Baptism and Belief
A sermon on the occasion of Brad’s baptism, 12/5/26, preaching on Mark 4:26-32
Faith and Baptism
The Gospel readings are parables, and hence difficult to preach on. There is a great temptation to try to explain “what Jesus really meant”, as though he wasn’t capable of speaking in a perfectly straightforward way when required. Part of the point of them, the reason we are still reading them and talking about them all these years later is that they have this mysterious power, and defy simple readings.
So, here we have grain, sown in the earth, which leaps up out of the ground all by itself, ready for the harvest. The tiny mustard seed springs forth into a shrub so big that it becomes a hospitable home for all birds of all sorts of different feather.
What do they mean for the life of faith in God, who revealed himself in Jesus Christ?
The reformers back in the fifteenth century wondered about this as well, when they asked: What is the “faith that saves”?
They considered that you could think about it in three ways.[1] Firstly, noticia. You need to take notice of the facts about Jesus, the claims of the creeds, and so on, in order to have any opinion about it whatsoever. Then, assensus – one needs to assent to the truth of the faith. I’m not going to lie – there is a very long-running argument about what, precisely, it is you need to assent to, so tonight we are following ancient tradition and going with the Apostle’s Creed as a short summary. And, finally, you need fiducia. You need fidelity. You need, essentially, to put your trust in Jesus as saviour and lord. Or, as Paul puts it, you need, like Abraham, “the righteousness that comes by faith.” You need to step out, trusting in the promise of God.
You need all three aspects of faith. If it’s all fiducia and no assensus, you get trust in an unspecified “divine” can get woolly pretty fast. Without the testimony of Scripture, without Jesus’ revelation of God, what reason do we have to trust God? What reason do we have to trust that “the arc of history is long but bends towards justice”?
Alternatively, if it’s all assensus and no fiducia, you get this odd sense of faith as being a fascinating series of ideas. As though, after death, you could expect to encounter St Peter as the divine invigilator at the great exam hall in the sky, and woe betide you if you get the question about the Trinity wrong!
Obviously here we spend a lot of time in noticia and fiducia. But, even though I am going to ask Brad some questions on behalf of the congregation – indeed on behalf of the church as a whole – the act of baptism is quite a strange fit with the tenor of the questions.
It feels as though the questioning should conclude with a hearty handshake and the handing over of a certificate. Something like graduating and shaking the Chancellor’s hand, as she or he gives a well-practiced smile to the camera. I’m sure a lot of us have a variant of that photo hanging up somewhere in our houses.
A nice, neat, pragmatic awarding of a membership certificate.
Instead of which we are going to engage in this weird, ancient ceremony. It is the opposite of neat – our little team has spent a surprising amount of the last week trying to figure out how to do it in a way which doesn’t lead to a collapse of the floor or water getting into the extension leads, leading to a dramatic solution to our building problems.
So it definitely isn’t neat, and it shouldn’t be.
Because it is not “nice” or “pragmatic” either.
It is definitely ancient. John the Baptizer, famously, baptised people in the River Jordan, and his followers practice regular baptism to this day. But, as far as I understand it, no-one really knows where the tradition comes from. The Old Testament, for instance, isn’t full of people baptising one another. Anointing one another with oil, yes. Praying with hands outstretched, very much so. Clergy dressing up in special clothes, absolutely, and in ways which make contemporary ecclesial clothing seem pretty informal.
But Baptism, not so much.
Of course, Jesus was baptised by John in the Jordan, leading to generations of first year theology students pondering the question of why that was necessary, given that Jesus was without sin?
(The answer, as revealed unto me by my Introduction to the New Testament lecturer, was that Jesus was baptised in solidarity with the rest of us.)
The word “baptism” means immersing. Jesus said that he had a baptism to endure and was impatient for it to be over. That is, he had to be immersed into suffering and death, in order to do what he was sent to do. And, making the link to tonight, the Apostle Paul talked about being baptized into Christ’s death.
Think about the deep watery desert which covered the earth at the beginning of Genesis, when a “wind from God”, or perhaps the spirit of God, or perhaps the one symbolising the other, hovered over the face of the deep. It’s the place where God has not yet brought new life.
The primordial waters of chaos, the depths of the ocean, are a risky place. It’s all very well body surfing on the waves, carefully keeping between the flags where it is protected by lifeguards. Being out, way past your depth, the tide dragging you inexorably away from the land – that’s what the waters of chaos mean. Being baptised is being drowned with Christ, of being sucked down into the foundations of the world with him.
When we talked about baptism in my ministerial formation, they said the water should be “deep enough to drown in” because that’s how the symbol works. That’s why full immersion baptism is the recommended process, because it is such a powerful way to convey that symbolic death.
It is like the seeds in the parable, scattered and hidden under the ground. The life of faith is not just assensus faith, it’s not really about thinking the correct thoughts. It is about being joined to Christ, and, through that, joined with everyone else who has done the same thing.
This is a long, long way from the idea that faith is having the correct beliefs about God. It is much more like being buried in the ground like a seed. It is much more like being taken down into the chaos of the world, the chaos of ourselves, swept off our feet.
However the Spirit of God doesn’t just stay hovering over the limitless sea. God brings new life where there was only welter and waste and says: this is good.
Baptism is not just being drowned with Christ. Baptism is also coming up out of the water, springing up into new life, like a field of wheat white unto harvest, like a fast-growing shrub.
And, like the wheat and the mustard shrub in the parables, it is new life for something. The wheat is for harvesting, for making bread for humanity. The strong branches of the mustard shrub becomes a place where all sorts of birds can make their homes.
Baptism is part of immersing yourself in God’s call on your life, a life with and for others. A life like the life of Jesus, who came not to be served, but to serve.
To be baptised into Christ is to join him not only in his death, but also to share his risen life. It is to be brought into the life of the Three-personned God, where the love between the Father and the Son overflows to create the whole world, in coming in person to redeem it, and in drawing us into the ongoing work of God in the world. It calls us forth to become ambassadors of God’s ongoing work of reconciliation. To be ready to be made into bread, for the sake of the world. To be a shrub where many different birds can come and go and be safe. To be joined to the one who has taken the weight of the sin of the world on his shoulders and transformed it into blessing.
To be baptized is to be brought into the life of the one triune God, the one who loves each of us individually, specifically, and by name. The one who will never abandon us.
[1] First enunciated by Melancthon in Loci Communes in 1529.