baptism

 

SERMON PREACHED at HOLY TRINITY,
RINGWOOD EAST

ORDINARY SUNDAY 21

 (August 28^th) 1989

(incorporating baptism of Joshua)

READINGS

Hosea 1:2-10
Psalm 85
Colossians 2:6-15 [16-19]
Luke 11:1-13
 

Baptism. There are few if any things that are agreed on by the whole Christian community, but one that we come close to agreement on is baptism. We, as Christians, argue as to when it should be done, and we argue as to how it should be done, but we are in relative agreement that it should be done.

At a time when some, perhaps many, Anglicans are moving towards a belief that only adult, believing Christians should be baptised I want to make it quite clear that I believe the opposite. I believe that, in the New Testament, when whole households were baptised, children were amongst them. And I believe that it is imperative that we baptise children not out of some superstitious belief that if some tragedy befalls them God will have no place for them, but because they are so young and unaware the rite signifies what it is to become a part of God’s Kingdom of love and mercy.

Let me explain. The argument for baptising only those who are adult, believing Christians, is that only they can fully understand the significance of the step they are taking. Joshua today will have no real conception of what is happening to him. He will know only that an unfamiliar person has taken him and has for no apparent reason washed his head.

Yet I believe that is precisely why we should baptise infants. Those too young to know what is happening to them. For if we say we have to have an intellectual grasp of all that Jesus has done for us, then the gospel is not gospel, is not good news. If we must grasp God first with our intellect then God is not good news for children, not good news for the intellectually handicapped, not good news for those who happen to meet Mormon missionaries before they meet Christian missionaries. It is not even good news for you or me, for there is no way that we can grasp or understand the significance of Easter – any more than Joshua. It is to those who believe as children – those who accept but do not even attempt wholly to unravel the mystery – that the Kingdom of Heaven belongs.

What we do with our belief is another matter. We may seek to explore and deepen our knowledge of God intellectually, as well as emotionally and physically – but that is another matter. For Joshua that decision will come later.

What are we doing then, when we baptise? Baptism is not a naming ceremony. Joshua has a name already, although by naming him again in this context of baptism we are expressing, as it were, God’s approval of his name.

Baptism is a symbolic death, burial and resurrection. It is a symbolic re-entry to the womb. The font water becomes a symbol of the waters of which we are born. Birth itself is a death experience – passing from the comfort and security of the womb into the cold and noise of the outside world, our world. The font waters become also a symbol of death – the waters of death, the tomb of death into which Christ descends on Good Friday, and to which we all descend in our death.

In emerging from that tomb-womb we symbolise the mysterious Christian hope of the resurrection of the body, the experience of Easter. We symbolise even more than merely the immortality of the soul, a Pagan doctrine, for we symbolise God’s love of his creation, God’s love of our bodies in all their functions, God’s desire to create and then to recreate our bodies in the glory of his future Kingdom.

In the end today we are offering it to Joshua no more than a symbol. We are offering to him the symbol of hope – of the hope that our life is not all. We are offering him the symbol of grafting, of being grafted on to the death and resurrection of Christ. We are offering him the responsibility to make of his life something of a symbol of Christ, a sign and reminder to the world of the hope for all people that is in Christ.

In the end we cannot understand. We can understand no more than Joshua. What we are doing today is a mystery.

 

The Lord be with you.