baptism – Leah Wise

This sermon was given in a trilingual (English, Spanish, American Sign Language) service of Holy Baptism.

O God, whose blessed Son made himself known to his disciples in the breaking of bread: Open the eyes of our faith, that we may behold him in all his redeeming work. Amen.

When I read today’s scripture readings, my first thought was: “Oh my gosh! We are so lucky to have a story about Baptism and a story about Communion on the same day! Especially on a day when people are getting baptized at the Hill!”

But I couldn’t even finish the thought before the internal voice that channels my mother kicked in and corrected “lucky” to “blessed.” Growing up, my mom always reminded me that, as Christians, we don’t believe in luck, because luck is attributed to chance or fate.

“When something good happens,” she said, “we should understand it as a blessing.” In other words, good things are evidence of the grace of God, who is actively participating in our lives and invested in our wellbeing.

I think my mom is probably right. It is a blessing – a divine gift – to revisit these wonderful Bible stories on the very day that two of our own will be baptized. Because the actions that take place in these stories directly connect our current faith practices to Jesus Christ and to the very first people who were called Christians. And beyond showing us where we came from, these stories open our eyes to the fact of Christ’s ongoing presence in our practices.

So, let’s get into it…

In Acts, Peter – who just moments ago was hiding in a locked room – has encountered the living Christ and has taken to the streets to spread the good news. He says: “Let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.”

The crowd is so moved by his proclamation that they ask him, “What should we do? How do we join up with this Jesus you speak of?” And Peter replies: “Repent and be baptized.” “Vuélvanse a Dios y bautícese.” Acts tells us that “about three thousand people” were baptized that day!…(Can you even imagine how long that took!?)

Jesus wasn’t there in the flesh that day, but the Holy Spirit showed up in full force.

In Luke, we go back in time a little bit, to the first day of the resurrection when two disciples join up with an apparent stranger on the road. Even though these disciples know who Jesus is, they do not recognize that this man is Jesus, until he eats with them.

The Gospel tells us that he blesses and breaks the bread. It’s an action that reflects the Last Supper; the special way he breaks the bread can only mean one thing: they are in the presence of Jesus Christ!

Just as they recognize him, Jesus disappears. And then, one of them says: “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” “¿No es verdad que el corazón nos ardía en el pecho?”

Jesus wasn’t there in the flesh anymore, but they recognized him in the broken bread.

When I first read today’s scriptures, I was swept up in the wonder in these stories. The confident conviction of Peter, who had, up until this point, been afraid to admit that he knew Jesus at all. The enthusiasm of the crowd, and the enormous number of baptisms. The confusion turned to delight, of those disciples who met Jesus on the road.

And the common theme of both: that Jesus is present and doing good and gracious things even when we can’t see him.

It is interesting that these moments of baptism and breaking bread are not so uncommon: we all wash ourselves, we all eat. But they are somehow made holy and blessed when Jesus enters the picture. In other words, they are made “sacraments.”

And this is why we still practice these sacraments today – because we believe Jesus shows up in them.

The sacraments are, as our prayer book puts it,

“…outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace, given by Christ as sure and certain means by which we receive that grace.”

In some churches, there are said to be seven sacraments. In the Episcopal Church, we generally say we have two: Baptism and Holy Eucharist, our prayer and participation in Communion.

While there are many ways that Christ shows us grace throughout our lives – whether through relationships, experiences, or something else – we believe that these two particular actions are places where Christ’s grace is always and immediately apparent.

That means that these actions, these sacraments, are more than a symbol of transformation. And they are more than a memorial to something that happened a long time ago. When we cleanse ourselves in the waters of baptism, and when we eat the bread and wine at communion, we are – through a divine mystery – encountering the living presence of Jesus Christ. Here at the font, and here at the table, we are brought into the eternal blessing of God. And something essential about us is changed by our participation in them. Even though we don’t see Jesus – the eyes of our faith are opened to life and hope beyond the here and now.

And, to get even more mystical, whenever we participate in the sacraments, we are also in the presence of the “great cloud of witnesses.” These are the ancestors of our faith, living and dead, who are part of the eternal family of God. The 3,000 people who were baptized that day in the book of Acts rejoice as two more join their ranks today. The disciples whose hearts were warmed in Christ’s presence will dine with us at the Eucharistic feast.

Even if we can’t see Jesus, the Body of Christ is here. And we pray that he will continually open the eyes of our faith so that our hearts will recognize his presence.

We’re so lucky that luck isn’t the thing that determines goodness in our lives. We are blessed, instead, by these sacraments, And we can be “sure and certain” that Christ’s grace is freely given to all who wish to receive it. We are blessed to witness to the new life in Christ of these dear ones being baptized, who will also join with us and the great cloud of witnesses at the shared table of Christ today. Amen.

Father in heaven…Grant that all who are baptized into his Name may keep the covenant they have made, and boldly confess him as Lord and Savior; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.

Among the many nerdy theological arguments clergy find themselves engrossed in, is a lively debate about what to call the season we’re currently in.

Is it the Season of Epiphany or the Season after the Epiphany? The Feast of the Epiphany was Monday. Every year on January 6, we celebrate the arrival of the Wise Men bearing their gold, frankincense, and myrrh, and announcing Jesus as the “King of the Jews.”

Epiphany marks the end of the Christmas season and the return to “ordinary time.” While “ordinary,” in this case, means “counted,” in many ways, we are also getting back to “normal” until Lent begins.

But preachers and scholars can’t quite agree on the thematic details. Some feel like the broader theme of epiphany – meaning “sudden revelation or insight” – invades and permeates the scripture readings set for this season. They insist that we keep looking for signs and wonders of Christ’s action in the world.

And I take their point.

But personally, I am inclined to say Epiphany is done, and there’s nothing else to say about it. I think it’s just that I’m over the twinkly lights and the Christmas trees and the heightened sense of optimism, that our secular Christmas and New Year’s celebrations bring. I’m ready to put all that away and sink into my Seasonal Affective Disorder until spring. (Yes, I have been diagnosed.)

But in his weekly newsletter, Dr. Andrew McGowan suggested that we can’t say goodbye to “epiphanies” just yet. Because today, we celebrate the Baptism of Jesus, the descent of the Holy Spirit, and the sudden revelation of Jesus as the Son of God, announced by God himself.

As a colleague put it, this moment in our Gospels is when the clock starts ticking on Jesus’ earthly ministry. He is baptized here, among the people he has come to save. He will spend the next three years with them, walking slowly toward Jerusalem, the cross, and the resurrection.

In other words, Jesus’ baptism marks a spiritual, relational, and ritual transformation that will bond Jesus and this burgeoning faith community to one another for eternity. Jesus’ baptism, in a mystical and physical sense, is the beginning of the church. Because it gives form to a new religious movement that will eventually be called Christianity.

That’s not ordinary at all. That’s an epiphany!

This is why baptism has been so important to the church since the very beginning. And it is why we call it the “initiation rite” of our church…

Our Book of Common Prayer describes Holy Baptism as “…the sacrament by which God adopts us as his children and makes us members of Christ’s Body, the Church, and inheritors of the kingdom of God.” It was described by the early church reformers as “the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.”

While Christ can and does speak to us whether we’re baptized or not, our baptism welcomes us into new life, a life dictated not by the finality of death and brokenness, but by the last Word of eternal life, held forever in the hand of God.

While we usually baptize at a font by pouring water on the person’s forehead, the early church preferred baptizing in a pool of water. These were inground pools built within the walls of the church. The person to be baptized would be brought into the room, descend down several steps into the pool, be immersed face first, and then step up and out of the pool, where they would be clothed in white.ⁱ

The layout was significant to the meaning of baptism: Stepping down into the pool signified stepping into the grave, being immersed in the water signified death (and purification), and stepping back out to be clothed in white signified the resurrection.

This ritual, an “outward and visible sign,” revealed what baptism actually is: becoming one with the Body of Christ in his death, and his resurrection.

Just like those ancient Christians, our baptisms still make us one with Christ and with his Body, the church. Whether water is poured on our foreheads, or we are immersed in a pool, at baptism we participate in our own funeral, and our own homecoming.

But we don’t do it alone. The Episcopal Church no longer performs private baptisms, because we understand that our faith is not only for ourselves, but for our community, and strengthened by our community.

This is why infant baptisms are part of our practice. We believe that life in Christ is nurtured in the church, that we learn from one another and, in turn, teach one another what it means to be “born again.”

Our initiation into the church through baptism prepares us for a lifetime of growing in the faith. And it helps us pay attention to life’s epiphanies that both reveal Christ’s grace and urge us to respond in kind.

Baptism, Christ’s and our own, points us to who we are.

We are “resurrection people.” Life in Christ, and in his church, will not protect us from the trials and horrors of this life – from the fires and floods and griefs.

But we are a people called to run toward the challenges of this life in service of love, drawing from a deep well of hope in Christ that can’t be moved by the death, destruction, and decay all around us, because we know we are held forever in the hand of God.

To use a Biblical term, we can “gird our loins” for whatever comes, because we know we belong to Jesus, we are led by the Holy Spirit, and we have one another as mentors on the Way.

[As we prepare to say together the Baptismal Covenant, I encourage you to take some time to reflect on and pray with the words. Consider how the Holy Spirit is leading you to more fully embody your baptism.

Later, as you come up for Communion, I encourage you to place a finger in the font and make the sign of the cross on your forehead, as a physical reminder of your participation in the resurrected life of Christ and his church.

We will now take a couple minutes of silence for prayer and reflection…]

Tag: baptism

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