andygoodliff: 40 Days of Baptism: 15

If you want to know what being Christian is about, a good place to start would be to read Rowan William's little book Being Christian, where he explores baptism, the Bible, the eucharist and prayer. Below is a (longish) section from a talk +Rowan gave in a visit to the Diocese of Gloucester in July 2012, but which follows quite closely part of the chapter on baptism in Being Christian.

I think one of the important things we often miss about baptism in its New Testament sense, in the sense it’s been given throughout the Christian centuries, is that baptism is meant to put you somewhere, to put you were Jesus is. Because being immersed in Jesus is, of course, to go where He goes.

When St Paul in 1 Corinthians uses, a bit surprisingly, the language of the Israelites being “baptised into Moses” when they came out of Egypt, what he seems to be saying is that the Israelites go where Moses goes. They are immersed in Moses’ destiny, and so where he goes they are carried with him.

And so it is that when we are immersed in Jesus, we go where He goes.

Now where exactly does that take us? I'm going to suggest that there are three kinds of neighbourhood into which baptism takes us. And I begin with the picture that’s presented to us in the Eastern Orthodox tradition of the baptism of Jesus, where He’s shown not only immersed in the water of the River Jordan, but also standing over chaos. At his feet, in some of the Eastern icons of the baptism, you will see a rather shadowy figure who is supposed to be the river god, the power of chaotic nature, underneath it all.

Jesus’ baptism is a descent into the depths out of which new creation comes, the depths of watery chaos, because this baptism is like the very beginning of all things. Just as the Spirit comes down upon the chaos in Genesis 1, and brings out of it a world, so Jesus descends into the chaos of this world. And the Spirit comes down upon Him, to equip Him to begin the new creation.

So our baptismal place is with Jesus as He goes down into that human chaos, with the Spirit (as it were) pouring down after Him, so that up from that watery chaos comes new creation, just as the world emerges from the Spirit hovering over chaos at the beginning of Genesis.

So if we ask where baptism takes us – into what neighbourhood – I'm afraid the first answer to the question is: into the neighbourhood of chaos. Baptism brings us near to chaos in the sense that to be baptised, to go where Jesus goes, is to go into the depths of the human condition. To be in touch with our own inner chaotic need of God’s Spirit for re-creation, to be in touch with the chaos around us, the muddle, the suffering, the neediness of human experience. The one thing baptism doesn’t do for us is to put us in charge of our circumstances. Instead we’re asked to plunge down, with God, into the depths of ourselves, and the depths of God’s world, to understand the rawness, the muddle, into which the Spirit of God has to come, bringing absolution and renewal.

And the baptised life, therefore, is a life lived in constant awareness of our own inner need, our own inner chaos, our constant hunger for the Spirit. It’s a life lived in awareness of the nothingness out of which God creates. So we begin by being taken into the neighbourhood of chaos, so that the Spirit pours down into it, to bring new creation.

And of course, having said that, at once we see the second element emerging: to be brought into the neighbourhood of chaos is to be brought into the neighbourhood of our human neighbours – their need, their confusion, their chaos. To be brought into solidarity.

Because when Jesus descends into the chaos of this world, and the need of this world, He accepts solidarity with human beings, in all their diversity. And to be baptised is to be taken into solidarity.

How much more comfortable our lives would be if that were not so. Sometimes it’s easy, and it’s tempting, to say that the ‘fellowship of the baptised’ is the gathering of those who are holy, and finished, and polished, and like us. Whereas in fact the fellowship of the baptised is the neighbourhood of a huge variety of people we would not really like to be found in the company of.

But if Jesus is not ashamed to be in the company of the human beings to whom He comes, and with whom He stands; if Jesus is not ashamed to be called our God, God with us; then our baptised condition is one in which we accept the solidarity involved in being in the neighbourhood of all those to whom God’s love is reaching out.

It’s a matter of accepting – to put it very starkly – the contamination of solidarity. We’d like to be pure. We’d like to be different. We’d like to have clear blue water around us, to separate us off from those compromising and annoying people into whose company God has brought us. Of course those compromising and annoying other people are not just the unbelieving world of humanity in general – they're much more often the other Christians that we are so embarrassed by. And when I think of the angst and struggle of the Anglican Communion over these last few years, to which the Bishop has referred, I think again and again of how tough solidarity is, and how much, at times, we want to be somewhere else with other people.

I've often gone back to the old Scots story of the aristocratic lady who founds her own church. And the parish minister comes to call one day and gives her a bit of a talking to, and says, “Are you seriously trying to tell me that only you and your coachman are saved?” And the old lady thinks for a bit, shakes her head, and says “Well, no. I'm not so sure about John.” That’s the kind of church we probably, most of us, would really rather like to belong in. And one of the great graces of the Anglican Communion worldwide, and the Church of England locally, is that we are not going to get that sort of Church if we stay with that sort of fellowship.

We can be embarrassed, angry, and frustrated by that, and we probably will be anyway. But we ought at least to be working at some fundamental theological recognition that what we are doing in remaining in fellowship with the people we find questionable, and who question us, is expressing the solidarity of the baptised identity – our neighbourhood, with suffering, sinful, needy, and confused humanity, in and out of the Church. That means that in baptism the gift of the Spirit is not only drawing us up into new creation, the gift of the Spirit is always holding open the door of communion. Holding open the possibility of solidarity, of fellowship, with the strange, the threatening, the embarrassing.

This is a bit of a parenthesis, but I have to say that one of the things that strikes me most about visiting parish churches in certain parts of the country, is quite simply that you see there the neighbourhood of people who would not be visibly neighbours anywhere else. Visiting a parish some years ago in the East End of London, I remember so vividly looking around and seeing the diversity of race and age and class in that rather remarkable church, and thinking, “Where else?” And that remains one of the great gifts and glories of the church of God in general and, dare I say it, the Church of England at its best.

The neighbourhood of chaos and the neighbourhood of others, accepting and recognising our need, understanding our solidarity – often a solidarity that we find quite hard to come to terms with – but neither of those would make any sense unless we took seriously the third dimension here, which is of course the neighbourhood of God the Father. Where are we taken by baptism? We’re taken into the neighbourhood of God the Father. That’s what the Spirit does. When St Paul tells us that the Spirit is poured into our hearts so that we cry “Abba, Father”, St Paul is telling us that baptism takes us into the heart of the Father.

In the first chapter of St John’s gospel, when we read in the prologue that “the Word was with God” (John 1.1), and the “only begotten” was, literally, “in the bosom of God” (John 1.18), surely what we’re meant to understand is that the word of God is, as it’s sometimes been translated, “next to the Father’s heart.” And in that same fourth gospel Jesus says to his disciples, “Where I am, there will my servant be also.” (John 12.26) And if the eternal word of God, made flesh in Jesus, is “next to the Father’s heart”, and if we are going where Jesus goes, in baptism, then that’s where we’re going: to the Father’s heart.

That is both a deeply consoling and a deeply challenging vision. The Jesus who is next to the Father’s heart, and prays “Abba, Father” Himself in Gethsemane, is the Jesus who, because He is so close to the Father, has no defences against what the Father asks of Him and so goes to the Father’s heart through the cross. And that’s where we’re going too: the very centre of our Christian identity, our Christian location; the very energy and heart of the new creation – to be taken into the cross and the resurrection.

Where baptism takes us is a dangerous place, a risky place. The cost of facing our chaos, the cost of solidarity with others, is all part of the ultimate cost of being defenceless before the will of God the Father. And so to grow into Christ, and to go where He goes, is to grow in intimacy with the Father; an intimacy which constantly reconnects us with our neediness and our frailty, and connects us with the need of our neighbour. Our solidarity with the neighbour is part of our solidarity with Christ, next to the Father’s heart.

Three kinds of neighbourhood, three dimensions into which baptism takes us. All of them both exciting and consoling, and challenging and worrying. All of them reminding us that one thing baptism is not is simply ticking a box or simply signing a statement, let alone joining a club. Baptism is going where Jesus goes. The baptised life is life lived in those three neighbourhoods of our own chaos, the neighbour’s need, and the will and love of the Father.