Scripture: Genesis 1:1-5; Luke 3:21-22; Genesis 3; 1 Peter 2:9; Romans 6:3-4
Baptism is pure gift and the action of God initiating us into the covenant family, grounded in creation’s waters and Jesus’ own baptism, which is why the tradition baptizes infants, refuses re-baptism, and trusts God’s grace over our sin on the way to perfection.
Illustrations: big-bend-carrying-water, oreo-dunked-in-milk, jewish-mikveh-ritual-bath, by-water-and-the-spirit, ordination-perfection-questions, seashell-baptism-symbol
September 14, 2025
Baptism
Genesis 1:1-5 Luke 3:21-22
When God began to create the heavens and the earth, the earth was complete chaos, and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. - Genesis 1:1-5
Now when all the people were baptized and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” - Luke 3:21-22
My family loves to go out to Big Bend at least once a year. We often go backpacking in the Chisos Mountains in the backcountry.
One of the big challenges of hiking in the Chisos and hiking in Big Bend in general, is that you have to carry your own water. There’s a spring that’s sometimes running, sometimes not running in the backcountry, but it’s incredibly unreliable. And so you need to bring your water. It’s a little cooler up in the Chisos than it is on the desert floor. It’s a completely different biome than the rest of the park. You still have to carry your water.
When you carry your water, it teaches you to appreciate how precious your water is: how much water is used to clean your dishes, how much water is used to climb up a mountain, how much you need to have a sip in the middle of the night and to have enough water to make it home down the mountain.
Series Intro
Today we are continuing our series on the stained glass windows at Covenant with this window over here signifying baptism. Baptism is a practice that has been controversial for at least the last 500 years. Baptism is one of those things we do as Christians without fully understanding it. There is a wonderful doctrinal statement of the United Methodist Church on baptism called By Water and the Spirit, which I would be happy to share with people, and I agree with, and I think it’s lovely. It starts with our condition.
As told in the first chapters of Genesis, in creation God made human beings in the image of God — a relationship of intimacy, dependence, and trust. We are open to the indwelling presence of God and given freedom to work with God to accomplish the divine will and purpose for all of creation and history. To be human as God intended is to have loving fellowship with God and to reflect the divine nature in our lives as fully as possible. Tragically, as Genesis 3 recounts, we are unfaithful to that relationship. The result is a thorough distortion of the image of God in us and the degrading of the whole of creation.
But that is not the end of the story.
While we have turned from God, God has not abandoned us. Instead, God graciously and continuously seeks to restore us to that loving relationship for which we were created, to make us into the persons that God would have us be. To this end God acts preveniently, that is, before we are aware of it, reaching out to save humankind…Through Christ’s death and resurrection, the power of sin and death was overcome and we are set free to again be God’s own people (1 Peter 2:9). Since God is the only initiator and source of grace, all grace is prevenient in that it precedes and enables any movement that we can make toward God. Grace brings us to an awareness of our sinful predicament and of our inability to save ourselves; grace motivates us to repentance and gives us the capacity to respond to divine love In the words of the baptismal ritual: “All this is God’s gift, offered to us without price”
We then get to our view of sacraments:
God’s presence in the sacraments is real, but it must be accepted by human faith if it is to transform human lives. The sacraments do not convey grace either magically or irrevocably, but they are powerful channels through which God has chosen to make grace available to us.
Then we get to baptism
In baptism the Church declares that it is bound in covenant to God; through baptism new persons are initiated into that covenant. The covenant connects God, the community of faith, and the person being baptized; all three are essential to the fulfillment of the baptismal covenant. The faithful grace of God initiates the covenant relationship and enables the community and the person to respond with faith.
When we look at the Scriptures, there are a number of different things going on at baptism. For instance, in the passage I read today, we have Jesus being baptized. We have John the Baptist baptizing those who come before him, and then Jesus is baptized. Now, sticking to the word itself, baptizo in Greek, simply means to putting into water. Baptism was John the Baptist getting the people into the water. This is important because not every time the word baptize is used in the Bible should we be thinking about the sacrament of baptism. For instance, if Oreos existed in ancient culture, the act of dunking an Oreo in milk would have been baptizo.
So that’s what the plain meaning of the word is, but something changes with Jesus. In ancient Judaism and even in present-day Judaism, there is a step of ritual purification that takes place if you’re to convert to Judaism. It is called a mikveh. There are excavation sites in Israel of these old synagogues that have what looks like baptismal fonts. This doesn’t mean that they were Christian churches. They were for the mikveh. Christians took this practice and transformed it.
We see from the beginning, in Genesis, creation was blessed through the water. The waters were there. The Spirit flowed across the dark waters and brought forth light. Water and our relationship with water go back to our very beginning. It wasn’t a new thing for Christians to be into water
Getting back to John and Jesus in the Jordan, in the act of baptism, the water was sanctified as Jesus submitted to it. And I really want to hold onto this for us, this astonishing aspect that in Jesus Christ, the God of all creation became human, not just a human, a child. An infant, a bundle of needs, as I like to say. And when he grew to a certain age, submitted to another. The God who created everything submitted to someone in creation in order to take on this calling, to sanctify this action.
Now, that question Christians have had about since that time is, is the baptism that Jesus received the same baptism that we receive? I think the answer is plainly no. It is not the same, but it is connected. It is made possible because of what Jesus did, both in that first baptism, but also on the cross.
In Paul’s letter to the Romans, less than twenty years after the death of Jesus, we have this language of being baptized in Christ’s death and rising again in Christ’s life. Baptism consists of these twin actions: submission and resurrection. Whether you’re a child, an infant, or an adult, to be baptized is to submit to being baptized. To concede it. You can’t baptize yourself.
For an infant, the first part of baptism is done as a child. The second part is done later with confirmation. Now it’s not contingent, the gift is all there at the beginning, but you have to step into it. We’re baptized into Christ’s death and rise into his new life as a new people, as a part of a new people. Baptism marks the entry into the family of God. It is a gift. It is pure gift.
This is one of the main reasons why our tradition baptizes children, because we see baptism as a gift. It’s not contingent upon the person seeking baptism. It’s not contingent upon their age. It’s not contingent upon their awareness. Other traditions, like the Baptist tradition, believe in believer’s baptism. That You have to believe and ask for baptism in order to be baptized, otherwise it doesn’t work. In this way, however, it’s no longer a gift. It’s a work that you do. It’s no longer grace.
Another aspect of our tradition other than baptizing children is we don’t believe in re-baptism because we don’t believe that God makes a mistake in baptism. If Baptism is the action of God, then whether someone is a child or a grown-up, it’s still gift and still God’s action. We believe that people can turn away, that God gives us free will, but God did not make a mistake. And our entry into the kingdom of heaven, into the community of the faithful, is still valid. Whether we backslide, whether we turn away from the Church, whether we sin greatly, baptism is valid and given to us by God. Baptism is not an offering to a perfect people, but a mystery given to help us on our way towards perfection. Completeness. When I was ordained in the United Methodist Church, two of the questions I was asked were, “Are you going on towards perfection?” and “Do you think you will be there in this lifetime?”
I had to answer yes to both of these in order to be ordained. I easily did, and here is why. This is not perfection in a sense of never making a mistake. It’s perfection in being completed by God. I struggled with this for a long time before ordination, with this part of our tradition, because it seems so contrary to the empirical evidence of my own life and existence; the sins I know I’ve done and do.
The claim is not that I’m such a good person that I’m going to get to a point of sinlessness. It’s that my sin is not greater than God’s love. Let me say that again in a different way. It is believing more in God’s grace than my sin. Do I believe in my sinfulness more than in God’s power to save? If I do, then being perfected in love is impossible. If I believe more in God, then it is a possibility and a hope.
Traditions that speak against perfection lift up human sin and fallibility over God’s love and God’s power and the possibility of God sanctifying us. And I’m just going to side with God on this one. I’m going to side with God on this one over myself. Coming back to baptism. Whether you were baptized as a child or as an adult or you haven’t been baptized before, you are already loved. I would recommend it. I would offer it. It is a gift. Baptism is a gift. This step of submission, acceptance. This step of new life is a gift.
If you would like to be baptized or if you’d like your children to be baptized, please come and talk to me. If you don’t remember your own baptism, remember it through the people who were there. Remember it through your family, through your friends. We have a service of remembering our baptism every January, but I want to do an optional one today.
We have water this morning up in our baptismal font. If you want to take a moment during the last praise song, come forward and touch the water and remember your baptism and be thankful.
And as you come into this holy place and you see this seashell, remember it stands for baptism. And whatever day that is, may you remember yours and be thankful.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.