Immersed in the Sprinkling

There’s something special about baptism. And there’s something truly special in denominations as mine that practice infant baptism. Holding a baby in your arms, giving vows to the parents, and watching the water drip from your fingertips and splash upon the head of a child is magical. It’s the most precious thing I do. I hesitate a bit to say this, lest it become a jinx, but so far, in forty-one years of ministry, not one child has cried.

Baptism is magical. Some of us do not come to it as infants. And, despite the fact I was born into a truly Methodist family, I was not baptized as an infant. For me baptism came in my early teens. And I will never forget that day.



The Reverend Charles Solomon had come to our house on several occasions to talk with me about my desire to join the church. He’d talked to me about Jesus and the commitment I was asking to make. He shared with me his love for Christ, and on a Sunday morning in June at the 11:00 service of The First Methodist Church of Smyrna, Georgia, I came to the altar, took my vows, knelt down at the altar on the left side of the sanctuary and, in a moment now frozen in time, I was baptized. I didn’t see the water, but I felt it. And I heard the words, “Guy, I baptize (splash) you, in the (splash) name of the (splash) Father, and of (splash) the Son, (splash), and of the Holy Ghost. Droplets of water ran down the side of my head and found a channel behind my ear and then rolled down toward my chin. There they left me, shaken loose into the pull of gravity by the shaking of my body.



My heart beat in my chest. There were tears running down my cheeks. I was now a wet mess, but I had given my life to my Jesus and the world was never going to be the same.



I didn’t hear the sermon that morning. I sat beside my daddy lost in the wonder of it all. My daddy patted my knee then put his arm around my shoulders and hugged me to himself. He was no longer just my daddy; now, he was also my brother in Christ.



I know this will be hard for you to believe, but when the benediction was pronounced and I walked out the doors of that church, everything was the same.

Mickey Brinkley was still my friend and we got into some trouble the very next day. And what’s more horrible than that, I, the newly baptized Christian, found myself back behind Billy Bane’s house not more than two weeks later making out like mad with Billy’s sister. I was a newly baptized wet on the head and behind the ear child of a loving God sliding down the slippery slope of adolescent discovery.

Life became a little more complicated after that. I knew I had given my life to Jesus, but Janet Bane sure could kiss. I knew there was a reason that we Methodists favored the juice Mr. Welch produced, but that stuff, also made from grapes, that Mickey’s daddy produced down in his basement had a bit more robust flavor and, certainly, a more noticeable kick.



On Sunday I’d sing “Oh, How I Love Jesus,” and on Monday … Well, Monday and Tuesday and other days of the week … I was a growing, curious, secular, but still seeking, baptized child of God.

Gosh, it would have been nice had everything changed after that. You know everybody in my peer group knew I had been baptized. Why, then, did my friend Mickey tempt me into helping him shove that potato up the exhaust pipe of our principal’s car? I had been brought into the folds of the redeemed. Janet knew that. Why then did she insist that I swap spit with her? Didn’t these people know who I was? I was God’s child. I was Jesus’ partner. And I was a baptized child who still sinned. Oh, woe is me.



I’d like to tell you that it really was “Oh, woe is me.” I’d like to tell you this struggle of the secular and the sacred within me caused all sorts of anguish within my soul. But, it didn’t. I went to church on Sunday. And I made out with Janet on Tuesday. I went to Bible Study on Wednesday, and I pulled some prank with Mickey on Friday. And it didn’t bother me a bit. I could completely separate the two. — Does that make me and you kin?

But that did not stop me from approaching my second baptism. It was at another church altar, this time the altar of Glenn Memorial United Methodist Church on the campus of Emory University. I knelt again at the altar and again on the left side. This time a bishop came to me. And the bishop put his hands on my head. Oh, how heavy were that little man’s hands. And he said, “Receive now the authority ….” And I started sobbing uncontrollably. Something I had not expected had happened. I was supposed to have been ordained, and I was, but I was also baptized again.



And they sent me to pastor a church. And this time life was never the same. Life was never the same because I was now “set apart.” And, to be honest, things were never the same because some of the people who sit in the pews are hard to deal with.



I am firmly convinced that the day I knelt as a teen at the altar of the First Methodist Church of Smyrna, Georgia, and felt those droplets of water running down my head, I took the first step that led me to the altar of Glenn Memorial Church where I was set apart to labor for Jesus. I am also convinced that every kiss I got from Janet, and every day of restriction I got from the pranks Mickey and I pulled was prelude to that moment of ordination. It just took me a while to understand what was going on.

Bishop William Willimon tells of a church meeting he attended once where folks were giving testimonies. At one point a fellow stood and proclaimed to everyone, “I was a Methodist for thirty-eight years before anybody told me about Christ.” Bishop Willimon said that really bothered him, but what bothered him the most was the man sounded so smug about it. He made out that he’d had some instanteous experience recently that washed away everything in his past. Well, thought the bishop, what about all those teachers who put up with him as he was growing up and going to Sunday School? What about all those preachers who tried their best to tell him about the gospel? What about all those Christians who tried to tell him that Jesus loved him?



Almost everyone in this room is baptized. But almost everyone in this room, in one way or another, acts as though we’ve been Methodists for all these years and no one ever told us about Jesus. Well, hey, yes we did! You just were not ready to act on it.



And acting on it may not be what you’ve envisioned. I’ve got to tell you, being baptized was not at all what I expected. I thought I’d be a saint. I wasn’t. I’m not. But I was different.

When we are baptized we put on the righteousness of Christ. It’s a gift. When we are baptized we don’t become righteous. We put on the righteousness of Christ. We are not righteous. He is. And as we grow in our faith we can become more and more comfortable in our righteous clothing. We begin to reach out to those in need. We begin to want to provide direction to those who are lost. We begin to give comfort to those who feel abandoned, and healing to those who are sick.



But we don’t become sinless. And we don’t become better than others. And we have not reached a point in the state of our grace where God makes us the arbitrator over what is sin and what is not. We just become more and more aware of who we are and whose we are.



When Charles Solomon sprinkled the water upon me, as I’ve told you, nothing magical happened. That bothered me. It haunted me for years. I didn’t realize then the celebration of that baptism was but my initiation into the fellowship of the believers. I was not righteous. Jesus was righteous. I was not without sin. Jesus was without sin.



The same thing happened at my ordination. It was not me; it was Jesus.

There’s a line in today’s lesson that I’d never noticed that much before. It says in the 21st verse, “Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened,” When all the people were baptized; and when Jesus was baptized, too. They were in it together.



I had my initiation into the kingdom of God. It happened when the waters ran off my head and down behind my ear. And Jesus had his baptism into my kingdom when he came to John to be baptized like me. Think about it: me in Jesus’ kingdom. Jesus in my kingdom. What a marvelous mystery.



Brett Blair tells of jazz musician who told Brett that he’d been baptized a second time recently. The musician said, “I needed to do it again because the first time didn’t mean very much.” It seems the man had been struggling with the same things we struggle with. We’re baptized into what we think is going to be something and then we behave like it was something else.

Brett said he was put off with this concept. In our faith, baptism is something God does. And re-baptism is not something we consider. Baptism is a one-time thing. Baptism is the initiation into the Christian community. The first baptism is the only one that counts. And sometimes we just don’t know that.

From the day that water ran down my head and behind my ear, the rest of my entire life has been but a response to that one event.



And that’s the way it was with Jesus. “Now when all the people had been baptized. And when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying the heavens opened.” Jesus had been initiated into our world of sin and doubt. And everything in his life from that point forward was a response to this one event.

Have you been baptized? If so, then all of your life from that point to this has been a response to that one event.

Comments

[Carolanne]

Thanks for sharing this story, QP. Seems like being baptised doesn't change who we are but changes who we are becoming.... like.