We, the Baptised Ones

Baptism—it’s the word we use for the rite that sets new members of the church off on their journey in the Christian life. It is one of the church’s jargon words, but jargon words are actually important in helping us to understand who we are and what we are on about. Jargon words tell us about ourselves. They tell our story. Every community of people have their own jargon words, their own “in-words”, their own particular and peculiar ways of communicating big ideas with one another.

Think about your family conversations. When you were reminiscing with everyone at family gatherings over the Christmas/New Year period weren’t there occasions when someone just had to say a few words and everyone knew what you meant (and knew far more than what the words literally meant)?

In my extended family, we have a particular set of code words for family gatherings. That set of words is “the Grand-pa speech”. When someone says those words, we know that they are conveying the sentiment that my mother’s father always conveyed in a speech when we gathered as an extended family. The sentiment went something like this: “Isn’t it great for us as family all to be here and isn’t great to have each other as family!” Oh, the Grand-pa speech definitely went much longer than that, but these days, and now that Grand-pa isn’t around we usually get away with just saying “the Grand-pa speech”. Oh, it’s not that it’s not important to let other people in on the meaning of those words sometimes—children as they grow up; friends who might be visiting with us; new partners who might come into the family—but the explanation is not quite the same as just saying “the Grand-pa speech”. Those few brief words hold a lifetimes of family experiences.

Baptism is like that for the church, the people of the God, the communion of the Spirit, the body of Christ. Baptism tells us something about ourselves that we could try to explain in lots of words but still we would never quite explain enough. You have to be a part of the action to experience it and to understand it; and we have to keep reminding ourselves of that action and what that really means for us as God’s people.

In today’s readings, we have two references to Baptism. In the reading from Acts, the storyteller is distinguishing between the baptism of John the Baptist and the baptism into Jesus Christ. In the Gospel reading, we have the story of Jesus’ baptism by John in the Jordan.

The word ‘baptism’ comes from the Greek word baptizo which means ‘to dip’ into water or liquid. A related word form, bapto, is used for dipping something into dye, and for drawing water. Baptizo may also mean ‘to cause to perish by drowning’. The imagery is vivid. It is about being immersed, about changing colour, about life and death. But, for the Christian church, Baptism is not about human life and death. It’s about Christian life! It’s about being born into the life of the body of Christ, the church.

Going under water and coming up signifies that a newly baptised person is incorporated into the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The person may be immersed in water or have water poured over them. The meaning is still the same. From this time forward, the person is a member of the one, holy, catholic (universal) and apostolic church, the body of Christ, the communion of the Holy Spirit, people of God.

The Uniting Church’s baptismal service puts it this way:

Baptism is Christ’s gift.
It is the sign by which the Spirit of God
joins people to Jesus Christ
and incorporates them into his body, the Church.

In his own baptism in the Jordan by John,
Jesus identified himself with humanity
in its brokenness and sin;
that baptism was completed in his death and resurrection.

By God’s grace,
baptism plunges us into the faith of Jesus Christ,
so that whatever is his may be called ours.

By water and the Spirit we are claimed as God’s own
and set free from the power of sin and death.

Thus, claimed by God
we are given the gift of the Holy Spirit
that we may live as witnesses to Jesus Christ,
share his ministry in the world and grow to maturity,
awaiting with hope the day of our Lord Jesus.
(‘The Meaning of Baptism’ from ‘The Sacrament of Baptism and the Reaffirmation of Baptism called Confirmation’ in Uniting in Worship 2, © 2005 The Uniting Church in Australia, p. 74) 

But even before Jesus and the Christian church, baptism (immersion in water) was used as a religious sign to indicate a major spiritual life change, a religious conversion, a dying to a former way of life and understanding and a rising to a new beginning. That’s why, in the Gospel reading for today we encounter the story of Jesus being baptised by John in the Jordan.
The story of Jesus’ baptism in the Gospel of Mark signifies a very important beginning—not just for Jesus, but for the people who follow him, as his body, the church. Jesus’ baptism signifies the beginning of Jesus’ intentional ministry for the sake of the world.

It is the ministry of Christ that we are incorporated into in our baptisms: the very life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Baptism enfolds us into what God in Jesus, has accomplished and continually accomplishes for us. God in Jesus came into our world to overcome the power of sin and death in our lives and that that overcoming was accomplished in Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. In a special way, the sign of baptism makes present the reality of God’s love and God’s gracious gift to us.

In the act of his baptism, Jesus is identified as the one into whom we are baptised, God’s chosen one. In our baptisms, God graciously calls us not just to new life, but also to new work in Jesus.

A request for baptism is a big thing for us. Baptism is a covenant made between God and the person being baptised. Baptism isn’t about our relationship with the human community; it’s about our relationship with God and God’s community. For this reason, we call Baptism a “sacrament”. It is one of two sacraments that we believe are God’s gifts to the church; the other is Eucharist or Holy Communion. Sacraments are about how the church, the people of God, is formed and shaped by God.

Being baptised is about being called to live an intentional Christian life, as part of a Christian community. Giving your allegiance to the Christian faith is about seeking to order your life according to Christian practice. That life and practice is one of worship, witness and service. Christians are called to meet regularly together to worship God. They are called to witness to their faith through their worship and in their daily lives. They are also called to serve people in the name and the way of Christ. Baptism is the beginning of our participation in the ministry of Christ… as Jesus’ baptism signified the beginning of his intentional ministry on our behalf. Australian Anglican priest, Janet Gaden, talks about baptism as the breaking of the waters, signifying that the “labour of giving birth has begun in earnest” (“The Waters of Birth”, Initiation in Australian Churches ed. By William Tabbernee, Victorian Council of Church, p. xiii).

Christian Educator, Debra Dean Murphy puts it this way:

Baptism… confers an identity at odds with the ways we are named and claimed by family, nation and ideology. Baptism is the constitution of a new people whose prior loyalties and allegiances are exposed, named, and radically reconfigured. (Teaching That Transforms: Worship as the Heart of Christian Education, Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2004)

Through Baptism, God claims us as God’s own for God’s mission in the world. Baptism is about beginnings—new beginnings in God as the people of God engaged in God’s work. This is who we are. This is what we’re on about. And the act of Baptism tells us about the depth of what our new relationship with God means far better than any long explanation might do. But in order to understand, you have to be involved, you have to experience it, you have to live out your Baptism as God’s people, the communion of the Holy Spirit, the body of Christ.