2024.1.14 | Why Baptize?
“Why Baptize?”
Rev. Brenda Loreman
Designated Term Associate Minister
Eden United Church of Christ, Hayward, California
Baptism of Christ
Sunday, January 14, 202
Genesis 1:1-5 and Mark 1:4-11
The first Sunday after Epiphany has traditionally been reserved for celebrating the Baptism of Jesus. Originally, the baptism of Christ would be celebrated along with the arrival of the magi on Epiphany. At some point, the Catholic Church created a new feast day to focus solely on the baptism, and the Anglican and Lutheran denominations generally followed along. While we are not super “high church,” here at Eden, observing a traditional feast day gives us an opportunity to ponder the meaning of our faith practices, along with other Christians all over the world. Whether we were baptized as infants or as youth or as adults, whether we were baptized with a little water or a lot, or whether we have not yet been baptized at all, considering the history and practice of baptism helps us answer our own questions about what baptism is and why it matters.
That one of the primary rituals of our faith tradition involves water is not a surprise. As an element vital to the creation and sustaining of all life on earth, water was often seen by ancient peoples as divine, or having divine properties, and most ancient cultures explained the creation of life on earth as beginning in the water. And so water was vital in many early religious rituals.
Jesus’s first-century Jewish community was steeped in stories about water. In Genesis, among God’s first acts of creation were to separate the heavens from the sea and raise land from the waters. In another story from Genesis, the powerful flood waters wash away the sins of humanity, and through Noah, humanity has a chance to renew itself. In Exodus, the Israelites escape slavery by passing through the waters of the Red Sea, and, in a story from 2 Kings, the general Naaman, with the help of the prophet Elisha, is freed from a debilitating skin disease through the cleansing waters of the Jordan river.
These stories of the Hebrew Bible show the importance of water ritual to this ancient culture. And before there was Christian baptism, there was Jewish tevilah, or total immersion in water as act of purification. In Jewish communities throughout the world, the mikvah, or ritual bathhouse, was considered an essential structure—and still is in Orthodox communities. The tevilah was required in many different ritual circumstances—before marriage, or after returning from war, for example—and as part of the ritual for conversion to the Jewish faith.
So it really is no surprise that the prophet John the Baptist stood at the river Jordan—a sacred river to the Jewish community—and ritually immersed or poured water over those who wished to repent and receive new life. And it’s no surprise that this ritual became a core practice of those who followed Jesus. Of the two primary sacred rituals mentioned in the new testament—baptism and communion—baptism is the only one that appears in all four gospels, and is mentioned more times throughout the other New Testament texts than the ritual of the Eucharist. It’s apparent that it was very early on the way both Gentiles and Jews were initiated into the path as followers of Jesus.
In these early days, baptism was a ritual practiced primarily by adult converts to the new faith. Since few children were born into Christian households at first, everyone had to be converted. And so the earliest practice was what we would now call believer’s baptism: the baptism of someone who was old enough to make their own decision to become a Christian and participate in the ritual.
It was also not a ritual that was done on the spur of the moment. From early church documents and histories, it is apparent that baptism was taken very seriously, and those preparing for baptism—called catechumens—spent weeks, or even years, in study, prayer, and fasting, until they were ready to be baptized. The Apostles’ Creed, familiar perhaps to many of you if you had a traditional Christian upbringing, very likely began as an early oral teaching for catechumens. It would be practiced in question and answer form until the convert could recite it by heart.
Up until the fourth century, when Christianity was no longer a persecuted religion, it is likely that each Christian community had its own version of preparation and study, as well as baptism ritual and liturgy. Some baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Some used the trinitarian formula of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Some immersed the catechumen, while others poured water over the head.
And it’s likely that different communities had different theologies around the meaning of the ritual. The New Testament itself offers differing understandings of what baptism means. Generally speaking, there are five understandings of the ritual that are scattered throughout the New Testament, and these five have been emphasized by different communities in different times and for different reasons:
The cleansing, washing, or forgiveness of sin. Peter says in Acts, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven.” (2:38)
A union with Christ in his death and resurrection. Paul says in Romans, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.” (6:3-4)
Incorporation into the church. Paul says in 1 Corinthians, “We were all baptized into one body.” (12:13)
Reception of the Holy Spirit. Mark’s gospel relates that Jesus “saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him.” (1:10)
New birth or regeneration. The Pauline letter to Titus claims, “He saved us […] through the water of rebirth and the renewal by the Holy Spirit.” (3:5)
Once Christianity came out of the shadows and was sanctioned by the Roman Empire, the church began to develop a common theology and practice of baptism. The 40-day period of fasting during Lent became the preferred time for preparation for baptism. The liturgy settled on a trinitarian formula of baptizing in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and a profession of faith by the baptismal candidate.
Scholars are unsure when exactly the shift to infant baptism began. There are some very early references to baptizing infants in the third century (and some early controversy about it), but it probably wasn’t a regular practice until a major shift in the meaning of baptism occurred in the fifth century, with the theology developed by St. Augustine of Hippo. Augustine’s literal reading of the creation story in Genesis led him to develop the theory of original sin—that because of the sin of Adam, we are all born stained with sin and needed the sacrament of baptism to be washed clean and avoid the punishment of eternal damnation. It wasn’t so much that Augustine’s original sin theology started the trend of infant baptism, but it gave the practice theological justification that made it more popular until infant baptism became the norm in the church.
That practice of infant baptism didn’t shift for another thousand years, until the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century. As they began to strip away the non-biblical practices of the Roman Catholic Church, many Protestant reformers began to look to the early church for its practices of the sacraments, and began to reclaim believers' baptism as the “proper” way to do baptism. In 1608 the English priest John Smythe started what became the (capital-B) Baptist movement, and by the mid-18th century, it had spread to North America and other parts of the world. The popularity of believers’ baptism was likely enhanced by the Enlightenment, with its disdain of all things supernatural. It seemed rational for faith to come before baptism, rather than the other way around.
Once the Protestant Reformation broke apart the established baptism customs of the church, the practice and meaning of baptism was again as varied—or even more varied as it had been in the early church. Some churches baptized infants, while some practiced baptizing believers old enough to choose baptism for themselves. Some sprinkled water, some poured water, some immersed in water. Some churches believed that a proper baptism was outside in a river, as Jesus had been baptized in the Jordan. Some used a font, while some built sunken baptistries into their church chancels. To oversimplify, we might say that a church’s practice of baptism rested somewhere on the axis of how old and how much water. Or, if you like irreverent church memes as much as I do, whether you like your ice cream cone sprinkled or dipped.
My guess is that, in this very room, there are people reflecting the whole range of baptism practices. There are people who were baptized as infants, and those who were baptized as youth or as adults. Some were sprinkled, some were dipped, some were somewhere in between, and some have not yet been baptized.
My own baptism falls somewhere in the middle of all this. I grew up in a UCC Church that practiced infant baptism, but I wasn't baptized until I was 8 years old. I was never quite sure why my mom, who was the churchgoer, never had me baptized until then. I had always assumed she just hadn't gotten around to it. and I have always regretted not asking her that question before she died; now I'll never know. Over the years I have pondered the meaning of baptism—my own and the meaning of baptism in general—as an inquiring adult on a spiritual journey, a seminarian studying the theology of the church, and as a pastor who has baptized people of all ages. and while I appreciate and affirm many of the traditional meanings of baptism in the church, I've come to understand an additional layer of meaning for this sacrament.
I believe that what is affirmed through the sacrament of baptism is our relationships—with God, with the world, and with our fellow spiritual seekers. The theologian John Shelby Spong, has said that, “Christianity [...] was always a call to practice the task of living, loving, and being.” For me, that’s what baptism is—answering the call into deeper love with God, self, and neighbor.
It’s about starting a journey of the spirit, in companionship with other travelers who are also on the road, following the path of faith that Jesus himself walked. Amen.