The Baptism of Christ
By Mark Oakley, Sunday 13th January, 2008
I have kept in touch with a few of my teachers from university and theological college and a few years ago was invited to the 70th birthday party of a professor who taught me New Testament studies – I´ll leave it to you to work out how good he was but I do remember him saying that he if lectures to 50 students, 50 different lectures are being heard and none of them are the one being given. Rather like preaching! Anyway, I was at his birthday party and also there was the professor from his own university days. The three of us were talking and my teacher, now 70, said: you know at my age now, you think twice about buying a new suit – how much wear will I get out of it? To which his teacher replied: well, at my age you think twice about buying a bunch of green bananas!
Now as much as we apply all the lotions and potions, try and exercise, and so on, we are all ageing. That makes you feel better doesn´t it? I wonder how old you feel and how close it is to the number of years you´ve actually lived? Well, last week here in church Jesus was a baby and now, a week later, he´s thirty years old (the age that conferred the right to public activity) and starting his ministry. Its something we don´t remember – that Jesus spent all that time out of the limelight, learning, growing, changing and presumably, slowly developing a sense of purpose and vocation that leads him, eventually, to seek out his cousin at the river.
I want to think about baptism briefly this morning by taking you to three different parts of the world. First, to England, Portsmouth, where the small cathedral re-ordered its inside and as part of that placed in the centre of the church, that is, en route from the nave into the sanctuary, the heartland of the space, what looks like an oblong open tomb. It is the font. Many fonts were originally tomb-shaped because from the very beginning, and you can hear it in the gospel, baptism was linked to death and to resurrection. Jesus goes down into the depths, the watery grave, and comes up to hear the voice that he is a wanted child, embraced for eternity. As he comes up the dove is hovering, the same Spirit that hovered over the waters of creation in Genesis, the same dove that spoke of peace to Noah when the waters of the flood receded. Our own baptism is an entering into this mystery of fidelity. The divine love is stronger than the grave, will not let us go. On the font in Portsmouth these words are engraved written by St Cyril of Jerusalem: �When you went down into the water it was like the night and you could see nothing, but when you came up again it was like finding yourself in the day. That one moment was your death and your birth, that saving water was both your grave and your mother�.
Now let´s go to the East, to Russia, where the Church celebrates the Baptism of Christ as a sort of preamble to its Easter Celebrations. And if we take a look at some of the ancient icons in a Russian church we will see devotional pictures of the scene at the Jordan River, depicting Jesus submerged up to his neck in the water. John stands nearby, gently touching the Messiah’s head. Above, a lone dove glides down a ray of heaven-sent light, while on shore, angels wait with ready towels for God’s beloved Son to emerge. The icons also usually also depict a curious figure. There in the water along with Jesus you can often find a small elderly man carrying a jug. He is the river god, the spirit of the Jordan, the sometime enemy of humankind. This watery sprite reminds viewers that water is not always so friendly. It destroyed the earth in Noah’s time. It threatened to swamp the disciples’ boat in a storm. It nearly drowns both Peter and Paul. It has a tsunami´s power. In one Eastern icon (Ohrid, Yugoslavia, c.1300), Jesus raises his foot to squash this river god. And that’s not the only adversary that the Messiah will find in the depths. The waters of the Jordan in these icons are frequented by dragons and great sea serpents. In these icons, when Jesus goes into the river, he goes to do battle against the powers of evil. He goes to bind the strong man. In other words, by entering the water Jesus takes on our human experience, shares our lives, enters into our chaos, battles, exhaustion, ambiguities – our fight to keep our head above water. All of us belong to him and he to us. Our baptismal promises are to do likewise: it is not a pious ritual, it is a life-changing commitment to resist evil and injustice and to do and say what is right, a fight for the dignity of every human God-given life.
Finally, we go to Rome, to the cathedral church of St John Lateran. If you go to the marvellous baptistery there (separate rooms used to be used for baptism to remind you it was the first stage of a life long journey) you find enormous octagonal walls which were anciently used to hold a great amount of water, the sort of water needed to wash your regrets and failures off, to cleanse humanity, to drown all the destructive messages we can transmit to others and ourselves. Unfortunately today you also find there a sort of Italian bathtub of the 17th century and across this a wooden plank and on the plank a small bowl with a tiny dish on it in which baptisms are celebrated today. This is a sad reflection of how we can reduce, literally, the way we celebrate baptism and consequently understand baptism today. No understanding of a womb-like font here, where nourishment and growth are provided to a soul in development. No sign of a tomb-like font, where we are immersed into the depths and drenched in grace. Just a pudding bowl or bird bath with a few polite drips of water. I doubt the early Christians would recognise what takes place in the baptistery there today. I intend to do a lot of splashing later! But regardless of the wooden plank, if you look up around the walls of the baptistery there, you find words written by St Leo the Great in the 5th century:
Here is born in Spirit-soaked fertility a brood destined for another City, begotten by God´s blowing and borne upon this torrent….reborn in these depths they reach for heaven´s realm….this spring is life that floods the world….Sinner sink beneath this sacred surf that swallows age and spits up youth. Sinner here scour sin away down to innocence…shudder not…for those born here are holy.
“When Jesus had been baptised, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God.� Matt 3, 16
