What if baptism is designed to be not an event but the deepest part of our identity, the central, guiding reality that defines our lives?
Along with Red Skies and When Faith Fails, Living Under Water: Baptism as a Way of Life ranks up there as one of my favorite spiritual reads during 2022. It's also one of the books to read when going on Cultivate's Abbey of the Genesee retreat alongside Henri Nouwen's The Genesee Diary and Thomas Merton's Thoughts in Solitude. And as we continue in Emmaus City Church's summer series on "Rootedness," Living Under Water is a wonderful resource in helping us focus on the meaning of our baptismal identity (i.e. who we are as the family of God sent to love, serve, and witness) that we get to live into each day.
This meaning of this identity is as powerful as the exodus, as being recognized as part of a royal lineage. N.T. Wright captures the heart of this in a quote from his Christian formation commentary on Galatians:
This is the new Exodus, the ultimate release from slavery,
the moment when God says of all of Jesus the Messiah’s
people that He said through Moses to Pharaoh:
“Israel is My son, My firstborn.”
What God said of Israel then, He said of the coming
Davidic king in Psalm 2:7 and 2 Samuel 7:14;
this national and royal title was then spoken over
Jesus Himself at His baptism (Mark 1:11 and parallels);
what God said of Israel, the king, and then Jesus,
He now says of all who belong in the messianic family …
All sons and daughters of God in Messiah Jesus
Baptized into the Messiah,
Clothed with the Messiah,
All one in Messiah Jesus,
Belonging to the Messiah,
Therefore Abraham's seed and promised heirs.
+ N.T. Wright based on Galatians 3:36-4:7
For this City Notes (CN) post, below are some excerpts that stood out to me about baptism as the way of life with Jesus. I love the gift of baptism, and Living Under Water by Kevin Adams is full of beautiful stories, a bevy of historical and ecumenical highlights, and may be the best book I've read yet in unpacking this sacrament for all of us, young and old, seasoned and new to walking with Jesus. If this post intrigues you to engage more with the mystery, beauty, and power of baptism, you can read Living Under Water: Chapter 1: The Script for Our Truest Selves for free.
Living Under Water: Baptism Brings Us into the Biblical Script
Baptism brings us into a particular story by which we make sense of our lives and find meaning and joy for them. Anglican bishop N.T. Wright says about this script,
"The point of the Scripture narrative is to say that baptism draws together all those stories about creation and Exodus, about Jesus, but also about the life of the church in the world. When we baptize someone, we are participating in that same narrative. We are saying, 'We are on this journey, this is our story, and it is now your story as well. And if you stick with us, we will help you live that story with us.' That's what baptism is all about." + "Space, Time, and Sacraments"
Wright summarizes what Christians for centuries have understood: that baptism encapsulates the entire Bible, starting in Genesis with creation, when God's spirit "moves upon the waters," and ending with Revelation's closing image of the river of life flowing through the eternal and electric city of God. In between is a life-shaping thread of baptism stories: Noah and the ark (Gen. 6), Moses and the Israelites' escape through the Red Sea (Exod. 14), Joshua and the crossing of the Jordan River (Josh. 3), Jonah swallowed by a huge fish (Jon. 1-2), and the prophet Ezekiel sprinkling the people as they receive new hearts (Ezek. 36), to name a few. Jesus tells a religious outsider, a Samaritan woman, he can give her living water (John 4), and later promises that those who believe in him will have "rivers of living water ... flow from within them" (John 7). The early church believed that the saliva Jesus used to heal a blind man was a reference to baptism (John 9). Sometimes the connections between baptism and the biblical story are obvious. Acts tells us about a converted jailer and a businesswoman named Lydia, both baptized and dramatically switching scripts. But if you were to read through the Old Testament with early Christians, you'd see baptism stories everywhere (ex. take, for instance, the Old Testament story of Naaman in 2 Kings 5).
William Willimon, former chaplain of Duke University and now a United Methodist bishop, remembers assisting with two baptisms one Sunday morning. The first was a three-month-old baby girl whose parents were active in that Methodist congregation. The pastor read the prescribed forms, asked the parents baptismal vows, and baptized her. Then he took the child in his arms and said,
“Mary, we have baptized you and have received you into the Church. God loves you and has great plans for your life. But you will need the rest of us to tell you The Story and, from time to time, to remind you who you are and to keep you in God’s family. We are especially going to appoint some members to guide you and watch over you as you grow in faith. And all of us promise to adopt you as a sister in Christ.”
Next, the minister baptized a thirty-year-old man who had recently converted to Christianity. After the man made promises and received his baptism, he stood before the congregation alongside the minister, who said,
“Tom, we have baptized you and have received you into the Church. God loves you and has great plans for your life. But you will need the rest of us to tell you The Story and, from time to time, to remind you who you are and to keep you in God’s family. We are especially going to appoint some members to guide you and watch over you as you grow in faith. And all of us promise to adopt you as a brother in Christ.”
Living Under Water: Baptism Gives Us Our Identity and Sets Us Free
What if baptism is designed to be not an event but the deepest part of our identity, the central, guiding reality that defines our lives? ... What does your baptism mean to you? What if you had not been baptized? What difference would that make?
Baptism is a countercultural way of viewing race, sex, money, and everything we see. In a world with a hundred groups to join, a thousand songs to sing, and countless tantalizing stories promising the good life, baptism initiates Christians into an alternate story offering an inherited identity, a sense of belonging, and a set of lenses through which to see God at work in our sin-damaged world.
For example, Father Silouan grew up Roman Catholic, rebelled against everything he learned at home, and then became a Hindu monk. One day, as he walked in Manhattan's Lower East Side, he picked a flyer off the ground inviting people to believe in the Virgin of Guadalupe. Somehow, in reading this simple tract, his heart turned a corner. It didn't just encourage him to faith; it started his life in a whole new direction. To him it signaled far more than a heartfelt love for the Virgin Mary and her divine son. In his deepest self, he sensed, "This is it." So he became a Roman Catholic parishioner, then an Orthodox monk, and eventually an abbot. As we walked, Father Silouan shared, "Baptism is about ontology. It's a state of being ... baptism is about our identity." He said all this as a gentle but clear admonishment, frequently turning to look at me, his eyes flashing for my acknowledgement.
"If people in the early church talked about their identity, if they asked, 'Who am I?,' they would answer, 'I am a person who has died and risen with Christ.' ... To answer questions of identity with 'I am baptized' is a summary of that reality. Life, then, is about knowing who we are. ...
When we are baptized into the church, we become part of it, a part of something bigger than us as individuals. In a sense, we don't exist on our own anymore. We are dead and have been raised with Christ. ... People tend to live in fear. We are afraid of losing our self, but we will all die, and we have already died in Christ, so we can let that fear go."
Because of baptism, we can live in the kairos (Kairos is a Greek word that means "the right time" or "an opportune or decisive moment") ... in the present moment.
Living Under Water: Biblical Baptismal Images Are Colossal
Baptism is washing.
Baptism is dying and rising.
Baptism is the start of a new life.
Baptism is joining a community of fellow believers.
Baptism, braced by these life-altering images, is designed to be the central pivot of life, the hub through which every spoke of piety – praying, giving, fasting, selfless serving, communal living, mission – links to and works with the others.
Baptism is the lens through which a believing person sees all the daily and weekly and lifelong rhythms of devotion more clearly. (We can) visualize baptism as an anchor for a lifetime of faithful living.
What if baptism were the fountain of a Christian life ... rather than one more spiritual episode among a thousand?
What if baptism became not just an expression of faith but a source of deep reassurance in times of doubt or failure, a sign of God's abiding presence even when we stagger through the emotional chaos of grief or prayerlessness or overwhelming doubt?
We receive life. In the same way, baptism begins a life of faith. Every subsequent act of Christian obedience depends on (i.e. is rooted in) and flows from this beginning.
The baptized still struggle to be decent human beings. We are still tempted to be less than God created us to be. But in Jesus, God gives us spiritual power to choose a higher and better way. Because of our baptisms, we live inside the promise that we are loved and can live love.
Every baptism is a renunciation. And it's an anointing, a call to live as prophet, priest, and king. Baptismal identity is a gift, a grace we receive. And it's also a gift we put into action as called people in the often tangled and thorny work of life.
Baptismal living always includes a renunciation, an anointing, and a "putting on." We wear our baptism in a way that makes us new – including the way we speak and think and rearrange our finances and value people in a racially charged world, etc.
Baptism redeems, sanctifies, purifies, loosens, forgives, illumines, renews, and heals.
To live our baptism is live our truest, deepest, most life-giving selves. It is to push away temptations to do life as performance or show or theater. It is to live life as an unwarranted gift.
Here are links to other recent City Notes (CN) books:
A Time To Heal (Shalom); Red Skies; Story of God in a Sanitation Truck; The Artistry of What's Next; Days of Song on Spot of Scorched Earth; Seeds of Hope in the Rain & the Dark; The Church is the Most Corrupt Institution on Earth; The Seamless Life; A Good Calling; Inisheer Island; Wrestling with God in Doubt; Taste Grace in World of Seculosity; I've Seen What Hope Can Do; Ubuntu and the Family of God
With presence, peace, and many blessings,
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