A HOLY COLLISION!

        This Sunday a Holy Collision is taking place at First Baptist Church!  We are celebrating baptism—the baptism of Courtney Sams.  Courtney told me last night she was excited!  And she should be!   Everyone should be excited about the day of their baptism.  And if baptism is true and authentic, the excitement is only beginning and    life will never be the same!  

        Baptists, as you well know, baptize by immersion.  You will get wet!  Soaked to the skin!   I honor and respect the baptisms of different faith traditions; we accept all baptisms in our church because we believe that baptism can only be validated by God, not by a denomination.  But at the same time those who were only baptized as infants or even later by “sprinkling” miss the full impact.  There are many powerful Christian acts that we have, shall we say, “watered down,” behind the soft light of our stained glass windows and the antiseptic atmosphere of our church rituals.  Baptism was never intended to be a comforting little ceremony with warm fuzzy feelings, it was a Holy Collision between water, Word, and Spirit!

        Our Gathering this Sunday will hopefully set the tone for this service that will be anything but ordinary:  Yes, this is no “play it safe” Sunday. Today we celebrate this holy collision of water, Word, and Spirit. In celebrating the baptism of our Lord, we also remember our own baptism, our incorporation into the family of God, and into this wonderful, countercultural, dangerous discipleship journey. By water and Word God named and claimed us and gave us the gift of the Spirit. Nothing should ever be the same again; if it is, if the world is too much with you and you are distracted by worries and concerns then trouble those waters, my friend. Stir it up and remember whose you truly are. Let the grace and the wonder and the expectation wash over you again and again

            One cannot survive this Holy Collision and expect to return to normal.  When Jesus was baptized the heavens split open, the Word was proclaimed, and the Spirit descended like a Dove!  Whoa!   That’s powerful stuff.   Annie Dillard wrote these thought-provoking words:

        Does any-one have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping God may wake some day and take offense, or the waking God may draw us out to where we can never return.” (from Teaching a Stone to Talk)

            Our ushers are not going to lash us to our pews Sunday!  (It’s an interesting thought, is it not?) But we are going to do something we have never done before!   (Mercy!)   

        Courtney will carry a small pitcher of water with her to the baptistery.  This will symbolize the faith that has been passed down from one generation to the next.  Courtney’s family goes back several generations in our church.  The pitcher will also will have water from the Jordan River, the river where our Lord was baptized.  We have done this before, only this time, after Courtney is baptized, I’m going to fill up the water pitcher and ask her to bring it back into the sanctuary with her.  Then, I am going to fill up 10 more water pitchers, and hand these to our youth who will place them in front of the pulpit.  We are taking water out of the baptistery!

        What do we do with the water after our baptism?  Do we simply dry off, get dressed, go to Southern Lunch and talk about how good it was?   Or do we put on our crash helmets and life preservers, and go forth into the world in the power of the Spirit, forever changed from the powerful collision of water, Word, and Spirit!  Do we go forth as the hands and feet of Christ to fulfill the mission that Jesus proclaimed after his baptism in his hometown of Nazareth: “THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD IS UPON ME, BECAUSE HE ANOINTED ME TO PREACH THE GOSPEL TO THE POOR. HE HAS SENT ME TO PROCLAIM RELEASE TO THE CAPTIVES, AND RECOVERY OF SIGHT TO THE BLIND,
TO SET FREE THOSE WHO ARE OPPRESSED, TO PROCLAIM THE FAVORABLE YEAR OF THE LORD.”

          At the conclusion of the service as we sing our closing hymn, “Shall We Gather at the River,” our ushers will come forward and take the water pitchers, full with the waters of baptism, to each exit from the Sanctuary.   As each worshiper leaves the church, he or she will be invited to dip their hand, if they dare, into the water!   It will be a reminder of our own baptisms and a commitment to live as baptized people, cleansed by the water, called out by the Word, and changed by the Spirit! 

        I hope to see you Sunday!  It will not be business as usual at old First Baptist!