Proper 13 | Baptism | Colossians 3:1-11
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
July 31, 2022
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman
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“…your life is hidden with Christ in God.” – Colossians 3:3b[1]
Thank you for joining us on this special baptismal morning! Christian baptism is a celebration of new life, of rebirth, of a restored Creation and a reconciled relationship with God. This ceremony is a mystery spanning both heaven and earth. Yet baptism, in all its assortment of forms, practices, and traditions, is also a very human attempt to recognize, ritualize, and reveal a divine reality: that we—not only in our innocence, wonder, and potential, in all our curious glory, but even in our failures and struggles, the pains and tragedies all face—we are and remain children of God.
Baptism is a sacrament, which experts define as “an outward, visible sign of an inward, spiritual truth.” That statement edges into the mystery of this tradition. However, I’m not sure it captures the fullness of the strange reality we’re giving body to this morning. The definition is by no means wrong—and I certainly don’t need to argue with anyone over it—but I think it relies a little too heavily on our divided understanding of what, exactly, a human really is.
Western society has a long tradition of driving the sharp wedge of dualism between what we think of as the spiritual and physical realms. “Secular” culture often emphasizes the superiority of the physical while many religions—much of Christianity included—too often claim primacy for the spiritual end of things. Life becomes an endless battle between two sides permanently and irreconcilably set at odds with one another in terms of focus, form, and morality. We pressure ourselves and other to choose between two realities that, like oil and water, simply cannot mix. But the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, the incarnation of God the Son, upends our common way of thinking. It reveals the inadequacy of our concepts of division and exclusion, of separation and distinction, of earthly and heavenly or even sacred versus secular. Baptism displays our divided understanding of human life as utterly misguided.
It turns out that to be fully human, you simply can’t emphasize one perceived reality above the other. One can neither neglect the spiritual nor denigrate the physical without harm to the person as a whole. We Christians understand Jesus to be fully God and fully human: two natures but one single being. God, who we often consider to be purely spiritual, embraced the physical, essentially baptizing themself into our human way of experiencing the universe through Christ’s incarnation. Baptism reveals that within our own supposed “dual nature,” there is no dual to be found, only a unity made obscure and mysterious by our continual attempts to isolate it from itself. Through baptism, we know and celebrate the dignity of owning not just a spiritual or a physical human expression. Instead, we glimpse something entirely beyond our distinctions, a unified existence—a singularly unique gift from God—that can never truly be divided.
That said, Enora’s baptism this morning may be mystical, but it is by no means magical. You won’t find any quantifiable transformation of either her tangible or immaterial nature. Baptism does not make her more God-like, nor will it somehow leave her any less human than she already is. God revealed boundless love for humanity—for Creation as a whole—through the incarnation of Jesus Christ. Contrary to our expectations, God hasn’t ever wanted to take away from the me-ness of being me, the you-ness of being you, or the Enora-ness of being Enora. God actually wants us, from the youngest infant to the most elderly individual, to embrace the true fullness of ourselves, to live as much like me or you or Enora as we possibly can, bringing our own unique gifts, lives, and personalities into their greatest possible expression through love, joy, and faithfulness—to be, just like Jesus, even more secure, safe, and loved in our unified human nature than any of us have ever before realized.
“…your life is hidden with Christ in God.”
[1] All Bible quotations are from the NRSV unless otherwise noted.