Article 11: Baptism – the waters of death and life
January 9, 2011
BMC- Mark 10:35-40; Romans 6:1-4; I John 5:6-12
Introduction: The Waters[1]
Most of us know that water, also known as H2O, is a simple compound of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. It is a versatile compound that we experience in many forms. We encounter it as a solid in ice and snow, a liquid in rain and rivers, and a gas in steam and the moisture in the air. Water exists in a nearly continuous state of transformation as it melts from ice into water, evaporates from liquid into gas, and condenses from gas back into liquid or solid depending on the temperature.
About two thirds of our bodies are made up of water. We need it to drink, to breathe in the air, to give life to the plants and animals that we eat, and to bathe in. “Water is [an] essential nutrient that is involved in every function of the body. It helps transport nutrients and waste products in and out of cells. It is necessary for all digestive, absorption, circulatory, and excretory functions, as well as for the utilization of water-soluble vitamins. It is also needed for the maintenance of proper body temperature.”[2]
Water is a powerful reality for us. It comes in many forms and we need it to live. It is also something that our planet has in abundance overall, though there are regions where any water is obviously lacking and especially safe drinking water. About 71% of the earth is covered by water. We find it in the ocean, lakes, rivers, and streams. It rains down on us and sprays up from underground geysers. We pump it into our homes and swim in it to cool off or exercise.
And yet for as important as water is for us to live, it also can lead to death and destruction. An adult can drown in less than two inches of water.[3] And according to the CDC, in 2004 an average of 9 people a day died from unintentional drowning in the US. On a larger scale, we are all aware of the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina and the resulting floods. Over 1,800 people died because of Katrina and it caused over $80 billion dollars in damages.[4]
Water is a simple compound with complex realities of transforming states, of giving and taking life, and of existing abundantly. Knowing how important water is and the profound meaning that it has for us, is it any wonder that the Bible continually uses water to confer spiritually realities to us? Is it surprising that a substance so representative of both life and death is a part of such a central Christian ritual as baptism?
Water and Spirit Baptisms
One of the important uses for water in our faith is for baptism. Baptism symbolizes the cleansing of our sins, the pouring out of the Holy Spirit, and death of our sinful selves. This is a practice that is common to most Christian churches regardless of denomination, though the application of it varies from one tradition to another and even one congregation to another. Some traditions baptize infants while other baptize adults. Some baptize by sprinkling or pouring while others baptize by immersion.
In recent years of course, it has become our practice to go down to the river and to baptize by immersion. This has been by the candidate’s choosing and is not something that we are limited to. In fact, many here this morning were baptized by pouring. For us the method is not so important, but the ability to make a personal commitment is.
When we think of baptism, we tend to think in terms of water baptism, and yet scripture and our article for this morning name two other baptisms. Jesus was baptized with water in the Jordan River, an event that is celebrated today by those that follow the liturgical calendar. But he was also baptized with the Holy Spirit in the dove that descended. We see this baptism of the spirit repeatedly in the book of Acts as well. In those stories, we see that for some water baptism precedes spirit baptism, but for others it is the other way around.
Other Christian traditions like the Pentecostal church tend to put more emphasis on the baptism of the spirit than we do. It is a baptism of empowerment in which the Holy Spirit is poured into us. We read of the effects this had on the disciples waiting in the upper room on Pentecost. Through this baptism of the spirit, they were empowered to go out and speak the word of God in various languages.
Church Camp
My experience is not anywhere as Biblically impressive as what we read in Acts, but in the summer after my 8th grade year, I attended a very important week of church camp in my faith journey. During that week, we were taught about the Holy Spirit. In the midst of a time of prayer, I had an experience that I can only describe as a baptism of the Spirit in which I felt a power wash over me and fill me. This was also a week in which I received a clear confirmation of my calling to ministry.
It may seem a little silly to some, but we were playing a day long game similar to persecution in which we role played the early church under Roman persecution. Each person was given a role to play in the game and he or she was the only one that knew his or her role. Those who were Christian were trying to hold a secret worship service before that evening. Those who were Roman were trying to capture the Christians and prevent the service from happening. One of the roles was the pastor of the church.
As I went to camp that year, I was already beginning to sense a potential call to pastoral ministry and was wrestling with whether or not it was real. As the counselors were passing out the slips of paper with our roles on it, I prayed that if God really did want me to be a minister, that He would give me the role of the pastor in the game. That was the role that I got and it served as a pretty powerful sign for an 8th grade camper of God’s call on my life.
In our tradition, we recognize the empowerment of the Holy Spirit and yet we don’t tend to put much emphasis on a defined time of experiencing the baptism of the spirit. Believer’s baptism with water on the other hand is a core of our faith and a significant impetus to the formation our expression of Christianity.
During the Reformation of the 1500’s, it was the Anabaptist’s insistence on and practice of believer’s baptism as Biblically correct that led to their executions by the state and the state church. While the age that we consider to be sufficient to make that commitment will vary from church to church and even person to person, the importance of the ability to make a commitment remains. For us, baptism is an outward sign of an inward reality, a symbol of the cleansing of our sins that happens through the power of the Holy Spirit; but it is a sign that requires the personal commitment of the individual being cleansed.
My Re-baptism
Most of you know that I was baptized as an infant at Salem United Church of Christ in Marion, Ohio. The UCC typically practice infant baptism. At the time, we were between pastors so a lay licensed member of our congregation baptized me. This was significant for my family and for me. Growing up, it served as an anchor for me that I was a part of the church because my parents had made a commitment on my behalf to raise me to know Christ.
My family later changed churches and began attending Central Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), a tradition that practices believer’s baptism. In middle school, I went through their Pastor’s class and had the opportunity to be “adult” baptized. I went back and forth about it, but ultimately was not re-baptized at that time. Instead I was confirmed. I made a public confession of my faith and became a member of the congregation.
Fast forward about 10 years. After choosing to become Mennonite at the end of my time at Bluffton College, I began serving at Harrisonburg Mennonite Church while attending classes in seminary. I was again faced with the choice of whether or not to be re-baptized. This time, I felt the call to do that.
In November of 1999, I was re-baptized by pouring and joined the Mennonite Church. I wasn’t forced to be re-baptized, to be a “true” Anabaptist one who is re-baptized, but I chose to do this after more significant wrestling in my faith. I had to reconcile my upbringing with my calling.
For me, and I share this as my personal experience rather than a theological model to follow, my infant baptism was an important commitment of me by my parents to the church universal, much like baby dedications are for us. Then in my confirmation, I took that commitment on as my own; but even then, the commitment was rather universal in its scope and it was a public commitment to belief in Christ. I had not yet grasped the potential depth of that commitment, however a depth that is named in our passages for this morning.
It wasn’t until I was in college that I witnessed and began to grasp the potential that one’s faith in Christ, one’s commitment to his Lordship, to following in the way of Christ, meant. I began to understand that it includes a willingness to give of one’s life for one’s faith. Christian Martyr’s have done this for centuries since the first martyr, Stephen in Acts 7. We have testimony of 1600 years of martyr’s in the Martyr’s Mirror.
And so, I saw my baptism in Harrisonburg as my personal commitment not only to believe but also to follow the Lordship of Christ, even to the point of death. Not just a public commitment to accept His Salvation, but to accept His Lordship. I saw that re-baptism as a commitment to leave behind the illusion of being a “generic” Christian and instead follow Christ’s call for me to be and minister as a Mennonite Christian.
This doesn’t mean that I reject ecumenical interactions. In fact, I embrace them, perhaps too much for some. But I embrace them from a place rooted in an Anabaptist perspective of Christianity. Given my journey, I’ve come to realize that generic Christianity doesn’t really exist. Certainly we do have a lot of commonality in our faith with other Christian traditions and this is important. But we are all rooted, we all have a context, we all have been raised in a tradition that shapes our perspective on faith and our understanding of who Christ is.
In my rebaptism, I was choosing to be intentional about naming and committing myself to this perspective that I felt God calling me to. Not because it is the only understanding of the truth of Christ out there, but because it is the way that God was and is calling me to. I was making my own, personal commitment.
Commitment in the Passages
It is this sense of commitment that stands out to me as significant in our article and our passages for this morning. The article states that “Baptism is done in obedience to Jesus’ command and as a public commitment to identify with Jesus Christ, not only in his baptism by water, but in his life in the Spirit and in his death in suffering love.”
It goes on to say that “Those who accept water baptism commit themselves to follow Jesus in giving their lives for others, in loving their enemies, and in renouncing violence, even when it means their own suffering or death. Christian baptism is for those who confess their sins, repent, accept Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, and commit themselves to follow Christ in obedience as members of his body, both giving and receiving care and counsel in the church.” For us, baptism is a commitment that we make for ourselves.
This commitment becomes significant in our Mark passage for the morning. Here we read of James’ and John’s desire to sit at the right and left hand of Jesus when He reigns in his glory. But Jesus replies that they have no idea of what they are talking about. In verse 38 he says, “You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said. “Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?”
Jesus is not referring here to His baptism in the Jordan River, as important as that was. He is referring to his impending death as a baptism. It is a baptism of blood. It is a baptism that is not for everyone, but that we avail ourselves to when we are baptized with water and commit ourselves to following Christ as Lord. It is the way of the martyr.
Likewise, in verse 3 of our Roman’s passage, Paul declares, “Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” Now certainly, this is a statement of our eternal salvation, which comes with our acceptance of Jesus Christ as Lord and savior, an atonement that is made possible by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. But more than that, I believe that this also names the potential reality that when we accept the Lordship of Christ, when we commit to the way of Christ through our baptism of water; we join Christ on his journey, a journey of faithfulness that led to his death, to a baptism of blood.
Because as our I John passage declares in verses 6-8, “This is the one who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ. He did not come by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. For there are three that testify: the Spirit, the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement.” The baptisms of the spirit and the water and the blood; they all agree and Christ endured all three.
Christ endured all three and Christ is our model that we are called to follow and to emulate in life. Christ is not just our spiritual salvation to an eternal home, but also our model of how we live our lives, a way of life that we commit to in our baptism.
Blood Baptism
And so we have the third baptism described in our article, the baptism of blood. It is a baptism that not all are required to take, but that all are to be prepared for and willing to accept if called to it. It is the reason why for us that believer’s baptism requires personal commitment; because in it, we put not only our spiritual but also our physical lives on the line for the sake of Christ and the gospel.
118 Days[5]
“On November 26, 2005 four members of the Christian Peacemaker Teams in Iraq – Tom Fox, James Loney, Norman Kember, and Harmeet Singh Sooden – were taken captive at gunpoint …in Bagdad by two men who later identified themselves as the Swords of the Righteous Brigade. Through videos and statements sent to the Arabic-language television network al-Jazeera, the captors threatened to kill the four men unless the Iraqi government freed its prisoners and U.S. and British forces left Iraq.”[6]
These were ordinary men with an extraordinary commitment to their faith in Christ. They saw the injustices, the death and destruction in Iraq and they went to nonviolently act for peace in the way of Christ. They were ordinary men like Tom Fox, a 55-year-old American who was a full-time CPT member and veteran of 14 months of project work in Iraq. They were ordinary men like Harmeet Singh Sooden, a 33-year-old Canadian citizen living in New Zealand who was serving as a short-term CPT delegate. They were ordinary men like James Loney, a 41-year-old Canadian who served CPT Canada as program coordinator and delegation leader. They were ordinary men like Norman Kember, a 72-year-old from Britain who is a retired professor of physics and a short term CPT delegate.[7]
They were ordinary men with extraordinary belief and commitment. They went to help those in need but were taken captive in the process. They were held in some unknown location in which guns were prevalent, a dog barked viciously, and they heard the screams of other captives. They did not know if they would be killed, tortured, released the next day, held for years, or disappear forever.[8] All they could do is pray.
“From early on the prospect of release was held before [them]. First [their] captors said [they] would be freed in a few days, as a propaganda statement ‘to show the world [that the Righteous Sword Brigade] are not like al Qaeda.’ Then it was to be before the Iraqi elections in mid December of that year. When those came and went, they said it would be another week. Just in time for Christmas, [they] thought a public relations coup for the insurgency. [The captives] began to entertain fantasies about a Christmas reunion with [their] families.”[9]
Yet days drug into weeks and weeks piled into months. On Feb 12th, Tom Fox, the American, was separated from the rest of the CPT captives. They would never see their comrade again. On March 9, 2006, the body of Tom Fox was found on the streets of Bagdad. And it wasn’t until March 23, 2006, that the remaining CPT hostages were released, 118 days after being taken captive.
These men made a commitment not only to belief in Christ, but also to living in the way of Christ. For Tom Fox, that commitment led to his death, a baptism of blood, a martyr for his faith.
Conclusion
Though we tend to focus primarily on the baptism of water, scripture and Article 11 name three baptisms; the baptisms of water, spirit, and blood. For us, the baptism of water is one of commitment to the Lordship of Christ and living our lives as Christ has modeled. The baptism of spirit is the filling and empowerment of the spirit that God grants us. And the baptism of blood, is the following in the way of Christ with a faithfulness that may require the sacrifice of our very lives.
Thus, like the water that we come in contact with everyday that sustains life but also so quickly takes it away, the waters of baptism are the waters of death and life. We see in them the death to our life of sin and the rise to new life in Christ that water baptism symbolizes. But for some, we also see this in the fulfillment of our commitment taken in baptism to live under the Lordship of Christ, to live our lives as Christ lived His; a commitment that may lead to a temporal death and a transition to heavenly life.
In this new year, may we remember our baptisms with water. May we continue to be empowered by our baptisms of the Spirit. May we live out our commitment to the way of Christ, regardless of the cost as did those who have gone before us in the baptism of blood. And May God continue to lead us in His ways and to strengthen our ability to carry our commitment to him, whatever that may mean.
Amen.
[1] Taken from the opener to my sermon The Waters given March 5, 2006 at Grace Mennonite for the first Sunday of Lent.
[3] http://answers.gardenandhearth.com/Gardening/how_much_water_does_it_take_for_an_adult_to_drown
[4] http://www.ask.com/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina
[5] Taken from my sermon Let Us Go and Die with Him given at Grace Mennonite March 9, 2008, on the 5th Sunday of Lent
[6] http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=magazine.article&issue=soj0612&article=061210
[7] http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=magazine.article&issue=soj0612&article=061210
[8] http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=magazine.article&issue=soj0612&article=061210
[9] http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=magazine.article&issue=soj0612&article=061210
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