Into What Were You Baptized?
Acts 19:1-7
Our United Methodist doctrine of Baptism is thoroughly expressed in our denominational treatise on baptism called “By Water and the Spirit.” Baptism for us is bound up in history, ritual, and memory. You won’t find a single sentence in “By Water and the Spirit” that defines baptism.
Baptism is a sign; an outward and touchable symbol of God’s grace. It is a covenant we make with God and that God makes with us. It is a rite of passage. It is a reenactment of death and rebirth. It doesn’t require a conscious choice—infants can be baptized—but it is just one step in a lifetime of becoming fully the child of God we were made to be.
There are many understandings of baptism today and in the time after Jesus’ ascension into heaven. When Paul encountered some disciples of Jesus in Ephesus, he asked them, “into what, then, were you baptized?”
That isn’t a bad question for us to think about as we enter into this new year.
It can be easy to think of baptism as this one thing we do and then not have to think about it anymore. The moment we celebrate when we bring our child to the font, or an important moment in our life we remember that was an act of dedication. But Paul’s question challenges us to not leave it there.
Into what were we baptized? Was it into a social club that has a defined meeting time? Was it into something that the rest of our family did so we might as well have done it, too?
Was it into something that doesn’t really move us or motivate us anymore?
Whether your answer to this question is full of hope or exhaustion, the good news is that God’s promise never has changed. I certainly can understand as a Christian in the US that sometimes it feels like I have been baptized into an absolute mess. A mess of corruption, insipidness, and hatred. But Paul reminds the disciples (and us!) that true baptism consists of just two things: water and the spirit. Those are the things into which we have been baptized.
Baptism isn’t something that is solely a spiritual gesture that is more abstract than tangible. And it isn’t just water splashing into a font, or in a horse trough, or coursing as a river, or in a swimming pool. It’s both. Can’t have one without the other.
We need it to be of the Spirit because Baptism can’t just be a mundane gesture. It can’t be window dressing to our faith, a moment we keep in our memory like a polaroid in a scrapbook. Baptism is the work of the Holy Spirit bringing to life for us the covenant God is making between us. It is a holy seal of God’s promise that “I am with you and I will not forsake you.” It isn’t just the washing away of dirtiness that water can accomplish, it is the washing away of the sickness of sin that only the Holy Spirit can do.
But we also need it to be water. Because Baptism is real, and not just an abstract spiritual symbol easy to pretend is real only to forget its significance as time goes on. We remember our Baptism because we can see signs of it everywhere: in the trickles of streams from snowmelt in the Rockies, in the running of the South Platte River or Clear Creek that tumbles down from the Rockies into it, in the water that slakes our thirst, and in the very water we can touch in the baptismal font prepared for other baptisms than our own.
Baptism is as real as we choose daily for it to inform how we are becoming the people of God. It symbolizes a beginning of a journey that has ups and downs, a journey where we learn how we can’t be disciples by ourselves, a lifetime of being formed into the beloved children God has made us to be. It’s as real as Paul’s question is challenging, “into what, then, were you baptized?”
Our answer to that question becomes the manifestation of Christianity that unfolds with time alongside the unfolding of our story of discipleship. And I hope that our answer to that question can prove to be a counter to the evil and sorrow at work in the world today.
