Spirit of Organization

We ought to know the story by now. Jews, ancient and modern, have told it every year and in graphic detail: the story of how God rescued them from Egypt. He brought them through the Red Sea and led them through the wilderness into the Promised Land. Through the water to freedom.

The story itself began, interestingly, with the leader, Moses, being rescued as a little boy from the reedy edge of the Nile River, after his parents had placed him there in a waterproof basket rather than kill him as they had been ordered to do. Moses had to go through (on a small scale) the rescue-through-water which God would accomplish through him later on. After Moses's death, it happened again: Joshua led the people though the Jordan River and into the Promised Land at last.

These stories look back even further. Creation itself took place, according to Genesis 1, when God's great wind or breath or Spirit brooded like a dove over the waters, and when God separated the waters into different places and called dry land to appear. Creation itself, you might say, began with an exodus, a baptism. Through the water to new life.¹

So we shouldn't be surprised when we find that one of the best-known Jewish renewal movements took shape as a new-exodus movement, and a crossing-the-Jordan movement. Jesus' cousin John believed it was his calling to get people ready for the long-awaited movement when Israel's God would fulfill his ancient promises. He called people out into the Judean wilderness to be baptized (the word means literally "plunged") into the Jordan River, confessing their sins. Through the water into God's new covenant. They were to be the purified people, the new-covenant people, the people ready for their God to come and deliver them.

Jesus himself submitted to John's baptism. He was identifying with those he had come to rescue, fulfilling the covenant plan of his Father. And as he came up from the water, God's Spirit descended on him like a dove, with a voice from heaven declaring that he was God's true Son, Israel's Messiah, the king. Jesus saw his kingdom-movement as starting with that symbolic new-exodus action.

But he also saw it pointing to the action with which his ministry would reach its climax. HE spoke on one occasion about having "a baptism to be baptized with"--and it became clear that he was referring to his own death. As we saw earlier, he chose Passover, the great Jewish exodus festival, as the moment to act symbolically to challenge the authorities, knowing what was bound to happen next.

Jesus's own baptism and his carefully planned Last Supper both point back to the original exodus (the coming-through-water moment), point behind that to the original creation itself, and finally point on to Jesus's death and resurrection as the new defining reality, the moment of new covenant. And to achieve that renewal it was necessary to go, not just through the water and out the other side, but through a deeper flood altogether. All the multiple layers of meaning that were already present in baptism were now to be recentered on the event of Jesus's death and resurrection. Through the water into God's new world.

That is why, from the earliest Christian sources we possess, Christian baptism is linked not just to Jesus's own baptism, not just to the exodus and the first creation, but to Jesus's death and resurrection. St. Paul, in one of his earliest letters, speaks of being "crucified with the Messiah" and coming through into new life; and in his greatest work (the letter to Rome) he explains that in baptism itself we die "with the Messiah" and come through to share his risen life. The spectacular, unique events at the heart of the Christian story happen to us, not just at the end of our own lives and beyond (when we die physically and, eventually, when we rise again) but while we are continuing to live in the present time. Through the water into new life of belonging to Jesus.

That is why, from very early on, Christian baptism was seen as the mode of entry into the Christian family, and why it was associated with the idea of being "born again." Of course, not everyone who has been through water-baptism has actually known and experienced for themselves the saving love of God in Christ sweeping through and transforming their lives. At various points Paul has to remind his readers that they have a responsibility to make real in their own lives the truth of what happened to them in baptism. But he doesn't say that baptism doesn't matter, or that it isn't real. People who have been baptized can choose to reject the faith, just as the children of Israel could rebel against YHWH after having come through the Red Sea. Paul makes that point in 1 Corinthians 10 and elsewhere. But they can't get unbaptized: God will regard them as disobedient family members rather than as outsiders.

In particular, we can now see why Christian baptism involves being plunged into water (or having it poured over you) in the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The point is that the story which baptism tells is God's own story, from creation and covenant to new covenant and new creation, with Jesus in the middle of it and the Spirit brooding over it. In baptism, you are brought into that story, to be an actor in the play which God is writing and producing. And once you're onstage, you're part of the action. You can get the lines wrong. You can do your best to spoil the play. But the story is moving forward, and it would be far better to understand where it's going and how to learn your lines and join in the drama. Through the water to become part of God's purpose for the world.