August 22 2021
Matthew 28:16-20
As many of you are aware, I began my calling to ministry working with the youth of the church and I continued in that work for about twenty years. I found at the age of forty that the youth events that were called overnighters had began to lose their appeal. There was something about a group of teenagers hyped up at three in the morning that was very vexing to my soul, shall we say.Yet I’m still a youth worker at heart and I have a lot of great memories. This past week I was thinking about some of the ice breakers I used to use especially during the first few times of our youth meetings. There was this one game where you separated the group into two rows facing each other and then you would begin to ask questions where they had to choose between two different kinds of things, if they liked the first item they would move to one row and if they liked the second thing then they would move to the second row. So, I would ask the question are you a person who likes Fords or do you only drive Chevys; if they liked Fords they would move to the first row and if they like Chevys they would go to the second row. Or I would ask are you a Pepsi drinker or is it only Coke that’s allowed to touch your lips. Or perhaps they would have to decide if they preferred if they liked M &M’s or was it Reeses Pieces that was their favorite. The whole point of the game was to show that who we are is defined a lot by our preferences, what a person likes or dislikes. Our preferences are a good way to get to know something about people we might not know, a way to start up a conversation like talking about the superior qualities of M &M’s for example.
Now, what brought this game to mind is that this weeks article of faith which we are going to cover in our summer series, called Confident, is baptism. It seems that when it comes to baptism, church goers begin to line up on in two separate rows, like their playing that youth group game. Are you an infant baptism kind of person or do you go all in for believers baptism? Go ahead, line up. What is kind of mind-blowing is that the Church of the Nazarene does not make that distinction but rather says its whatever works for you. Isn’t that an amazing idea? If you don’t believe me listen to what is written in the Church of the Nazarene’s twelfth article of faith. Baptism: We believe that Christian baptism, commanded by our Lord, is a sacrament signifying acceptance of the benefits of the atonement of Jesus Christ, to be administered to believers and declarative of their faith in Jesus Christ as their Savior, and full purpose of obedience in holiness and righteousness.
Baptism being a symbol of the new covenant, young children may be baptized, upon request of parents or guardians who shall give assurance for them of necessary Christian training.
Baptism may be administered by sprinkling, pouring, or immersion, according to the choice of the applicant.
Well, there you have it, baptism is for believers and it is also for young children. The reason for such curious inclusion of seemingly opposites is that the Church of the Nazarene was formed out of a bunch of little churches who came from vastly different traditions. The Methodist tradition stuck pretty close to their roots which went back to the Anglican Church because the founder of the Methodist movement, John Wesley, was a priest in that Church. They held pretty closely to Catholic traditions so Wesley quite understandably also stuck pretty closely to the baptism of infants. Those in the Methodist movement that held fast to Wesley’s belief of entire sanctification, that one could be set free from the power of original sin, were joined in that conviction by others who were of the tradition of believers baptism where only those who could make a confession of faith could be baptized. So, here were two groups with two very different traditions and beliefs coming together to form something new and how would they be able to make this work? The way they made their unification work is that they made this understanding of entire sanctification the most important part of their belief, everything else, including how one felt about baptism, would be a secondary concern. They firmly held to what we read in the twelfth chapter of the book of Hebrews, that they were to strive after holiness without which no one will see the Lord.
So, we are left wondering just how is it that we can hold these two very different ways of thinking about baptism together, both being just as acceptable to the other? Perhaps the best way to proceed is to remember that baptism is a sacrament that signifies acceptance of the benefits of the atonement won for us by Jesus Christ. A sacrament as its name implies is a holy event, a sacred moment, which points to something else much like a finger pointing at a far away object. To put emphasis on the finger, the method of how we baptize, means that we lose sight of what it is that that finger is pointing to which is the holiness Christ has made possible. When we understand this then we can also understand why the baptism Christ commanded is different from the baptism of John. This difference is pointed out in the nineteenth chapter of the book of Acts where Paul encountered some disciples who had only been baptized with the baptism of John. The baptism of John, Paul explains, was the baptism of repentance. This, as Paul well knew, was not the Gospel because the Gospel is not about people turning their lives around doing all they can to be righteous before God. No, the Good News is Jesus, the very Son of God has entered into our hopeless estate, taking on our flesh, our life situation, and through his baptism of water and the Spirit in the Jordan, through his baptism of blood on the Cross, Jesus has made all things new. Jesus, having joined himself to humanity, put to death sin in the flesh so that upon his being raised from the dead all might experience resurrection life, a life whose source is the Holy Spirit. This life whose center is found in the eternal life of God is the gift which is not only ours now but is our reward at the end of the age, our life in glory. It is this resurrection life empowered by the God of glory that these disciples that Paul had found were missing out on by being baptized in the baptism of John.
So, we now can understand that what the sacrament of baptism is not, it is not the baptism of John. What baptism is is a commandment of Jesus as we heard in our scripture for today. As they were going on their journeys, the disciples were to follow the orders of their commander, the one to whom all authority was given. This statement of authority would be a sign to the disciples that Jesus was without a doubt, the Son of Man who was seen in a vision of Daniel as recorded in the seventh chapter of his book. There we read that this one like the Son of Man was given dominion and glory and a kingdom that all peoples and nations and languages would serve him. It is important that we follow that the one who has dominion is the one it is who will be served. This becomes apparent when Jesus tells his disciples that they were to baptize their disciples in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Here we again encounter the Triune God revealed to us by Jesus but we also are faced with the mystery of just what does it mean to do something “in the name” of this Triune God. This idea of baptizing in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, does make us think back to the baptism of Jesus where the triune God was clearly evident. There when Jesus came up out of the waters at the hand of John we are told in both Matthew’s and Luke’s version that the heavens were opened to him and Jesus saw the Spirit descend upon him like a dove. Then there came a voice from heaven who said, “This is my beloved with whom I am well pleased.” These were words that echoed those found in the first few verses of the forty second chapter of Isaiah where we read, “Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen in whom my soul delights.” So, the baptism of Jesus is where God the Father anointed his Son with the Spirit as a mark that this Jesus was the Anointed High Priestly King. Luke connects the baptism of Jesus with the beginning of the ministry of Jesus by having him start his work in his home town of Nazareth. There in the village synagogue, Jesus preached from the sixty first chapter of Isaiah, where he told his hometown crowd, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor…”When Jesus rolled up the scroll, he told his audience that that very day, this Scripture had been fulfilled as they heard those words spoken to them. Jesus was telling them that the long awaited anointed servant of God was none other than himself.
Now, it should come as no surprise that baptism was the place where Jesus was understood to be the suffering servant of God because as we study the Old Testament what we find is there is only one instance where a bath is administered by someone else and that is in the consecration of the priests of Israel. In Exodus and the book of Leviticus we read of how Aaron and his sons were to be washed by Moses before their service. John, a priest himself, was bathing people in the Jordan so that the people who did so would understand their connection with the priesthood at the Temple. John rightly understood that all of Israel was to be a royal priesthood before God and he knew that when God would return, Israel would at last fulfill that role.
This priestly connection also helps us to understand what it means for us to be baptized “in the name” of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In the eighteenth chapter of Deuteronomy we read that it is the priest who ministers in the name of the Lord. This helps us to understand that baptism can be thought of as when we are initiated into the royal priesthood with Jesus being our High Priest. We are baptized into the name of our Triune God because we serve in the name of our Triune God. Our service to God in his name is the fullness of our benefits of the atonement Christ has won for us. Too often all that salvation is thought of is what we are saved from with no consideration of just what it is that we have been saved for, the eternal purpose God has for us. Yes, baptism is about entering into eternal life but it is more than that it is an entrance into a certain definable life, life of serving in the name of God. As a sign of the new covenant, baptism is an understanding that now God has written his law upon our hearts and the first two of God’s great ten are that we are to serve only the one true living God and that we are to bear the name of God in a way that God is glorified. This is in a nutshell what is meant by being a priest under the authority of Jesus our High Priest. As we serve God doing so in his name, with his reputation on the line, we do so that those around us may understand that our God exists and that our God is a God who rewards those who serve him because these are what is pleasing to God. This is what we are told that our faith must be all about in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews. Yet, faith is not merely a confession, or a one time prayer. Faith is more an understanding that Christ has done everything possible for us to live a life pleasing to God and in baptism we enter into a life where that understanding is being lived out.
As priests then we, like the priests who served of old, must understand that we have to take off our common garments and put on the holy attire required of those who serve before the holy presence of the Lord. This is the language Paul uses in the third chapter of Colossians where he writes that we are to take off the old self with its practices and put on the new self which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. This, Paul continues, means that we are to put away the dirty clothes of sexual immorality, impurity, passion and evil desire and covetousness. We are to be done with, anger, wrath, malice and slander. Then , Paul goes on to say, we are God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved. Do you hear the similarities with what was spoken at the baptism of Jesus? As people who have been spoken of in the same way the Father spoke of Jesus, we are to put on compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness and patience bearing with one another, forgiving one another as the Lord has forgiven us. We are to most importantly to put on love which binds everything in perfect harmony and let the peace of Christ rule in our hearts, hearts which abound in thankfulness for all that God has done. This is what it means for us to serve God and to live so that the name of God, his very reputation and honor, are upheld through all that we say and do because when we live as his priests then people will see in us the image of the God we love. This is why it is easy for us to understand that what is to be taught to those who have been baptized is the commandment of Jesus that we are to love one another as he has first loved us. This is the fulfillment of the law, the very hope of the new covenant.
When baptism is understood as when people are initiated into the royal priesthood then the issue of whether they are infants or adults becomes less of an issue as well. We can think of Samuel who was brought to live within the Tabernacle as an infant and as he grew he learned the ways of holiness before the Lord. It was no wonder then at a young age that the Lord spoke to him as a young boy. Likewise, little children can come in and live within the new temple which has Jesus Christ as its cornerstone and learn the ways of the priesthood, what it means to serve God and to bear his name. We cannot forget that even if one is initiated into the priesthood as an adult, they still begin as little children spiritually who too must be made new in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.The danger of seeing baptism as a moment of decision is that it can be seen as an end instead of a beginning. Seeing baptism as a decision can also put so much emphasis on a person’s faith that what is lost is that baptism is all about Jesus, his taking on our flesh, his dying to sin, his rising again, his ascension into the throne room off his Father. Only in light of what Christ has done does baptism mean anything at all. The faith required at baptism is the faith which is the understanding that Christ has made everything new; the new creation has indeed broken in upon the old creation. We know this to be true because we are that new creation. We are the ones who know that because of Jesus we know that beyond this life is a glorious future and it is this understanding which changes us. Now, today, we live just like we will live in that future. In that future, set free from sin, people will be free forever from sin which means that they will only serve God and glorify his name. This is the future we are initiated into when we are baptized. As we learn to live within the reality promised to us in our baptism, when we live a life oriented toward serving God and glorifying his reputation, the people in the world will be able to see the glorious future God desires to give to them and they in turn, will desire this gift as well, to live in that future here today. This is what the great commission is all about and why baptism is what that whole commission pivots around. This is why we can embrace many forms of baptism because they, while very different, still all point to the same great and glorious future Christ has won for us! Amen!
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