Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, rcl yr c, 2022
Baptism
Hosea 11:1-11; Psalm 107:1-9, 43; Colossians 3:1-11; Luke 12:13-21

We are going to have a baptism today. And if you are saying to yourself, “well this is an odd Sunday for a baptism,” you’d be right.

We usually do baptisms, when we can, on the four baptismal feasts on the calendar: on The Baptism of our Lord, Pentecost, All Saints, and especially for adults, on the Easter Vigil. All of these feasts have baptismal themes of different kinds: when we celebrate the Baptism of our Lord we celebrate the fact that Jesus has gone before us, sanctifying the water of our own baptism; on Pentecost, we celebrate that we are reborn not simply in water, but in the Holy Spirit as well; on All Saints, we celebrate that in baptism we become one among a great chorus of saints through time and all over the world; at Easter, we celebrate that in baptism, we rise out of the darkness of death and into new life with Christ. So when we can, we baptise on days in the calendar that amplify the meaning of baptism.

But we can’t always wait for just the right day, either. Anyone who has been a hospital chaplain can tell stories of emergency baptisms. When life is threatened, we don’t even expect that a priest or a deacon, or in extreme cases, we don’t even necessarily expect a Christian would do the baptism. Anyone willing to baptise someone near death, so long as there’s water, and that the baptism is done in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? It’s a baptism.

In such emergencies, we rely on the fact that the person doing the baptism isn’t really all that important, because we are relying on God’s action when someone is baptised, not human action. We are confident that, if the desire for baptism is there, then God is at work in that desire, and in that very simple action of water poured and the Holy Trinity invoked.

Thankfully, today, no one is near death! That’s not why we are baptising Nashia on an unusual Sunday for a baptism. There is some duress, and some need to get her baptised, and for two reasons. Firstly, that Nashia needs to be baptised for her wedding in Nigeria a wedding that will take place in a short few months; and secondly, because Nashia was unaware that she wasn’t baptised until she needed to produce the baptism certificate for the wedding. Nashia thought she was already baptised! And so in a way, what we are doing today, is setting something into order that Nashia didn’t know was out of order. And all in time for her wedding.

But it poses an interesting question, doesn’t it. What does it mean to live the Christian life without being baptised? Is that possible?

Well, it is. The New Testament has a lot of stories about the Holy Spirit being active, and people receiving the Holy Spirit, before water baptism. And, it seems that people receive the Holy Spirit sometimes after water baptism. So we can be sure that the Holy Spirit will blow where it wills, and well outside our own rites and rituals.

All I would say though, is that even as we point to the Holy Spirit moving in people before, and after, water baptism—much like we see that the Holy Spirit has been at work in Nashia’s life despite not having been baptised with water—even as we affirm our awareness of the Holy Spirit apart from water baptism, we aren’t always immediately aware of the movement of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes we feel the Holy Spirit in our own lives, and sometimes we see the Holy Spirit at work in the lives of others. But the Holy Spirit is also at work when we don’t even feel it. Sometimes we simply rely on God’s promise, rather than our feeling, that we have been given the Holy Spirit.

And one of the times we are sure that the Holy Spirit is at work is in water baptism. And what this means is that each one of you, baptised perhaps as an infant, perhaps as an adult, you have been given the Holy Spirit, and you have been given a gift of the Holy Spirit—a gift that may be preaching or teaching, or administration, or hospitality, perhaps pastoral care or wisdom, or showing mercy, and many gifts in between—each of you has been given a gift given for the building up of the church. Gifts given for the building up, and never for the tearing down, of the people of God.

 And so let us be thankful today that the Holy Spirit will blow where it will, before baptism in Nashia’s life, after baptism for many others of us, but above all may we be thankful that the Holy Spirit is most certainly at work in baptisms like we celebrate today: baptisms in water, and in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Let us give thanks for the Spirit especially, at work in us for the building up of the community of saints, right here in Kitchener, and right here at St. John’s.

The Revd Dr Preston Parsons