Musings about our Holy Baptisms

Last night—in the middle of Evening Prayer, of all things!—June and I had a discussion about baptism. My wonderful June is a Southern Baptist, who, in marrying me, managed to get a Lutheran as a husband. June was baptized as a sixteen-year-old young adult (fifty-six years ago), and I was baptized as a five-week-old baby (seventy-one years ago) on St. Andrew’s Day, November 30, 1937. With June I now attend worship at her First Baptist Church in Barnesville, GA, and she attends worship with me at Faith Lutheran Church in Lexington, KY. We also worship at First United Methodist Church in Richmond, KY, and at The Church of the Good Shepherd, Episcopal, in Covington, Ga. Even though June is basically Baptist in her thinking and soul-thoughts and I’m a hard-shell liberal Lutheran in my theological outlook, one might also describe each of us as post- or trans-demoninational. In short, we get around, visiting and worshipping with the Body of Christ here and there. It’s a wonderful life!

But, as you might expect, because of our early years and experience in the Church, we sometimes share differences about our approaches to Christian doctrine and teachings, often and notably about Holy Baptism. We gave expression to our differences last night during Evening Prayer, and although we finished our prayers in good spirits, I felt a lingering dissatisfaction with our conversation and spent a good bit of the night pondering over the meanings and significance of Holy Baptism for both of us as we articulate and live them out life in Christ in our daily lives.

Hence, these musings:

Every day in Morning Prayer June and I pray the so-called Benedictus Dominus Deus (“Blessed Be the Lord”), the song of thanksgiving sung by Zechariah on the occasion of the birth, circumcision, and naming of his son, John the Baptist. Many prayer books—including the one June and I use daily--are sure to include it as one of our Morning Prayer canticles; one of my prayerbooks, The Daily Prayer of the Church, which I use when June is not with me, provides me with a beautiful melody for the canticle that I often sing while out walking in the morning.

The text for Zechariah’s Song and the story surrounding its singing is in Luke 1.68-79. According to Luke, Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth have just been to the temple to have their little boy circumcised and given his name: John. Then, holding his little baby in his arms, Zechariah, “filled with Holy Spirit” sings a psalm-like Song as he looks down on the infant who will become the Forerunner of Jesus. Towards the end of his song, Zechariah chants (I always imagine it in a raspy voice because he’s been speechless a good while) this Song:

You, my child shall be called the prophet of the Most High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare his way, to give his people knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins.

Sometimes, however, when I sing Zechariah’s “Blessed Be,” a painting about John the Baptist comes to my mind’s eye: it’s Matthias Grunewald’s famous painting of crucifixion in the Isenheim Altarpiece wherein John stands on the right side of Christ (as you view the painting) and, holding the Old Testament in his left hand, points to Jesus while our Lord is dying. Next to John’s left foot is a white lamb, reminding viewers that we are seeing the Lamb of God, Jesus, dying sacrificially for us.

In the Gospel for the Second Sunday of Advent, Mark 1.1-18, we are introduced to the work and witness of this same John the Baptist. Mark tells us John is a “voice” who proclaims the coming of the Messiah, who comes over the hill while John is baptizing repenting Jews. Obviously John knows his cousin Jesus quite well; their mothers were kin, they’ve grown up together and attended numerous family reunions. I have no doubt that John and Jesus played together as kids, hung out together as teens, and stayed in touch during their young adult lives. When in his early thirties, John (who decided to live monk-like in the Judean desert) tells his listeners that Jesus, who comes over the hill into view, is a man with tremendous power, power so great that John cannot now imagine himself daring even to untie his cousin’s sandal strings. Obviously John is now astonished at who Jesus has become. He tells the gawking crowd standing around that here is Someone who will baptize them with no one less than the Spirit of the Most High God.

That said, something remarkable happens. As I imagine it, Jesus sits down, takes a good look at John, unties his own sandals, and bare-footed clambers down the rocky bank of the Jordon to wade into the waist-deep river. Without a lot fuss (at least in Mark’s Gospel), John then either immerses Jesus, pours water over his body, or somehow makes sure that Jesus gets really wet; that is, he baptizes and washes his cousin. We don’t know what John says; we know only his actions. Then, with his clothes dripping and head wet, Jesus sees the “heavens torn apart, the Spirit, like a dove, flying down around and on him, and an announcing voice declares, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; my favor rests on you’.” Then, just as quickly as he came forward and got himself baptized, the wet Jesus who is baptized with the Holy Spirit is driven into the desert by that same Spirit. Quite a story! It's been "written" and told again by many Orthodox "writers" of icons; my favorite is The Icon of the Feast of Theophany which depicts the baptism of Jesus with artfully perceptive insight.

Advent reminds us that we are never to forget the two-fold, yet single, message of John and Jesus. First, we are to “change the way we think about life” and our culture (Repent!) and then unite ourselves to Jesus (Trust him!) so that we enter his witness, death, and resurrected life by a baptismal beginning. Sometimes our solidarity with Jesus begins when we are baptized as infants (as I did) or children when God adopts us into his Family, the Church; sometimes our solidarity with Christ takes places when we step into a river or tank full of water (as June did) to announce publicly that we believe in Jesus our Savior and that we want to be immersed into God’s Name: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. When we are baptized, either as infants, children, or adults, we enter into Christ’s life as Paul tells us in Romans, Chapter 6:

When we were baptized into Christ Jesus, we were baptized into his death. So by our baptism into his death we were buried with him, so that as Christ was raised from the death by the Father’s glorious power, we too should begin living a new life.

For most of us, Christ in and with baptism as already come into our lives (as infants or as adults) as God's beloved Advent. Now (often over the span of decades and years later) he keeps on coming, every morning, moment-by-moment, day-by-day, until he will come finally, either at our deaths to take us the Father by the power of the Spirit, or at his final Great Descent when he comes in glory to claim all the worlds as his own. Either way, by daily repentance and renewed trust, we are always in solidarity with Christ. Seeing all of life with his eyes, all hearing with his ears, all touching with his hands, all walking with his feet, all singing with his voice, and all thinking with his mind, we are wet behind the ears with His baptism, ready to let the Spirit be our guide.

While I wish that the Holy Scriptues were more explicit about the kind of baptism we ought clearly to affirm and practice, the Holy Spirit has decided to leave the Church divided (and sometimes tragically opinionated) about a preferred mode of baptism. Importantly, however, both infant-baptism and adult-baptism seem to work well with God. C. S. Lewis, for example, was baptized as an infant and became a great witness to the truth of the Gospel and the vitality of Christian living; Billy Graham was baptized as an adult and become an equally great witness to the power of God to work miracles in the lives of men and women. Clearly, the baptisms of both men have proven themselves worthy of God’s blessing and effectiveness. God surely seems to bless both kinds of baptism: infant and adult. For this reason, June respects my infant baptism, and I honor and respect her young adult baptism. Paul says there is “one faith, one baptism, one Lord,” and he’s right. Although there are two kinds of baptism practiced in the Church, there is in the final analysis only one baptism, the baptism that unites us to Christ.

So June and I rejoice in our baptismal unity, and we strive to live out the meaning of our baptisms by walking in newness of life every day. As baptized persons, we want to think with the mind of Christ, to walk with the feet of Jesus, to see with the eyes of the Savior, to hear with the ears of our Lord, and to imagine the world with the vision of God's Beloved Son. In short, we want to live resurrected lives. The challenge is not so much to find out who is right about the how and when of baptism; the challenge is rather how to live united with Christ now that we are in solidarity with Christ. It's quite an adventure!