesus; and the God the Son was standing in the River Jordan as a human being.
You can be married by a justice of the peace, anyone may conduct a funeral service, but there are no baptismal chapels. Baptism is a sacrament that only makes sense inside a particular church and with a particular people of God because it involves promises and relationships among members of the Church. The parents of an infant commit to raising her in a Christian life-style, a difficult task which parents cannot manage completely on their own, and that is why the congregation responds in support of the parents.
Water is the essence of baptism, and in the Middle East where water is life, the River Jordan was not just another body of water, but a flowing stream of living water, not a stagnant pool of bacteria.
There are no descriptions of how Jesus was baptized and the lack of description has produced confusion and argument among different traditions about exactly how to perform the baptism, yet there is a powerful imagery of what is taking place. The person being baptized is lowered backwards into the water and immersed under the water for a moment - the “old person” being lowered into the tomb, dying to the world. Then the baptized one is raised up out of the water by the priest or minister, being resurrected as a New Person into a New Life.
We forget that we have been resurrected and it is not the minister who is able to do that, but only God who is involved in recreating us at every moment. Isaiah’s prophecy, “I have called you by name, you are mine,” declares that we belong to God from the beginning. God is the one baptizing, recreating, not only Shayffer, but everyone who can declare with Martin Luther in times of distress and doubt, “I am baptized!”
That act of recreating is the role of the Holy Spirit, the dove that descended upon Jesus in the water. When I laid my hand upon the forehead of Shayffer to receive the Holy Spirit, I am praying that God the Holy Spirit will get involved with this child in ways seen and unseen, not only now, but decades from now.
The Trinity is centered here about Jesus the Son standing in the river and submitting to baptism. Jesus did not need to be baptized, but he insisted upon it as a model of humble behaviour for all of us. Jesus is never reported to have baptized anyone else, but if he could allow God to recreate him, then we have a fighting chance to live a new life that is not drowned in human error, failure and sin.
This is a sacrament, a true holy event when you and I all see it and experience it happening. Don’t ask the rest of the world to think anything real is happening here, because sadly they don’t see or hear a thing except water being splashed around, a baby crying, adults promising old words to a new life. When we are baptized we begin to see and feel the signs of a New Life most other people cannot recognize or understand. That’s all right, we’ll live with it.
Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan