Luke 3:21-22
Baptism
of the Lord
“Welcome to the life of the church.” That’s
what I say to an infant (or child or adult, usually an infant) after being
baptized. It’s how we often think about
baptism, as initiation into the church—emphasis on church, the
community of God’s people. John Calvin
(1509-1564) himself said, “Baptism is a sign of initiation, by which we are
admitted into the society of the Church, in order that, being incorporated into
Christ, we may be numbered among the children of God.”[1]
Now, I certainly don’t want to contradict
Calvin. And I don’t want the heresy police coming to my study or people
questioning my theological orthodoxy, but there’s a problem here. There’s something
missing with a one-sided view of baptism. The problem comes into focus
when we take this initiation-into-church view of baptism and then read the
accounts of Jesus’ own baptism. The dilemma
is staring right at us. Was baptism as initiation-into-church true for Jesus
when Jesus, himself, wasn’t baptized into a church? And he certainly wasn’t
baptized by the church. John the Baptist wasn’t out in the wilderness
baptizing Jews into the Christian church.
At Jesus’ time, baptism was a ritual used by radical Jews who were fed
up with the abuses of the religious authorities in Jerusalem, who wanted to be
purified or cleansed of those abuses to be more fully faithful to the ways of
God. Those who went out to see John in the wilderness didn’t want to be associated
with the Temple community in Jerusalem; they wanted to separate themselves from
it, distance themselves from the Temple and the Temple’s alliance with Roman
Imperial authorities. Instead, those seeking baptism wanted to identify
themselves with God.
When we read the account of Jesu’s baptism in
this light, setting aside our churchy view of initiation, we begin to see that
for Jesus baptism was less about initiation, than it was identification.
It was about identity—Jesus’ identity as the son of God and being identified
with God’s mission or kingdom in the world. In his baptism—going down
under the water and coming up out of the water—Jesus participated in a profound
ritual that helped him come to grips with who he was. In these waters
Jesus was aligning himself with the Baptist’s mission of radical reform, of the
need to focus more clearly upon ways of God. When Jesus came up out of the
water, he entered a new life, determined to embody his call and embark on the
mission and purpose of his life. After his baptism, Luke tells us, while he and
the others who had been baptized were praying, the Holy Spirit “descended upon
him in bodily form like a dove. And a
voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well
pleased’ (Lk. 3:22). You are my beloved Son. You are my beloved.
A designation of identity. Therefore, “With you I
am well-pleased.” Can you hear this in
your heart? Can you feel it?
In this divine declaration we begin to see that being baptized
has something to do with identity, with who we really are in the core of our
being. It seems to me that we also discover something about what our
baptism can mean for us, whether or not we remember being baptized. What we
discover when we consider the meaning of our baptism, not into the Church, but into
our call as people of God, is something akin to what Jesus discovered about
himself in the waters of his baptism.
It’s a designation of identity.
Baptism tells us who we are. Not
that we are mini-Messiahs, because we’re not, but that a similar designation—Beloved—belongs to us as God’s children. It’s a designation, a claim, and identity
that we need help remembering all our lives. This means that baptism is never
an event that occurs once in our lives (whether as infant, child, or adult),
and then we move on, but an event, or, better, a truth that we need to live into
day after day, year after year.
During the stress and strain of the Reformation, attacked on all
sides, Martin Luther (1483-1546) took great comfort in knowing he was
baptized. He would repeat to himself, over and over, “Remember your
baptism. Remember your baptism. Remember who you are.” Luther
said of baptism that is a once-in-a-lifetime experience that takes our entire
lives to complete.[2] He’s correct.
We’re not “done” and then we’re “in.” It’s an experience that yields
saving, personal knowledge. And the knowledge we gain of ourselves in
baptism, when we come to see who we really are, a knowledge that takes a
lifetime to fathom and acknowledge and live out and really claim to be true in
our heart of hearts is like what Jesus learned in the divine declaration, the
truth that defined and determined his mission, and it’s this: we too are beloved
children of God, daughters of God, sons of God, with whom God is
well-pleased. Your name is Beloved—Beloved Child.
I wonder, though, why is it so difficult to hear this, to accept
this, to believe this? I believe it’s truly tragic that someone can spend their
entire life in the church and never hear this, never able to accept it, never
able to view themselves this way, as Beloved. Sometimes we know, but then
we forget, and we need help remembering. Sometimes we hear other messages,
voices that tell us something else, voices from family members, or at school,
at work that tell us we’re something else—unwanted, unaccepted, unlovable. Or it might be those negative, piercing
voices of judgment and recrimination that we say to ourselves, the voices that
are less than kind or compassionate or graceful. We’re surrounded by a cacophony of voices
competing for our attention.
Who tells you who you are? Who has the authority to tell
you who you really are? Who grounds your identity? Do we look to our
families, our neighbors, our friends to tell us who we are? Your
colleagues at work? Your boss? Is it the culture with its distorted drives
and wayward passions that we turn to guidance? There’s no way to live
apart from these voices. But we need to remember that there’s only one
voice that truly counts, only one who speaks with authority, only one who knows
you—through and through—the only one who can tell you who you really are.
Several years ago, we saw The Lion King on
Broadway. Amazing production; amazing show; amazing story,
really. There’s one scene in which Simba—son of the great king of Pride
Rock, a son in exile from his father who lost his way without the courage to
fulfill his life’s mission—receives a visitation by Rafiki, a priestess
offering wise counsel. Rafiki is a Swahili word for “friend,” related to an
Arabic word for “companion.” She’s a kind of Holy Spirit-like figure
offering guidance to Rafiki. She tells him to look at his reflection in the
waters of creation, to see himself and to remember who he really is—he’s the
son of the king. Rafiki sings,
He watches over
Everything we see
Into the water
Into the truth
In your reflection
He lives in you.[3]
Simba
begins to see a vision of his father long dead who speaks words of assurance,
of affirmation, of identification, like what Jesus heard from the Spirit: Remember
who you are.
When we are in exile and far from home,
when we have lost our way in the world,
when the future looks scary,
when nothing seems to make any sense,
when the pressures and anxieties
and pain and immense sorrow of
the world overwhelm us,
and we forget our place in the universe,
Jesus invites us back—again and again—to the waters,
the waters of new creation,
to remember who we are.
But it’s so easy to forget. That’s why we need people who love
us and remind us who we are. It’s also what the church does when the
church is really being the church: we remind each other who we are. You’re a beloved child of God. That’s
what a sacrament is meant to do, it helps us remember. That’s what we need
to hear whispered in our ears whenever we approach a baptismal font, whether
it’s this baptismal font or any other font anywhere in the world.
When the great St. Francis of Assisi (1181/1182-1226) was called
by Christ in a vision to enter a world of poverty and care for the poor, his
father, Franceso, a leading public figure in the town of Assisi, Italy, was
furious. His father publicly shamed Francis in the public square. And
Francis shamed his father for taking his call seriously. Francis lived in
a small hut in the plains below the town of Assisi (you can still go there
today). When he had to walk up the hill to town, he was deeply fearful of
meeting his father in the street. His
father cursed at him publicly and rejected him again and again as his
son. Francis carried a lot of guilt about this and the relationship with
his father remained broken for the rest of his life. One day Francis had
to go up into town and feeling fearful, invited a beggar from the streets to
join him. He invited the beggar to walk
by his side and protect him. And Francis instructed him, “When my father hurls
curses and abuses at me, I will hear them painfully in one ear, but I ask you
to walk on my other side, and whisper God’s favor into my other ear, ‘Francis,
you are my beloved son. You are a son of heaven and a son of God.’ Just
keep repeating it until I can believe it again.”[4]
That’s what our baptism continues to say to us today. The font
reminds us who we are. In its waters we see our reflections. Here we discover
our true names. Rachel Held Evans said it
so well. “The great struggle of the Christian life is to take God’s name for
us, to believe we are beloved and to believe that is enough.” That’s the only voice and the only name we need to hear. Against the many competing voices telling us
otherwise, we need to hear the voice of truth, and hear it repeated in our ears
again and again, until we believe it and know it. At the font, God’s Spirit
whispers to us again and again, and won’t stop until we really believe it, know
it, feel it in our souls: You are my child. My daughter. My son. You are my
beloved.
One final thing, this identity…it’s
never an end in itself. It’s important
to know who we are so that we can faithfully live out our lives, serving God,
and fulfilling the purpose of our lives.
The well-loved poet Mary Oliver died this past week. She knew who she was as a child of God and
lived out her life to the fullest. She
said, “Love yourself. Then forget it. And love the world.”[5] Indeed.
[1] John Calvin, Institutes of the
Christian Religion (1559), Book IV, XV,1.
[2] Cited in Anthony Robinson, Transforming
Congregational Culture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Press, 2003),
37. The French Confession (1559),
written by Calvin, says, “We hold…that although we are baptized only once, yet
the gain that it symbolizes to us reaches over our whole lives and to our
death, so that we have a lasting witness that Jesus Christ will always be our
justification and sanctification.”
[3] The Lion King, Music and Lyrics by Elton John & Tim
Rice.
[4] “Legend of the Three Companions,” St.
Francis of Assisi Writings and Early Biographies: English Omnibus of the
Sources for the Life of St. Francis, cited in Richard Rohr, Wild
Man to Wise Man: Reflections on Male Spirituality (Cincinnati,
OH: St. Anthony Messenger Press, 2005), 78.
[5] Mary Oliver,
Evidence: Poems (Boston: Beacon
Press, 2010).
