January 12:The First Sunday After the Epiphany: The Baptism of Our Lord Jesus Christ
St. Paul’s, Monroe NC
Opening
Today we will be baptizing a child at the 10:30 Eucharist. Jameson Alexander Honeycutt by name. I will present today a very quick overview of the growth of my understanding of baptism. I am addressing all those who will be supporting Jameson in his journey of life. If he were about 20 years older I would address these remarks to him.
I take this approach not because my faith journey is particularly important. But to illustrate that baptism for ask of us is a lifelong journey. Perhaps a pilgrimage.
When I was a teenager I gave very little thought to baptism. My mother and my siblings all went to church every Sunday. I don’t think however that I saw very many baptisms because in those days baptisms were done outside of the Sunday service. Baptism was a private affair and indeed I think regarded primarily as a transaction between God and the infant. It was general practice in the Episcopal church that children were baptized not long after birth or at least when family could be gathered together.
I’m pretty sure that no one set out to instruct me about what baptism was all about so what I knew and thought about it I picked up from general information, and particularly what was stressed at the time of my own confirmation.
Somewhere I absorbed the notion that baptism was something that repaired original sin and thus assured that the infant was eligible for heaven. It was somehow about heaven and hell – but I didn’t have a clue about what I really believed or understood about those concepts.
1st Child
I mostly planned the baptism because of expectations that I placed on myself and that were probably projected onto me by the community around me.
I was by then on my way to seminary. The stakes for doing what was expected of you were increasing for me. There was an increasing need to understand. Probably it’s fair to say that my actually understanding was decreasing – headed for not understanding. As I studied and read, more and more deeply, listened to more and more theologians, I found that I understood baptism less and less but it seemed more and more important. Now, in the twilight of my career, I think understanding of the sacraments is really of only a minor concern. What is most important for me now, is trusting more and more completely on the unfathomable depth of Grace that God extends to us.
I learned at this time that there was an expectation that Easter was the very best time for baptisms. My first born was born just after Easter so we went with the 2nd best – Pentecost.
He was baptized with sprinkles of water from a font – as we will here today. All the rest of my children were baptized with lots of water.
2nd Child
Later when my 2nd child came along, at the age of 2 weeks he needed abdominal surgery. Largely because of that his baptized was delayed until – yep, Pentecost.
My major fear at that time was of Julian dying. It wasn’t a concern with the afterlife. It was the life right in front of me.
Our seminary community had just experienced a traumatic death of a 2 year old. It involved a malfunctioning Ford transmission and our experience made national news. I had long conversations with mentors and peers about the role of baptism under those circumstances and they convinced me that the sacrament was very much an act of the community. Kind of a way for the Christian community to say, "She is one of us!"
Somewhere over the next few years I began to shift my experience and my understanding of what baptism was all about. I was moving from thinking of baptism along with a fear of death – experiencing baptism as a celebration of life. A radical development in my experience and understanding of baptism.
3rd Child
At the baptism of my 3rd child I tried to put each of those understandings of baptism into practice. Particularly challenging for me was trying to get lots of water into a church that was not set up for it and not accustomed to doing things other than the way we had always done them.
I found a very large industrial bakers mixing bowl. I rested it on a stand I found and surrounded it by flowers. Miriam was submerged in the water and all went as planned. I saw the determination of tradition however in the response of the rector – my boss. He said it had looked like we were cooking Miriam in a wok.
The point was
… that a large quantity of water was important. I came to appreciate that more and more as I became more and more convinced that baptism – as the other sacraments – was first and foremost a sacred symbol.
Sacred symbols warrant a lot more explanation. Sacred symbols are those things that effect what they signify. In more natural English: a sacred symbol brings about the very thing that it symbolizes and points toward.
The abundance of water that I came to want for the sacred symbol of baptism points to the abundance of God‘s love for his people. The sacrament causes that very thing to happen. Baptism is not a quiet gentle indicator of a grace we cannot see. It is the instrument by which untold millions before us – as well as an unknown number who will come after – live into an awareness and experience of life-giving grace. Amazing Grace.
At a later baptism I officiated at in Honolulu, we were in a garden area, standing in a large pool of water, having come from the Easter vigil, and the heavens themselves opened up as we stood in the pool of water. There is a photograph of my, the young man being baptized and the acolyte – one of my daughters – standing in the water being soaked by rain.
That is the way God’s grace works.
Orthodox teaching
There is an orthodox teaching that connects this sacred symbol – baptism – with the sacred task we have all been given – to live a life.
The Orthodox explain the meaning of baptism by comparing it to the 3 basic necessities for a newborn child: to be cleaned, to be clothed, and to be fed. Everything else is extra. And they correspond with the 3-fold nature of Orthodox baptisms.
| clean child | baptism |
| feed child | Eucharist |
| Shelter child | anointing, chrism [confirmation] |
We have a sacred symbol that connects baptism with life itself.
I tell you this …
I tell you these stories in order to make this point about baptism . Baptism is about a journey, the journey of living the life of a Christian.
Baptism is about growing into a deeper understanding, day by day, year-by-year as to what it means to be the body of Christ in the world of the living.
I tell you the stories to illustrate that all of you have similar stories of how you have grown more fully into the stature of Jesus Christ as you have lived your life. Jameson will do no less.
I tell you the stories because – if I had a lot more time --I would make it clear that I have fallen short over and over again from the goal that baptism sets before us. But I live by grace. The grace that lifts up the brokenhearted. The grace that mends the wounded. The grace that makes life worth living.
That is a little something of why we baptize Jameson today. We choose to give him the best armor that we know for the living of the life he has before him. He will need all of what Christ can give him. And so today we call him Christian…
Frederich Buechner wrote: A crazy, holy grace I have called it. Crazy because whoever could have predicted it? Who can ever foresee the crazy how and when and where of a grace that wells up out of the lostness and pain of the world and of our own inner worlds?1
Baptism is a guide to becoming an adult and it is the measure of our life long journey. Baptism is a pilgrimage in which we fall many times, but Grace lifts us back up.
Baptism makes one a part of the Body of Christ, irrevocably, whether we acknowledge it or not, whether we ignore it for years at a time, Abba is with us.
Baptism provides the assurance that we are justified in putting our trust into the hands of the only one worthy of it – Abba
Grace
Father, I put myself in your hands;
Father I abandon myself to you,
I entrust myself to you.
Father do with me as it pleases you.
Whatever you do with me, I will thank you for it.
Giving thanks for anything, I am ready for anything,
I accept anything, give thanks for anything.
Prayer of Abandonment of Blessed Charles de Foucauld
Notes
lectionary
- Isaiah 42 – the source of the Spirit at Jesus’ baptism? – you are my chosen
- Acts 10 – Peter summary of the faith
- Matthew’s version: But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.”
During the week
January 18:The Confession of Saint Peter the Apostle
From Buechner ~ originally published in The Sacred Journey and Listening to Your Life ↩︎
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