Text: Mark 1:4-11
I have a question for you this morning: Why do we baptize people?
I’ve asked this question many times over the years as a pastor. The answers I get vary. For some, it’s an assurance of eternal life or heaven – the divine insurance policy. For others, it’s an initiation rite – you’re symbolically baptized into the body of Christ after accepting him as your Lord and Savior. Others, it’s a cleansing of sin that raises us up to a new identity in Jesus. That’s the classical Lutheran understanding – our sinful selves are put to death and are raised up by God to new life in Jesus.
Now, for some, these answers raise more questions:
Should we only baptize infants, adults, or both?
What do you have to do before being baptized? Accept Jesus? Confess your sins? Take a class with the pastor?
What happens to us if we’re NOT baptized? And what about children who die before they are baptized, what happens to them?
Now, these are not easy questions to answer, nor are the answers simple. Yet, people give such answers, and those answers can be rather traumatizing. Sadly, many theological reasons for baptism have caused great harm to people, enough to make them turn away from faith and the church. In fact, a number of years ago I came across a website that offered people who felt they were harmed by the church a chance to get “unbaptized.” There was an actual ceremony with a liturgy, they asked the person if they wanted to undo their baptism, and if they said yes, the person leading the ceremony would “unbaptize” the person by turning on a blow dryer and ceremoniously dry their heads. People would applaud at the end, and the unbaptized even got a certificate as proof of the event.
Now maybe this sounds ridiculous to you. However, the Church has done a lot of harm to people in its history, and perhaps, you’ve experienced this too.
But with all this in mind, I bring you back to my original question: Why do we baptize people?
The story of Jesus’ baptism in Mark is the shortest of all the gospels. It is straight to the point: Jesus is baptized by John, the heavens are torn apart, and the holy spirit descends on Jesus and God’s voice says, “You are my Son, the beloved, with you I am well pleased.” What I find interesting in Mark’s version is that it suggests people did not witness anything special about Jesus’ baptism – there is no mention that others saw and heard what Jesus did when he came up out of the water. Only Jesus witnessed the heavens opening and heard the voice of God. Missing also are verses that suggest Jesus’ was a public event and that it legitimized his authority over John the Baptists. Instead, Jesus’ baptism was a very personal event in which God affirmed that Jesus was loved and pleasing to God, and God’s special Son.
Why do we baptize people? I think so often, the Church spends a little too much time on people’s sin – pointing out the faults and failings of others while minimizing our own. What I am not saying is that we should avoid talk of sin and the need for repentance and confession completely – that is an important thing. However, when it becomes the ONLY thing we talk about, it can be harmful, traumatizing, and it is no wonder that the pews of churches seem emptier these days. Jesus’ baptism, as told by Mark, reminds us of the most essential part of the good news of God in Jesus Christ: God deeply and personally loves us as God’s own. We are pleasing to God, just as we are, and not a more perfect, higher achieving version of ourselves. This is why we baptize people, and it is why Luther said we should remember our baptisms daily – because we can never hear this personal message of God’s love and acceptance enough.
There is a catch to this: while the blessing of baptism is personal, it does not mean that it is private – or, only for us. As I mentioned before, there are people – hurt by the church in the past, marginalized by the church in the present, and sadly, are told they are eternally excluded from God’s saving love by the church for all time. May our hearts be moved by the baptism we share with Jesus Christ – and may we be moved to share the good news of baptism – as the church - in the ways we speak, act, and live. Amen.