“In Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not performed by human hands. Your whole self ruled by the flesh has been put off when you were circumcised by Christ, having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised with Him through your faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead.”
Colossians 2:11-12
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus
In the series, ‘Being Christian‘ I am trying to share with you the activities that signify a Christian essence in the life of the faithful and what kind of people we might hope to become in a community where these activities are practices. With this hope in mind, we started with the most important sacrament (or a rite) by which an individual is brought to the Christian family – the Baptism.
In the Part 2 of the series, we tried to understand that God, from the beginning, intended for us to grow in such love for Him and in such confidence in Him that we could rightly be called as God’s sons & daughters. And Jesus Christ came down to our level so that we could be restored to the humanity that God intended, by being able to work in places where humanity is most at risk, most disordered, disfigured and needy. Christians who are meant to be in the neighborhood of Jesus, will also be found in the neighborhood of human confusion and suffering, alongside those in need. We ended with learning that baptism means being with Jesus ‘in the depths’: the depths of human need, including the depths of our own selves in their need – but also in the depths of God’s love; in the depths where the Spirit is re-creating and refreshing human life as God meant it to be.
Sharing in the life and death of Jesus
If we believe the previous beliefs as true, baptism does not confer on us a status that marks us off from everybody else. To be able to say, ‘I am baptized’ is not to claim an extra dignity, let alone a sort of privilege that keeps one separate from and superior to the rest of the human race, but to claim a new level of solidarity with other people. It is to accept that to be a Christian is to be affected – one can also say contaminated – by the mess of humanity.
It is very much a paradox. Baptism is a ceremony in which we are washed, cleansed and re-created. It is also a ceremony in which we are pushed into the middle of a human situation that may hurt us, and that will not leave us untouched or unsullied. And the gathering of the baptized people is therefore not a convocation of those who are privileged, elite and separate, but of those who have accepted what it means to be in the heart of a needy, contaminated and messy world. To put it another way, one does not go down into the waters of the Jordan without stirring up a great deal of mud!
When we are brought to be where Jesus is in baptism, we let our defenses down so as to be where He is, in the depths of human chaos. And that means letting our defenses down before God. Openness to the Spirit comes as we go with Jesus to take this risk of love and solidarity. And that is why, as we come up out of the waters of baptism with Jesus, we hear what He hears: ‘This is my son, this is my daughter, this is the one who has the right to call me Father”.
The Holy Spirit, says St. Paul, is always giving us the power to call God Father, and to pray Jesus’ prayer (Galatians 4:6). And the baptized are those who, going with Jesus into the risk and darkness, open themselves up to receive the Spirit that allows them to call God Father.
What else can we expect to see in the baptized? Along with an openness to human need, we will also see a corresponding openness to the Holy Spirit. In the life of the baptized people, there is a constant rediscovering, re-enacting of the Father’s embrace of Jesus in the Holy Spirit. The baptized person is not only in the middle of the human suffering and muddle but also in the middle of the love and delight of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. That surely is one of the most extraordinary mysteries of being a Christian. We are in the middle of two things that are very much contradictory to each other: in the middle of the heart of God, the ecstatic joy of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit; and in the middle of a world of threat, suffering, sin and pain. And because Jesus has taken his stand right in the middle of those two realities, that is where we take ours as well. As He says,
“Where I am, there will my servant be also.”
(John 12:26)
Before I sign off for the day, let us do a quick recap of what we understood in today’s session. We tried to understand that just as Jesus was acknowledged in the waters of Jordan as God’s son, we too are given an opportunity to be acknowledged as God sons & daughters. And in opening ourselves to the Holy Spirit, we also are to open up to the needs and requirements of the people around us. We who are baptized are to be found in the middle of the love that God has for us and in the middle of the human suffering showing to the world Gods love for them as well.
Next week, we will continue on what else do we expect to see in a baptized person. In the meantime, please do uphold me and my family in your prayers.
Your brother in Christ Jesus
Jobin George
