Kalamazoo Mennonite Fellowship
January 10, 2010 (01/01/10)
Will Fitzgerald
In the Christian liturgical calendar that we use, today marks the celebration of Jesus’s baptism by John and by the Holy Spirit. In preparing for today’s teaching, I came across a number of prayers for use by congregations, and one of the phrases that struck me was a prayer that God might “raise us to live our baptismal vows.” I know this is a common enough thing to do when one is baptised in other communions, I don’t remember making any vows when I was baptised. Did any of you?
We looked at John’s ministry a little while ago, and one of the things that the scriptures say is that John was preaching “a baptism of repentence for the forgiveness of sin.” And this is a point on which the early Anabaptists and Mennonites agreed and practiced about baptism. The reason they were called “anabaptists,” or “re-baptizers,” was that they believed the Scriptures taught that baptism was something that required a decision on the part of the person being baptized. It wasn’t a thing that your parents could do for you, and it certainly wasn’t something that the State could do to you. It’s your own decision, not your parents or the State’s.
So, in this very important sense, I want to call us to self-examiniation: are there any actions, thoughts, or deeds from which we need to turn aside, and thus continue the work of God within us that is symbolized by baptism?
It is interesting and very important to note that Jesus doesn’t come to John in repentence. Jesus makes no vow to turn away from sin. Theologically, we know why: Jesus is the one who knew no sin, and thus had nothing to repent of. Jesus’s baptism by John reflects the beginning of Jesus’s public work and the passing of the torch from John to Jesus. Indeed, we see in Luke’s account that Herod throws John into jail and eventually kills him.
But this is not to say there were not vows made at Jesus’s baptism. Instead of Jesus making vows to repent and live towards God his father, God takes action towards Jesus. First, he sends the fulness of the Holy Spirit on Jesus in the form of a dove. Second, God declares that Jesus is very pleasing to God, well-beloved, and that Jesus was God’s very Son.
The gift of the Holy Spirit by God and God’s favor are themes that is picked up in lectionary readings. In Isaiah, God declares to Israel that Israel is precious in God’s sight. In the psalm, the voice of God thunders and thus declares God’s power. In Acts, God sends the Holy Spirit on new believers. And, of course, in our gospel, we see God giving the Spirit to Jesus and declaring Jesus to be his son.
And this suggest to me that we ought to pay attention to what was vowed and what was said at our own baptism. What do you remember others saying about you—your pastor, or congregation, or even parents?
It is very likely that when we were baptized, we were baptized with these words or something like them: “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” This baptism was the outward sign of something that had happened inwardly to us. God was beginning to work in us, to change us. We are being “christened;” we are being made into God’s image. When we are baptized in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, this is a sign that God wants to be in our company; that God is continually inviting us into the great company of believers united with God, but more amazingly, God is welcoming us into God’s own fellowship, not an an equal, of course, but as a delightful recipient of God’s love and power. We are in the company of God.
Julian of Norwich was a Christian nun who lived in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. She is often called a Christian mystic, and it does seem that God was revealed to Julian in a special way. I’m slowly reading through her book, called “The Shewings” this year, and it’s likely that you’ll hear more about her from me. This week, I read the very beautiful thing that she wrote about one particular revelation from God. In her mind’s eye, she held in her hand a very small thing, the size of a hazelnut. She then realized that the hazelnut was everything that had ever been made; so fragile and small compared to the greatness of God. But then she understood something else:
In this Little Thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it, the second is that God loveth it, the third, that God keepeth it.
She understood that God took great pleasure in loving small, helpless things such as ourselves, in some sense especially when we come to God “simply and plainly.” And this is surely what we do when we come to God in baptism. This is God’s baptismal vow to us: God made us, God loves us, and God keeps us.
And with great confidence I can say to each of you, God made you, God loves you, God keeps you.