[Sermon delivered at the Episcopal Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Phoenix, Arizona, Quadragesima Sunday (the First Sunday in Lent)]
✠ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, the Trinity, one in Essence and Undivided. Amen.
Why do we baptize?
Really. Why do we get people wet as a condition of joining the Church? Some groups do not require baptism for full membership, some do not baptize at all, but most Christian congregations and organizations insist upon it. Some groups insist that the person be age of reason, or age of legal consent, before being baptized, yet insist that there is no supernatural or metaphysical reason for baptism other than obedience to the Scriptures. An ancient practice took Baptism so seriously that people held off until their[1] death-bed, believing, as is hinted by the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, that if one so much as sneezed crosswise to the prevailing wind after Baptism they would be considered apostate and damned to the Hell of everlasting fire where the worm dies not (side note, the Church does not teach this).[2] Some groups baptize someone each time they feel like they need to get right (again) with God, reveling in the symbolism, but again not attaching so great a metaphysical importance to the right, treating it as more of an expression of one’s inner state. Many churches (one may argue the majority) hold it to be essential before partaking of any other sacrament of the Church.
Part of our difficulty with understanding Baptism lies within our upbringing and conditioning. Here in the West, and among those influenced by Western thought, people have been influenced by the Enlightenment and tend to forget, ignore, or outright disbelieve that there is anything outside the physical plane where things can be studied, observed, and experienced with the five senses and measured with the four dimensions of length, breadth, height, and time. Many who do believe in God hold to a pantheistic view that God suffuses everything as a material or ergative ingredient, as matter or energy, or they believe that God is a somewhat finite being dwelling in outer space somewhere with truly fantastical abilities that still can be explained by a physics too advanced for our current methods. In this case Holy Tradition tells us that we are way off the mark, blinded by our Modernist prejudices and limitations. The irony in this mindset is that we try, and of course fail, to measure and observe outside of a closed system of which we are part. If we hold that everything is limited to within our physical system to the exclusion of a metaphysical reality that extends infinitely beyond this system, then ascribing any importance to Baptism, or any other Sacrament for that matter, becomes nigh impossible.
So let us start with the assumption, that there is a reality beyond the cosmos, this physical universe of space, time, matter, and energy, and that this metaphysical reality can and does exert influence on the other. Suddenly, an eternal God creating the cosmos, acting within it, being everywhere in it, but, as hinted at in the First Book of the Kings,[3] not actually being in it or conforming to its rules and limits, makes sense. Created beings existing both within and without the cosmos become possible. Beings totally limited in their existence to the cosmos are possible. Since the things which are outside the cosmos are beyond the limits of observable cosmic reality without being any less real, we suddenly realize that the prejudices of the Enlightenment and the scientific method are just that, prejudices, and so can break our minds free of what limits our understanding of not only Baptism, but the other Sacraments as well.
So, we turn (finally) to our readings today, which focus on the Holy Mystery of Baptism. Our Lord Himself, the Sinless One, submitted to baptism in the Jordan River, a point which has puzzled many over the ages; our account from St. Mark’s Gospel[4] is very terse, and does not offer a lot to help this question. We need to turn to other Gospels to flesh out the account. From St. Matthew’s Gospel we read,
“John would have prevented him [viz., Jesus], saying, ‘I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?’ But Jesus answered him, ‘Let it be so now; for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.’”[5]
Likewise, we find this in St. John’s Gospel:
“And John bore witness, ‘I saw the Spirit descend as a dove from heaven and it remained on him. I myself did not know him; but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, “He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God.”[6]
Obviously, something is going on here more than just another Jew professing repentance. John the Baptist recognizes in Jesus someone for whom repentance is meaningless, for He had not turned away to begin with. Also, John acknowledges that he received word that this man would do more than just preach repentance but bestow the Holy Spirit, and no one can send God anywhere on command but God Himself. Why would this man seek a ritual cleansing from sins He does not bear?
Within the Holy Tradition we see two trends of explanation. First, there is the concept of Jesus as being the fulfillment of the Law, as espoused by St. John Chrysostom and St. Jerome and even to the Epistles of St. Paul and the Gospels themselves. Jesus faithfully fulfilled all the precepts in His lifetime, from His circumcision and presentation, up to an including the ritual bath cleansing one of impurity. All of these, including John’s baptism, find a foundation within the Law as interpreted at that time, and Jesus perfectly fulfilled its dictates, something that no one else had been able to do.[7] Second, Jesus in fulfilling the Law was engaged in the sanctification and purification of Human Nature, which He, as the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, had equally with the Divine Nature.[8] Human Nature was corrupt and fallen from grace, and the entire Trinity took a Jewish purification ritual and changed it, tying it to Jesus’ redeemed and recapitulated Human Nature.
Because the Trinity tied this act Jesus’ Humanity, St. Peter[9] tells us that Baptism is also tied Our Lord’s Death and Resurrection. According to St. Peter, the Sacrament prefigures Our Lord’s Death and Resurrection, and it has become the physical manifestation of deliverance from sins by His suffering. What was a symbolic cleansing from Sin has become a real cleansing from the same. Baptism therefore is not purely representational, an intellectual exercise, but a spiritual reality, the instrument of spiritual rebirth. This is how we by the Spirit’s agency die with Christ, rise with Christ, and live with Christ. Baptism is how the Spirit gives us our new Nature, not after our death but now, so that we may put away the old sinful nature now and not after we die, that we may commune and have a relationship with God now and not after we die, that we may demonstrate the life of the age to come now and not after we die, that we may be a light to the darkened world around us now and not after we die. In Baptism, the Spirit gives us the new Nature Jesus sanctified for us, and it is in the other Sacraments that the Spirit feeds and sustains this new Nature. They are real encounters with God.
Baptism is therefore the gateway Sacrament. The Sacrament upon which all others depend. Without it, all other Sacraments are either simple rituals or expressions of good will. Can someone come forward to receive the Sacrament without Baptism? I would say that one may indeed receive the physical elements, that which is perceivable by the five senses and measured in the four dimensions, and one may indeed understand the sentiment, but really, without that metaphysical rebirth, the question remains whether the recipient can attain to or benefit from the metaphysical portion of the Sacraments. Holy Tradition would tell us no, that without Baptism the grace in the other Sacraments have nothing onto which to attach, that the old, corrupt nature would continue its nihilistic path. Is that to say the Holy Spirit cannot and will not flood into someone prior to their Baptism and suffuse them with grace? No, because otherwise how would we explain the Prophets, or the great miracle of the Incarnation? When that happens though, should we not like St. Peter, say, “Can any one forbid water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?”[10] Indeed, if someone has received the Body of Christ, how does one not bring them to Baptism? Why would they not wish to take that new Nature which has been shown to them, offered to them, and make it theirs?
It is no mistake that we have these readings for the First Sunday in Lent. This is the season for preparing those wishing to become reconciled to God for their own Baptism at the great Paschal Vigil. This is the season to ready those reborn in the Sacrament of Baptism to prepare for receiving the Passover Victim in the Sacrament of Communion. This is the season in which those who have been living in darkness prepare to receive the Great Light. Let this also be the season wherein we remember our own rebirth and prepare for the celebration of our deliverance from Sin and Death.
✠ Through the prayers of the Most Holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary, Holy Dominic, and all the saints, Saviour save us. Amen.
[1] Heb. 10.26-27
[2] The question was settled with the resolution of the Donatist controversy in the Third Century, after a particularly nasty wave of persecution had caused multiple apostasies and ignited a pastoral crisis.
[3] 1 Ki. 19.11-12
[4] Mk. 1.9-11
[5] Mt. 3.14-15
[6] Jn. 1.32-34
[7] See the excerpts from the Church Fathers in Simonetti, Manlio, et al., Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: New Testament, 1a (Matthew 1-13), IVP Academic, Downers Grove (2001), pp. 49-51
[8] Ibid.
[9] 1 Pet. 3.18-22
[10] Acts 10.47