Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him.  John would have prevented him, saying, "I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?"  But Jesus answered him, "Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness." Then he consented.
And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him.  And a voice from heaven said, "This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased."

A number of years ago, when I was serving as an associate pastor, we had a glitch in our church.  It’s the kind of glitch that happens every once in a while.  We had a confirmation class join the church, but in the process, we forgot to baptize one of them.  As far as we knew, everyone joining the church had been baptized.  We had questions about this one young boy, but when the pastor called the father of the boy to ask if the boy had been baptized, he said, “Yeah, I think so.  I remember bringing him to the front of the church and all.”  So, we took that to mean that the boy had been baptized.

At our 11 a.m. service we had all the members of the confirmation class join, and everything went smoothly.  Then a few weeks later the mother of the boy called me and said, “Graham, I noticed that when my son joined the church he wasn’t baptized.  He wasn’t baptized as a baby either.”  I told her what the father had told us, and she said,” Oh, that was just a dedication.  At the time we belonged to a church that believed only in adult baptism.  Sorry.” 

So then it was left up to me to talk to her son about baptism.  I told him about how we had messed up, and that we needed to set a date to baptize him.  His response?  He wasn’t sure he wanted to be baptized.  He had also been attending the youth group of another church in town, and the members of that church had told him that to truly be baptized he had to be baptized by immersion.  The pastor of this other church had offered to take the boy to a local pool, along with members of that youth group, and to baptize him there.  The problem was that the boy didn’t want to join that church, but he did want to be immersed. 

I told him about the Presbyterian beliefs about baptism, and how we couldn’t baptize him by immersion because in the Presbyterian Church baptism was always done in the midst of a congregation’s worship service.  But he wasn’t buying it.  What he really wanted was to have the kind of baptismal experience that he had heard about through the other youth group.  They had told him that if he truly gave his life to Christ before the baptism, he would emerge from the water as a changed person, and he would have the most amazing spiritual experience.  That’s what he wanted.  I tried to explain to him that experiences like that were gifts from God, and that they weren’t tied into baptism, but he just couldn’t accept what I was saying.  To him, all that mattered was that he wanted the experience of baptism that Jesus had in our passage, where the Holy Spirit would descend upon him like a dove. 

This situation put us in a quandary.  He didn’t want to join the other church, but he wanted baptism by immersion.  He wanted to remain a member of our church, but he didn’t want baptism the way we do it.  We were at an impasse.  What would you do in this situation?  What we finally agreed upon was that we would hold off on baptism until he was either ready to have it be done the way we Presbyterians do it, or when he moved away after college and found a church that he could commit to. 

            In many ways this young man was a microcosm of the battles that have been waged among Christians since the Protestant Reformation.  Most people think that disagreements over baptism have been with us since the beginning of Christianity, but that’s actually not the case.  For the first 1500 years of Christianity there wasn’t much dispute.  The original Christians were all baptized by immersion as adults because they all came to Christianity as adults.  Then, as these Christians had children, they began to baptize the children.  Over time, as the church became more stable and there were fewer converts (especially after Christianity became the religion of the Roman Empire), the church did mostly infant baptisms.  That held sway for almost 1000 years. 

            This all changed after the Protestant Reformation.  Much of the focus of the Reformation was trying to return the church to biblical times so that Christians could live, worship, and serve God in the ways that the original Christians did.  That’s where the disputes over baptism arose.  You see, the Bible is kind of silent about baptism except when talking about the early converts. They were baptized as adults, but the New Testament says almost nothing about baptismal practices among the established churches.  In Paul’s letter to Timothy, it seems to be implied that Timothy was baptized as a child, but we don’t know that for certain. 

            During the Reformation, battle lines became drawn as different Protestant groups fought over baptismal practices.  The Reformed (the tradition of Presbyterians), Lutheran, and Anglican (the Episcopal tradition) adherents all believed in infant baptism.  The Baptist and Anabaptist (the Amish and Mennonites) traditions believed in only adult baptism.  The fights between traditions could get violent at times, with the Amish, when they were in Germany, often being the target of the most violence.  The Amish pass down stories of martyrs killed in the old country by other Protestants because they rebaptized as adults. 

In a lot of ways these battles over baptism were as intense as any religious battles during the course of the church’s history.  Even today, people disagree over infant versus adult baptism.  Fortunately, people don’t kill each other because of their disagreements, but people do disagree.  What do you believe about baptism?  This morning what I want to do is to teach you everything you wanted to know about baptism, but had no idea what to ask. 

Let’s start with the basics:  What is baptism and where does it come from?  The ritual of baptism starts with John the Baptist.  John was an interesting character.  He came out of the desert to baptize people in the River Jordan.  The Jordan River was the boundary between the wilderness and civilization.  John was an Essene.  You may not know who the Essenes were, but you know what they left us.  They were the ones who put scriptural scrolls into clay jars and left them in caves by the Dead Sea.  We know these scrolls as the Dead Sea Scrolls.  John may very well have learned scripture by studying these scrolls. 

The Essenes were a sect of Judaism that believed that all civilization was corrupt, and that the only way to become pure was to be removed from civilization.  This is why they lived in caves by the Dead Sea.  They often engaged in practices of ritual purification in which they would confess their sins and then afterwards take purification baths.  When John baptized people in the Jordan River, he was, in effect, recreating these purification rites for people who remained in the culture.  He didn’t call people to become Essenes, but he did call them to repentance.  He called on people to confess their sins, to give their sins to God, and then to be bathed pure.  The baptism became a symbol of their being declared clean by God.  John was offering an alternative to temple sacrifice in Jerusalem, where people would sacrifice an animal in order to expiate their sins.  John was offering people a chance to let go of sin and be made clean without having to make a sacrifice. 

The early Christians baptized because John had baptized Jesus, and Jesus had commanded to baptize in his name.  They offered people a one-time cleansing of sin, rather than the yearly temple sacrifice that was demanded of all Jews.  Also, this ritual baptism was one that both Jews and Gentiles could take part in. 

So, let’s fast-forward to the Reformation.  As I mentioned above, the fights over baptism began during the Reformation, where there were basically four different views on baptism developed.  Let me try to explain them by showing you a diagram of these four views: 

            This chart may look a bit confusing, so I’ll try to explain it.  People’s views of baptism have to do with the extent to which they believe in adult or child baptism, and whether they believe that baptism is a sign of grace (showing what God has already done), or an entrance into grace (in other words, baptism is necessary for salvation).  Looking at the diagram above, you can see that Roman Catholics believe in child baptism, but that they also believe that to be saved a person has to be baptized…sort of.  I say “sort of” because what I just said really isn’t true, but many Roman Catholics think it is true.  Many Roman Catholic believe that if a baby dies before being baptized, it goes to “Limbo,” which I suppose is a place where all day every day you have to lean over backward while trying to fit under a bar strung between two poles, as others yell out, “How low can you go?  How low can you go?”  J

            In truth, official Catholic Church teaching has never taught that the unbaptized go to Limbo.  That is what you might call “folk” theology:  beliefs that were taught by some, but that were never really official church doctrine.  In fact, the pope recently came out with a statement that there is no such place as Limbo.  In terms of their official church teachings, the Roman Catholic belief about baptism is very similar to Presbyterian, Methodist, Episcopalian, Lutheran, and Congregationalist beliefs, which is that they believe that baptism is for anyone, including infants, and that it is a sign of grace, not a means of grace. 

            Many Baptists, Evangelicals, and Pentecostals believe in adult baptism, believing that it is an entrance into grace.  In other words, they believe until you are baptized you remain unsaved (unless you are a child and you are not old enough to have taken the vow of baptism). 

Many Anabaptists, such as the Amish, believe in adult baptism, but they believe that the baptism is still just a visible sign of God’s invisible grace.  In other words, baptism doesn’t save us.  It is an act of commitment, entered into by an adult, that shows how God has cleansed us. 

What do Presbyterians believe about baptism?  We believe that baptism can be done by anyone at any age, but most often is done as an infant.  We also believe that the sacrament, while being filled with God’s love and Spirit, really is intended to lift back the veil to show ritually what God has already done, which is to make us clean and forgiven of sin.  We also believe that it is a sacrament done in two parts.  The first part is the sacrament of baptism in which the baby is baptized.  The second is the ritual of “confirmation.”  We do not believe confirmation is a sacrament because it is simply a “confirmation” by a person of her or his baptismal vows.  It is the second part of baptism. 

The first part of baptism occurs when our parents take these vows on their own and our behalf.  You know these vows.  They are offered not only at baptism, but at confirmation, and when people join the church.  Here are the vows: 

• Trusting in the gracious mercy of God, do you turn from the ways of sin and renounce evil and its power in the world? 

 

• Do you turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as your Lord and Savior, trusting in his grace and love?

• Will you be Christ’s faithful disciple, obeying his word and showing his love?

 

But there’s also another part of baptism that is important.  It is the vows we take as a congregation.  Do you know why we don’t have godparents in the Presbyterian Church?  It’s because all of us are godparents to children baptized in our church.  We all take godparent vows.  We make a commitment to each child to help that child grow to know God’s presence and love: 

• Do you, as members of the church of Jesus Christ, promise to guide and nurture this child by word and deed, with love and prayer, encouraging her to know and follow Christ and to be a faithful member of his church?

 

Each time a child is baptized, we get to see God’s love made visible.  We get to see that God has taken the child, even before conception, and cleansed her of him of all sin.  Baptism is a visible sign that God loves the child and loves us, and that God will always give us grace, mercy, and forgiveness.  Baptism as visible sign that God has washed us clean in love.  At the same time, baptism is an act that requires our commitment

There’s also one other part of baptism that isn’t talked about as much by Presbyterians.  It’s something that Pentecostals believe in.  This is baptism in the Holy Spirit.  Pentecostals believe that it is only when we become baptized in the Spirit that we truly become saved.  They believe that this baptism gives people the gift of speaking in tongues, or of prophesy, or of healing. 

I, like the Pentecostals, believe in baptism by the Holy Spirit, but where I disagree with them is about what the nature of baptism by the Holy Spirit is.  It don’t believe that we have to be baptized by the Holy Spirit to be saved, nor do I believe that being baptized by the Holy Spirit means

receiving these particular gifts.  To me, being baptized in the Holy Spirit means taking a final spiritual step of becoming truly open to God’s Spirit in everything we do. 

I believe that there are three degrees of baptism.  First is the symbolic cleansing of baptism showing what God has done, and this is what we see in infant baptism.  It is an opening into God’s kingdom as we see in some symbolic way what we could never see on our own.  The second is confirmation, which is our commitment to honor God’s love and become Christ’s follower.  The third is that point at which we decide to truly let the Spirit in to guide us and fill our lives with love, faith, and grace.  It’s that point at which we take the step to live in the spiritual and human realm at the same time

My guess is that almost all of you here have been baptized.  My guess is that almost all of you here have confirmed your baptism.  The question I want you to reflect on is whether you have taken that last step of allowing yourself to be baptized spiritually so that you live fully in God’s realm and this realm at the same time.  Are you open to the Holy Spirit, and to allowing the Spirit to lead you in every part of your life?