Baptism

Baptism is fundamental. It marks the start of Jesus’ ministry. The baptism of Jesus by John is recounted in the three synoptic gospels. The earliest of the accounts that has come down to us is that of Mark:

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens opened and the Spirit descending upon him like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”

“Jesus’ baptism by John is almost surely based on an historical event... Whether the individual details are historical, however, we cannot determine, but they are important for what Mark wants to tell us about Jesus. The Jewish people of Jesus’ time mourned the loss of prophets and the silence of God. Now, with Jesus’ appearance, the heavens are again opened up; God’s Spirit comes once more; and God’s silence is broken.” (Invitation to the Gospels, Paul Achtemeier)

Baptism is fundamental in the life of a Christian. That sounds straightforward. But I think that we are still in the process of renewing our understanding of this sacrament.

It has become customary to celebrate infant baptism in the course of the Sunday Eucharist. (Adults are baptized at the Easter Vigil.) It is not uncommon to hear comments about the infant that is being baptized being welcomed into the parish community, as well as being welcomed into the larger church. What I don’t often hear are words about Christ and the Holy Spirit and the Father.

However, by our baptism we enter into in a relationship with Father, Son and Spirit, with the Trinity. This is certainly the most important dimension of baptism. In baptism we are anointed with the Holy Spirit. We are “Christ-ened. God looks upon us and sees “his” own sons and daughters.

In celebrating the baptism of an infant, we are invited to proclaim the gospel message of Jesus in a powerful manner. We profess our faith in the good news that God loves us from the very beginning of our lives, that God loves us before we have the slightest ability to do anything on our own. We affirm what we read in the first letter of John: God is love and in this we know love that God has first loved us.

In the baptism of an infant we celebrate the awesome action of God proclaiming, as he did at the baptism of Jesus, this is my dearly loved child upon whom I pour out my own Spirit.

It seems customary now to applaud after the baptism as a sign of welcome. I confess this leaves me cold. It is a nice gesture that befits a birthday party or a luncheon speaker. The action of God calls for so much more. How I would love to hear a church resonate with a congregation’s praise of a God with full throated acclaim “You have put on Christ” or “Great is the Lord, Worthy of Praise, Spread the word of his Love.”

For All the Saints

I enjoy reading about the saints. Even the legends that have grown up around them appeal to me. For instance, in Benjamin Britten’s “St. Nicholas Cantata” we hear that Nicholas leaped from his mother’s arms into the baptismal fount and cried “God be glorified.”

However there is a risk in such stories, a risk that we will see sanctity as something extraordinary, something that few can achieve.

However, I think that sanctity has more to do with God at work in our lives. We see this in the way Paul opens many of this letters. Paul addresses his letter to “all God’s beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints.” And to the Corinthians, that church community torn by dissention, he writes his first letter to “those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints,” and his second to “to the church of God that is at Corinth, including all the saints throughout Achaia.” He writes also “to the saints who are in Ephesus,” “to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi,” “to the saints and faithful brothers and sisters in Christ in Colossae.”

Paul is aware of the shortcomings of his readers. But he is even more aware of the grace of God at work in the churches that he founded. His thinking is in keeping with the Jewish tradition that gave us the Old Testament.

Look at the heroes of the Old Testament. Noah, with whom God made a covenant in the clouds, lay naked in a drunken stupor. Abraham was a polygamist. Jacob, with the connivance of this mother, cheated his brother out of his birthright. Joseph “made slaves of them (the people of Egypt) from one end of Egypt to the other.” Moses killed an Egyptian and had to flee for his life. The great king David was an adulterer who plotted the death of Bathsheba’s husband.

The gospels relate Peter’s denial of Jesus, Thomas’ doubting the resurrection, Paul’s murderous campaign against the early disciples.

God did not choose any of these people because of their perfection. God simply chose to work in and through them. God chooses each of us to accomplish his will in us. God loves each of us as we are, not as we think we ought to be. Faith is first of all, not believing things about God, but coming to trust that God loves me jus as I am.

Not What but Who

One of the characteristics of the Catholic faith is its intellectual content. From the formulas of the early Ecumenical Councils, trhough Scholasticism's systemization of theology, to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, our church has developed a rich intellectual tradition.

However such emphasis on content runs the risk of focusing our attention on the things to be learned. Yet this knowledge is mean to help us come to know God and to enter into a relationship with God. The goal of our faith is a relationship with the God who loves us.

"In His goodness and wisdom God chose to reveal Himself and to make known to us the hidden purpose of His will by which through Christ, the Word made flesh, man might in the Holy Spirit have access to the Father and come to share in the divine nature. Through this revelation, therefore, the invisible God out of the abundance of His love speaks to men and lives among them so that He may invite them into fellowship with Himself." (Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation #2)

God chose to reveal Himself so that we might come to share the divine nature! The 1st Letter of John puts it this way:

"See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are... Beloved, we are God's children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is." (1 John 3:1-2)

In the Gospel according to John, Jesus prays for his disciples at the last supper:

"I  pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also mey be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me. And I have given them the glory that you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that you sent me, and that you loved them even as you loved me. Father, they are your gift to me. I wish that where I am they also may be with me, that they may see my glory that you gave me, because you loved me before the foundation of the world."  (John 17:20-21)

One in Christ with the Father, sharing the glory the Father bestowed on Christ. This is Jesus' prayer for us whom the Father loves as he loves Christ. This is good news.

The heart of the good news

In Bo Caldwell's book, "City of Tranquil Light," the main character, Will Kiehn, is a man seemingly destined for life as a farmer in the Midwest, who finds himself called by God to travel to the North China Plain in the early twentieth century to labor as a Mennonite missionary. At the end of the book, Will, now a widower in his 80's who lives in a home for retired missionaries, says:

"Over time I have come to believe that God's will is a mystery, fluid and surprising. Following it is like stepping into something I cannot see, and I am frequently unsure about whether I am doing God's will until after the fact. But I have learned that while I don't always know when I am doing something right, I always know when I am doing something wrong, and I rely on this as I go forward, trusting that He will use my mistakes as well as my triumphs and knowing that He does not ask me to be perfect, or even good. He simply asks me to be His, which to me is the heart of His good news: that I am deeply and passionately loved exactly as I am, despite the faults that grieve me most, by a God who delights in me more than I can know - a God who created me so He could love me. With the gift of that renewed certainty when I awake each morning, I rise to meet the day and to praise my dear Lord, and to finish my course with joy."

Indeed this is the heart of the good news: God loves me deeply and passionately exactly as I am.

It is not possible to understand the God of Jesus Christ except as a God of love. Such love is never comprehended simply by the intellect. Such love, to be comprehended must touch the soul; it must be experienced.

In Bo Caldwell,s book, it is the lifetime of relationships with family members, spouse, fellow Mennonites, neophytes who respond to Will's preaching, even those who do not come to faith in Christ, it is this lifetime of relationships that reveal a loving God to Will Kiehn.

God's love for us is mediated by the experiences of each of our lives. As Richard Rohr writes in "Things Hidden, Scripture as Spirituality," "God comes to us disguised as our life."