St Stephen On-The-Cliffs

Do you remember the day of your Baptism? Probably not, I suppose, for a number of good reasons, one of which may have been that you were a baby, and it may even be that your Godparents have even forgotten the promises they made on your behalf – that’s one of the reasons I have no objection to there sometimes being so many Godparents – maybe at least one will remember! Our baptisms may well have been done in a quiet church, by a priest softly saying the words and pouring a small amount of water over our heads so as not to disturb us, or make us cry, or have a little accident, for all these things can be on our minds as we hold the baby! But today we hear of quite a different type of baptism. By all accounts, John the Baptist was no cosy figure and offered little to soothe. He was fierce, outspoken, direct, outlandish looking, and lived a strange kind of life. Soon he would be removed by execution for daring to question the establishment.

To come to John was to be cut down to size and jolted into repentance. Jesus went to him not as a child but as an adult and took even John by surprise in doing it. This was no setting for the Saviour, the all-powerful and sinless one. It was a place of repentance; it was a time of humility before God to which everyone was flocking, none of them were asked to fill forms out, none of them were questioned about the role of a Godparent, none of them had to wear a white dress – the wish to repent and change was sufficient. What was Jesus Christ doing there? He who created the water and divided the waters and the land Himself now plunges from one to the other as the voice of the Father thunders from heaven – the world is created again, dynamically, suddenly, as creator meets creation and all is recreated to prepare the way for that which Baptism signifies – the joining of humanity to divinity, the Word in flesh is submerged and the word of the Father consecrates Him as he rises. It’s the eighth day or creation, and awesome to behold.

Something new was coming to birth from the waters of the Jordan. Water that is womb, Adam and now a new Adam. There had been a parting of the waters of the Red Sea to allow God’s people to escape from slavery; Moses and now a new Moses. Christ divides the water to complete the Old Testament, the final exodus, the final pillar of fire, the new Adam rises and the Father testifies as to His divinity. The tomb of Adam is empty and the womb of life opens, out of the depths the Word shouts and from the heavens the Father comes. In the Son we see God sharing our materiality and submerged by the weight of sins he did not commit but took on. We were not saved from a distance by a Saviour who kept himself invulnerable. An ark survives the flood and this ark of the Body of Christ survives death and asks us all to become part of it, in this same, way, through Baptism. The dove brought a sign that the flood was over and now the Father announces that the plan for salvation has begun – what a beautiful day and what a beautiful thing we do in Baptism, forms or no forms!Our own baptism may well have been a tame ceremony, but its effects through Christ are matters of life and death, and by it we are involved in mysteries that change the world. Today’s feast completes that of Christmas day and the Epiphany, showing us just what a distance Christ travelled from the life he shared as God with the Father and the Spirit whilst remaining the Son of God. Christ journeyed to us with a purpose and not in vain and this day the purpose is revealed – that we can find salvation and forgiveness and belonging in Him. On Good Friday, Jesus would again be humbled and then executed. For him to be born at all was already a descent, a self-emptying of glory, and his whole life and ministry among us were often in obscurity. When Jesus was finally brought down, down from the cross, they put his corpse out of sight in a tomb, submerged in stone.

In today’s feast of the baptism of our Lord, we reconnect with that day when he was submerged in water at the river Jordan. Yet as the Gospels tell us, the Father never took back his love for his Son, and the Spirit came to him.Because of all this, we too are baptised by water in the name of the Trinity of unbreakable and saving love. The Church has been made into our ark of salvation; the baptismal font is tomb and womb and we are His family, because He has lived and died that we can live and die in Him. Baptism really isn’t about the water, it’s about the whole creation shouting in joy because it has brought forth a saviour, and He has brought us life.

St Stephen On-The-Cliffs

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