Baptism, spiritual milk

Baptism – spiritual milk

“Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation.” 1 Peter 2.2

There’s a difference between the way that American Baptists baptize and British Baptists. Although both baptize adults by immersion in water.

In my former life as a Baptist minister, I would stand up to my waist in water and with one hand on the collar and one on the solar plexus of the adult candidate, I would propel the person rapidly backwards until the water closed over their face.

It was dramatic and messy and time will not permit me to tell of my adventures in trying to raise a 24 stone lady from the bottom of the baptistry, or of the very chic white cotton Italian trousers I decided to wear one evening. As I walked down into the pool, they turned completely transparent.

My first baptism in an American Southern Baptist church was a revelation. No unseemly dunking and splashing for them. The candidate held a cloth over their nose and mouth and were very gracefully and slowly eased back under the water as the lights dimmed and the organ played seraphic music.

The pastor of the church explained to me that, as baptism represented being buried with Christ, it was more appropriate to lower the candidate lovingly into the grave, than to throw them into it.

The NT imagery of Baptism is indeed of dying and rising in Christ; of being buried with him in death and reborn to a new life in his resurrection. This is why the language of the baptismal liturgy is so stark and uncompromising: ‘Do you reject? Do you turn? Darkness and light.’

And this is why traditionally we baptize during this Easter season in which we celebrate new life springing from the death of Good Friday and Winter.

It is a natural, and we would say God-given instinct to hope for personal continuation after death. In today’s Gospel, Jesus promises us that we will be with him in his resurrection life. Jesus shows us that our human instinct to hope for more after death, is not just whistling in the dark. Through his death and resurrection it is the Christian hope of glory. This is the faith of the church which Gus will join this morning through baptism.

But of course baptism is only a first step along the road to spiritual maturity. Peter reminds us in this letter, that just as babies quite naturally crave for their mother’s milk, so we should continue to long for spiritual nourishment throughout our lives.

We have all been given the gift of new life in our baptism. Do we pursue this spiritual life and feed it with these other sacraments of bread and wine? Or do we starve our spiritual life, until it simply withers away to religious sentimentality?

Baptism is a reminder to all of us of our baptismal vows. It is reminder that if we wish to live life fully, then we must live by the power of God and in loving dependence upon him.

“Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation.”

Good Shepherd

The Good Shepherd

Ezek 34.11-16; John 10.1-20; 1 Peter 2.19-25

“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” John 10.11

Politics – ‘in it for themselves’
- lucky in Britain – not fleecing us (etymology)

Jesus arguing with Pharisees – the supposed spiritual leaders – the shepherds (like bishops)

More like hirelings – the hired hands (vv 12, 13)

In the scriptures of the Old Testament, the image of the shepherd is a symbol of divine government, and of human government, too, as an imitation of the divine.

Jesus' authority as shepherd, as governor of our lives, is established in his great act of paschal sacrifice: "I lay down my life for the sheep."

The idea of Jesus as the good shepherd is a popular and attractive image, which has inspired centuries of Christian devotion, and I suppose there is no passage in the whole of scripture better-known or more loved than the twenty-third Psalm, with its picture of divine shepherding.

But the image is almost too cute. It is too easy to be sentimentally attached to the image, and thereby overlook the deeper levels of meaning it implies.

In the earliest expressions of Christian art, the paintings which adorn the walls of the catacombs - those narrow labyrinthine tunnels which served as burial places in the early Christian centuries - a favourite theme is Jesus as the good shepherd.

It is natural and obvious enough, of course, that the Risen Lord should be represented as shepherd of the dead. But it's not just that. Jesus is represented there as shepherd of the stars - the universal, cosmic shepherd: the Son of God. He is shown as "the power of God and the wisdom of God," (1 Corinthians 1.24) that is, the good governor of all that is, shepherding all things to their appointed end. Even the mighty Roman Empire which was busy oppressing the church.

The image of the good shepherd is fundamentally an image of divine government, an image of the universal providence of God in Christ. But it is infused with the meekness of the Lamb of God, for Christ is both shepherd and lamb.

One of Dr Spooner’s celebrated ‘spoonerisms’ was to remember that ‘God is a shoving leopard!’ This is the strength and moral demand of God; and yet the loving shepherd displays the self-giving and careful patience of God with human waywardness.

When I lived in Torquay, I knew a young couple who were sheep farmers out on the moors. I would often spend my day off with them.

At lambing time, there were sometimes orphans left, whose mothers had died in giving birth. And then of course there were those mothers whose lambs were still-born or who died soon after birth.

Hungry little lambs and mothers with no young to suckle; want and plenty side by side.

But to match up these needs, the shepherds had to undertake a rather gruesome operation. They must take blood from the dead lamb and smear it all over the little orphan. Only then would the mother accept the lamb as her own and feed and nurture it.

And so this rich imagery of shepherding; of death and life, is seen supremely in this mass; we are redeemed by the blood of the Lamb; accepted in the beloved; clothed in the righteousness of Christ.

This is the Good Shepherd who is Governor of all things and who orders our universe; this is the Good Shepherd the bishop and guardian of our souls, our loving friend and brother; this is the Good Shepherd who loved us and gave himself up for us. This is the Good Shepherd who calls us to follow his example in self-giving care of one another, in our exercising of authority here in church; or in the workplace, or in the home

“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” John 10.11