Eighteen months after Leni and I were married we went on a bit of a world tour. We visited places that were important in our development as people. Leni took me to Greece, to see the places where we parents came from. I took Leni to South Africa, where my mother was from and the place where I started doing my training for ministry.
One the thing that we saw in South Africa was a number of small tents in fields around various suburbs, particularly around the ‘shanty towns’, the squatter areas. We were told that inside these tents were black adolescent males. They were going through a rite of passage. They were becoming male adults in their society. I will spare the details about it, but they were going through pain and being on their own for a while. It was the process by which they became recognised as adults in their society. Going through this rite of passage can significantly influence the way a person relates to others in the society. Not because of any major change in the person, but because of what that means within their society.
For us today we have various rites of passage. I wonder what rites of passage you went through and why it symbolised and why it was important for you. Sometimes we go through rites where some don’t feel a great emotion about the event. Others going through the same rite will feel a great deal. For example in the movie ‘The Castle’, Dad Kerrigan describes to a man his has just meet how proud his was when his daughter graduated from technical college. For him, it was the first person in his family to graduate from tertiary education. He felt a great deal of emotion about it. In this situation going through the rite of passage gave cause for a feeling that hadn’t been felt before, at least in such intensity. In the movie he is describing this to a QC who has a string of degrees but nonetheless can relate to the sense of pride in a child doing well.
Today I am going to look at the Christian concept of Baptism. What is it all about? We are going to look at something of what we as a church believe about baptism and why we believe it. But before we do that I want to start, as I often do, by exploring how the process developed in Judaism.
In the earliest conversions to Judaism we don’t see much of a ‘ritual’, or a ‘rite of passage’ involved in becoming a Jew. However we do see the idea of circumcision being important in becoming a person of Israel right from the beginning. Moses’ male children needed to be circumcised before they could become part of Israel.
However there is one ritual that no doubt was incorporated into the process and developed over time. In the Old Testament laws those not of Israel are unclean people. They are ceremonially unclean. Before you can become a member of the community you need to become ceremonially clean. This involves sacrifices but it also includes washing. Leviticus 15 contains some of the information about how one becomes clean again. It involves bathing.
By the time we come to John the Baptist it seems that this has become quite a formalised process. Although there isn’t any Jewish literature documenting the process before John the Baptist, it seems from the gospel accounts that people knew what was going on. Certainly later there was a formal ‘baptism’ for people becoming Jews, which is about becoming ritually, clean and therefore part of the community.
I think that people knew that when people went out to John the Baptist, these people though that he was dealing with baptising people into the community of the people of Israel. We earlier read in Mat 3:9 that John’s dispute with the Pharisees was about being children of Abraham, or members of the community of Israel, God’s people. In going out they knew they were going for a special spiritual experience and so prepared themselves for going through this rite-of-passage.
So what was the message of John the Baptist? It was a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. What was the baptism? It was about being made clean in God’s sight and therefore being part of the community of God’s people. John was saying that you don’t belong to the people of God because you were born into the people of God, but by repentance and acknowledging your sins before God.
The rite associated with that entry into the people of God was being washed clean from sins, being washed pure of anything that would make us unacceptable, or unclean, in God’s sight. In Luke’s gospel (3:10-14) we see the ethical side of that, the things that we should do in order to show that we are real in our repentance. It isn’t just about saying the thing, or going through the ritual, but it is about going through a rite of passage that is meaningful to our lives and followed by a change of lifestyle, which shows that the people were real in their repentance.
But John knew his work, his ministry, was not an end in itself. John knew that by moving people’s thinking away from being born as one of God’s people he was preparing Israel for some one who was greater than he was. He says in Mat 3:11-12 that there is one more powerful than he is who will not just wash in water (which cleans the outside) but one who will baptise in fire. If you ‘clean’ an ore with fire you really get rid of the impurities. You can only do so much by washing with water. You can’t change the make up of something by washing with water. But if you clean an ore with fire you start to change the make up of the ore.
So what is the change in our make up that is being symbolized by baptised? What happens when Jesus baptises us by fire? When does that happen? When we decide to become a follower of Jesus and accept Jesus as the one who has authority over our lives he does something in us. He starts the process of reducing the power of sin in our lives. We are forgiven for our sins. Sin starts to lose power over our lives. We no longer want to do some of the things that we wanted to do that we knew were wrong. This is symbolized here by John the Baptist as being baptised in fire. We get the Holy Spirit, the third person of the trinity, who does this change in us.
Now, Christian baptism reflects that change. Baptism is the Christian rite of passage which welcomes people in God’s community. It is the community of those who have been through this change which is symbolised in baptism.
Why did people start baptising babies? It was because they wanted that change in their children. Let’s get people out of the power of sin from birth! Unfortunately for me, the problem with that is that it isn’t baptism which makes that change in people. Rather it is the decision to accept Jesus that leads to that change and baptism is the rite of passage, or the symbol, into the community of those who have accepted Jesus.
Luther said that the decision at baptism was taken by the parents or godparents on behalf of the baby at the time of baptism. And then later, when the child grew enough to understand, the person went through another rite, confirmation, and in that rite became a member of the community. However for us, it seems a bit redundant to create a second rite, so we just stick to the original, but how we acknowledge the other rites of other churches is an issue we need to be thinking about.
The passage in Matthew then goes on to describe Jesus’ baptism. This does raise a number of questions. Why does Jesus need to be baptised? Isn’t he already a member of God’s community, not by birth, but by the fact that he is God? Why does Jesus need to go through a symbol process of being cleansed? He had nothing from which he needed to be cleansed? And in fact John knew this. He tried to stop Jesus being baptised.
So why did Jesus say that he wanted to be baptised? It was to ‘fulfil all righteousness’. What does that mean? It is in some ways about fulfilment of scripture. It Matthew the word ‘fulfil’ nearly always refers to fulfilling scripture. Once it is about filling a net. Mostly it is used in the passive but here it is used in the active. Jesus is active in doing something to fulfil scripture, rather than others around him doing something to him, like Herod killing babies. What Scriptures are being fulfilled? Well maybe it is Isa 43:2, ‘when you go through the waters I will be with you’. Maybe it is part of Ps 2:7, ‘You are my son’ Or Isa 42:7 ‘With whom I’m well pleased’.
So it is about fulfilling scripture, but what about ‘all righteousness’? What does righteousness mean? Basically righteousness is about being in a right relationship with God and with his people. It is impossible to be in a right relationship with God if you aren’t in a right relationship with his people. Often in the gospel of Matthew righteousness is about Jesus coming and dying for us so that we can be in a right relationship with God and his people. In this passage of scripture we have a very important transition happening in the story of God reaching out to his people. The Old ways ended with John. The new ways start with Jesus. Here we have the transition from the old ways to the new. It is like in a relay and passing on the batten. Here John is passing the batten on to Jesus (Note that it is only after the ‘batten’ change that John sees the spirit coming down on Jesus and then knows that Jesus is the Messiah and that ‘I must decrease but he must increase’).
There is also something else going on here. Why did God come down as a person? God knew everything right? Well not quite. He didn’t know what it felt like to be a person. And so by coming down as a person, he experienced being a person. He KNEW what it was like to be a person, not theoretically, but practically. He was identifying with those with whom he wanted to have relationship.
In Jesus’ baptism we see part of that identification. Jesus was identifying with those who were going to be part of God’s people, not through birth, but through going through the ‘rite of passage’ into God’s people. He was identifying with those who chose to acknowledge their need for God in their life, and for God to be the authority over their life.
Why do we practise baptism? What does it mean? We practice baptism because we believe it is the rite of passage into the ‘church’ that Jesus accepted, followed and commanded his disciples to continue. And when we say ‘church’ do we mean this little congregation, this little community? No, we mean that it is the rite of passage into the church universal, that is, all people in all time who have decided to follow Jesus’ ways, to accept his authority over their life. We believe that people have to make that choice from themselves. Nobody can make that choice for them. Each of us has to choose if we want to be part of that worldwide community. If some one does make that choice the way we practise that rite of passage is the way we think is closest to the Bible, through baptism.
The great thing about any rite of passage is that it allows oneself to prepare and to be focussed and to experience things in a way that they might not have before. Like Dad Kerrigan, who experience pride in a way he hadn’t before, so when those who have accepted Jesus’ lordship in their life chose to go through baptism it often opens them up to receive from God something in a way that they haven’t done so before. Many people can therefore report going through baptism as something that is a wonderful special spiritual moment for them.
If two people want to be married, they go through a number of rites or ceremonies as part of a larger ceremony of marriage. They might exchange rings, they take a vow, the sign papers, and they publicly kiss. Depending on the faith tradition in which they get married, they do all things to be legally married.
Two people can behave as if they are married. They can live together, eat together, share bills, and even have children together. However if they don’t go through the rite of passage, if they don’t make a formal statement of their marriage, then legally they aren’t married. In some ways they are legally married, but they can’t be ‘Mr and Mrs Eyland’, or ‘Mr and Mrs Jones’, unless they go through a formal process of acknowledging either a name change or a marriage.
Likewise for us as members of the worldwide community of those who have Jesus as the authority over their lives. We can be a part of a local community, go to church, be involved, preach and they can even go to heaven. But I suspect that there is a little bit missing if they don’t ‘fulfil all righteousness’, if they don’t take that final step into being in a right relationship with God and his people because baptism isn’t just about going through a rite of passage, it is about making a statement. It is a big statement, not just a physical statement but also a spiritual statement to other members of God’s community that you now choose to be a part of that community.
If there is anybody who would like to go through that process, to go through the rite of passage, I would love to guide you through it. It isn’t a difficult thing, it won’t take long, but it might just be a very significant thing for your life.
