Baptism Day-Retreat
* There is a downloadable PDF format of the meditations at the bottom of this post.
“Water, Fire, and Breakfast”
Sermon at the Easter Vigil (Baptism, Confirmation and First Communion of Easter)
by the Bishop of Durham, Dr N. T. Wright
If you remember little else about this morning, you will probably remember it as the day you got up at half past three in the morning to go to church. I hope you remember a lot more than that, but that’s a good start: because the whole point of Easter, and of baptism and confirmation, is that it’s all about getting up ridiculously early, being splashed with water to wake you up, and perhaps, in old-fashioned houses at least, lighting a fire somewhere so that the house can warm up for everyone else. Then, when all that’s done, you can think about some breakfast. Well, that’s what we’re about this morning – the water, the fire, and the breakfast: and all because Easter is about waking up ridiculously early while everybody else is asleep. That’s why, at the first Easter, everyone was shocked and startled – the women perplexed and terrified, the men disbelieving and amazed. This was all wrong. Things shouldn’t happen like this. The world was surprised and unready. It was still asleep. And it still is.
You see, the popular perception of Easter lets us down in a big way. I don’t just mean the chocolate eggs and fluffy chicks and rabbits. In a sense, they are all just good fun. Nobody in their right mind would mistake them for the real thing. No: the danger lies deeper. Many people in our culture, including many Christians, think of Easter basically as a happy ending after the horror and shame of Good Friday: ‘Oh, that’s all right, he came back to life, well, sort of, and so he’s in heaven now so that’s all OK, isn’t it?’ And the answer to that should be, ‘No, that’s not OK; that’s not what Easter is about at all.’ The whole point of Easter is that God is going to sort out the whole world, put the whole thing to rights once and for all – this world, not just somewhere called ‘heaven’ – and the resurrection of Jesus is the beginning of that great work. It is the launching, good and proper, of this thing we call the kingdom of God.
What’s that got to do with getting up two hours before sunrise, and with the water, the fire and the breakfast? Well, pretty much everything. You see, as far as the rest of the world is concerned, it’s still night-time. Nothing new has really happened. The world would much prefer to believe that Christianity is simply another ‘religion’, offering another strange spiritual option, with a few odd miracles to back up its claims, but that really nothing’s changed. Corruption and death still rule the world, and Easter simply whispers that there’s a way of escape if we want it. No! Believe it or disbelieve it (though you, here, had better believe it!), the point of Easter is that when Jesus came out of the tomb he was alive again in a bodily life which was the start of the new physical world which God is going to make. And that means that God’s time has jumped forwards, so that what we thought would happen at the very end – God putting everything to rights at last – has leapt forwards into the present, into the middle of our time, our history. When the early Christians told the story of Jesus’ resurrection, that’s what they were saying: God’s new world has begun, and you are invited to be part of that new world – part of the world which lives on God’s time, and lives in God’s new way.
And it’s all because of Jesus, and his dying and rising again. God’s new time is the time when new life happens, but new life can only happen when death has been overcome. God’s new world is the world where sins are forgiven, but forgiveness can only happen when sins have been dealt with. God’s new life is the genuinely human life, the life that fully reflects who God actually is, but we can only even dream of that holiness if something happens to us and in us so that we ourselves make the transition from the way of death – which is what seems, to us, the ‘ordinary’ way of living – to the way of life. And the way we are brought into that new time, that new world, and that new life, is through being plunged into the death and resurrection of Jesus so that his death becomes ours, and his resurrection becomes ours.
Jesus himself showed how we are to do this. When we are baptized, we are drowned in his death and come out the other side into his new life, his new world, his new time. This is the meaning of the water of baptism.
But to be complete, we creatures of earth need not only the water but also the fire. When people come to confirmation they not only ‘confirm’ the promises made at their baptism – promises about dying with Jesus and rising again with him – but also pray for the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the living fire of God’s own presence and power, and that fire comes to live inside us – us together, and us individually – so that we can live the new life, be part of the new world, and in particular live on God’s time, which is always ahead of the sleepy time of the rest of the world. When you pray for the Holy Spirit, and when together as a church we pray for the Spirit to come upon us – and today in particular upon you – God answers that prayer in all sorts of different ways. Sometimes it’s quite dramatic, and that’s fine. Sometimes it’s slow and quiet, and you will only gradually realise that things are different. You are to take responsibility for thinking it through and working out what God is now calling you do be and to do, what his new life will look like in and through you. As the Americans say, ‘You do the math’: figure out what are the ways in which he is calling you to wake up and live on a different time to the rest of the world, and in particular the ways in which he is lighting a fire inside you not simply to warm you up but so that, through you, he can warm up the rest of the world.
Because that’s the point of all this. Confirmation isn’t simply about God’s gift of himself, his own Spirit, to live within you. Confirmation is about God’s gift of himself through you to the rest of the world – more particularly, to the bits of the world where he has called you and put you. You are God’s Easter-presents to your family, to your school, your place of work, to our country and our world. The early Christians used to dress people up in white clothes after baptism, to symbolize the new life they had now entered. Perhaps we should dress you up as large chocolate eggs, to make the point that God is giving you to the world all around as a delightful and delicious Easter-present. I know people don’t usually think of Christians that way, but perhaps it’s time they did. After all, in many towns and cities and villages it’s mostly Christians who are volunteering to help in the hospice, or visiting in the prisons, or doing meals on wheels, or whatever. Yes, several people do these things who are not Christians, but again and again you’ll find they are. It’s Christians, mostly, who are campaigning on behalf of asylum seekers, who are working as Town Pastors in the confused night-time world of our city streets. Christians should be at the forefront of the world’s celebrations and its tragedies: rejoice, said Paul, with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep. You are the salt of the earth, said Jesus; you are the light of the world. You are the fire that God is lighting in our cold, dark, nighttime world, the fire that says it’s morning-time and the place needs warming up. Christians are people who have been washed in the water and filled with the fire, abandoning the old life and bringing the new one to birth in a surprised and unready world.
And the water-and-fire people are then the breakfast-people. You can’t sustain the new life by yourself. You can’t live in God’s new world, on God’s new time, without constant help. And the help we need is Jesus himself – his death to go on dealing with our sins and failings, his new life to go on becoming ours, for us and through us. As we come to his feast, the bread and the wine become heavy with fresh meaning, Passover-meaning, Jesus-meaning, meaning for us and for the world through us. This, too, is shocking and puzzling to many people. How on earth can this simple, symbolic meal carry all that power?
The short answer is: because Jesus said it would when he told us to do it. The deeper reasons are all there to be explored in due course. But today, as we come to the first Eucharist of this Easter, you come with special joy, because you are today’s water-and-fire people, and, as we share in this breakfast with you, you remind us that all of us who belong to Jesus are water-and-fire people, all of us Easter-presents to and for God’s whole world. Thank you for standing up and being counted today. Thank God for all that he’s doing in your lives and through you for the rest of us. No doubt there will be times when you, like the rest of us and like those first disciples, will be perplexed and amazed, perhaps even disbelieving and terrified. But Jesus Christ is risen again! He is on the loose, on the move, at work in his world and in our midst, and you today are the living witnesses to the power of his death and resurrection and Spirit. Remember the water; pray for the fire; come to the breakfast, and be ready then to go out live as God’s Easter presents to his surprised and unready world.
“One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism”
By Bp. Chandler Jones
Our Lord Jesus Christ is unique in the history of mankind in that He is the perfect and sinless Lamb of God without spot or blemish, like us in every way, that is perfectly and totally human with a complete human nature, and yet without sin (Hebrews 4). Our Lord is True God and True Man in One Person - to be more precise, He is One Divine Person, God the Son, the Second Person of the Trinity, with two natures, human and divine. Therefore, as Redeemer and Saviour of the world, he came not to be saved but to save the human race. Jesus Christ is God and does not require salvation - He imparts it. But the salvation He imparts is nothing less than making us the 'partakers of the divine nature' (II St Peter 1.4), Jesus comes to make us the children of God by adoption and grace; He comes to infuse His own Divine Life and sonship into us, making us with one with Him and thus one with the Holy Trinity. Because salvation consists not only in freedom from sin and forgiveness of sins both original and actual, that is, forgiveness both of the sin we inherit from Adam and that obtains in us because we are human, and the sin we personally commit, but also in being made one with God, Our Lord instituted a mean by which He might take his own human nature, sinless and glorified, and impart it to us, implant it in us. We are united to Christ in His human nature and in His death and resurrection through Baptism (Romans 6).
We are saved from sin, yes, but more, for communion with God. The initial instrument which Our Lord instituted for imparting the grace of His Incarnation to human beings through their own humanity is Baptism. The sacraments do not only symbolise the conferral of grace; they symbolise what they cause and cause what they symbolise. They are more than symbols of God's previous action upon our souls - they are effective or efficient causes of grace. They do what they symbolise. God uses them as instruments and channels to convey His own life to us. The sacramental principle is based on the Incarnation: God became man and assumed human nature in order to make man one with God. Now Christ takes the sacraments and conveys through them that same human nature which He perfected and redeemed. We get a 'human nature transplant' through the sacraments, because the sacraments are the physical way by which God, who became physical for us, communicates Himself to us. We do not have to become something different or other than human to be saved - grace now comes to us through the sacraments, which allow us to receive grace in our capacity as human beings. As Saint Leo the Great says, Our Lord's visible presence on earth has now passed into the sacraments. The sacraments are Christ Himself acting to save and sanctify us, Christ made visible under the mystic elements and signs of the sacramental order.
When Our Lord became Man, He used the visible and outward and material, His human nature, to convey and give the inward and supernatural and spiritual, His divine life - today, after the Ascension, this is precisely what He does in the sacraments: He uses the material as the vehicle of the spiritual. In Christ, the one now communicates the other...
As the Holy Fathers teach: In the waters of His own Baptism, Our Lord was not saved from sin, for He was sinless, nor were His sins washed away - as the Sinless One stepped into the Jordan to be baptised, He Himself sanctified the waters by His power to become the mean by which our sins are washed away. Now Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost own and use the waters of Baptism to cleanse us from sin and give us grace. 'Repent all of you and be baptised for the forgiveness of your sins and you will receive the Holy Spirit' (Acts 2).
The Baptism of Our Lord by Saint John Baptist in the Jordan River is a theophany or Christophany, a revelation or manifestation of Christ as God. The Holy Trinity is revealed in the action of Jesus' Baptism - the Father speaks, the Spirit descends in the form of a dove and lights upon the Son, Who stands as God revealed in human flesh. The Holy Trinity conveys and reveals Himself in Jesus' Baptism to show that when we are baptised we are made the sons of God, filii in Filio, sons in the Son, and partakers of the Holy Trinity. In Baptism we 'put on Christ' (Galatians 3) and we enter the life of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost (St Matthew 28). We are revealed to be Trinitarian and the sons of God by grace and regeneration in our own Baptism. In Baptism we become by grace what Christ is by nature. We are identified with Christ and we become one with Him. 'Baptism doth now save us...' (I St Peter 3).
St John 3.16 is often prooftexted to assert that one only need exercise a mental assent or personal faith in Christ in order to be saved by Him without concern for the Church or sacraments. In theology this is called prooftexting, lifting one passage out of Scripture and establishing it as truth apart from, or even divorced from, other Scriptural passages that illuminate the passage in question and bring it its true meaning. The passages of Scripture must always be read in context, contextually within the pericope and book in which they are found. St John 3.16 is a classic example. The answer to the question is St John 3.5, which is part of the same passage and provides its proper context. 'Verily, verily I say unto you: unless one is born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.' Our Lord clearly associates the power and effect of belief in Him with the new birth by water and the Holy Ghost, which the Church has always known to be Baptism (BCP 297).
Baptism is the new birth, the Laver of Regeneration (Titus), the Cleansing of the Washing of Water by the Word (Ephesians 5). Indeed we must have personal faith in Our Lord in order for His grace to be effective in our souls and for His grace to bear fruit, but personal faith is never separated from the action of grace found in the sacraments, which confer and infuse the grace of justification and salvation. The new birth given by water and the Holy Ghost, the outward sign and inward grace of Baptism, infuses into our souls the three gifts that last forever and make it possible for us to have communion with God: faith, hope and love (I Corinthians 13).
Through the theological virtues of faith, hope and love we can trust in God, have confidence in God and be united in charity to God. The infused virtues and graces of Baptism make it possible for men fully and completely so to believe 'that all that believe in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.' Faith itself is a gift from God, a grace given by God to men without the merit or deserving of men. No one can create or engender saving faith in oneself. It is sola gratia, grace alone. Baptism is sola gratia, grace alone. Baptism is the Sacrament of Faith, which supernaturally gives us the gift of saving Faith and unites us to the Faith of the Church unto salvation. 'Faith' is not merely a personal or subjective experience, or an individual act of trust or assurance in God, it is the power and virtue given by God to the whole Church, the total Christ, Head and Members, whereby we are all joined together into the Mystery of Christ as One Body. Baptism inserts us into the Faith of Christ, which is possessed and proclaimed in the unity of the Family of God.
God often leads adult persons to faith before Baptism through what is called prevenient grace, 'the grace that goes before,' the grace of God given to men so that may come to Our Lord. This prevenient grace is a wonderful mystery and gift of God and is orientated towards its fulfilment in the grace of Baptism. For infant children, baptised as they are before the age of reason, it is the Faith of the Church that actualises baptismal grace in them. Children can be baptised and exercise saving faith in the baptismal act because it is the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, the Sacrament of Christ in the world, which believes in them, for them, and through them...
“The Final Destruction of Demons – Holy Baptism”
By Fr. Stephen Freeman
“Final” is not a word you often hear in Christian teaching. Most Christians leave the final things until, well, the End. But this is not the language of the fathers nor of the Church. A good illustration can be found in the Orthodox service of Holy Baptism. During the blessing of the waters the priest prays:
And grant to [this water] the grace of redemption, the blessing of Jordan. Make it the fountain of incorruption, the gift of sanctification, the remission of sins, the remedy of infirmities; the final destruction of demons, unassailable by hostile powers, filled with angelic might. Let those who would ensnare Your creature flee far from it. For we have called upon Your Name, O Lord, and it is wonderful, and glorious, and awesome even to adversaries.
What can it possibly mean to ask that the waters be made “the final destruction of demons”?
The nature of the waters of Baptism reveals the Orthodox understanding of the world. These waters, now in a font, are none other than the waters of the Jordan. They are an incorruptible fountain and all the things we ask for. They are the final destruction of demons because they are nothing other than Christ’s Pascha. The waters of the font are Christ’s death on the Cross and His destruction of Hades. They are the resurrection of the dead.
For this reason St. Paul can say:Do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we should walk in newness of life (Rom. 6:3-4).
The realism of St. Paul’s teaching on Baptism is mystical realism (to coin a phrase). These waters become those waters. This event becomes that event. This time is now that time. Christ’s death now becomes my death. Christ’s resurrection now becomes my resurrection.
How utterly and uselessly weak is the thought that Baptism is merely an obedience to a command given by Christ! The idea that nothing happens in Baptism is both contrary to Scripture and a denial of the very nature of our salvation.
The anti-sacramentalism (and non-sacramentalism) of some Christian groups is among the most unwittingly pernicious of all modern errors. Thought to be an argument about a minor point of doctrine, it is, instead, the collapse of the world into the empty literalism of secularity. In the literalism of the modern world (where a thing is a thing is a thing), nothing is ever more than what is seen. Thus every spiritual reality, every mystery, must be referred elsewhere – generally to the mind of God and the believer. Christianity becomes an ideology and a fantasy. It turns religious believing into a two-storey universe.
The reality of in the Incarnate God was not obvious to those around Him: no surgery would have revealed His Godhood. The proclamation of the Gospel, from its most primitive beginnings (“the Kingdom of God is at hand”), announces the in-breaking of a mystical reality. Many modern theologians misunderstand Christ’s (and St. John the Baptist’s) preaching on the Kingdom to refer to an imminent end of the age. They hear, “The Kingdom of heaven is at hand,” to mean, “the End of the world is near.” Thus we have protestant theologians creating an “interim ethic” to cover Christian activity in the “in-between” period – between Christ’s first coming and His second. If the coming of the incarnate God into the world did not fundamentally alter something, then the preaching of Jesus was in vain and radically misunderstood by His disciples.
The Gospels presume and proclaim at every turn that in Christ, the Kingdom of God is present. Christ says, “But if I cast out demons with the finger of God, surely the kingdom of God has come upon you” (Lk 11:20). There is a mystery at work in the presence of the Kingdom. Christ makes statements such as that just quoted, but also frequently says that the Kingdom of God has come near. The Kingdom is a reality and a presence that has both come near us, and come upon us. But in neither case does it simply refer to a later “someday.” The urgency of the proclamation of the Kingdom is not caused by the soon approach of an expected apocalypse. Its preaching is urgent because its coming has already begun!
The sacraments of the Church (indeed the Church itself) should never be reduced to “holy moments” or “instances of miracles” in the life of an otherwise spiritually inert world. If bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ, then the Kingdom of God has come upon us! And nothing less.
The sacramental life of the Church is not an aspect of the Church’s life – it is a manifestation of the whole life of the Church. It is, indeed, the very character and nature of the Church’s life. The Church does not have sacraments – the Church is a sacrament. We do not eat sacraments or just participate in the sacraments – we are sacraments. The sacraments reveal the true character of our life in Christ. This is why St. Paul can say: I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I but Christ liveth in me, etc. (Galatians 2:20)
I am…nevertheless I…yet not I…but Christ…. This is the language of the mystical reality birthed into the world in the Incarnation of Christ. Thus we can say: This is the Body of Christ…nevertheless you see bread…but it is not bread…but Christ’s Body sacrificed for you. This is the Hades of Christ’s death and the Paradise of His resurrection…nevertheless it is the water of Baptism…but it is not water…but Christ’s death and resurrection into which you are baptized.
And so we see the whole world – for the “whole world is sacrament” – in the words of Patriarch Bartholomew. We struggle with language to find a way to say “is…nevertheless…yet not…but is.” This is always the difficulty in expressing the mystery. It is difficult, not because it is less than real, but because of the character and nature of its reality. Modern Christian thought and language that simply dismiss the mystery and postpone its coming, or deny the character of its reality, change the most essential elements of the Christian faith and inadvertently create a new religion.
But we have been taught something different. We have been given the Final Destruction of Demons, the Mystical Supper, the Kingdom of God. Why should we look for something less?
H. Baptisme. (I) by Fr. George Herbert
AS he that sees a dark and shadie grove,
Stays not, but looks beyond it on the skie;
So when I view my sinnes, mine eyes remove
More backward still, and to that water flie,
Which is above the heav’ns, whose spring and vent
Is in my deare Redeemers pierced side.
O blessed streams! either ye do prevent
And stop our sinnes from growing thick and wide,
Or else give tears to drown them, as they grow.
In you Redemption measures all my time,
And spreads the plaister equall to the crime.
You taught the Book of Life my name, that so
What ever future sinnes should me miscall,
Your first acquaintance might discredit all.
H. Baptisme. ( II ) by Fr. George Herbert
SInce, Lord, to thee
A narrow way and little gate
Is all the passage, on my infancie
Thou didst lay hold, and antedate
My faith in me.
O let me still
Write thee great God, and me a childe:
Let me be soft and supple to thy will,
Small to my self, to others milde,
Behither1 ill.
Although by stealth
My flesh get on, yet let her sister
My soul bid nothing, but preserve her wealth:
The growth of flesh is but a blister;
Childhood is health.