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.”
