Tag: Water Baptism

Water and Fire

Psalm 29:1-2, 11 Ascribe to Abba God, you gods, ascribe to Abba God glory and strength. Ascribe to God the glory due God’s Name; worship Abba God in the beauty of holiness. God shall give strength to God’s people; God shall give God’s people the blessing of peace.

Introduction

I don’t know about you, but I’ve had moments in my life where I have felt the heavy blankets of shame, disgrace, and regret. The dastardly thing about these emotions and feelings is that they never tend to stay on the surface, pinned to the exterior of the epidermis. They sink in deep, infecting the heart, mind, soul, the very being of a person. There isn’t enough soap and water hot enough to get at the dirt. There are times when I want to crawl into the shower and stay there, under the hot streams, until I feel clean, hoping beyond hope that the water cascading down, pouring over me would–somehow—penetrate through my flesh and cleanse my heart and mind, my soul and self, washing away these children of malfeasance. In the end, though, it’s just water, it can’t and won’t do the very thing I needed it to do. These are times I need something more than just water, I need divine fire. Under that falling water, I need to remember my confession: please forgive me Lord, a sinner. But I can’t stop there, I must press through that confession and remember this: In the name of Christ, I am Baptized. With Martin Luther, it’s here, in remembering my baptism where I am exposed by my confession and brought through that death into new life, placed deep in the presence of God through the purifying fires of faith in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

John answered and said to the people, “Indeed, I, I baptize you [with] water; but one comes who is stronger than me for whom I am not fit to untie the strap of his sandals. He, he will baptize you with [the] Holy Spirit and fire.” (Lk. 3:16)

In chapter 3, Luke brings us face to face with John. According to the first part of chapter three, John, the son of Zechariah, is going about the region of the Jordan proclaiming a baptism of repentance (vv. 2-3). In v. 7, people are coming to John in the Jordan to be baptized, and he is verbally exposing them and exhorting them to better life lived in the world (vv.7-14). Due to this interaction, the people begin to wonder with excitement that John might be the Messiah (v. 15).

Luke tells us John senses this building excitement and wonder about his role in God’s activity in the world, and quickly nips all speculation in the bud, Indeed, I, I baptize you [with] water; but one comes who is stronger than me whom I am not fit to untie the strap of his sandals. He, he will baptize you with [the] Holy Spirit and fire (v. 16). John makes a clear distinction here between the baptism he offers in the coming reign of God and the one Jesus will offer. His cleanses the outside, Jesus’s will cleanse not only the outside but also the inside. Luke has a couple of objectives in mind by placing these words on John’s tongue. First, at the time of writing, there were factions remaining of those who followed John and those who followed Jesus; for Luke, not even John wants anyone following him because he is one who points to Jesus (his is more prophet[1] than Christ).[2] Here, Luke, through John, places articulated emphasis on the baptism that Jesus will offer as the superior baptism to his water baptism. While both water and fire clean, only fire will purify.[3]

Luke’s second objective: to expose the significant difference between John’s baptism and Jesus’s (it’s not only that one is more powerful). The bigger difference is that one baptism includes receiving something. Where John’s baptism is a baptism of repentance and being washed clean with water (full stop), John does not claim to give anyone anything to fill the now vacant spot washed. But, according to Luke’s John, Jesus does. What is this gift? The Holy Spirit. The believer, the one who is baptized with fire and the Holy Spirit, receives the Holy Spirit in Jesus name via baptism. In other words, John’s baptizands aren’t empowered with anything, they’re just washed clean; Jesus’s are.[4] Those who receive the baptism of Jesus with fire and the Holy Spirit also receive the Holy Spirit and it is this “paraclete” (according to the gospel of John) who exposes and who empowers Jesus’s followers (i.e. through exposure and exhortation, or the growth discussed in the book of Ephesians) into the way of wisdom, love, and truth[5] and will continue to do so long after Jesus ascends.[6]

John then retreats to some rather intimidating imagery of judgment. Who has his winnowing shovel in hand to thoroughly purify his threshing floor and collect the grain into his grainery, but the chaff he will consume entirely [by] unquenchable fire (v. 17). Again, there are two important things being articulated here. The first is the comparison of Jesus and his baptism with fire and the Holy Spirit as an act of judgment,[7] or, what I would call “exposure”. The winnowing shovel is judgment; to winnow is to separate the chaff from the grain. For Luke’s John, Jesus comes with a winnowing shovel to judge by exposing everything to fire (judgment). This winnow shovel language echoes back to what John said at the beginning of the chapter about the axe being laid at the base of the tree to chop down those trees that are fruitless.[8] Thus judgment is clearly and explicitly intended here and no one is escaping divine fire! But, (and second) how Luke relays this winnowing is important: it’s in the past tense; as in: it’s already happened. Return to the imagery with me, one will come with a winnowing shovel and the grain will be collected together while the chaff is burned in the unquenchable fire. Thus, the winnowing has already been done by the time the collecting together of the grain and the burning of the chaff. In other words, for Luke, John has winnowed and Jesus will collect and the left over unusable parts will be burned up. Those who respond positively to John’s call for baptism by water will be the grain that is gathered up by Christ and baptized by him. [9] According to Luke, John is the fork in the road; if you are open to repentance baptism, then you are open to what comes when the Christ shows up. [10]

Then our passage closes with the well told story of Jesus’s baptism in the Jordan with John. Here Luke solidifies Jesus’s dual identification with God and with humanity;[11] demonstrating that Jesus is, without need of repentance, in solidarity with humanity’s plight (needing repentance) [12] as well as in solidarity with God’s mission in the world to bring absolution (the purification with fire and the Holy Spirit) to the beloved. As one of the many people in the Jordan, Jesus, too, is baptized; yet, as the one who is God’s son, he is recognized by God as God’s own by the opening of the heavens (v.21), and the Holy Spirit like a dove[13] came down bodily upon him, and a voice out of heaven came about, “You, You are my son; with you I am well-pleased” (v. 22). According to Luke, Jesus is the Son of Humanity and the Son of God, the one through whom God’s redemption comes[14] and through whom humanity will be both restored and represented in the heavenly realms.

Conclusion

To be baptized of water, to be cleaned by water is great; to be baptized with the Holy Spirit and God’s divine fire in the name of Christ is the call of anyone who follows Jesus out of that Jordan on that day and every day after that. Something I find interesting here is that this passage speaks not of two different fires but of one. Just like it is one light that illuminates the darkness, sending the darkness to its demise while illuminating that which is in the room; so does the divine fire that comes with the Christ send that existential and spiritual dirt to its demise while rendering the beloved object of that fire new and pure. The very thing that sends me into the hot shower to cleanse from head to toe is obliterated life chaff sent to the unquenchable fire in my confession and my recollection that I am baptized in Christ and with the Holy Spirit. Yet, I, in my flesh and in my soul do not escape that fire, but suffer through it like pottery in a kiln or gold in the refinery; what is left of the fire that surges over and through me is what is collected and stored in the grainery to serve and participate in God’s mission in the world, following after Jesus and walking within the same sand impressions left behind by my savior as he left the water. In my confession and in my need for Christ, I am summoned out of and away from death (chaff) and placed in the heart of God’s love, given new life, and sent forward in liberation renewed by faith and empowered by the Holy Spirit. That which is sentenced to death (my guilt, shame, regret, anything that hinders me from new life) is burned up forever, and that which is sentenced to life abundant (me, myself, and I) are refined and collected up into the grainery to be used by God in the world to God’s glory and the wellbeing of the neighbor, God’s beloved.

We, as God’s beloved, are called to walk through the one fire and to let God take what is chaff and burn it up completely and purify and refine by the baptism of Christ that is with God’s Holy Spirit and fire that which is to be collected as grain. In the event of faith, we, as God’s beloved, are brought into death and through it, finding ourselves resurrected on the other side, purified and made clean, inside and out, to be as Christ in the world, to represent God by word and deed, and to identify with the suffering and plight of our neighbors.

[1] Gonzalez, Luke, 50. “Thus what John is saying is that he is not even worthy to be counted among the lowest servants of the one whose coming he announces…In brief, Luke presents John as perhaps the greatest among the prophets and as the heir to the long line of leaders of Israel who significance was announced in that they were born of barren women; but even so, John cannot even be compared with Jesus.”

[2] Justo L. Gonzalez, Luke, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2010), 50. Luke is emphasizing Jesus over John “This is an important point for Luke, who apparently was writing at time when there were still those who claimed to be followers of John but not of Jesus and such views had spread beyond the confines of Judea to Diaspora Judaism…”

[3] Gonzalez, Luke, 51. “John baptizes with water; but Jesus will baptize ‘with the Hoy Spirit and with fire.’ Both water and fire are purifying agents; but fire is much more potent than water. Water may wash away whatever is unclean; but fire burns it away.”

[4] Gonzalez, Luke, 51. “Thus in Lukan theology there is a difference between a baptism of repentance, which is what John performed, and baptism in the name of Jesus, which is connected with receiving the Holy Spirit. John calls people to repent, and when they do this he baptizes them as a sign that they are cleaned of their former impurity. But Christian baptism, while still employing water, is ‘with the Holy Spirit and with fire.’ It is a cleansing (fire) and empowering (Holy Spirit).”

[5] Ernesto Cardenal, The Gospel in Solentiname, translated by Donald D. Walsh (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2010), 54. “Octavio: ‘The Holy Spirit is Wisdom.’
Julio: ‘It’s love for others.’
Gloria: ‘And the fire is love too.’
Eduardo: ‘Because it gives light and warmth.’
Tere: ‘And also because it purifies.’”

[6] Joel B. Green, “The Gospel of Luke,” The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids): Eerdmans, 1997), 180. “The conjunction of the Holy Spirit and fire in this baptism is puzzling within the context of Luke-Acts. The Holy Spirit has been present repeatedly in 1:5-2:52, where such roles as empowering and guiding were paramount; for Luke thus far the Holy Spirit has been a manifestation of eschatological blessing and an empowering presence critical to God’s redemptive mission. Baptism ‘with the Holy Spirit,’ then, must surely be related to these themes even if other connections of the Spirit with cleansing and purging are also in view. Fire, too, can have this meaning, and it may be that the figure John anticipates will administer s single baptism of refinement and empowerment.”

[7] Gonzalez, Luke, 51. “Furthermore, fire is a sign of impending judgment. John had declared that the axe was now at the root of the tree, so that a fruitless tree would be cut down and burned. Now something similar is said about the coming of Jesus: he comes with a winnowing fork in order to separate the wheat from the chaff, saving the former and burning the latter.”

[8] Gonzalez, Luke, 51. “Furthermore, fire is a sign of impending judgment. John had declared that the axe was now at the root of the tree, so that a fruitless tree would be cut down and burned. Now something similar is said about the coming of Jesus: he comes with a winnowing fork in order to separate the wheat from the chaff, saving the former and burning the latter.”

[9] Green, Luke, 182. “…the language John uses actually presumes that the process of winnowing has already been completed. Consequently, all that remains is to clear the threshing floor, and this is what John pictures. This means that John’s ministry of preparation is itself the winnowing, for his call to repentance set within his message of eschatological judgment required of people that they align themselves with or over against God’s justice. As a consequence, the role of Messiah is portrayed as pronouncing or enacting judgment on the people on the basis of their response to John.”

[10] Green, Luke, 182. “…it is important to realize that John presents his baptismal activity as an anticipation of the Messiah’s; his baptism forces a decision for or against repentance, and this prepare for the Messiah’s work…”

[11] Cardenal, Solentiname, 56. “One of the women said: ‘to give us an example. He didn’t need baptism but we did, and he did it so we would do it when we saw that even he did it.’” And, “Somebody else said: ‘And he could also have done it out of humility. He was with his people, with his group, and he wasn’t going to say: “I don’t need this, you do it, I don’t have any sin.” The others, the Pharisees, might say that, the ones who didn’t follow John. Not Jesus, he goes along with the others.”

[12] Cardenal, Solentiname, 56. “Alejandro: ‘You could also say out of solidarity. So he wouldn’t be separated form the group.’”

[13] Cardenal, Solentiname, 57. “‘It wasn’t that a dove descended, because it doesn’t say that a dove descended but “like a dove.” A dove is a soft and loving little animal. And the Holy Spirit is loving. It was the love of God that descended upon him.’”

[14] Green, Luke, 187. “The purpose of the divine voice in 3:22 is above all that of providing an unimpeachable sanction of Jesus with regard to his identity and mission. Working in concert with the endowment of the Holy Spirit, this divine affirmation presents in its most acute form Jesus’ role as God’s agent of redemption. This accentuates Jesus’ role as God’s representative, the one through whom God’s aim will be further presented and worked out in the story, but it also demonstrates at least in a provisional way the nature of Jesus’ mission by calling attention to the boundaries of his exercise of power.”

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Borders and Boundaries, Dismantled and Destroyed

Psalm 98:1-2 1 Sing to Abba God a new song, for God has done marvelous things. With God’s right hand and God’s holy arm has Abba God won for the victory.

Introduction

God’s boundaries are not our boundaries. This is something that’s hard for us to grasp. Historically, religious institutions formed and cultivated boundaries around who can and cannot access God. Creating in-groups and out-groups; allowing domination to sow discord and compliance through threats of shame and isolation for disobedience or different. While these impulses are often initiated with a desire to be true to God and God’s will materialized in time and space, they often—over the course of time—become archaic dogmas long grown rancid thus detrimental to human thriving. The clerics within these institutions find themselves upholding the institutional ideologies and becoming the guard-dogs of traditionalism, becoming the means through which malevolent power wields its sword against the people in the name of God. Both the official leaders and the people so led are caught up in these human-made boundaries and before any of them realize it, the whole kit and kaboodle has moved far off the mark, relinquishing the divine Spirit to maintain human control.[1]

But God’s boundaries are not our boundaries. God’s boundaries are fluid and move and flex. The movement of God through history demonstrates that divine space and time defies orderly categories soothing to nervous human consciences. What was is never all there will be. While we like to create systems and ideologies giving us assurance and allowing us to sleep in comfortability, the reality is that God’s way is not our way and because of this we are (regularly) summoned out of a life suspended in stasis into a life grounded in evolution. We are (regularly) invited to participate in the flux of the divine revolution of life, love, and liberation in the world: we are called to go along with God’s radical movement in the world on behalf of the beloved.

If this sounds weird, let me tell you the story of Peter and the celestial sheet of animals…

Acts 10:44-48

…for they were hearing them speaking languages and magnifying God. At that time Peter answered, “Hence, no one is able to (has the power to) to hinder the water from these to be baptized who have received the Holy Spirit just as we [have received]?” (Acts 10:46-47)

Our lectionary drops us off at the tail end of chapter 10 of Acts. This is unfortunate. Chapter 10 is a hinge chapter in this book, setting up the fulfillment of the thesis of the book of Acts articulated back in chapter 1 (vv. 7-8): “Now [Jesus] said to them: ᾽It is not for you to know the times or seasons [God] has set by [God’s] own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.᾽”

So, let’s back track a bit. At the beginning of chapter 10, Peter is found in Joppa in the tent of a tanner (an unclean person). Joppa is well outside of Jerusalem but still within Judea. Thus, Peter has moved with Gospel proclamation from Jerusalem into the outer regions of Judea. Also, in chapter 10, we are introduced to Cornelius: a gentile centurion of Caesarea; Caesarea is within Samaria. Samaria was a region of Jewish faith that was not Israel and was outside of Judea and considered unclean; Samaritans and Jews proper did not get along (hence, the offense of the “Good Samaritan”). This same Cornelius receives a heavenly vision and is told to fetch Peter from Joppa and bring him to Caesarea. Thus the inaugural clear and present movement of God’s feet breaking through human-made boundaries. Every border and boundary is about to collapse.

Meanwhile, back in Joppa and before he is fetched by Cornelius’s men, Peter has a vision. A large sheet descends from heaven and on it is every kind of animal—impure and unclean. A voice from heaven tells Peter, “Get up, Peter. Kill and Eat.” Peter declines. The summons goes out again. Peter declines again. Then one more time, the divine voice commands Peter to “Get up; kill and eat.” After this the sheet returns the way it came and is gone. For Peter the command to eat one of these animals was to participate in defiling himself, making himself unclean and impure. But for God, “‘Do not call anything impure that God has made clean,’” (10:15b). Dietary restrictions, marking a group clean or unclean, are eliminated. Not only does God defy human-made geographical boundaries oriented toward keeping some externally in and some out, but now there is no distinction internally, too. Boundaries and borders are dismantled and destroyed.

So, in our passage we find Peter already at Cornelius’s home. He’s spoken with Cornelius who shares with him his story. Then Peter gives a speech about the radical movement of God moving from Jerusalem unto the ends of the earth, a fulfillment of Acts 1:8. As he finishes his speech, the Spirit falls upon everyone within Cornelius’s home who listened to Peter’s words. Those who are clean (Peter) are now joined to the (formerly declared) unclean (Cornelius and his family), the Children of Israel are yoked to the Gentile converts by Spirit baptism; [2] this then moves Peter to declare who can withhold the waters of baptism from those who believe and who have received the Holy Spirit as we have? The answer to this question? “No one.” (Because the way the structure of the sentence occurs in Greek it demands a negative response.) God moves and then we follow; God touches and we respond; God comes low to be with us…we do not go high to find God.[3]

Conclusion

In this passage we see God transcending boundaries and borders, ones made by human beings. In other words, and to refer to Willie James Jennings on this passage, “We are the boundary and border God has transgressed, and that transgression is real. Here at the site of miracle, space and time are being given for Jew and Gentile together to press in deeply to the caressing of God through the flows of water on the body and the joining of our bodies together and to the body of Jesus.”[4] In other words, God has bent the rod of time and space in such a way as to make our bodies the locus of God’s movement in bringing the ends of the earth together. In this moment, no one is clean or unclean; they are just the beloved of God whether circumcised or not, whether Jewish or not, whether clean or not because all these identities and markers are false binaries holding no water because God’s water, the water of baptism, knows no male and female, child of Israel or gentile, slave or free (Gal. 3:28);[5] nothing—not time, space, geographical region, time in chronology—can prevent transcendence and transfiguration.

Baptism—of both water and Spirit—renders our preconceived notions of in and out, us and them obsolete and pointless.[6] In and through Baptism, we are brought through death into new life that is of a new (timeless) time and of a new (spaceless) space where human-made boundaries and rival groupings are history, byproducts of an old and dead life lived apart from God and faith in Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit.[7] Here, in and through the Baptism of water and divine Spirit, the followers of Christ are called to participate in and with God deconstructing boundaries and borders prohibiting God from being with the beloved.

[1] Jennings, “Acts,” 114. “This is the border not of God’s desire but of our need. Our senses are dull and our attention weak. We are easily distracted by other things, drawn so deeply into obsession with these things that we will worship them and make them our gods. We must have the space and time in which to have our senses trained to understand authentic divine touch. We must have the time and space to learn the way of Spirit caressing flesh, holding it, moving it, directing it toward life and light.”

[2] Willie James Jennings, “Acts”, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2017), 114. “The waters of baptism signify the joining of Jew and Gentile, not simply the acceptance of the gospel message.”

[3] Jennings, “Acts,” 114. “The Spirit confronts the disciples of Jesus with an irrepressible truth: God overcomes boundary and border. God touches first. God does not wait to be touched by us. This is the boundary not of our failure but of our truth. We cannot reach up to God and bring God down to our embrace. We are creatures. Yet God takes touch seriously and initiates the embrace.”

[4] Jennings, “Acts,” 114-115.

[5] Jennings, “Acts,” 115. “This is what God wants, Jews with Gentiles, Gentiles wanting to be with Jews, and together they eat and live in peace. This is surely not the eschaton, not heaven on earth. It is simply a brief time before the chaos and questioning descend on Peter and the other disciples who will following the Spirit, before the returning to the old regime, and before the lust for the normal returns.”

[6] Jennings, “Acts,” 115. “Both these questions will haunt the apostles and the church built on their witness. Yet the greatest event of this story comes after the miracle of baptism. It is the beginning of life together, ‘Then they invited him to stay on for several days’ (v 49).”

[7] Jennings, “Acts,” 115. “…in a quiet corner of the Roman Empire, in the home of a centurion, a rip in the fabric of space and time has occurred. All those who would worship Jesus may enter a new vision of intimate space and a new time that will open up endless new possibilities of life with others.”

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