Baptism: NOT into Salvation from Hell, but into The Way of the Cross
The Poisonwood Bible - - I'm reading Barbara Kingsolver’s book about a Southern Baptist missionary family in Kilanga, a remote village in what was The Belgian Congo, in the late 1950s and early 1960s: Nathan, the angry, fiery, redheaded preacher, domineering husband, intimidating father - -
Nathan - - The Reverend Nathan Price, unspeakably arrogant, a mean, cruel bully, self-certain, absolutely determined missionary of his own stern, law-bound God, closed-minded, blind to other people's different civilization and culture, and UNWILLING, SO UNABLE to see - - “sees", "knows” for absolute certain his calling to “save” the ignorant black “savages” from their darkness and sins by baptizing them in the nearby river - - which they are having no part of because of the crocodiles; but also because he is overbearing, self-certain, offensive, oblivious, mindless of their humanity.
Someone said no one is scarier than a Saved, Born-Again Christian rising from his knees and going forth to execute the will of God! And Reverend Nathan Price is such a One!
There was a Time in the early church - - and into the darkness of Christianity’s obsession with sin, specifically the sins of others who are different, and being baptized and saved into heaven after death, and the church’s making the most of obsessions to exert power over people by striking fear of hellfire, and the church asserting its exclusive dominion to absolve sins and pronounce people saved or damned - - a Time when it was taught and fervently believed, that once you were baptized (baptism allowed only once), that once baptized you must never sin again (with the Church defining and grading sins by degree and severity, venial and mortal); when baptism was dogmatically essential to salvation, and backsliders who fell into sin after baptism were in grave danger of losing their salvation and slipping into hell.
Religions are different, churches are different, Christian denominations are different - -
- - unlike Christian denominations where everyone may be expected to agree socially and biblically and morally and theologically and politically, in the Episcopal Church, no two people are likely to believe the same things or have the same combination of social, moral, political, theological and scriptural views.
Just so, when we stand and repeat the Nicene Creed on Sunday mornings, you and I and each person here will be speaking from a different place in life and faith, meaning different things, with different levels of confidence in the early church bishops - - flat-earthers who, in the Fourth Century Roman Empire, were summoned by Caesar to church councils to discuss, disagree, receive guidance from Caesar and vote, and cobble together the Nicene Creed as a uniting symbol of the Christian faith: "We believe ...".
It is not necessary to salvation that we agree either with them, or today with each other. Differences are healthy, differences promote thought, discussion and intelligent, evolving progress: the Church no longer condemns Galileo for observing that, contrary to Church belief, the earth IS NOT the center of the universe, that the sun and stars DO NOT revolve round the earth, as the church ignorantly and stubbornly, if piously, believed and taught as doctrine, absolute Christian dogma, true to its literal understanding of the Bible and its early Israelite creation myths. Disagreement punishable by death.
No amount of belief makes anything true, and, especially in the Church there’s room for human differences on every subject.
What we say we believe as an institution, our Christian doctrines and creeds, are not matters of known certainty, but human beliefs, devices for uniting people; spoken from faith, experience and innocence, although God whom we see in Jesus is nevertheless incomprehensible, God perhaps chuckling (or weeping) at our divine formulas defining Pantokrator, the Creator God.
What IS to the point and spot on this morning as we hear about Jesus' baptism, is the rector’s sermon from this pulpit last Sunday morning, his testimony about meeting Jesus in a New York soup kitchen: Jesus a recovering crack addict and prostitute, mother of multiple children, a woman who, when Father Steve asked her how and why she came to Christ, she said it was not hearing what people say about Jesus, it was searching and seeking and seeing people who, in Jesus’ Name, DO what Jesus did, which is LOVE.
LOVE is living as Jesus lived and cared. Seeing them, she knew that Jesus is real, and alive. And in Fr Steve’s eyes, she was Jesus, she herself had become Christ; which is our goal in the Christian journey of baptism into The Way of the Cross.
We are disciples, apprentices. In the trades, an apprentice is someone who is journeying toward becoming what the master is. As a Christian disciple, imagine yourself as someone who is learning a vocation, a trade, in our case, the Christian trade. At our baptism into The Way of the Cross we become apprentices who promise to learn and practice becoming what the master is, Jesus himself. As you live and love, and people see Christ in you, you slowly become a journeyman Christian. Over your Time of life in The Way of the Cross, as you love and emulate Jesus, you hopefully may become what Jesus is, yourself a master Christian, merging with Christ, yourself a Christ, as Fr Steve described the Jesus he met.
Unlike Reverend Nathan the missionary in Kingsolver’s novel, we do not baptize new Christians into salvation from hell. We baptize new Christians into The Way of the Cross, apprentices who promise, with God's help, to live and love as Jesus lived and loved.
And whenever the gospel presents the opportunity, as the story of Jesus’ own baptism does this morning, we stand and renew those promises together.
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sermon, homiletic endeavor by the Rev Tom Weller on the First Sunday after the Epiphany, Jan 9, 2022, the Baptism of Jesus, in Holy Nativity Episcopal Church, Panama City, Florida. Text:
The Gospel Luke 3:15-17, 21-22 (NRSV)
15 As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Christ 16 John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 17 His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
21 Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, 22 and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”[a]
[a] Luke 3:22 Other ancient authorities read “You are my Son, today I have begotten you”.