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It's Who We Are                        Ephesians 4: 4-6                   March 22, 2009

This morning, instead of my typical sermon on the text for the week, I'm going to tell you everything that I know about baptism.

Baptism, you see, is important. Very important. Because if you cut through all the stuff that divides us and separates us as people of God - if you cut right down to the bone - what you find is that "baptized" is who we are. "Baptized" is our identity.

The author of the New Testament Book of Ephesians calls himself Paul. This Paul, whom scholars argue could be either The Apostle Paul or, more likely, a disciple of his, is responsible for the most often quoted saying about baptism in all of scripture.

"There is one body and one Spirit," Paul writes in his letter to the Ephesians, "just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all."

The audience for this letter is the group of baptized Christians who lived in Ephesus - in what was then the most important city in western Asia Minor. Ephesus was at an intersection of major trade routes. It was the home of an early Christian church, and it was also the home of a pagan temple dedicated to the Roman goddess Diana.

So to this land of competing Gods and Goddesses, Paul writes, testifying to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. There is only one Lord, he says. One faith. One baptism.

A little earlier, when we participated in the baptism of the newest member of our congregation - young Giovanni Gagliardi - we baptized him into the same faith that Paul proclaimed nearly two thousand years ago, and we promised, together, to provide opportunities for him to learn of and grow in that faith.

"One baptism," Paul writes. But is there only one?

The Bible, in point of fact, speaks of many baptisms.

When we think of baptism we normally think of John the Baptist. But John the Baptist didn't create baptism. It had been practiced for centuries among the Jews. It was a spiritual cleansing - the ritual equivalent of Confession.

In the Jewish tradition, this spiritual cleansing took place in a special pool called a mikvah (literally, a pooled collection of water), and was done to remove impurity and sin. Jewish males participated in this baptism weekly, on the eve of every Sabbath. Women did it monthly.

Perhaps the women had fewer sins to wash away.

Jesus' cousin John adopted this ritual and preached a baptism of repentance to prepare for the coming Messiah. And later, Jesus himself transformed this baptismal ritual into the one, single, definitive act by which we celebrate the beginning and developing of our faith.

If I'm counting correctly, that makes three baptisms so far: the spiritual bathing of the Jews, John's baptism of repentance, and Jesus' baptism. Later in the New Testament, the Gospel writers also talk about the baptism of fire. "One who is more powerful than I is coming after me;" Matthew quotes John as saying, "He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire."

According to Mark's Gospel, Jesus also mentions what has been called the baptism of the cross or the cup. "You do not know what you are asking," he says. "Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?"

Paul also weighs in on the subject. In his first letter to the Corinthians, he writes about the baptism of Moses, saying, "I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea."

Stick with me, friends. It doesn't stop there, but we're almost done. The Gospels also reference the baptism of believers, and in Acts, Luke writes about household baptisms.

Let's add them up. The ritual cleansing of the Jews, John's baptism of repentance, Jesus' water baptism, Jesus' baptizing with fire, the baptism of the cup, the baptism into Moses, the baptism of the Holy Spirit, the baptism of the believer, and household baptism. That's nine different baptisms mentioned in the Bible.

"One Lord. One faith. One baptism," says Paul. But which baptism was he talking about?

The question gets even more complicated when we turn to Church history for answers.

In the Second century, A Bishop named Irenaeus first mentioned infant baptism. A little later, in the early part of the Third Century, in Northern Africa, another Bishop, Hippolytus, argued for baptism by immersion, but allowed that pouring water over the head of the candidate was acceptable, if there was not enough water for total immersion.

Hippolytus also said, "Baptize the children first, and if they can speak for themselves let them do so. Otherwise, let their parents or other relatives speak for them."

In the Fourth Century, the Roman Emperor Constantine was baptized shortly before his death. Actually, by that time many people put off getting baptized until they were near death, so that they could continue living a sinful life as long as possible.

In later centuries, the divided church continued the argument over baptism, and practiced it in a vast variety of modes and manners. The Roman Catholics sprinkled. The Mennonites poured water over the head of the candidate, a practice called effusion. The Anabaptists insisted on immersion. And the Greek Orthodox Church immersed the candidate face down, three times-in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

For us, as Moravians, the mode of baptism is not important. Over our history, we have practiced immersion, pouring and the mode I used today, sprinkling - which turns out to be more of a gentle wetting with the fingers than an actual sprinkling. More importantly, we recognize the validity of the baptism of any Christian church. And we do not re-baptize people who have already been baptized in another denomination.

All of this seems really confusing, I know, so let me see if I can simplify it. Baptism is three things, really.

First, it is a gift from God. It is a sign - a symbol - that God forgives our sins and welcomes us into the church - not just this Church, but the church of Jesus Christ. All of us who have been baptized are, again in the words of Paul, "dead to sin and alive to God."

Second, baptism is for a lifetime. Once we are baptized, we are never the same again. We have been initiated into a body of Christians that spans the centuries and reaches into all of the corners of the earth. It is not possible to undo our baptism. God's love and forgiveness, freely given, cannot be taken away.

And finally, baptism answers, for us and for all Christians, the all-important human question, "Who am I?"

As sophisticated, twenty-first century members of society we already know that who we are is determined, in part, by our genetic coding, by the care our parents provided to us when we were developing, by the order of our birth, and by a host of other factors - nature and nurture they are sometimes called - that combine to make us who we are.

Our baptism reminds us that while we may be all of those things, we are also connected to something that is greater. That God is in us and we are in God. Our baptism calls us to be all that we were created to be.

It's who we are. Thanks be to God. And welcome, Giovanni, to the family of the baptized.

                                                                             AMEN

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