The Sacramental Waters of Our Baptism

The Water Isn't the Half of it...

Devotional Texts

11/1-3/25 From: "50 Days of Promise", Week-4: THURSDAY—My Thoughts 19—Confessional Moments

11/1-3/25   ...1,102 days living into sobriety.

Scriptures: Psalm 23, GENESIS 28: 10-22, Ephesians 1, Phillipians 2: 1-18

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.

• For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.

• In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.

• In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, in order that we, who were the first to put our hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory.

• And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit,”

Ephesians 1:3-6, 11-13 NIV

Why Less is More

We evangelical Christian are so taken with our own spoken word that we miss The Word living and acting within our moments, each moment.

Now, our spoken and lived moments are often worthy of celebration as they are life giving, nurture a good and God blessed narrative in and between us as families and communities. That's why we spend so much time remembering birthdays, retreats, games, high school, college, weddings, infant baptisms, 1a national holidays and such.

The value of such human moments is greatly diminished when we take our word, our memory as the main thing when in truth 'something and someone' for whom the day or hour commemorates is passed by. A few beers, jokes, and sparklers fill the evening set aside to celebrate our forbearers triumph over impossible odds to make of us a free people. It's not that the back yard suds and barbecue is bad. Quite the opposite. It's that it's not what it could be. The minor narrative has misplaced the originating narrative of existence.

As a child of the Church and in a church that said Baptism is a sacrament (Word from God to us) that's how I—in the first three decades of my life—felt after my own baptisms. Yes I said baptisms, as in more than one.

In highschool I asked to be baptized again, thinking that I must have just been too young to have experienced it meaningfully. 1b My pastor, my dad, wasn't theologically equipped to tell me, and for good reason, that I couldn't be baptized again; that God hadn't taken his Word back and said. "Wow, Terry, I'm sorry that you think a do-over is necessary because the 'emotional atmosphere' has changed between us. When did you think I had ripped up my commitment to you at Nazarene boys camp in McCall Idaho?"

As usual The Father patiently listened to my reasoned objections as to the adequacy of that 10 year old baptism, before continuing. "Yes son, the water was cold, like ice. Yes, it was held in an artificially charged revivalist atmosphere, separated from cousins, uncles, grandparents, your closest friends, your mom and dad and pastor and more importantly your church. And. no, I wouldn't have done it that way. I much prefer what your pastor at today's Baptismal celebration did as the whole family gathered to create a larger narrative, a memory. But,... what's that Terry?"

Payette Lake, Victory Cove Camp, McCall, Idaho

It would be a few decades later, past my re-baptism (as opposed to reaffirmation of my original baptism) at 17 years of age that God finished the conversation. I was in my 40's and on a devotional roadtrip with God, seated in my car, looking out into the waters of Payette Lake in  McCall, ID at exactly the same camp and place of my baptism, when my experience and theology of Baptism became sacramental.

"Terry," God continued his conversation with me from decades earlier. "I was there, with you and the church gathered at Payette Lake, Pilgrim Cove Camp, when you were immersed under the clean, pure, cold waters of the Northern mountains of Idaho. I am The One whose Presence makes all things new and enters before you and at that moment with you into the death, burial and resurrection of your life in me." As I'm too wont to do, I interrupted my Father in heaven. "But God, I blew up that second baptism just like I did the first by sin. I ruined my testimony." (I've always been anxious that God get his theology down correctly. After all, God was beginning to sound like a Clavanist.)

Sometimes it would be helpful if The Trinity of God, would just interrupt my confessionally based arguments. Instead, I'm just allowed to hang myself. Still, following my heartfelt desire to keep it real, God gently but firmly described 'real'. "Seriously, Terry, you thought this whole journey was dependent upon a 'word' by you?" 'Well', I thought to myself, 'when you put it that way?' My thoughts evidently betrayed me as The Father redefined Baptism.  "Terry, there never has been a deficiency in my promise and Presence poured out upon you that morning."

In that moment and enlarged with every passing day since, I began a journey recognizing that It is not my testimony or witness that first matters in Baptism, but God's of me.

A Sacramental Presence Leaves the Initiative with God

In The Sacrament of Baptism The Church was celebrating with me:

1. The Father, "who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ" (Ephesians 1: 3b), and;

2. From that heavenly place—in between the Father, Eternal Son and Spirit, "in accordance with his pleasure and will—to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves"  (Ephesians 1: 5b-6), and;

3. With the imagination and vision of who I will yet become, God the glorious Father, together with The Son who ever intercedes on our behalf praying that The Spirit "may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better" and... "that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe" (Ephesians 1: 17b-19a), and;

4. The reality is that before the first rock was created our Baptism in Jesus of Nazareth was fixed in the heavens. God chose us to be, "in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight, ... in accordance with his pleasure and will" (Ephesians 1:4-5 NIV), and finally;

5. God  in Christ, commits to work "out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, in order that we, who were the first to put our hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory" (Ephesians 1:11-12 NIV).

Quite literally, The Waters of Baptism are filled with Christ, who promises to make actual in time and space what the Trinity of God dreams from before the first light explodes across the eons of time reaching us some 14 billion years into time and space. What's more, our loved lives become a continuing sacramental Presence in this world, "for the praise of his glory" (Ephesians 1: 12 NIV).

Our living testimony is significant, yes, but not as a promise of intent or identity, but as a living sacrifice or sacrament of life. It is a response to God's initiating sacramental life given in, around and through each molecule of H2O.  Paul describes our Divinely inspired and enabled human response. "And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory" (Ephesians 1:13-14 NIV).

Here's the critical, even Calvinist, insight into The Living Presence of God within our universe. Even our sin—assuming it does not grow from a self-destructive and chosen, willful, continuing violence upon the 'living memory' that is the Sacrament of Holy Communion—becomes part of God's redemptive work in us; part of the 'image bearers restoration.' We may totally blow our identity with Christ out of the water, as I have, and God remembers The Trinity of God's pre-history promise made in the great diluge which is our sin.

That is why Paul is so expressively joyful in Romans 11, reviewing in the whole of Old Testament, God's response to Israel's stubborn blindness as a temporary probem; looking forward too their coming salvation together with us; for "God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable. Just as you (Gentiles-The Other-non Jews) who were at one time disobedient to God have now received mercy as a result of their (Israel's) disobedience, so they (Israel) too have now become disobedient in order that they too may now receive mercy as a result of God’s mercy to you (Gentiles). For God has bound everyone over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all"

Doxology

Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!

How unsearchable his judgments,

and his paths beyond tracing out!

(Romans 8: 29-33). Then: 2

Making It Real—Personal

I've come to believe that we Protestants have way too low of an understanding of just how significant is the Jesus Incarnational event—to which Baptism points to and flows from. Quite literally this text and many others describe  the release of all humanity from the dominion of God's created spiritual entities who in rebellion stole authority over Terra Firma from humanity's nurturing care.

In the gospels the Gates of Hell (Hades), a spiritual retreat center in the north of Israel, is the place where it was perceived that the ancient gods escaped to and

rose from, in order to rule the near mid-east; going down into the underworld beneath a body of water nestled up against Mt Hermon. It was there that Jesus gathered his disciples to affirm, through Peter that he is

“the Messiah, the Son of the living God" (Matthew 16:16 NIV). To which Jesus said, “And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it" (Matthew 16:18 NIV).

The early church understood that Jesus birth, life, teachings, passion, death and resurrection changed everything for everyone.  That:

1. Humans were no longer condemned in their sin, The Satan was. On the night of his crucifixion Jesus tells his own that when The Spirit "comes, he will prove the world to be in the wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: about sin, because people do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; and about judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned" (John 16: 8-11). Jesus said more, theologically, on that night and in a short paragraph than he did thoughout the 3 years of his ministry. Sin is fundamentally about relationship or lack of relationship, not a legal offense. Righteousness is derivitive, a quality in the Father, shared in relation to Jesus and as a result of Jesus continuing high priestly prayers on each/all of us—every human. Condemnation is reserved for the Evil One who in turning from The Father gave birth to and nurtures still darkness, and;

2. The reign of death and sin that resulted from our parents first sin was broken and replaced by the resurrection power and Presence of God of God, increasingly realized. Paul focuses the need for atonement and forgiveness in terms of the systemic cross-cultural, bio-chemical, enviornmental, sociological, wounds and brokeness that flow from our first parents introduction of The Serpent's darkness into our enviorn and evolution as a species. Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned... Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come... Nor can the gift of God be compared with the result of one man’s sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ!" (Romans 5: 12,14,16-17). The reversal of this reign of death has begun, but first in The Trinity of God's heart, now reconciled to every human in terms of the systemic (enviornmental, bio-chemical-sociological) wounds, brokeness resulting for every human, and;

3. The only sense in which the justification and life giving renewal is provisional is our own personal sin, which is relational and hence not relized in us without our participation. "Consequently," as Paul concludes, "just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous" (Romans 5:18-19). God is reconciled to all humanity and The Trinity of God is near and engaged with every human person and community to make real in the earth what was already true in heaven itself, in the kindly heart of God towards all creation.

John the Baptist initially rejected The Messiah's (Jesus) request to be baptized, until Jesus said, "Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness.” Then John consented" (Matthew 3: 15). The ancient peoples believed that the gods, fallen angels and any other fallen hosts created by God lived in the chaos of the deep, the sea, the rivers and the underground (undreworldly) spaces of the earth. Jesus baptism was the surrender of love into the darkness that he likely, even then knew (or at least suspected) was coming. In this act Jesus of Nazareth was expereiencing in himself and vicariously for The Father, Eternal Son, and Spirit the real cost instide his mission; "that God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (II Corinthians 5: 21).

"As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”" As it was for The Trinity of God, it is for us who follow. Baptism is our participation in this new creation, defeating as Christ did in his own baptism, the power and reign of the underworld whose place of residence was the waters of the deep. In Christ's Baptism, we are released from the power of fallen human, angelic and other spiritual entities starting now and realized fully in the final, glorious renewal of all things and the resurrection promised. "Don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life" (Romans 6: 3-4). This is the reason Jesus commanded that we also are to be baptized.

Does our baptism represent a witness or testimony to others and to God? To be sure, it does and a critical one at that, as I witnessed so beautifully in my church recently. It is tragic, however, if we miss the deeper narrative, the deeper voice speaking from eternity and from the heavens. "This is my beloved son or daughter, in whom I find pleasure."

So, let us affirm anew that baptism is a meta-narrative of God's doing, our baptism the first witness to the very Promises of God that would make real what God promised. Only a sacramental understanding of the Spiritual reality at work can raise our individual testimonies into the very Word of God spoken to, in and through each/all of us.

Terry

3/3/25

#1a, 1b Enjoy a fictional narrative about Infant Baptism. I created this one for my grandson, Tanner at his own baptism as an infant.

Infant Baptism: Making What is True, Real

#2 "Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. 2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will b able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will" (Romans 12: 1-2).