The Rev. Joseph Farnes
All Saints, Boise
Baptism of Christ, Year A
After the initial fervor of the first centuries of Christianity, the theology of baptism started to become quite anemic. You see, in the first centuries, under various persecutions, being baptized as a Christian was not just an important spiritual act: it was also a social, political, and moral one. Being baptized as a Christian meant turning away from the status quo and turning toward Jesus Christ. Being baptized was a risk; the powers that be had a vested interest in keeping the status quo because it benefited the powerful and the wealthy, and they wanted to keep that power and wealth no matter the human cost.
In the earliest centuries, this turning from the status quo was actually ritually practiced in the act of baptism. The person being baptized would face the west, the direction of the setting sun and make the renunciations. The west symbolized death – the sun goes down and the sky darkens. They would renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of evil, they would renounce the ways of the world that turn away from God, and they would renounce even the broken and misguided parts within themselves that pull us away from God. Then, the person being baptized would turn to face the east, the direction of the rising sun, the new dawn, the light and life of the world, and promise to follow Jesus as their Lord and savior. By moving their bodies to turn away from the direction of death and to face Christ’s light and life, the person being baptized made the promises of baptism with their bodies.
And that bodily promise made in baptism resulted in martyrdom for many. The powers that be were not about to let people switch their allegiance from Caesar to Christ without violence. But the earliest Christians knew that we have hope in Christ, who holds our souls and our bodies in life, in death, and in the resurrection. As people saw the willingness of Christians to love their neighbors and their enemies even though it could mean death, people saw the love of Christ made flesh, the love of Christ made present in the bodies of the martyrs. People saw that the way of love gave infinitely more life than the ways of the status-quo world.
But, as I said, the initial, fervent love of Christians began to wane as Christianity was absorbed into the Roman Empire itself. It became harder and harder to perceive a difference between the ways of the world and the way of the Gospel, or at least how the way of the Gospel was taught. The imperial hierarchy didn’t dissolve and give up the wealth and power it accumulated – no, it simply switched to praying to the God of Israel instead of the Roman pantheon.
And so baptism lost its sense of being a ritual change of loyalty and direction – turning away from ways of death and turning toward life and light in Christ – and slowly faded to a shadow of itself. It became about saving ourselves from original sin and hell, about signaling a move from being a pagan kingdom to a Christian one. We baptized babies, and we made promises to help them grow in the stature of Christ, to grow up to be different from the world … and then so often we would forget those promises we made, and the promises made on our behalf.
It took a lot of reflection over the centuries – from the Protestant Reformation to the second Vatican Council in the 1960s – to fully open our eyes to the power of baptism. Baptism was not just “what you do when you have a baby” – baptism was truly about life in Christ. We’re not dipped or sprinkled in order to avoid getting sent to hell; baptism is that movement from death into life.
And that movement from death into life is the way we live life as Christians.
There is so much in the world that is death-giving. Death in body, death in mind, death in heart, death in spirit. We live in a world with plenty of food, shelter, and medicine, but so many cannot get what they need. We live in a world where we have access to so much information, and yet our minds are killed daily by the dulling of our curiosity and the assassination of our attention spans. We live in a world where people honestly do not feel loved, they feel their worth is only as consumers and producers of things, and we see that so many have grown cold and callous to the suffering and death of others. We live in a world where people long for hope and connection but no longer feel there’s a point to anything.
Those are ways of death all around us. They surround us on every side. They soak into us. They invade our minds, hearts, and communities. The forces of death assail us and threaten to destroy us.
But we renounce these ways of death in our baptism. We renounce them. We renounce anything and everything that stands between us and our life in Christ; we know that in Christ we have overflowing life, now and always. We renounce everything that stands between us and the endlessly abundant love of Christ.
We have life in our bodies –our bodies are sacred gifts of a loving God, that even if we are sick, or struggling with health, or even threatened with death, that our life, our body, is sealed together with Christ forevermore.
We have life in our minds –we were given minds that can create, rejoice, explore, understand, and share, that our minds are marvelous gifts of a brilliant God.
We have life in our hearts –we have hearts that are capable of love in all its dimension, from the heights of love for family and friends to the love that we call grief for those who have died, and even love for strangers, and even love for enemies. A love that abounds and knits us together with the heart of Christ who loves one and all.
We have life in our spirits –when all might seem hopeless, when all might seem meaningless and disconnected, we have the faith and hope of Christ abiding within us that God sees everything and that we always have hope that God will make a way out of no way, that as was spoken to St Julian of Norwich, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”
This is the life of Christ that is given to us in baptism. He was baptized, and we are baptized into his death and into his life. Washed from sin, washed from death, and born into new and eternal life in Christ.
As we see the ways of death around us on every side, we should turn to our baptism and remember not just our promises in baptism, but also the promises that God makes to us. God promises in baptism that just as Christ is beloved, so are we. God promises in baptism that just as Christ died and was raised to glorious everlasting life, so will we. God promises that where our bodies are – our individual body, and our collective body we call the Church – there too is Christ’s body. We turn from the ways of death and turn toward God’s life; and God promises that nothing shall ever separate us from God’s life, ever. This is the joy that we celebrate, this is our strength, this is our life, now and always. This is our way of life as Christians. Amen.