Baptism of Christ

Reading Acts 8.14-17

When the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them. When they arrived, they prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit had not yet come upon any of them; they had simply been baptised into the name of the Lord Jesus. Then Peter and John placed their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.

Gospel Luke 3.15-17,21-22

The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might possibly be the Christ. John answered them all, “I baptise you with water. But one more powerful than I will come, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing-floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

When all the people were being baptised, Jesus was baptised too. And as he was praying, heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”

Sermon

Today we commemorate the baptism of Christ, but these readings are as much about our own baptism as they are about an event that occurred early in Jesus’s ministry when he came to be baptized by John. More particularly what links them is that baptism is by the Holy Spirit.

The background to the passage from Acts is the period when the fledgling church moved from its concentration on Jerusalem and all things Jewish to the Gentile regions beyond. Philip went to Samaria, and preached the gospel there. The book of Acts says there were signs and great miracles performed. This was a momentous departure for the early church. The Samaritans had been traditional enemies of the Jews for centuries. There would have been deep seated resentment on the part of the more traditional Jewish early Christians and very real doubts that the people of Samaria had heard the gospel, accepted the testimony of Philip, and been baptized.

This explains why Peter and John were sent by the Jerusalem church to Samaria on a reconnaissance mission. There they found the report to be true. But the report goes on to say that the Samaritans had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus and had not received the Holy Spirit? What does that mean? Surely one can only be baptized once, with water and the Holy Spirit? Why was the most important element of the sacrament missing? How was it the Holy Spirit was not received by the first Samaritan Christians, and anyway how did they know the laying on of hands by Peter and John proved more effective?

These are indeed very tricky questions – but we have to pursue them because they impinge on our own understanding of our own baptism in our own church. Think about it – if the Holy Spirit can be missing from the baptism by Philip the apostle in Samaria, what if the same is the case today, and would it matter?

Let’s get one thing out of the way at the outset. Baptism is important, not only as a means of receiving new members into the church – the body of Christ. After all, if Jesus was prepared to be baptized himself by John, and the Holy Spirit was clearly manifest to him through the sign of the dove and a voice from heaven, how could we believe baptism is not important for us?

As we know from the miracle of Pentecost, the early church was used to a noisy and visible sign of the presence of the Holy Spirit. We do not often experience that today – and certainly the experience of ‘speaking in tongues’ is unscriptural, in that the disciples at Pentecost were understood when they suddenly spoke in foreign languages which is not the same at all.

So were the Samaritans mistaken when they experienced nothing untoward at their first baptism? We don’t know. One possibility is that the baptism by Philip was a full baptism, but there was a real need for the barriers between Jews and Samaritans to be broken down in a manner that was so clear to everyone that there could be no possible doubt. So when the apostles Peter and John came to Samaria, God’s Spirit was manifest and evident to all. In other words, there was no need for a second more effective baptism, but there was a need for the apostles to believe that God can and does work outside the boundaries set by us, and that God does break them down because the gospel message is for all people and not just for a chosen race.

This is one of the central themes of the Acts of the Apostles, and one of the extraordinary claims made by today’s readings. The love of God, and God’s desire to make every one of us one of his children, is intentionally and thankfully beyond any boundaries or limits we might have in our own imaginations.

What then does this teach us about our own baptism? Well, to my mind the unique perspective of this narrative is that God’s Spirit will fall on whosoever God wills. It’s been called a reckless grace – and no amount of circumvention or limitation will affect the boundless grace of God. That goes for baptism as well as any other event in our lives. Including infant baptism, I suppose – although we know baptism of children is only the start of a Christian life. We make promises made on behalf of someone who, as yet, is unable to form a reasoned judgement on matters of faith. So something else is needed later in life for such a sacrament to be fully one that changes the direction of our lives.

Great expectations are vested in a young life at the time of their baptism, but those who came to be baptized by John had even greater ones. Was John the Baptist the long awaited Messiah they wanted to know. No – John made that clear, and went on to warn about judgement to come for those who bear no fruit.

Preaching about judgement as the flip side to salvation is these days deeply unpopular. We would prefer to hear more about the boundless grace of God, and nothing of the consequences for us if we turn from the light. John does not let his hearers off lightly – he is not a gentle prophet. And we should not lightly skip over all the dark language about sin when we hear the modern baptism liturgy.

To ignore judgement takes away the real need to preach the gospel. It’s not a matter of scaring people, as was certainly the case in Victorian times, but of revealing the need for salvation through Jesus Christ and why it is important. If the road is easy, and not narrow and hard to find, then our life of faith would be one more people would naturally experience.

The gospel of Christ is not all sweetness and light. On the contrary he is the Messiah who lays bare our pretences and false expectations. He reveals our deep seated need for personal and inner transformation. This Son of Man is someone surprising and filled with ultimate and eternal meaning. For preachers to leave out judgement is to let go of the reason for the gospel and thereby cheapen the good news.

So, whatever happened at the baptisms in Samaria, and whatever happened or is to happen in the future at our own baptism or confirmation, let’s bear in mind that the baptism of Jesus is with water and the Holy Spirit, but also with fire. Fire burns but also cleanses. It burns stubble after the wheat has been harvested – but even that is not the end of the story. The wheat is threshed and the chaff blown away. Only the good grain remains to be gathered in.

His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing-floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” Amen