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| The Cleansing by Edwin Lester |
What if baptismis designed to benot an eventbut the deepest part of our identity,the central, guiding realitythat defines our lives?
Living Under Water: Baptism as a Way of Life ranks up there as one of my favorite spiritual reads of the past five years. 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. And complementing Living Under Water, Fr. Alexander Schmemann's modern classic, For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy, is also included.
The meaning of our baptismal identity is as powerful as the exodus, as being recognized as part of a royal lineage. N.T. Wright captures the heart of this:
This is the new Exodus,
the ultimate release from slavery,
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:
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
He said of the coming
Davidic king
in Psalm 2:7 and 2 Samuel 7:14;
in Psalm 2:7 and 2 Samuel 7:14;
this national and royal title
was then spoken over
was then spoken over
Jesus Himself
at His baptism (Mark 1:11 and parallels);
at His baptism (Mark 1:11 and parallels);
what God said of Israel,
the king, and then Jesus,
the king, and then Jesus,
He now says of all
who belong in the messianic family …
who belong in the messianic family …
All sons and daughters of God
in Messiah Jesus
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.
and promised heirs.
+ N.T. Wright
based on Galatians 3:36-4:7
based on Galatians 3:36-4:7
Baptism joins one to many, and
the Lord’s Supper makes many into one.
+ B. Robin
the Lord’s Supper makes many into one.
+ B. Robin
For this 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 His 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."
is to say that baptism
draws together all those stories
about creation and Exodus,
about Jesus,
but also about the life
of His 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."
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).
Living Under Water:
Living Out Our Baptism
Together as God's Family
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.
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.
God has chosen through baptism
to create a people who are
His Kingdom representatives
to the kingdoms of the world.
This is why Paul writes about
how those who are one in Christ
through baptism
are now no longer Jew or Greek,
male or female, slave or free.
Baptism sets apart a dynamic community
of people of all ages
that challenges and critiques
the social hierarchies of this world.
Baptism makes Jesus' Church
a family of Kingdom servants
and ambassadors where
the age, ethnic, and class distinctions
of ancient Rome; or historic India or China;
or the modern U.S. no less; no longer matter.
Bonus Reflection on Baptismal Water:
Baptism forms the real content,
the "existential" root of what
we now call "religious education."
(It) is the revelation of the
(It) is the revelation of the
wonderful things that have "happened"
and happen to us in the divine gift
of the new life.
Water is the "prima materia,"
the basic element of the world.
It is the natural symbol of life,
for there is no life without water, but
it is also the symbol of destruction
and death, and finally, it is
the symbol of purification, for there is
no cleanliness without it.
Its blessing at the beginning of the
Its blessing at the beginning of the
baptismal rite acquires thus a truly
cosmic and redemptive significance.
God created the world and blessed it
and gave it to man as his food and life,
as the means of communion with Him.
The blessing of water signifies the return
or redemption of matter to this initial
and essential meaning.
By accepting the baptism of John,
Christ sanctified the water – made it
the water of purification and
reconciliation with God.
As we stand before the water, the matter
given to us by God, it is an all-embracing
eucharistic movement which gives
the baptismal liturgy its true beginning.
Once more the world is proclaimed
to be what Christ revealed and made
it to be – the gift of God to man,
the means of man's communion
with God. This water is manifested
to us as "the grace of redemption,"
the remission of sins,
the remedy of infirmities.
A sacrament is always a passage,
a transformation. Yet it is not a
"passage" into "supernature,"
but into the Kingdom of God,
the world to come,
into the very reality of this world
and its life as redeemed and
restored by Christ. ...
The act of blessing may mean
the revelation of the true "nature" and
"destiny" of water, and thus of the world
– it may be the epiphany and the fulfillment
of their "sacramentality." By being restored
through the blessing to its proper function,
the "holy water" is revealed as the true,
full, adequate water, and matter
becomes again a means of
communion with God. ...
A sacrament therefore is not a
"miracle" by which God breaks,
so to speak, the "laws of nature,"
but the manifestation of the
ultimate Truth about the world
and life, man and nature,
the Truth which is Christ.
+ Fr. Alexander Schmemann,
For the Life of the World,
pgs. 83, 88-89, 123, 156, 124
Bonus Songs:
We the Kingdom &
Tasha Cobbs Leonard,
Tasha Cobbs Leonard,
2020 A.D.
God, I'm on my knees again,
God, I'm begging please again,
I need You, Oh, I need You.
Walking down these desert roads,
Water for my thirsty soul,
I need You,
Oh, I need You.
Your forgiveness
Is like sweet, sweet honey on my lips,
Like the sound of a symphony to my ears,
Like holy water on my skin.
Dead man walking, slave to sin,
I want to know about being born again,
I need You, Oh, God, I need You,
So, take me to the riverside,
Take me under, baptize,
I need You, Oh God, I need You.
(Chorus)
I don't want to abuse Your grace,
God, I need it every day,
It's the only thing that ever really
Makes me want to change.
(Chorus)
Ike Ndolo, 2013 A.D.
My bones are weak in me
And my eyes are closed
Because of what they've seen.
I'm stuck in smoke and fire
And it's getting hard to breathe.
My spirit chokes in me
And now I cannot stand,
I'm on my knees.
I'm on my knees.
Hope is coming again!
Come on down to the riverside!
Come on down and get baptized!
Come on down to the riverside
'Cause we've got to die
To make it out alive.
This water brings me life,
Renews my soul
And returns my sight.
My heart was cold as ice
But You made it beat again.
My days had turned to night
But You called my name
And gave me back the light.
You're bringing hope back again!
(Chorus)
(Chorus)
I've seen the sum of my tragedies,
Cripple me, so come and set me free!
'Cause everyone needs a remedy
Love can bring,
Let it wash us clean!
(Chorus)
More on Baptism:
With presence and peace,
