I remember my baptism. I remember hiking up to Delafield Pond with a few of my classmates at West Point. We were wearing our gym uniforms, because we always had to be in uniform. I remember wading out into Delafield Pond with the head chaplain at West Point, who was a Southern Baptist. I remember being immersed three times, all the way in the water. I was *really* baptized.
But what I remember the most about that day and that event was my disappointment. I had taken to my new religion with all of the zeal that an enthusiastic and idealistic teenager would. I went to Bible Study, I went to Wednesday night Fellowship Group—I was so looking forward to my baptism. What I was looking forward to was my baptism making me a new person, because I knew that my baptism would wash me clean, and I knew that in Christ I would be a new creation; the old would get washed away, and the new would come. And there were parts of me that I really wanted washed away. My habits or addictions, or things about me that I just didn’t like very much—and when I imagined what a Christian should look like, I had a lot of things in my life that were not matching up to that image. So I was counting on my baptism to wash all that stuff away so that I could be the Brian that I knew God wanted me to be.
I didn’t know what to expect at my baptism, but coming up out of the water I sort of did an inventory; what’s different? And something was different. I think there was a placebo effect, because for about two weeks after my baptism, I was the Brian that I knew God wanted me to be. I was so excited that this baptism had transformed me into “superchristian Brian.” But it wore off; and my old habits and my old ways of being started to come back. I was so disappointed that I was still stuck with me.
That launched me into a journey to find out what exactly baptism is about. I had to know what had happened during this ritual that I went through. So when I graduated from West Point, I started going to an Episcopal church faithfully every Sunday, I attended the adult classes, I read the Bible, and I still couldn’t figure it out. I assumed that everyone else in church, because they grew up in the church and they had gone to Sunday School, that they already knew what baptism was about, and I was the only one who didn’t know. And because my assumption, I was always too embarrassed to raise my hand and ask the question. I figured that everyone else knows, and I’ll get it eventually.
Well, I never got it. I was too embarrassed to ask my priest. I figured I had to go to the one place that would teach me what baptism was about, so I enrolled in seminary. While I was in seminary, they offered a class- “Baptism and Eucharist.” Thank you, Jesus, just what I was looking for. I signed up for this class, and I figured that I would just sit in the back row and listen, and eventually I would get it, because I definitely wasn’t going to just raise my hand and ask. I went to class, I listened to the questions that the other students were asking, and it dawned on me that nobody knew! That they had the same questions I had!
I took the class, I read the assigned readings, I listened to the lectures, but I still didn’t get it. I graduated from seminary and I still didn’t understand what happened in baptism. Then I became a priest, and I started baptizing, and preparing people for baptism, and having conversations with the candidates and parents and godparents. I started experiencing the ritual at a deeper level, and eventually I began to get it.
What I realized was that baptism doesn’t mean just one thing. This ancient and sacred ritual means lots of things; it has layers and layers of meaning. Every year or so, I would be performing a baptism, and a new meaning would explode in my head, and I’d go, “OH! That’s what it means!” It was like an onion, peeling back layer after layer, and each time I was surprised by a new depth of meaning.
In case some of you were wondering what baptism is all about, I want to save you the trouble of going to seminary. I want to spend a few minutes talking about some of the meanings of baptism. I’ve got too many to fit into one sermon, but I want to talk about a few of them. I want to start by explaining how I believe sacraments function, and what sacraments are. And I want to start on that topic by mentioning the fact that we are dense.
We are dense both literally and figuratively. Literally we’re dense, and not many of us can see God readily. So it helps us to have dense things, physical tangible things, that speak to us about God. An obvious one that most people can relate to is a sunset, or, if I’m skiing, and I actually stop at the top of the mountain to look around, the view around me can speak to me of God. That’s a very diffuse sort of visual symbol of God. To help us, we have other, more concentrated physical symbols. A cross is a concentrated physical symbol. The cross literally is just wood and metal; but it speaks to us of something much greater and deeper, and if you meditate on a cross, you can get some deeper meaning than just wood and metal.
A sacrament is kind of like that—it is a physical symbol that speaks to something deeper, but it’s different from a cross, and from other physical symbols, in three ways. One is, sacraments are participatory. You don’t just look at them, but you participate in them. You stand, you sit, you kneel, you sing, you eat, you drink, you have water poured on you. Second, sacraments are also communal. There is no sacrament that is performed alone. We believe that Christ is experienced most purely in community.
The third thing about sacraments is that they are efficacious. There’s a good seminary word- efficacious. Sacraments are efficacious, which means that they effect a change in you. Now, here’s the tricky part. I had thought that they would be efficacious like magic. I thought that my baptism was going to magically transform me into someone new. But they don’t work like magic. How sacraments are efficacious is, they effect a change in you if you faithfully participate in them over time. If you faithfully take communion over time, your soul will be shaped. If a community faithfully participates in baptisms over time, the community’s soul is shaped.
My favorite analogy for a sacrament is a kiss. A kiss is a physical symbol of love; it’s participatory, it’s communal, in that you don’t do it alone, and it’s efficacious. It doesn’t just symbolize love; if you kiss faithfully over time, the act of kissing makes love happen. It can also be meaningless. It can also be cruel. It has to do with the heart you bring to it; if you faithfully participate in this ritual, over time it will change you. That’s how baptism functions.
How will baptism change you? What will it mean to you? I’d like to highlight a handful of ways that baptism has changed me and taught me. In the Jewish Scriptures, the most important story is God’s deliverance of the Jews from slavery in Egypt. They have passed through the waters of the Red Sea, and are given the land of freedom and promise on the other side. The word for bondage in Hebrew literally means “narrow places.” What that story is saying is that God is in the business of delivering us from our narrow places, from the places that keep us from living freely, and giving us this new land of freedom and promise.
The Jews celebrate this every year in the Feast of Passover, and they do it in the first person: “*We* were slaves in Egypt; God delivered *us* through the waters of the Red Sea and brought *us* to the land of freedom and promise.” In baptism, we bind ourselves to that story. We say, that story is our story, and that God is our God; and God is always in the business of delivering us from what keeps us hemmed in.
For Christians, the most important story is the story of Jesus being crucified, being buried, and then rising again in the Resurrection. This is a second meaning of baptism. Each of my children were baptized at the age of four months, and this is the meaning of baptism that freaked me out. This meaning is, in baptism, we are buried with Christ in this watery tomb, and we are raised up again in the Resurrection. What that means is that for some of us, the obstacle in the spiritual life, the thing that keeps us hemmed in, is fear of dying.
If that’s your problem, if you’re afraid of dying, baptism is trying to say to you, get over it. You need not fear death. Your resurrected life has already begun. You are already living in the Resurrection; the Kingdom of Heaven is already at hand, so just wake up and live it! And if you’re afraid of dying, get over it!
Here is a third meaning of baptism. We believe that God’s Spirit is in everybody. One of the symbols of God’s Spirit is water. To help you understand that God’s Spirit is in you, we soak you in water. We hold you up, all dripping wet. I think that we’re so dense that it really helps to have this high drama, so if we could immerse everyone, I would, but, we’re Episcopalians, and it’s just, well, too uncouth for us to get *all* wet. But in my mind, when I perform a baptism, we’re all getting soaked. In my mind, that’s what’s happening; we’re getting soaked in God’s Spirit.
Another meaning of baptism. For some people, what keeps them from living, keeps them in bondage, is the sense of not being good enough, or clean enough, or pure enough, to be with God. When I became a parent, when I had children, it shifted and deepened my image of God. I knew what it was like to love someone so much that there was nothing that they could do to move beyond my love. There is nothing that my children can do that would put them beyond my love. There’s a lot that they do to make me really angry; but there is nothing they do that takes away my desire to be with them.
I believe that God must love us at least that much. I have this image of God where God just wants to dance with us, and we’re saying, “No, no, if you knew me, God, you wouldn’t want to dance with me.” And God says, “Know you? I made you! Let’s dance!” “No, no, God, if you knew me, you wouldn’t want to dance with me.” And God says, “Oi.”
Now, if that’s your problem, if what is keeping you from freely living in the Kingdom of Heaven is your sense of not being good enough or clean enough or pure enough, have I got a deal for you. I have this water here, that will wash you clean, and whatever it is that you think is wrong with you, it washes that away. And this water is so high-juju, that it doesn’t just work for now, it works for ever; it’s Teflon water. So that no matter what you do for the rest of your life, it’s not going to stick to you, and it’s not going to put you outside of God’s love. So if that’s your problem, get over it!
It is helpful to realize that baptism isn’t just about the person being baptized. We all participate in baptism, and what happens is that we remind ourselves that we were baptised like that, we were cleansed by that water. It is like going to a wedding when you’re already married- you can’t help but relive that moment for yourself. In baptism, we relive that moment again and say, “Yes! We were cleansed by that; I am still like that.”
Another meaning of baptism is being born again. Both concepts mean starting over, starting anew, starting afresh; but also mean being given a new family. When you are baptized, God is your parent, Jesus is your sibling, and everyone in the church is a brother or sister. This is how I explain baptism to a seven-year-old or a ten-year-old. I remember once that I was at the Cathedral in Boise, Idaho. It was a Saturday, and I was sitting with this ten-year-old boy who was going to be baptized the next morning. We were sitting on the chancel steps, and I was explaining all this to him. I told him that tomorrow, after his baptism, he would be given this new family, with God as his parent, Jesus as his brother, and everyone in church would be a member of his family, and would know that it was their job to love him. I had him look out over all the empty pews in the Cathedral, and I said, tomorrow this church is going to be filled with all these people, who are going to know that it’s their job to love you. He got the biggest smile on his face. He got it. It’s being born into this new family.
Baptism is also being given responsibility, because as a member of a family, we have a responsibility to love one another. In a sense, baptism is ordination to ministry. To be a Christian is to be in the business of healing the world and bringing Christ’s love to the world. In our tradition, I’m not called a minister, I’m called a priest, which is a specific kind of ministry. We are all ministers in the Church, bringing Christ’s love to the world. We’re all members of this family of love.
One more meaning of baptism—and this is one of my favorites. It comes from today’s Gospel reading. In the story of Jesus’ baptism, when he came up out of the water, a voice spoke from heaven and said, “You are my child. I love you. And with you I am well pleased.” It is my belief that voice speaks at every baptism. When I was baptized in Delafield Pond, or, an hour from now when an infant and an adult are baptized here at Trinity Cathedral, God’s voice speaks—“You are my child. I love you. And with you I am well pleased.” I believe that is our true identity- that is who I truly am, underneath all of the other names that get piled on top of me; who I really I am is one who is beloved by God, and with whom God is well pleased. And when I explain to godparents what their role is, the simplest way I know to say it is, “Your job is to never let your godchild forget that. They are God’s beloved child, and with them God is well pleased.”
Those are some of the meanings of baptism, some of the ways that baptism is trying to shape us individually, and to shape us as a community. When I was baptized, I was expecting my baptism to make me into a new person. That’s not what happened. What happened was that in my baptism I entered into a relationship with a love that would not let me go, so that I can come to realize that who I was, Brian, the old Brian, was beloved. Was loved, was whole. And was part of this community of love that would not let me go. As I slowly began to realize that, I began to slowly become the person I wanted to be. But it wasn’t a magical soul transplant; it was rather learning to love who I was, and learning to realize that I was part of this community that would not let me go.
So I invite you to enter more deeply into your baptism, and to know that God is in the business of freeing you from feeling too small, or not worthy, or too dead; freeing you so that you can live in love. Amen.